[HN Gopher] California teen with autism who vanished 3 years ago...
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California teen with autism who vanished 3 years ago is found alive
in Utah
Author : MilnerRoute
Score : 86 points
Date : 2022-04-16 20:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nbcnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nbcnews.com)
| aaron695 wrote:
| stuntkite wrote:
| I hope this reconnection doesn't put him into a situation he fled
| from and start a recycle of abuse. I hope he gets the help he
| needs, which is hard for autistic adults especially getting out
| into the world this way. Just because he was homeless and pushing
| a cart, doesn't mean he doesn't know how the world treats him and
| he had the ability to do his best not to give his name. He will
| likely repeat similar transient behavior. Which maybe that's not
| the worst thing in the world if he can get some better care. I
| know some delightful autistic hobos. The world doesn't want them
| for normal jobs and they're perfectly happy to camp, hop trains,
| and sing songs. It's a dangerous life but it's not a wrong life
| to choose. I don't need to know the drama of his struggle, but I
| just really hope people that can help him find a life that is
| less cold and more fulfilling and whoever put in him the need to
| walk away doesn't get to put that on him again.
| riffic wrote:
| this was exactly what I was worried about reading this article.
| The return to his parents seems like a terrible thing to
| celebrate without knowing what exactly happened to motivate him
| to escape in 2019.
| duxup wrote:
| To me that assumes something negative about the family.
| riffic wrote:
| This would be a solid assumption to presume.
|
| edit: I read your reply and I'm going to stop engaging
| right here. Sometimes intuition is worth listening to.
| zdragnar wrote:
| My brother is literally the best person I know. He has
| the patience of a stone, the compassion of a saint and
| bends over backwards to make sure his family's needs are
| met.
|
| His son is autistic, and will, given the slightest
| opportunity, walk out of the house and wander off. It's
| just something he does, no matter where he is or who he
| is with (local day cares refused to take him after awhile
| because they literally couldn't keep the kid safe from
| himself wandering or climbing after a certain point).
|
| I worry for my nephew, because he has literally no sense
| of self preservation, and he is growing fast. At some
| point, he may need to be put in a group home, because he
| is nearly his mother's size (she's fairly short anyway)
| and my brother is the primary breadwinner for the family.
|
| Don't wag your klep when you've nothing at all to go on
| about someone.
| duxup wrote:
| What do you think you know about these people?
| s5300 wrote:
| Yup, I've been mostly justifiably conditioned to believe that
| the overwhelming vast majority of missing persons reports for
| people 12-25ish are likely people running from abuse. Typically
| unfathomably horrendous abuse.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| > I hope this reconnection doesn't put him into a situation he
| fled from and start a recycle of abuse.
|
| Given his reluctance to give his name, this is highly likely to
| be what's happening here.
| psyc wrote:
| This is weird for me to read because years ago I met someone
| like this, and it always puzzled me. He just came up to me
| downtown one night and started chatting. He struck me as a
| little out there, kind of hippy-dippy. Seemed in good spirits.
| One of my neighbors knew him from a party. We all hung out with
| a few other people I didn't know. (At which time a middle-aged
| preacher uppercut a 6'5' drunk fireman so hard his feet left
| the ground and he landed on his head.) He crashed at my
| apartment. We hung out again the next day, and then he just
| disappeared.
|
| I didn't think much of it. I'd 'come up' with a bunch of
| neurotypical 'transients' with sad family lives who partied and
| crashed where they could.
|
| A couple of years later I thought maybe I'd look him up. I
| found a few news articles stating he (an adult) was "missing",
| autistic, and "ran away" from his "caregiver." Stated that he
| "functioned at a 12-year-old level." The autism part maybe
| explained some eccentricity, but I could not square that last
| part with the person I'd met. He seemed to know what he was
| doing (?) Based on the articles, he'd run away at least twice.
| No mention of parents, only a "caregiver."
