2006 was a bad year. The worst of years. A lot of autistic kids were killed by their parents. I got sick of writing about these stories. Not bored, don’t misunderstand me, but sick, really physically sick that a parent could do this to a child. That the parent of a disabled child could do this.
Seems like there’s no respite from this insanity just yet:
Before he died, 5-year-old Brandon Williams was fed sleep-inducing medicine twice a day. His mother, Diane L. Marsh, 39, would sometimes tie him up or plunge his feet into scalding water to discipline him, a sheriff’s official said. On Wednesday night, Brandon died after his mother gave him a lethal dose of 12 Tylenol PMs when he complained of having flu symptoms, the official said.
What the hell can you say about someone who would tie up and scald their own child? That they’re scum? Sub-human? Yes, you can say that but it won’t bring Brandon back.
Reading this report on Brandon’s death makes me despair for the future of humanity. A mother who totured her 5 year old autistic boy, two lodgers who either participated or stood by and watched and a father who apparently never noticed.
Sickening. Please mourn Brandon and remember those who have gone before him. Its pathetic that the one positive we can take from this is that at least he is out of the hands of his parents.
Left Brain Right Brain 
Just yesterday someone commented on an older Autism Vox post about Katherine McCarron and mentioned the struggles parents face, and the “courage” of the mother who talked about driving off the bridge……
Poor little guy. I wonder if the mom planned that the police would let her off because, after all, he was autistic. His murder was quite cold bloodedly planned from the look of it. Child protective services had taken his two older half siblings out of the home, apparently, but left Brandon with his mom. That’s bizarre.
Father abuses stepson, stepson abuses Brandon, mother abuses Brandon, freeloaders in house help abuse Brandon.
Father doesn’t see autistic stepson for six months and takes no action. Mother poisons Brandon.
And now there will be outrage and retribution. Where were the authorities when they took the two stepsons out of the house? Wouldn’t it have been obvious to all at that time that this “mother” was totally incapable of caring for her autistic son?
The primary blame is on the mother, sure. But there’s more than enough blame and shame to go around.
One of the many costs of freedom is that we breed psychotics, from generation to generation; leaving them, for the most part, unchecked and free to continue the line. I have no solution for…I have no tolerance with…I have no comprehension of the situation. We, as a society, hopefully catch 99% of the abhorrations. I guess the only thing we can do as individuals is keep our eyes open and report what we see as not ‘right’.
Who do you greive for in these situations? The child is now in a better place; the guilty parties and complacent social workers will have their own consciences and dieties to deal with.
For all those innocent who were touched by Brandon’s life, I greive…
Kev, seems Mr. Best is blaming you for this death. Not long ago he was blaming his President for parents murdering their autistic children. I just noticed he deleted that post from his blog. Doesn’t he realize those of us using blog readers (like Google’s for example) are still looking at *all* the posts he’s deleted? Why isn’t this death Bush’s & Wright’s & Autism Speaks’ fault I wonder….
John is part of a group of people who’s defining characteristic is an inability to assume any responsibility. _Everything_ is always someone else’s fault to people like John.
Let him rant, he’s an irrelevance at the end of the day.
Edit: I know there’s a few posts detailing John been made. I’ve removed them not because I disagreed with anything they said but because this thread isn’t about John Best. Brandon deserves a better epitaph than a discussion on John Best Jr. I would urge people to simply ignore John.
Thank you for posting this about Brandon and for taking the high road by keeping it about Brandon.
Adults made his short life a tortured existence. As adults who care, the least we can do is send our belated thoughts of love after him. I wish he could have experienced the love that thousands of your readers would have gladly given him.
My heart just aches for Brandon. He was a joyful and wonderful child whom I was blessed to have had called my friend. I wish I would have known so I could have done something to help him but now it all makes sense why he would have such emotional tantrums. The saddest thing is he would never let anyone know he was being hurt by his mom. He would just say he wanted his dad.
This is a very sad time in our family. For a few reasons. The first and most important reason is because we lost a child in our family. Second, is because most of us live in other parts of arizona or out of state,so unfortunatley we were not around. I do remember the last time I saw brandon it was at my grandfathers 97th birthday party. Brandon looked healthy and was very happy. I never saw his mom react in a mean or violent manner. I guess she fooled us all. I am VERY ENRAGED by brandons death. In no way am I making excuses for ANYONES actions. There is no reason a child should be treated that way. I love my cousin(who is brandons father),but if they took two of the boys out of the household for abuse they should have taken brandon as well. It could have saved his life. I ask that those of you who have compassion in your hearts to keep our family in your prayers. Thanks and God bless.
Monica – and Brandon’s friend above,
I want to express to you how sorry I am that you have lost Brandon and I know that, as all kids do, he had family who loved him such as yourself. I am not a religious person but I will be thinking of you and all your family who lost Brandon.
I also want to say how sorry I am that you lost Brandon. It really must be so painful for you to think of how he lived and how sweet he was and how he deserved so much better than he got.
Monica and Brandon’s friend,
It’s difficult to think of anything to say that could adequately express sympathy or understanding in a situation like this, but your families and friends will be in our thoughts too.
To Monica and Brandon’s friend,
it is good to know that there are people who loved Brandon and will cherish his memory. Thank you so much for taking the time to leave your comments here.
Knowing how bad this makes me feel as a stranger to this little boy, it is impossible to imagine how bad you people who knew and loved him must be feeling. My heart goes right out to all of you.
Thank you for your support, it is a comfort but I just do not know how my heart could ever heal from knowing his abuser was the one person he should have been able to trust the most in life. I do find comfort that he is with the Lord now but it just does not take away the hurt of the suffering he had to endure. Monica-will you be able to attend his service? God Bless everyone
Brandons friend, yes of course I will be there at the service. Please come and introduce yourself to the family so I can meet and hug you. Thank you for being a friend to brandon.
