Sadly, and most worryingly of all, I’m not at all surprised at the prejudice, willfull ignorance and bigotry.

Interestingly, when I deliver autism awareness training to the local police they are incredibly resistant and argumentative – no one else I’ve ever trained behaves in that way.

And ‘mom’ I very much believe you are real!

I remember the day program incident and this is from my viewpoint as a parent. According to the day staff the violence was sudden and unexpected and did not personally involve you but witnessing it triggered your PTSD and you ran right out of your shoes. I remember they called your father and said you were just suddenly gone. Your shoes were there and a shawl but not you. They had looked for 15 minutes and couldn’t find you anywhere. By the time your father arrived it had been 45 minutes. He immediately had them call the police for help in finding you fearing that running scared like that in a city you might run right into something horrific or someone who might harm you. Two hours later we got a phone call that you were at the police station and had been “found” miles away. We rushed down and I have to admit the picture you see on television of a found child with ice cream cone in hand was the image I anticipated. I will never forget being led back to a back room where two very large armed policeman were sitting outside a locked room. You were inside that locked room, cold and hungry and thirsty and barefoot shivering without a blanket or water or a kind word. I was shocked.