|
| It was just weird. He was very, very chill, and very chatty. He
| didn't seem in distress. I suppose one could recast my first
| impression of rambling free-spiritedness as "functioning at the
| level of a 12-year-old"...? Just odd. I never did find a way to
| contact him.
| stuntkite wrote:
| Trigger Warning: Gonna talk about sexual assault and physical
| abuse below.
|
| "caregiver" is a big red flag for me. I'm on the autistic
| spectrum. My parents took a different tact and let me become
| an emancipated minor at 15. I'm not gonna say they did their
| best or that that was a good thing to do... I cannot as an
| adult fathom just letting the kid go to the wolves... but I
| survived.
|
| There is a massive contingent of people that HATE autistic
| people and feel like it's something to be "fixed". A lot of
| them frame that hate as helping.
|
| There are tons of laws and very questionable care giving
| organizations. The history is brutal. Frequently they are
| handed over to people who get into the role of caring for
| these people because they want to beat and rape people who
| can't complain (see Jimmy Savile). This isn't that dissimilar
| from the highly publicize Britany Spears conservatorship.
| There is money in taking care of an adult with "the mind of a
| 12 year old" also you can beat and rape them if you wanna.
|
| There is an old and "hippie dippie" model for spectrum
| disorders where they refer to them as indigo children and
| they claim that kids used to be called that because the baby
| was replaced by fairies and now speaks truths beyond their
| years. Look at the classic traits of a vampire. Being scared
| of water, can count things very fast, maybe has surprising
| strength and old wisdom.
|
| Autistic people aren't extra wise, they span the range of
| dipshit to genius like any other category of people. Autistic
| people do spend a lot of extra energy trying to predict a
| world that is confusing and hostile to them and when they
| vocalize how they navigate said world, it creeps people out
| who have to deal with a society that says lying is wrong but
| the rule actually is "fuck it, do whatever you can get away
| with."
|
| If you get hooked up to "caregivers" that take away your
| agency and you are an outlet of justifiable (to the abuser)
| sadism for them you can't run far enough. The state will put
| you back in their arms.
|
| Autism Speaks is a eugenics organization. Autism does not
| mean a person is unaware of the world around them, actually
| quite the opposite. Also the messaging that autism can be a
| super power is the same thing in disguise (see the most
| recent Predator movie or Baby Driver). It's a sensory
| disorder. It's not a lack of emotion, it's that overload
| frequently makes it difficult to respond to people and
| situations as "normal people" expect so abuse becomes a
| default mode for "caregivers". There are organizations that
| are CURRENTLY advocating for electric shock or physical harm
| to help "correct" autism.
|
| Yeah... (speaking about the perspective of a hypothetical
| person in a situation of abuse) Change your name, run away,
| hop trains. RUN if you can because you're autistic enough to
| see that people will always abuse you in any situation where
| you're put into the care of the ghouls that own your name.
| Even the Arc and Autism Self Advocacy Network have some
| massive problems including putting autistic people with weird
| abusive special interests into positions to hurt people who
| just want to live their fucking lives.
|
| I recently saw this video by a fellow I really relate to
| where he lays out all the things I say in a fit some times
| but... yeah. They lay it all out. The history of helping the
| disabled is pretty wrought with not checking in with the
| disabled. Also, I think they are a hilarious humorist and the
| rest of their stuff is fun.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOlEjWaejAw - You Don't Seem
| Autistic - or - How I Learned to Love the Meritocracy _
| Woohooligan Comedy
| erdos4d wrote:
| > There is a massive contingent of people that HATE
| autistic people and feel like it's something to be "fixed".
| A lot of them frame that hate as helping.
|
| I suspect this has something to do with the fact that many
| of these have grown up in environments where you are good
| at technical stuff or you are less than those who are (i.e.
