Mother kills 12yrold autistic son by making him drink bleach

Post Reply New Topic

What a horrible way to die.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11758290

WOW. Let the courts have her drink bleach and have her neighborhood watch her die. Or just put her in prison with a bunch of other inmates and have them do bad things to her.

That's really disturbing.

If her son was a problem child then I really don't see any problem with this.

So it's OK to kill your own children if they are "problem children"? As someone on the autism spectrum yourself, I'm sure you were a "problem child" too but I doubt you would of wanted to be killed by your own parents.

if you read the origanal article here http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/nov/15/mother-autistic-son-killed-bleach you will see that she was mentally ill

She was apparently sane enough to:
A: Make sure he got enough bleach in him that he'd die. Make sure she got little enough that she'd live.
B: Even make that distinction in the call she made: "murdered my son and tried to kill myself".

All of which seems pretty cold and calculating to me.

In any case, it was a horrible, disgusting thing to do.

The voices told her to do it. Schizophrenia. She isn't fit to stand trial. I don't know what the law is in the UK, but in the US if a judge determines that somebody was mentally ill at the time of the crime they are put in a hospital instead of jail "until they get better", which usually means for life. She really doesn't deserve jail. Schizophrenia is devilishly hard to treat, and some of the meds are worse than the disease. Here in the US the mentally ill are usually ignored until they kill somebody, then they're often thrown in jail or hospital.

Of course, it is also very easy to say voices told you to do it, and get off that way. How can anyone prove what you did or did not hear in your head?

I find it suggestive and disturbing that she had the clarity of mind to give him enough bleach to kill him, yet to drink little enough herself that she'd live; to call for help, thus further ensuring her own survival; and (presumably inadvertently) even reveal in that call that she'd murdered her son and "tried" to kill herself. She was making a distinction here, an excuse for her own survival - but if the voices told her to kill herself, why didn't she drink more bleach and wait to die instead of calling for help?

If children were offered such punishments more often, the rates of problematic behaviors from them would drastically decrease because they would understand the fate that awaited them. Why children that create problems aren't disposed of more often puzzles me.

You are an extremely 'troubled' individual putting mildly.

Are you trolling again, Yupa? Killing your kids because you don't like them or can't be bother to take care of them properly or whatever is still illegal so what is your point?

A lot of you are merely reading the title and reacting to that. The woman was mentally ill. People said she acted strangely BEFORE killing her son. Some people suffer from psychotic breaks, so it's possible that the complete hopelessness and stress she was suffering could have driven her to the edge. Have any of you who criticize ever had to look after a non-verbal autistic child? I haven't but I highly doubt its easy.

The sentence will change if she is diagnosed with a mental illness officially. Instead of murder, it will be something like manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. If she is ill, which from the sounds of it she is (very few people would just kill their own child through sheer nastiness), she will probably be put in a secure psychiatric unit rather than a prison. I am not entirely sure about that though so please correct me if I am wrong.

All I am saying is that maybe we should feel sympathy towards a woman like this. She is probably a nice person underneath her illness and shouldn't be judged by what she did when unwell. I know killing a child is horrible and no, mental illness is not a get out of jail free card, but being mentally ill is not a choice.

Goddamn people.

I definitely agree that people with psychotic mental illness cannot be fully blamed for criminal acts they commit whilst having an episode, and that they should be treated in a psychiatric hospital and not a prison. This maybe so, but why the hell would anyone kill someone by making them drink bleach??????! Burning him from the inside??That's gotta take a long, long time. Watching your child vomiting and still feeding him more? I couldn't live with doing that to my son even knowing that I was psychotic at the time and I personally would have done a better job of killing myself. Maybe her punishment now will be living and knowing.

Her psychiatrist, social services ; whom she had seen that day ( you'd have thought they'd have noticed she was psychotic wouldn't you ?) and maybe her ex husband should definitely stand accountable for not preventing this tragedy.

ALSO- I really hate that they put 'autistic' son, like it becomes more understandable that she killed him because he is autistic. I can understand that it may have been more difficult, but to belittle this boys life because he is autistic is awful. It's like when they report "Man kills prostitutes" like they are not real women too, or mothers or somebody's child. It makes me really angry.

We are assuming she isn't faking it, some people do fake it in order to avoid harsher sentences. She had the presence of mind to avoid drinking a lethal level of bleach.