Girl Faces Backlash After Punching An Autistic Kid In The Face After He Groped Her, Asks For Advice Online

One viral story on Reddit has raised a set of deep questions about how we treat neuroatypical members of our society and how we think about personal accountability. The story can be a difficult one to read for people who may be triggered by accounts of sexual assault, so readers, please be warned.

In this story, a schoolgirl is pressured by her community to tolerate unwelcome sexual advances from a peer with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) until the ongoing abuse causes her to snap and lash out. One silver lining is that she seems to have found a more supportive community than her own after sharing her story on Reddit. Let’s hear what happened in her own words and then unpack the lessons her story holds.

The wording she uses at certain points in her story encapsulates some of the problematic aspects of her community that enabled this situation to happen.

“It was always his autism that made him who he was”: There are certain behavioral tendencies among people who have disabilities on the autism spectrum, but none of them define who somebody is. Behind each unique diagnosis lies a person with their own feelings, beliefs, thoughts and potential. For every attacker like Troy, there are many other neuroatypical people on the autism spectrum who have never felt a compulsion to attack others or who have felt that compulsion but have learned not to act on it.

Her story makes it clear that her community failed not only her, but Troy as well. By defining Troy primarily through his disability, his community has infantilized him. They have relinquished the challenging but important duty of teaching him how to appropriately integrate himself into society.

“Teachers just kept saying [...] that I am being a good person by taking care of him”: This is a textbook case of adultification. Adultification is a type of abuse or neglect where minors are given outsize responsibilities that should instead be handled by responsible adults. The girl in this story should have never been made to feel responsible for Troy’s happiness and wellbeing. That was the responsibility of Troy’s caretakers, parents, and community. Troy’s response to the author’s rejection was not her responsibility to handle or modulate. His parents and caretakers had an opportunity to teach him about how to navigate relationships with neurotypical third parties and that opportunity was ignored.

We know that the author of the post is not responsible for what happened to her. But who does bear the brunt of the responsibility? Is it Troy, whose behavior may have been caused in part by a developmental disorder that some scientists believe may have inhibited his capacity to empathize and discern right and wrong? Or is it Troy’s community, which enabled and excused his abusive behavior rather than correcting it?

Unfortunately, the extent of personal responsibility for someone like Troy isn’t quite scientifically clear. The autism spectrum of disorders is not yet fully understood, and scientists in various fields are still exploring what impact these disorders may have on an individual’s culpability for their own actions. From the author’s story, however, it feels like Troy was someone who could be held responsible for his own actions. She described him as somewhat well-adjusted to society when not in her presence, and many commenters also wondered whether Troy was consciously abusing the leeway given to him by their community as a result of his neuroatypical diagnosis. There are also plenty of people with ASD out there who don't behave this way, so Troy's actions cannot fully be attributed to his developmental disorder.

However responsible we think Troy is or isn’t for his actions, what is certain is that the author’s community has critically failed both of them. We’ve already described their failures in nurturing Troy, but perhaps greater still is the community’s failure to keep the author safe. She should have been listened to when she first raised her concerns and every time thereafter. She should’ve been protected from Troy. She never should’ve been subjected to the undue burden of having to tolerate, accommodate, and later suffer abuse from Troy. No child should ever be forced to plead the case to adults in their community that the sexual abuse they face from their peers should be stopped.