| the US). They know that many autists will straight smoke
| their ass in all things STEM and they deeply resent being
| dealt a losing hand to those "weirdos". Others are just
| straight up sadists/abusers. The more I hear stories like
| this, the more I believe the courts practically seek out
| these sick fucks to be "caregivers" and such. Something is
| pathologically wrong with this entire area of society.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| "autist" is generally regarded as derogatory, BTW.
| teddyh wrote:
| So, what _is_ the latest term from the euphemism
| treadmill, then?
| psyc wrote:
| We can't decide between 'autistic person' and 'person
| with autism' but I gather the former is in the lead. Will
| get back to you after we sort it at the next AutistiCon.
| psyc wrote:
| Whatever. My brother and I are both autists and its our
| favorite term, because it's funny. I gauge the general
| level of respect from the context.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| You're welcome to it, of course. Doesn't change the way
| it's received by most of us!
| psyc wrote:
| There was this popular kid in my senior year of high
| school. Class clown, well dressed, one of the star
| athletes. We'd been friends in 7th grade but he'd
| apparently forgotten and didn't talk to me. I was
| occasionally fodder for his loud jokes in front of the
| whole class, although the gay kid got it a lot worse than
| I did.
|
| One day I was fixing one of the computers in the office
| and he happened by. Nobody was around. He saw what I was
| doing and apropos of nothing he launched into something
| like, "You know, this place doesn't matter. Nothing here
| is real. Out there, a few years from now, you'll be in
| college, or working for fucking Microsoft or some shit.
| You know where I'll be? I'll be driving a forklift or
| changing somebody's oil if I'm lucky." No jokes. No
| smile.
| ctime wrote:
| Well? Was he right?
|
| The suspense is terrible, I hope it lasts.
| psyc wrote:
| I left it out because I struggled with how to say it and
| still don't know the right way to tell it. I did become a
| software developer, and I did greatly enjoy my time at
| Microsoft. It wasn't happily ever after, but at least it
| was happily until it wasn't. He died 15 years later of a
| brain injury he sustained in a car accident that occurred
| around the same time we had that encounter. Just awful
| luck, having nothing to do with anything. I totaled my
| first car too, only difference was I didn't hit my head
| the same way.
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| > the more I believe the courts practically seek out
| these sick fucks to be "caregivers" and such
|
| I suspect its worse than that. I suspect courts don't
| care if the caregiver is a sick fuck, because the sick
| fuck is offering to fix the problem of a disabled person
| existing with needs.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| The idea of being in the care of malicious caregivers is
| horrific. I can imagine it skews your worldview in a
| pessimistic direction. I'm sorry to hear that life was
| unfair to you. I'm glad to hear that you're able to
| approach it with some humor now.
| woohooligan wrote:
| Thanks, Stuntkite! That's really kind of you...
|
| I ... my childhood was fucking weird... I thankfully never
| dealt with malicious caregivers, but I know now that both
| of my parents were autistic and undiagnosed. My care was
| mostly severe neglect... I say it was bizarre, because I
| went to an expensive summer camp like $6k/yr if I remember
| correctly, but that was the only time I knew support and
| community as a child. Back at home, while my parents were
| millionaires (not anymore), I lived alone with my mom in a
| hoarding house with multiple holes in the roof and infested
| with both racoons and rats. So yeah... a distinct lack of
| socializing experience didn't help me.
|
| Let me know if I can help with anything. I'm datafaucet on
| twitter http://twitter.com/datafaucet
| psyc wrote:
| Ha! This video is what I needed right now for a few
| reasons. Thanks. Yes, I am on the spectrum, and so is my
| brother, and so is my father. I wasn't diagnosed until my
| late 30s, but 1) I had plenty of other things to blame, and
| 2) I more or less 'knew' since my teens, but autism was not
| widely discussed then, and I didn't identify with that
| label at all. Internally I simply identified as a space
| alien from another planet sent here to observe humans. It
| helped me explain to myself my need to study people very
| carefully to form a theory of their words and actions. I
| just studied people silently for years, never saying much.
