Girl Who Commited Sex Attacks

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I found this documentary quite shocking, especially as at the end they could not find any sign of mental illness in the girl, but found that she had ASD (presumably Aspergers or PDDNOS)

I think that the way that information was presented might make some uneducated people think that there is a risk with many people on the spectrum

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the- ... e-boys/4od

Whats your opinion?

Yeah, I watched that too. I was tempted to make a topic on here, but my opinions on the topic hadn't really had enough time to ferment.

I found the girls, although I had sympathy for their pain at being sexually assaulted (and raped, and I find it strange that wasn't addressed well, that just because she was a female it was still rape, but maybe that's just me), absurd.

I found their lack of awareness as to the identity of the 'boys' they were dating quite absurd. I know you can't judge unless you've been in that situation but I just found it absurd. It seemed to me like, in part and of course subconsciously, it was a willing suspension of disbelief in order to just have a boyfriend, any boyfriend.

The way that the diagnosis was just tacked onto the end of the program without any explanation of what an ASD actually is left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. It also, I think, wrongly leaves the uninformed viewer with the impression that we're all, or a lot of us are, capable of such an elaborate socially manipulative deception. Also, there seemed to be the implication that her apparent unfeeling nature was a result of the ASD.

But then I may be reading too much into it and being over sensitive.

I don't think you are being over sensitive at all, in fact you just described what I was thinking with much more eloquence.

One thing that caught my ear is that at the end they said that she didn't display any emotion in the court case, before they brought in the diagnosis results.

It brought to my mind a mention that I have seen somewhere on this forum about people on the spectrum being less successful in court cases because of the lack of correct body language shown.

She probably was feeling something, although based on her previous actions I wouldn't have thought it was sudden caring or guilt in this case.
Unless she was feeling guilt and that is why she made it easy for her to be caught.
We shall probably never know.

I'm by no means defending her actions with the above paragraph.

From Wikipedia:

...If she showed no emotion and pulled off the deception I'd be more tempted to lean towards she's a sociopath.

I would be more interested in the court transcripts than the documentary.

After watching the entire thing, I find it highly doubtful that she's autistic. From both girls' description I would go with a sociopath but the Jessica girl was a very unreliable informant anyways. The autism diagnosis seems to have come out of nowhere at all. Either this documentary was very poorly put together [which it is, it is very poorly put together when I think about it; they never asked Gemma anything which they absolutely should have] or that psychologist needs to review their books.

I would be inclined to say there's a misdiagnosis there, but we can't know for sure as the documentary was so badly put together, the story is being told by only the witnesses and victims with no analysis throughout, and there is little to no information on the court case other than "she seemed emotionless"
If she is on the spectrum, that piece of information should be rendered useless, as many on the spectrum can't display emotion very well (I am no exception)
There is no connection made between her individual ASD traits and interests and her actions, only implied in an imprecise way, no mention of her individual traits at all.

It is amazing if it is true that someone with AS not only managed to get into not just one relationship, but two while pretending to be three different people. That is certainly something I could never do for a multitude of reasons, and certainly not when I was a teen.

P.S. Read the National Autistic Society comment on the court case of Gemma Barker on autism.org.uk here:
http://www.autism.org.uk/news-and-event ... baker.aspx