I know exactly how he feels! I'm a woman diagnosed with Asperger's and I've been a victim of bullying and discrimination all my life, which I coped with on my own. It is only when my son (now also diagnosed with Asperger's) started getting bullied at his Catholic school and not being taken seriously by the stuff at all that I made an official complaint then asked for help from the Social Services. The school's acting Head retaliated by alleging that I have mental health problems and lie about everything and that our son is also lying about the bullying and that the bruises on his body were caused "at home" (not true! He was repeatedly kicked by other kids: all recorded by our GP and photographed).

We took our son out of school where he couldn't even read or write (school saying that he was just a "slow child") and he's now at a different school - one of the best in his class at reading and writing, but he still gets bullied - Autistic kids do! However, I was pregnant with our second child and started collapsing on a bus when collecting my son from school so Social Services were supposed to help. Instead, they'd turned on me and we've been put through hell. I've never been treated worse in my life! I was shouted at, treated as though I am backward, they were openly racist and sexist and hostile and made up lies - simply because they felt they could (thinking my diagnosis of Autism meant I was crazy).

I'm suing the former school now because her FALSE allegations are in writing. And the Social Services (they shot themselves in the foot by documenting their own stupidity when they claimed that I taught my children with Autism!!! It's impossible to do and the stress they'd caused was enormous.

My GP was no better - it seems they communicated between themselves, put two and two together, mae 65, but when I complained - they'd closed ranks and refused to co-operate. I was also denied any help from psychologist on the basis that my IQ is above 70 (in my feeble attempt to protect myself from being treated as though I was backward I took a Mensa test scoring 155. I thought I'd finally be recognised as their equal and treated with respect, but I ws wrong: they appeared to fear me as though I was an evil professor and started backtracking and interpreting things they did differently to make themselves appear less prejudiced. In the end they just all ignored me. My GP called me to my face a "Drama Queen" and told me to "shake off my Autism" and to "get over it" (when I'd asked her to refer me to a counsellor) and refused to prescribe my epilepsy medication (even though I was diagnosed with epilepsy by a Neurologist!!!) I have 2 University degrees and I was always treated with respect by my University professors and by my other GPs at the practice I used to be with.

However, since moving house and getting in with the new practice, it seems the first things they saw in my file was the word Asperger's syndrome and prejudged me before they'd even met me. Then all it took was one xenophobic acting head of catholic School (I'm Jewish by birth but not religious) and a Social worker who instead of helping me in time of need (having epileptic fits on a bus while heavily pregnant) asked me: "If you are having such a hard time here, have you thought of going back home?" After living in the UK LEGALLY for 17 years and married to my British husband and having both of my children in England, she's asking me that?

I don't know if the problems were due to racism or their ignorance of Autism or that I was incredibly unlucky. But one thing is clear: this goes on and something is seriously wrong with a system that allows this to go on. None of the people were reprimanded, even though there was evidence to prove what I was saying is true and that the so-called "professionals" blatantly lied.

There seems to be a culture of a cover-up and of closing ranks going on and it's the vulnerable and the victims who get punished over and over again. I'd really like to know: what is my husband paying his taxes for? He's been working since he left school, he has his own business and works 6 days a week. I also work. We own our home and we've NEVER broken the law. Why are these "professionals" getting away with abusing people like us AND getting paid for it?

Yours sincerely,
Roza Greenberg Carter,
Art consultant and Autism campaigner

I am so glad people are finding their voice and speaking up on the way they are abused and mistreated by those who claim to care for them.
Enough of our hard earned money is paying their salaries.
I have researched the attitude of social workers and other so called professionals for 12 years now.Herd thinking is what we discovered.Brainwash
ed and de humanised during training.
Maybe they are micro chipped too as they all act the same like sheep.
I have worked with people world wide and together we found that this patriarchal system abuses the weak and vulnerable because they can get away with it in secret.
They are backed up by secret courts also.
social workers call up psychologists and psychiatrists and tell them the outcome they want and the others rubber stamp it and then joke about it to your face.
I was told that I was too powerful for a woman and ought to learn my place.
If another social worker tells me they have more power than Tony Blair- I will bring them to 10 Downing St for him to hear.
I am also educated with degrees and that seemed to make things worse.
here is a truth that may shock you all.
my children during assessment were found to be too articulate, strong willed, and intelligent and so the SS would go to court to have an order made to have them zapped- I mean electric shock therapy.
i was in shock for a long time.
there was no psychiatrist involved at all.
no- they did not get the children and one is 22 and world wide IT Consultant.The other is going into osteopathy.
He scored in the top 10% in the world - so what was the reason for it then??
I have since learned that children are being taken and used in various trials.
secret of course.
It was all covered up and no files were allowed to us even under FOI.
We had never broken the law either but since that day none of us have entered a doctors surgery or any other so called professional in the care industry where people are the commodity of the money making scam that is.
the tax payer is paying the bill for all this abuse and neglect.