| After high school I found some friends who appreciated me
| enough to bring me into situations where I could imitate
| them and slowly begin to practice masking.
|
| My father was not very involved because my mother didn't
| want him to be. To this day she is enraged that she was
| suckered into marrying a defective person because she felt
| sorry for him. She booted me out the house at 18. I was
| quasi-homeless for the next few years, sleeping in my car,
| at friends', sometimes at my grandparents'. Nothing
| permanent. I'm going to cut this story short because it
| doesn't really go anywhere. 2006-2012 were pretty good for
| me, and by conventional measures too.
|
| I've been entangled with the mental health system too many
| times to list. It's a fraught fucking thing. A real mind-
| fuck. We didn't have the word 'gaslighting' in those days.
|
| I've had very little interaction in life with people I
| relate to, other than my brother. That's why this video is
| ... relieving, or something like that.
| stuntkite wrote:
| If you ever wanna talk, hit me up! Community is
| important! Kindness is infectious. Check my profile if
| you feel like you wanna reach out. I've been kind of
| working on an internet generative pen and paper style
| role playing chat gizmo (who isn't right?) but also...
| Yeah man, that family stuff is typical honestly and it
| sounds like your mother and father had a lot of hurt
| because they couldn't connect. We have the luxury of
| doing better because we can know different things because
| internet.
|
| No matter what, guard your grill with your fam but they
| did what they could and are flawed like the rest of us.
| Tigers won't change their stripes. Be who you gotta be
| and try to share some comfort and kindness where you can.
| Also give Whooligan a like and follow if you think of it.
| They don't have a lot of attention and I think they do
| solid effort and deserve more.
|
| I detect a very familiar kind of traumatic shock in this
| story here. I currently experience manic terror masked by
| what looks like jokey beats told rapidly on loop for what
| I suspect are similar reasons. Who failed you doesn't
| have to define you though. They will probably still fail
| you but, probably they don't want to and don't know how
| to be different and wish they could be. Not your problem
| to fix. Because you're human and talking to me right now
| I think I can say with very strong confidence that your
| chosen family needs you to slow down the tape enough to
| share your light.
|
| It makes me pretty happy that this video resonated with
| you. Find your people, be kind, know yourself. Guard your
| grill because the world is getting weirder. You're a
| goldmine and ghouls wanna deplete you. Surround yourself
| with folks that value your modes and can help you with
| the parts you don't get that well and you can trust to
| tell you the truth. Rinse, repeat.
|
| I'm sorry if that's preachy sounding, but everything
| feels like hell to me today. I very much feel for your
| struggle how you explained it friend.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Just wanted to show my support to @psyc and you
| (@stuntkite). I come from a mildly dysfunctional family
| and while everything worked out fine in the end it made
| me quite sensitive to these issues and I am aware of the
| struggle. Big hug, guys!
| psyc wrote:
| I appreciate it!
| stuntkite wrote:
| Thank you. I very much appreciate that. Cheers!
| cycomanic wrote:
| Thanks for sharing @stuntkite @psyc! Sometimes a read
| (like these posts) come as quite a reality check to
| someone who comes from family with no big issues and who
| had it generally quite protected in life. All the best to
| you and stay strong!
| psyc wrote:
| Well thank you for saying so, and yes I tell my story _in
| part_ to prick the Just World / The System Works bubble
| that I perceive as predominating around these parts.
| Like, to me, I might casually mention I started working
| at age 8, and someone responds "Uh, that is child labor."
| To which I reply, no shit it's child labor. By 12 I was
| putting in 40 hour weeks during summer, under the table,
| for a respected professional pillar of the community. And
| someone will say, "This happened in America?