Also, Thanks to everyone for your care and kind words. No one can imagine the hell our family is going thru at this moment. They are making my cousin,brandons father, out to be a monster and he is in no way like that. If you come to the service and meet him you will see that for yourself. Anyone who comes to the service please come up to the family and say hello, I would love to meet you. God Bless.
Monica-We are going to the viewing around 4 but may be a bit late for the service due to work contraints. I will look for you-I am the older Asian with long hair. Sorry to hear that Melvin is being made to be out as a bad father. My impression of him was nothing but good. He always seemed to be a loving and caring father to Brandon and I know Brandon just adored him and Grandma. I always prayed that he could live with them. I know of the unfortunate incident with the older step-son but we do not know the whole story of what was the cause. I just know he was nothing but loving to Brandon.
Kev, I just want to pick up on a general point that you have touched on with this posting.
The lack of support for parents with children who are Autistic – or any ASD come to that.
I’m not making an excuse for parents who murder their children, and no one should either. It will always be avoidable. But it is a reason that has to be taken note of and acted upon. Too much the parents are blasted for not seeking help. But where is the help? It’s one huge mess that creates criminals out of people who may otherwise be decent people.
I’m not specifying Brandon’s parents as an example of this. As Monica pointed out, two other children had already been taken off them – so this reason I speak of doesn’t apply to them. They were obviously already dangerous that being the case. But if governments (county, state, federal, whoever) started putting more money into support and research to promote understanding I think we could save lives more effectively than the curebies ever could.
I had been hopeful that this story would be spaired the standard pitch for services – “but” evidently not.
Phil, I agree with ‘Another Voice’. I don’t think we can legitimately link the call for more services to murder. However one looks at it it does tend to appear to be giving the parent an excuse for murder. In my view, that’s wrong. Murder is murder and is never, ever right.
The fact that there are parents who are rich enough to comfortably afford the services they seek privately, yet still harbour unreasonably hostile views about Autism indicates that service provision is not related to parents murdering their children.
While the parents may be under a lot of strees, there are many others that go through all the same without contemplating murder.
As the mother of an autistic boy who is decidedly NOT rich (or even “comfortable”), I find the hostility towards the needs for services for our children and their parents bizarre. I live in Tucson, where Brandon lived and died. I deal with the social service agencies here because we live well below the poverty level. My son’s school programs are being cut because our fabulous government is too busy killing children in the Middle East to worry about providing for them here. Getting therapies for him has required a lot of fight and struggle with the system. Getting the proper educational support is similarly difficult. It shouldn’t be.
To deny that there are indeed some parents out there who need help is downright idiotic. To deny that this extremely wealthy country could and should be providing these services is blind. Saying so does not diminish the horror of what this child suffered, nor does it diminish the culpability of the mother and (I’m sorry if this upsets his family, but it’s true) the father. This family AS A WHOLE obviously had violent tendencies. A man who chokes one of his step-children is no paragon of virtue, regardless of what his family claims. These parents need to be held accountable for their actions towards all of their children. However, it is foolish to ignore the fact that there are parents out there who are at the end of their ropes due to exhaustion and being overworked. Like it or not, most of the parents of autistic children who I have come into contact with are unable to pay for the services they need. Providing them the help they need can only help prevent there being more Brandons in the future. If you actually care about these kids, you’ll drop your hostility and fight to see that they get it. It may make you feel morally superior to spew self-righteous rants about this case. However, it does nothing to prevent it from happening again.
Kim.
Where is the hostility against needed services? Show me.
I have lived below the poverty line for most of my adult life, my children lived most of their lives with me in that same low income bracket. I haven’t checked lately to see if I’m still officially below the poverty line, but I know I make less that half of what the typical household makes in the town I live in, probably way less than half, but I’d have to do the math.
Most of the commenters here are not rich. No one says that there should not have been “Cadillac” level services available to Brandon, Brandon’s mom and whoever else cared for him, the point is, that Cadillac level services probably wouldn’t have save Brandon from what looks like (from here) a really evil woman, his mother.
Maybe you need to think a minute before you start criticizing out, because you just made yourself look not too smart.
_”To deny that there are indeed some parents out there who need help is downright idiotic.”_
Where is this denied?
_”To deny that this extremely wealthy country could and should be providing these services is blind.”_
Where is _this_ denied?
_”Saying so does not diminish the horror of what this child suffered, nor does it diminish the culpability of the mother”_
It does if one starts off by saying something like ‘this act should highlight the massive need for services’.
No services or perfect services, murder is murder. There is a time and a place to campaign for better services. On the back of a child’s death is not that time or place.
Phil, I agree with ‘Another Voice’. I don’t think we can legitimately link the call for more services to murder. However one looks at it it does tend to appear to be giving the parent an excuse for murder. In my view, that’s wrong. Murder is murder and is never, ever right.
Oh don’t get me wrong, Kev! It’s not an excuse – and it can never be used as an excuse. My definition of “excuse” and “reason” is different. For example – some people would classify euthanasia as murder. I wouldn’t. Of course it depends on the circumstances. I certainly don’t support euthanasia willy nilly.
My post wasn’t intended to be a pure plug for more support based on the “murder” scenario alone. I think we all agree that support is needed no matter what variety of “this is what happens without support” argument is put up. And understanding as well. That was my point. I’m pretty narky about that at present as I do have a case before the local tribunal – Disability Discrimination by denying a disabled person (me) financial support for my special needs as an Aspie.
My blog will be reporting on that (oh BTW any vacancies on the Hub?) just to get away from it’s current “format” (giving heaps to a certain JBJ!). My new website is going to take care of that.