“I’ve terminated the life of my autistic child”
November 23, 2006 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Crime, Parenting
“’I’ve terminated the life of my autistic child.’”
So Jose Stable said to the police who responded to his call to report that his son, 12-year-old Ulysses Stable, was dead. As reported in the November 23rd New York Times, Ulysses was found naked in the bathtub “with his throat slit from under his left ear to the middle of the throat” early Wednesday morning. Ulysses’ mother did not live with him and his father had had custody since Ulysses was two years old. Stable home-schooled his son; caseworkers had been to visit them and seen Ulysses as recently as last week. According to Sharman Stein of the Administration for Children’s Services, there had been a “recent allegation of neglect against the father” and a report that Ulysses was not attending school regularly; the agency had sought custody of Ulysses in Family Court earlier this year, and had “agreed to provide supervision” under a court order instead.
Ulysses, who weighed about 280 pounds, did not speak much and seemed “inseparable” from his father, according to neighbors.
Stable, who was unemployed, has been charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon. Records indicate that he had been arrested “several times” previously for assault and possession of a criminal weapon. The Times reports that “two large kitchen knives and a meat cleaver” were found and that it appeared that they had been partially wiped off.
As reported in the November 22nd Newsday.com, Stable referred to his son as a “burden” to police.
It is Thanksgiving here and I will be thinking of Ulysses all day, and for many days to come.
Jeff Stimpson
Jill Cornfield
I am shocked, horrified and sickened by this.
Can’t think of anything else to say at this point, except maybe … when will this killing end?
Oh, I can’t think of anything to say. This is so very very sad. Something needs to be done to stop parents from killing their children.
Horror and a pit in my stomach as I read this.
Just read the Times and posted about this over at Austism’s Edges.
My response is similar. I am heartbroken.
And I am angry.
How many autistic children will be murdered by their parents before we demand good schools, good family supports, and respite care for caregivers?
Jose is described in the Times as “unemployed.” Given that he was homeschooling a severely challenged child, it seems rather odd to describe him as “unemployed.” He was working 24/7, he just wasn’t being compensated.
None of this excuses murder, but I can’t look at this without looking at the totality of this situtation. If it is difficult for me to find a school, and caregivers, and respite with my very mildly impaired Sweet M, I can’t imagine what it was like for Jose and Ulysses. I can’t even pretend to imagine.
I too have a moderately affected nonverbal autistic son in which the schools and neighbors harrass. Of course the midwest has been known to be narrow minded with disabilities. Anyway if I am ever on my death bed, I want my son dead because I want no government liar SOB drugging him or tieing him up somewhere. Basically I pray to outlive my own son. You all think this is a joke it is not. I am sick and tired of the judgemental jokes. I ask for help killing animals and they think he is being abused in my home. He rubs genitalia on furntiure I am accused of sexual abuse. WE now have pro lifers doing there speeches yet when the child is born, the mother is completely on her own. I have a neighbor who calls us retarded and wanted to put up a sign no retardos allowed. Yet when I see judge Billings for a restraining order, I am totally ignored!!! The US of america being a decent country is a joke!
There’s no excuse for murder, period. There are parents who murder nonautistic children as well.
More blood on the hands of Autism Speaks. It’s been nothing but murders since they formed.
Nothing excuses this. NOTHING. But had CPS been called, no one would have listened anyway…
I agree — nothing excuses murder.
And you already know what I think about social circumstances that provide almost no support to parents caring for an autistic child; such circumstance would increase the prevalence of mental health disorders in those parents.
Don’t kill your child. I’ve dealt with attempted murder and I’ve dealt with being abused in institutions and tied down and so forth. The difference between being tied down, abuse, and death, is that you can’t ever escape death. A person can have a life after abuse, most people do. I’d far rather be abused and even institutionalized and survive it (it happens, all the time) than killed beforehand by someone who assumed that I could never be happy after that, that I would never get out after that, etc. Saying you would kill someone to “protect” them from that fate spits in the face of everyone who has survived that fate and somehow, by their own power or the power of others, gotten out and made a good life for ourselves.
Charlene,
Whatever you say, the law is pretty damn clear: the killing of anyone without just cause is wrong. As a ‘just cause’, legal execution of a death sentence on a prisoner is fraught with many ethical problems… ‘because the kid is autistic’ is not a ‘just cause’ that even deserves to fly.
Killing children is wrong, period.
Doesn’t mean that I don’t empathise with the situation you and your child are in. I think that - instead of funding un-necessary and illegal wars - politicians should think more about making a difference in the US, the UK and in Canada… and where-ever else there is a government (basically, throughout the world).
But the situation is not down to the autistic child. The situation is down to intransigence on the parts of the authorities. And I’m damned if I’m going to accept that it is ‘okay’ or ‘understandable’ for anyone to punish an autistic child because of what the authorities refuse to do to support the child in his/her needs.
