Introduction
After
reading the recent ice bucket prank incident, I noticed a trend in bullying situations
where autistic teenage boys were targeted.
The following episodes are within the past year and there was a pattern
in the criminals’ behaviors. All
perpetrators videotaped their own evidence, thus self-incriminating. None of the perpetrators were charged with
hate crime, however every victim was targeted for their autism, or the aggressor
was aware of the victim’s mental differences.
The
following section describes each of the five cases. Then attributes of these cases are collated
into two tables in the analysis section.
Case 1: Bay Village, Ohio;
September 2014
Bullies
coaxed a 15-year-old boy with autism to participate in the “Ice Bucket
Challenge” for raising awareness to ALS.
They had him strip down to his boxer shorts, and stand in front of a
garage. Instead of ice water, the perpetrators
poured a bucket of urine, feces, spit, and cigarette butts onto him. They had videotaped it with the victim’s
phone and uploaded it to Instagram.
Aftermath: The bullies are under investigation. The victim approves of having the video
online to raise awareness of bullying children of special needs.
Case 2: Okeechobee, Florida;
August 2014
Aaron
Hill, age 16, was invited to a party where an adult, Evadean Lydecker, gave the
teens alcohol. Hill felt sick from
drinking whiskey and needed to lie down.
When he woke, he was ordered to go outside and fight. Hill was unwilling. Then, one of the other teens, Andrew Wheeler,
age 18, came inside and started beating, kicking him and knocking his head into
the wall. He also dragged him across the
floor by his hair. Hill was curled up on
the floor, protecting his head, and screaming.
This segment of the conflict was recorded on a partier’s phone. The other partiers witnessed and laughed at
the victim. The adult, Lydecker, was
outside, and refused to intervene because she believed Hill deserved it.
After
the infamous video clip ended, Wheeler forced Hill outside and choked him till
unconsciousness. The police found Hill
lying in the middle of the road. He told
them he had been beaten and forced to walk to his current resting place.
Wheeler
was proud enough to post the video on his Facebook account, and the video went
viral, causing public moral outrage. The
police found it during their investigation.
Aftermath: In an interview with police, Wheeler claims
Hill was fighting the girls, refusing to leave, and that Hill tried to punch
him. He said he wanted to record the
incident, and that it only showed the latter half of the conflict. This is not worth believing. With Hill on the ground, crying, it is not
plausible that he just instigated a fight.
If Wheeler wanted to record evidence of himself being victimized, he
would have waited for Hill to supposedly try hitting him again. He was not trying to catch someone in the act
of violence. He wanted to record his own
violence, a one-sided fight with an autistic boy. Then he uploaded it on Facebook, which only
further showed he was proud of his actions.
Wheeler
also claimed he was going to drive Hill home.
Apparently strangling him and leaving him unconscious in the middle of
the street was “driving him home.” Wheeler
had been called to come to the house and drive Hill home, or was this a
preconceived excuse to cover the other possible reason they called Wheeler, to
beat up the kid? Hill denied Wheeler’s
claims against him.
Wheeler
was charged with Child Abuse Without Great Bodily Harm, and Lydecker was charged
with corrupting minors. Even if Hill really
did get aggressive and black out, he was under the influence of alcohol
provided by Lydecker. If Lydecker never
gave the teens alcohol, this situation could have been avoided.
Hate
Crime or not a Hate Crime?
Wheeler’s
story sounds like a conflict unrelated to Hill’s condition, but it is in
Wheeler’s best interest not to admit to hate crime, which would give him more
years in prison. However, how did the
internet know the victim was autistic?
Did Wheeler label the video that way, or did someone else disclose that
information? One girl in the background
called Hill a baby for crying. Wheeler
uploaded a one-sided fight more likely to impress his peers with his so-called
fighting ability, rather than promoting awareness to the conflict that supposedly
occurred. His video seems to be an
expression of arrogance; domination over a perceptively weak male. Although, Wheeler never slurs “retard” or any
suggestive epitaph, part of his pride is in fighting someone who is
disadvantaged, literally on the floor.
Would he do this to someone without special needs? At this point, it is unknown.
Case 3: Columbus,
Georgia; August 2014
Four
gang members attacked a 17-year-old boy who went to their high school, with
full knowledge that he had a disorder. Jarvis
Tatum, Saul Jackson, another juvenile, and another member called, “Junior,”
forced the victim on all-fours in the middle of a basketball court in a
park. They kicked him until blood came
from his mouth. Then the thugs took his
wallet, cellphone, and his clothes. They
had stripped him down to his boxers, and left the victim to walk home in that
state. One of the gang members video
recorded the entire incident and uploaded it onto Facebook, which was
anonymously reported, leading to Tatum, Jackson,
and an unnamed juvenile’s arrest. Junior
was still to be apprehended.
Case 4: Southern Maryland, March 2014
Two
girls, age 17 and 15, forced their 16-year-old autistic classmate to do sexual
acts with their dog. They threatened him
with a knife to his throat, kicked him in the groin, and dragged him across the
floor by his hair. They eventually took
him to a nearby pond, and forced him to walk on the icy pond. He fell through the ice, and the girls did
not help him out. They videotaped the
whole exploit.
The
victim was noticeably autistic, and his parents told the police he had
“diminished mental capacity.” There was
no way the perpetrators did not know.
Lauren Bush, 17, and the other juvenile had previous abused the victim
on a number of occasions. The autistic
boy did not understand that they intended ill will to him, and perceived the
girls as friends. They took advantage of
his poor judgment in character and continued harming him until this incident.