| Exploitation!" Well maybe, but to me it was a godsend,
| and the one and only reason I was able to buy my first
| computer and learn programming. Of _course_ that isn't
| how it would go in an ideal world, but how can anyone
| mistake this world for an ideal one? You answered that
| question. And my early life (on second thought, the rest
| of it too) wasn't all-ghetto either. It was always very
| checkered. Every part had aspects of real privilege and
| real poverty. Maybe the only thing it didn't have was any
| consistency :)
| woohooligan wrote:
| Thanks, psyc. I'm really glad I was able to ... connect?
| lol ... how do talk person? I was going to say comfort
| you, but I dunno... it felt weird to say. I'm glad you
| can relate and got something out of it. How's that? Am I
| doing this right?
|
| Relationship with your mom sounds awful... I'm strained
| with both of my parents for different reasons.
|
| Let me know if I can help with anything. I'm datafaucet
| on twitter http://twitter.com/datafaucet
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Thanks for your trigger warning. I did not read your
| message. I am replying notwithstanding. I actually had to
| write this in a different application because when I tried
| replying to your comment, I couldn't actually hide it from
| view, and I saw the words 'special interests' and others,
| couldn't resize the window right, so opened another app to
| write.
|
| Dude so in Chile, most of the world, a guardian can pay a
| shrink (a malpracticing psychiatrist, that's what that
| means) $400.000 (like $500) and he or she will 100% accuse
| him of any condition desired. Will. In United States the
| price is higher, depends on the state, basically on the
| chance of getting caught, and good psychs will just refuse.
| But they won't turn the guardian in, the good psychs are
| not in charge, the shrinks are in charge (like the
| Sacklers, being a shrink can make you a billionaire[1]).
| But a shrink can diagnose bipolar, schizophrenia, cannot
| take care of himself, retardation[2], what are the
| others...autism...paranoia...early-onset dementia...um...I
| read so many books about these things, why am I having a
| hard time rattling them all off...but at any rate, these
| are not diagnoses. They are also accusations. If false and
| public, they are slander. They justify harm, you can
| justify brain surgery, like a lobotomy but with better
| marketing. Same as an accusation can justify harm, putting
| someone in prison. And turns out, they all make the
| pretense of being scientific, but none of them are
| falsifiable (you have no way of proving them false), so why
| bother calling psychs who use them doctors if they're not
| even scientists? (Psychs is a more neutral term than
| shrink, psychiatrist is too big a word, takes too long to
| say, and means 'attendant of the soul' which is
| innacurate.)
|
| And there are some great psychs. Just a minority by design.
|
| [1] If you actually do the math, the three Sackler brothers
| are each a trillionaire debtor because that's the poverty
| value of the suffering they inflicted. Thousands of 13th
| amendment violations, making people addicts means making
| them slaves, they made hundreds of thousands of Americans
| slaves. Just through psychiatric malpractice, by definition
| being a shrink.
|
| [2] This one is dangerous because if you diagnose
| retardation and the retard gets the best score in the
| country on the SAT, you might not look so smart yourself.
| psyc wrote:
| So my mother did this to me once. She didn't pay him - he
| was a friend from her church. He committed me as a favor
| to her. I was actually in a pretty good place at that
| time mood-wise. 100% not a danger to self / others. But
| she thought it a clever way to get me gone without the
| guilt of putting me on the street. Neither said a word
| beforehand. Surprise! The feeling of betrayal was
| indescribable.
|
| They held me for a miserable month. The justification
| given by the hospital doc was I "Didn't have a plan."
| That last bit can be good or bad depending on their
| assessment of your plans.
|
| yes, I'm fortunate to have a very good doc now. I've had
| a few decent ones. Most could be replaced by a kiosk -
| take a quiz, dispense Big Pharma pills.
| robocat wrote:
| > The justification given by the hospital doc was I
| "Didn't have a plan."
|
| Can you give more context? Generally if someone is
| suicidal, "having a plan" is not a good thing, because it
| is beyond a vague intent, and it is a very strong signal
| of danger. Depressed people are queried about plans to
| help judge the possibility of suicide: you imply that was
| the risk that your mother was worried about.
