CW for filicide/murder.

This week, a 10 year old autistic boy named Dylan Freeman was killed by his mother.

His death was tragic, unjust, and completely avoidable. But instead of sympathizing with Dylan, many people have been sympathizing with his murderer instead.

This is a common pattern we see in media coverage and general discourse on autistic children who are killed by their parents/caregivers.

Because the child is autistic, suddenly their life isn’t as important. They must have been a burden, so their death is understandable. /s

Here’s a Facebook post about the incident.

This person refers to Dylan’s murderer as a “poor mother” who was “utterly drained with no help at all.”

Then, they imply that being quarantined with an autistic child is so emotionally burdensome that murder is understandable.

Here’s a tweet, in which quarantine with an autistic child is described as “a nightmare.”

And to me, the inclusion of “severely” before the word autistic here is being used to justify what happened.

Again, this person is openly sympathizing with Dylan’s murderer.

This tweet is the worst, in my opinion.

The implication here is that killing an autistic child isn’t abhorrent, even though killing a neurotypical child would be.

Because autistic people are such burdens, who cause our families such severe amounts of stress. /s

All of this is sickening to me. There is never an excuse or justification for murder. Never.

Autistic people‘s lives are valuable.

All children test their parents’ nerves. But people don’t jump to the murderer’s defense when the child is neurotypical, do they?

I never want to see another parent defend or sympathize with the murderer of an autistic child, ever again.

And I will not tolerate the underlying assumption that autistic people are burdensome and deserve to die.

We have the right to live in this world.