Aftermath: Lauren Bush was charged as an adult for first
and second degree assault, false imprisonment, and solicitation for child
pornography. The other juvenile was
charged with same offenses and referred to the State Department for Juvenile
Services.
Case 5: Melcher,
Iowa; November 2013
Levi
Null, a 13-year-old boy with Asperger’s, was physically and verbally abused in
a video recorded by his bullies at Melcher-Dallas
High School. The video was uploaded online, and it showed
Null being taunted over his condition and punched in the face. The teachers seemed careless for letting the
bullying happen.
Aftermath: This story is televised on the news, and
numerous parents react online to defend the bullies. The bullies were disciplined at school, the
video was eventually deleted, but the principal, Josh Ehn, did not believe that
any bullying took place in the video. He
also said that it’s the students’ responsibility to resolve bullying
issues. That explains why the teachers
turned a blind eye.
The
parents and legal guardians of the bullies supported the cruelty. Levi Weatherly, one of the bullies’ parents,
stated, “I would say three-fourths of this stuff he brings on himself and
probably a fourth of it is bullying that shouldn’t be going on.” Jamie Harrison, the uncle of the physical
abuser, was proud that his nephew punched Null for calling him a “nasty name.” It’s not an eye-for-an-eye. It’s a punch for a word!
Analysis
Before examining the incidents, it
is important to understand the socio-economic surroundings for each case; Table
1. In Table 2, the incident information
is collated to enable visual comparison.
Table 1
Each
incident happened in a different state in America;
Ohio, Iowa, Maryland, Georgia,
and Florida. Bullying that targets special needs children
is widespread, whether it’s in Southern states, the Midwest, or the East coast. Most of the locations were middle class
suburbs with relatively low crime rates.
Columbus, Georgia is an exception, since it is a large city with high
crime rates. The perpetrators were not
only the victim’s classmates, but they represented a gang, calling themselves, “The
Street Celebrities.”
Table 2
These
incidents are fairly recent despite anti-bullying programs. This trend could be a direct reaction to
society’s anti-bullying attitudes, or indifference to what society thinks. The former implies rebelling against the
progressive ideal, and the latter implies that anti-bullying programs have been
ineffective.
All the
victims were males between ages 13-17 who had some form of autism. Since these disorders are scaled in a
spectrum, not every person’s autism is alike.
Some were low functioning enough that their condition was noticeable,
but a student’s Asperger’s was still known to his harassers regardless of how
high functioning he was.
The perpetrators were teenage classmates
or grown adults. Despite age, they all
had one common attribute, pride. Their
pride led to their self-incrimination by providing their own video
evidence. They were proud of their
actions enough to video tape themselves committing the crime, and then to show
it off to the world, thinking people would be impressed. The perpetrators were unaware of the
possibility of public outrage. Since
parents in the Melcher, Iowa case reacted in favor of the aggressors, there are
probably more people with that mentality.
In a society that has people exhibiting victim blaming, bully coddling,
and the attitude about a “generation of wimps,” it is feasible a significant
portion would favor the bully’s brutality against the weak and innocent;
thinking humiliation is humor. Each
aggressor viewed their victim as inferior, unmanly, stupid, and/or deserving of
their abuse. Part of why males seem to
be the targets, among these cases, is because the victim is regarded as less
masculine for not being brutal or fitting a negative male stereotype. The other possibility is that all the victims
had good grades, which may have induced the jealousy of their harassers. Null had to have skipped a grade level to
attend high school at age 13.
Lauren Bush and her juvenile
accomplice were the only abusers not to upload their content online,
possibly. The police could not find
their video anywhere on the internet.
Perhaps they were being less proud and slyer than the other criminals
who had no discretion and no foresight to public reaction.
Focusing on the types of abuse, all
incidents involved mental, psychological abuse, since degradation and
international exposure were integral to the victimization. Most of the victims were physically abused;
punched, kicked, hair pulled; slammed into a wall. The Bay Village, Ohio boy endured a physical
level of humiliation because it involved the bodily fluids physically covering
his whole body and potentially causing medical harm. This physical abuse does not hurt in the way
as getting punched, but the urine and feces could have flooded his eyes and
mouth. This could have induced his body
to vomit the fluids foreign to his own body.
Imagine your stomach vomiting someone else’s urine and fecal
matter! It’s not so funny anymore, is
it?
Lauren Bush and her accomplice were
also very sadistic since their crimes were sexually abusive in nature. They sexually victimized an autistic person
and their dog. By forcing their autistic
peer to perform lewd acts with their dog on tape, they were creating child and
animal pornography. They were willfully
harming a disabled child and their own pet.
Moreover, if the victim could not emerge from the ice pond, he could
have died from hypothermia. Without any
help in getting out of the ice rink, he was forced to rely solely on his own
ability.
In both the Iowa
and the Florida
cases, adults present were neglectful.
In Georgia,
adults at a back to school event noticed the victim walking home in his forced
half nakedness, but did not contact police.
Besides that, the gang was isolated with their victim like the Maryland and Ohio
cases.
Every perpetrator was sanctioned in
some way. Most were either charged or
charges were pending. The only ones who
did not receive any legal consequences were the Iowa teens who punched their classmate. The discipline was internal to the school. The other consequence is the backlash of the
media and the public. Videos angered the
masses. Incidents were aired on the
news. Although the Iowa
case was positively received by pro-bully parents, the majority of America’s
public disagrees with the abuse. America’s angry
reaction to bullying signifies that there is hope for the future in reducing
this harmful behavior.
©2014 Caroline Friehs
Originally Posted: 8/10/2014
References