i just wanted to comment on this topic as my son has a diagnosis of aspergers and an array of other asd disorders....however because the diagnosis disagreed with the local authorities doctor i was labeled as a fabricater and consequently the diagnosis is being ignored....ive been treated as a leper in society ever since and my son is still suffering. the social services plan to remove him very soon from my care rather than put in the services this family needs in order to function. the social services do not care about children with complex needs ....this country needs to face facts.too many parents do not get the help or support they so badly need , instead unneccessary intervention, meetings, monitoring, conferences, assessments, they go on and on putting families through hell on earth.killing two birds with one stone 1. to put a child with conplex needs in a home somewhere where they cut off contact to their parents , obviously the child gets no treatment either.2. they fulfill their local authorities adoption targets and reap their financial rewards...what a sad excuse the ss are,they send out the message to the nation that they care when nothing could be further from the truth their interest lies in lining their own pockets at the expense of others....
www.fassit.co.uk

I am 50 years old, live in Montreal, Canada, and have high functioning autism along with Tourette's and personality disorder. I have no support system at all and am unable to get any services here. The provincial government cries poor and considers cases like mine a joke. Our entire health and social services system is in trouble because of government mismanagement.

From the time I was 14 till his death in 2004, I did see an understanding psychiatrist for supportive counselling. When he died, the psych who took his cases over took me on, but he follows an erratic schedule with last minute cancellations, didn't set any time aside for regular sessions and lacks compassion. Unlike my other psychiatrist, he knows little about autism, expects me to push myself to change and faults me for being unhappy. He refuses to realize that my living situation in this rough city with no support, a part time job in a regular workplace where I'm expected to function like everyone else and daily ostracism that started back in my schooldays is taking its toll. He also refuses to understand that getting through a day uses up all my mental energy. I can't switch because no one is willing to do supportive therapy and Quebec is short of psychiatrists.

Even when I saw the other psychiatrist, my needs for practical help went unmet. For many reasons, I can't do housework or even tolerate it and need help with chores. During the winter, I need rides. I also need advocacy. I am registered with the CLSC (Quebec health and social service agency system), but get nothing because my case is considered lowest priority. I'd have to be totally paralyzed, suffer a condition like Alzheimer's or have a below average IQ to get anything.

Laypeople and professionals I contact think I can learn to be self sufficient and cope because of my intelligence. My parents even went into denial when I was diagnosed with autism at age 3, raised me as if I were a nondisabled child, expected me to function like a normal kid and punished me for failing to do so. I was weak in subjects requiring social understanding but excelled in math and ended up with high marks or solid passes in everything because I bluffed my way through school and the grading system was lax. Those high marks fooled my parents and everyone else into thinking I could a lot more than I was really capable of.

Years of struggling without the proper support left me burnt out. I am desperate and fed up with being called lazy.
-Marla

I agree with Roza from Birmingham I am also a person with AS and have had similar experiences to her. From day one the kids and some teachers knew I was “different” and exploited this by engaging in a sustained campaign of bullying and exclusion including throwing hot soup on me when I brought soup to school, pulling down my pants, name calling, threats, cruel teasing, stealing my items, severe beatings, social exclusion and many other things. Even today I still suffer flashbacks and nightmares as a result.

The system needs to begin to realise that people with AS despite their intelligence are in need of help and support. Too often the problem is swept under the carpet or dismissed.

I suffer from Asperger's Syndrome, and I know how difficult it is. The mental health profession is almost entirely ignorant of the condition, and despite having seen several consultant psychiatrists due to depression it was not diagnosed. I eventually had to tell my GP what I thought it was, and get a referral to a specialist - a tortuous process which took several years. I did eventually get a diagnosis, and frankly I wish I hadn't bothered as there is no help at all available. I have been the victim of bullying several times, but due to the condition nobody takes much notice - I am made the scapegoat. The primary offender in this case is the Church of England, that filthy organisation which cynically pretends that it cares about people's welfare when in fact it generally couldn't care less, and will always look for a scapegoat to avoid having to tackle any issue.

My advice to anyone who suspects that they suffer from Asperger's Syndrome is do not, under any circumstances, seek a diagnosis. There will be no support from the medical profession, and once it gets into medical, employment and other personal records you will be treated like some kind of halfwit who brings bullying and discrimination on themselves.

I can relate to the experiences Roza and her son had with bullying. I didn't mention it in my first post, but I have been bullied all my life everywhere I went.

Not only peers but kids in all grades made fun of me in school. I also got it from the kids in the regular day camps my parents forced me to attend, park playgrounds and even at home, where my normal sister made fun of me. I couldn't even run an errand to the corner store without kids in the area calling me a mental case or step out the door without kids living a few doors away yelling out, "you ugly thing, why did you have to come outside?" When I went to junior college and university, students made fun of me. When I tried a nursing assistant course in a high school in 1978, regular high school kids started calling me a mental case because I had a severe meltdown the first day of classes when a car smashed into my bike while it was locked to a post and totalled it.