Kassianne: “More blood on the hands of Autism Speaks. It’s been nothing but murders since they formed.”
Yeh, kinda odd, isn’t it?!
Charlene,
You don’t need to choose between death and abuse. There are other choices and other outcomes.
I’ve found that when the choices before me seem rather dismal, it’s usually because I’m not seeing very clearly.
I pray that you can see a way find other choices.
Charlene, Thank you for writing here—-I know what it is like to feel so tired and desperate and just sad that things do not look good, that (as Shawn puts it), choices seem dismal. But yes, there is a completely different choice to take, to do what we can to help our children live the best lives they can, to live. And I can only hope that what happened to Ulysses Stable can help us to create a better world so that his death and that of too many others does not, need not, happen again.
There were murders, murder/suicides, neglect and abandonment involving autistic people and their parents long before Autism Speaks was formed. Let us not attack other parents and their organizations but try instead to get people the support they need.
This is so horrible. WE NEED TO HAVE SUPPORT for ALL families. Let people know it is ok to ask for help. They do not have to go through it alone. Caring for the autistic is challenging but it should not come to murder to get peoples attention. EPEDEMIC!
Yeah.
Epidemic of selfish parents. We’ve been here a looooong time. Parents didn’t USED to think it was acceptable to kill their kid. So why the epidemic of murdering mommies and daddies?
Is it the plague rhetoric? YES! I think that’s a good hypothesis! The epidemic of hysterical language caused the killings!
wow am I good…
Reading about one parent killng one child is beyond horrible—reading about it again, and again, and again, leaves me wordless. I don’t think enough can ever be done.
that is horrid! And the tragic thing is that in most of my research I have come across the fact that murderers of autistic kids typically receive less severe sentences then the murderers of NT kids!
Autismgal: If there is any information or articles that you’d ever like to share here, it would be more than appreciated. Thanks for sharing this here.
Joel Smith (http://thiswayoflife.org) has compiled a list of murders of autistic children by their parents, and of the sentences they received.
ím a single mom of two children: 6 and 4 almost 5 who is autistic; both children are victims of maltreatment, neglect, and abuse as of right now. Family Court does not listen what being going on and instruct me to comply w/ visits. today my son ia suffering after comming back from overnight at father’s home. Father fits a sociopath profile, he is dangerous to his children, he has no concious, and does only have interest focus in have his vehicleto hurt me: the children. I’m touched and hurt by this murder. DCFand Child Prot. Team are just fillers, they do not perform whatsoever, in my case I have felt intimidated by my speacking up of facts; this people is responsible for many children’s livwes and abuse with out no concious themselves.
Electra, more than glad to know your son is home with you tonight. Are your children mostly with you?
Thank you for telling us about them here.
Kristina,
Electra fails to tell you she is an admitted perjurer, and was caught lying to invesigators and also caught coaching her children to make false claims agains their father. Electra also fails to tell you that she has been charged in dependancy court for emotional abuse and neglect of her two minor children.
my father works in exactly the same way, but he’s never been a criminal, my autism has just made him an angry man. i reach out for help and cry for something or someone to help him gain back his sanity.
so in other words, i have 1,000 cries for help and peace that someone or something help my father
The initial case received a lot of publicity, but I was not able to find a followup on the resolution of charges.
“…[Case-workers] had seen the family at least twice a month to offer aid after they received a complaint in July 2005 that his father was not taking good care of him. In January [2006], they had taken the case to court to consider putting him into foster care; after discussions with a judge and the child’s court-appointed lawyer, they decided that he would be better off with his father, who had cared for him for 10 years without complaint.
The caseworkers also helped to place Ulysses in a school specializing in autistic children just weeks before his death
(…)
“In the case of the fellow who killed his autistic son, everyone was all over that case trying to help,” Mr. Mattingly said. “This is a case where we did our very best and no one could rightly have expected this to happen.
I believe that there are very troubled individuals in this world who unfortunately also have children. It could be a matter of some debate on the contribution of autism. From the stories I read too often of horrific child abuse and infanticide across all categories of families and circumstances, I think simple explanation may be parsimonious, but not enough. This was a tragedy.
I am crying as l read these storys and comments.I had two autism children and l would never change who or what they are,every day is hard but they are children and the same as every else.I hope there are people out there willing to fight and make the differents,that need to be made. We have these children no one else. The question that needs to be asked is,not whats wrong with them, what wrong with the people in this world. They justs need to be understood, its hard and will take along time and l am not even there but l no l have faith in my children.
I’ve had my breaking points of being angry only because I can’t fix my son’s autism. But, the thought of killing him will never cross my mind. The way this man brutally murdered his son is horrible. The pain and fear that poor boy must have had is unthinkable.
i have autism myself, and yet people beat me up.