| codezero wrote:
| To NT people not conforming to or recognizing/acknowledging
| social structures anchors your cognition at an adolescent
| level where that type of behavior is acceptable. Teens are
| expected to conform and some people on the spectrum can be
| completely "normal" in every other way, but if you asked that
| person to show up to a job at 8am every day or to do X
| socially expected thing, they'd probably just go find someone
| else to talk to, hence the "functioning at a 12 year old
| level." I consider this to be oppressive social pressure and
| I'm lucky I was privilege enough to live this way without
| being shamed or tormented by my family. We should all
| function at the level of a 12 year old.
| psyc wrote:
| I couldn't agree more.
| throwawayHN378 wrote:
| Tbh most adults I meet function at a 12 year old level. Have
| you ever tried to see an adult do math? I'm talking about
| adults who aren't engineers, doctors, etc.
| MathCodeLove wrote:
| I don't think one's ability to do math is a great indicator
| of how effective they function in day to day life.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I hope he wasn't dumped by overwhelmed parents.
| moralestapia wrote:
| A few days ago there was an Ask HN about how do you get along
| with your parents [1].
|
| I've been reading a lot about this and other related topics, like
| how does one deal with narcissistic parents, which is a common
| thing actually. There's a lot of abuse that no one notices as it
| is not immediately evident as other sorts of abuse (i.e.
| physical, sexual, etc...), child neglect is so widespread
| nowadays that I'd consider it an epidemic.
|
| I recall reading a testimony of a child who was constantly and
| severely emotionally abused and he was talking about how come
| none of the other adults around him realized what was going on,
| even though he _" was showing all the signs of living in an
| abusive household"_. The thing is that all of these signs are
| quite subtle and you have to know what you're looking for in
| order to start noticing them. For instance, the kid who almost
| never wants to be noticed, who is quite "shy", who is always
| complying with everybody may be under a chronic situation of
| ridiculing, demeaning or derogatory remarks at home, which has
| modeled this behavior and, sadly, stunted his emotional and
| social development.
|
| As I was reading this story, I couldn't stop thinking about how
| the boy would rather risk it into the wild rather than just
| coming back to his parents, for three years. This is a huge red
| flag, honestly, and while it doesn't necessarily imply wrongdoing
| from the parent's side it is definitely something that should be
| looked at with a lot of care and empathy for him. Sometimes, not
| even parents are aware of the kind of damage that they could be
| causing by choosing to behave in a way they consider to be
| "normal".
|
| I wish the boy the best, he still has his whole life ahead of him
| and I hope he finds his place in this world soon and without much
| trouble.
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31047608
| chrismeller wrote:
| You know what, I don't talk about it... at all. It wasn't until
| 20 years later and after I'd moved to a different continent and
| started seeing a therapist for completely unrelated reasons,
| but the therapist asked me what my childhood was like.
|
| I'd always thought mine was "fine" or "normal". Divorced
| parents, like my friends. Younger brother and I living with our
| mother, like my friends. Aggressively "middle class", like my
| friends.
|
| I described one time how my mother would (frequently) get home
| from a long day at work, not ask how our days were, start
| cooking dinner (Hamburger Helper or similar), and then one of
| us kids would ask an innocent question and she would fly off
| the handle. Turn off the stove mid-meal, storm to her room and
| slam the door.
|
| There was always plenty of cereal, sandwich meat, and canned
| soup in the house, so it's not like we went hungry. Again, I
| thought it was normal.
|
| I'm now very closely approaching 40 and finally coming to terms
| with what that seemingly insignificant thing (to her) did to
| me. I'm not expecting every parent to have a guidebook for
| survival with kids, but WTF.
|
| Hey, at least I ended up being fiercely independent and learned
| to cook. I'm sure this kid (man now) will soldier through...
| he's obviously survived this long on his own.
| [deleted]
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