Let us hope that this is not contagious
June 27, 2006 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
That is the first line of an editorial in the June 24th Peoria Journal-Star, Disabilities should not dehumanize young victims. The editorial comments on the cases of Lexus Fuller, whose mother Kellie Waremburg is charged with attempting to kill her daughter on June 23rd with an overdose of pills, and of Katherine McCarron, who mother, Karen McCarron, suffocated her with a plastic bag on May 13th.
The Peoria Star-Journal editorial makes the point—made here more than a few times—that, in the words of disability advocate Stephen Drake,
Articles about the alleged murder of a person with a disability should not contain more about the disability than about the victim as a person. More space should be devoted to grieving family members than sympathetic friends of the accused killer.
The Peoria Star-Journal editorial closes with a reference to other mothers who have killed their children including Andrea Yates, the Texas mother whose second trial for drowning her five children in a bathtub in 2002 began this week.
Just as it’s important not to rush to judgment regarding Waremburg’s guilt or innocence, it’s critical not to blame the victim here, not to suggest that somehow, Lexus’s challenges excuse her mother’s alleged behavior. Advocates for the handicapped rightly repudiate any attitude that would dehumanize the disabled, that would depict these children as mere burdens, that would paint these parents as understandably overwhelmed, that would explain away these alleged crimes as the inevitable result of a primary caretaker snapping under the stress.
Yes, raising a disabled child can be frustrating. A mom or dad can feel isolated. The healthiest of children test their parents’ patience, too. But it never justifies alleged acts like these. If you’re even remotely contemplating doing harm to your children, please get help.
For now, central Illinoisans can simply pray that young Lexus Fuller survives, while dealing with the possibility that the Andrea Yates and Susan Smiths and Marilyn Lemaks don’t all live somewhere else. It’s not the best of company to be in.
Kellie Waremburg attempted to take her four-year old- daughter’s life not more than five weeks after Karen McCarron took her three year-old daughter’s, and the Peoria Journal-Star notes the similiarities between the cases, which have indeed dominated more than a few discussions in the autism blogsophere. Earlier in May—starting on May 9th—autism bloggers were kept busy discussing Autism Every Day, the video produced by Autism Speaks. Many bloggers were aghast to hear one of the mothers say, in her autistic daughter’s presence, that she had thought of driving off the George Washington Bridge with her daughter.
That she had thought of killing her daughter, and herself, like Kellie Waremburg, like Karen McCarron.
In the words of the Peoria Star-Journal editorial, “If you’re even remotely contemplating doing harm to your children, please get help.”
I was thinking of this today when I heard that Andrea Yates re-trial started up today. (Apparently, the first conviction was overturned on appeal.) Her defense is one of mental illness, punctuated by a case of post-partum depression. I’ve not followed the case enough to have an opinion, but someone who methodically drowns 5 kids in the bathtub has got some problems.
A key difference in that case, of course, was that the children who were killed received quite a bit of attention and public mourning.
I was hesitating to mention Andrea Yates—and Susan Smith, whose case I remember very well as it also got a lot of media attention. But I have been thinking about both of those mothers and of their children a lot.
And wondering why, outside of the autism and disability communities, more has attention has not been directed to Katherine McCarron’s case and the other child’s case.
Kristina, once again you have managed to have deep insight into a complex issue when you wonder why the murders of people with disabilities get so little media attention as compared to nondisabled children. We in the disability community have been aware of this trend for eons. We are devalued by a society that does not see our worth. Very few people are even aware that literally hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities were systematically rounded up during WWII in Nazi Germany and killed. The ovens were first perfected on people with disabilities and were still in use until 1949. Hugh Gregory Gallagher documented theses atrocities in his book, By Trust Betrayed. Zoom to recent times where we have been subjected to Dr. Kevorkian. This mad man actually had ideas to open sites called “obitoriums” where persons with disabilities could go to have their organs harvested for nondisabled people that he felt had more right to live. Many of Kevorkian’s victims did not even have terminal illnesses. They were disabled and their families made them feel like burdens. Read “Doctor Death” by Michael Betzold. So, the sad reality is that when a beautiful child like Katie McCarron is murdered, society sees it as a justified act. Sympathies are misdirected to the callous murderers. Your web site is a wonderful outlet for caring people to mourn the death of Katie and the other children that are not valued. We must keep speaking out about celebrating the lives of those people with disabilities who have a right to be loved and to love, and the right to live.