When I was 17 my parents sent me for group therapy in hopes of coaxing me out of my shell. I ended up group scapegoat that other members called their comic relief. One member told me I was "mentally miswired." I was so upset I ran out of the room and quit the group.

When I worked as a care aide in a nursing home from 1975 till my dishonorable demotion to the cleaning department (a story in itself) in 1983, fellow aides and other unionized staff, especially ones who belonged to cliques, teased me nonstop. During my equally unsuccessful stint as a cleaner, the teasing continued. I now work in that facility as a medical library assistent, but members of the original cliques as well as more recently hired blue collar level staff call me names, treat me as if I were a cockroach and walk around talking about me to their friends. Many of the other staff who are too mature to tease me mistreat me in other ways.

I also unfairly earned the reputation as a mental case in every apartment I rented because of meltdowns I got during power failures and other disruptions. Because of my autism related need for sameness and routine, I lose it when the routines that are my only source of comfort and pleasure get disrupted. Word also got around about my poor housekeeping ability and destructive rages brought on by frustration and sensory irritability. When I bump into neighbors from apartments I used to live in, they look at me and tell the people they're with, "There's that mental case who used to live in my building."

Despite coordination problems, I take part in the physical activities I enjoy and help me control my lifelong weight problems. When I'm biking or doing another activity, kids get a kick out of startling me on purpose, threatening my safety laughing when they see they succeeded in scaring me. While I was walking home from work one day, a bunch of kids who habitually scared me when I was biking and skating pulled up to me in their van, made fun of my awkwardness, jerked the van back and forth and almost ran me over. I memorized the license number and called the police, but they just told me that they couldn't do anything to track the kids down.

In addition to ongoing teasing, I endured more than my share of harassment and mistreatment from superiors like former workplace bosses and school teachers. I never got to finish the nursing assistant program I tried in 1978 because the teacher suspected I was mentally ill and threw me out after two weeks of classes. When management wanted me out of the care aide job, the union I belonged to fought on my behalf, but management harassed me into switching to cleaning. During that period co-workers played tricks like pouring juice into my purse, stole my wallet and giggled when they saw me get a meltdown upon discovering the contents of my purse was missing. One of the nursing supervisors called me a nonfunctioning human being and sent me home without pay.

Years of bullying left me with a permanent fear of kids. I will do anything to avoid them when I'm out. I also wake up in the middle of the night haunted by memories of school and workplace bullies and have no self esteem. It's hard to rebuild my sense of self worth with the ostracism continuing in all settings I take part in.

I have to admit this, but society isn't tolerant and most, if not all, autism spectrum people who live and function in mainstream are doomed to bullying everywhere they go. What we need is education to enlighten the public about autism spectrum disorders and services to help the autistics meet their day-to-day needs and reduce the stressors that provoke meltdowns and other undesirable behaviors.

I can hardly believe what i am reading here...well yes, maybe i can.I am so ashamed of our world today.I have a four year old daughter who is autistic.I am absolutely appalled at the way people with disabilities and their families are treated.Why is nothing being done to stop this happening?Why is it allowed to go on?And WHY does it happen at all?
People with a disability, any kind of disability, should have help,support and understanding.Not bullying,disbelief and ridicule!It must be hard enough living in their world as it is!
It's these horrible bullies that have the disability..
My daughter will begin Primary school this year (a normal mainstream school where she will have 'support') when she is almost five.I have said all along that she will NOT attand a Grammar school once she reaches the age of eleven because i know she will be bullied and ridiculed by older pupils etc.If there is no specialist school available for her to attend (and there are none in my area) then she will be taught at home.There is no way on this earth that i will let people bully her or hurt her and make her life a misery in any way.
She is quite verbal and understands quite a lot and gets very upset just if voices are raised.It would traumatise her if she were to be bullied.
After reading the posts and the article here i feel more strongly than ever and i feel i have been proved right in what i was thinking.
I really feel for all those of you that have posted here and can only repeat how utterly disgusted i am at the way in which you have all been treated.

The case of Peter Temple highlights the need for a wake up call.Across the UK,we receive letters, emails telling us of the indifference of Local Authorities when dealing with cases of Asperger Syndrome.Asperger Syndrome Awareness ASA,is a not for profit support group for adults with AS, and for parents/carers of children diagnosed with the Syndrome.ASA is looking to form a Local group in York,for further details visit the Communigate page search Charities, followed by Health and Disabillity groups.Or visit our main website on www.asawareness.org.
uk.Mark Sangan ASA Director.

I am very sorry to read the stories printed here, unfortunately I am not at all surprised.
Those in authority and who abuse their power, it would seem, are not a minority, but a very large majority.
There are a growing number of helpful websites for people with autistic spectrum disorders, members of whom, have often been 'through the mill' themselves.
One I like is:-
http://www.aspergeri
nfo.com/
This probably like the others has many links.