I have started and erased this post more than a dozen times. I do not know exactly what to say. On Tuesday evening a mother, Kelli Stapleton, decided to end her life and the life of her 14-year-old autistic daughter, Issy. Her husband called police after Kelli left a disconcerting voicemail on his phone and once he discovered she and Issy were gone, along with the family van. Police discovered them both unconscious, in a van with two portable coal burners, dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. Kelli has been released from the hospital, but Issy remains, with the extent of permanent brain damage still unknown.
I confess, I cannot understand Kelli Stapleton. I understand stress, and autism, and autism parenting, believe me I do. What I cannot, and perhaps do not want to understand, is the murderous impulse behind her actions and decisions.
My own autistic child turned 8 this week, amidst the turmoil of moving cross-country and trying to get enrolled in new services and a new school. The stress of that caused me to have a panic attack in the Chicago train station. I understand stress.
I understand the frustration and hopelessness that comes from having a child you don’t yet know how to effectively communicate with; my son didn’t start talking till he was 4, after 3 years of speech therapy, and we struggled with finding non-verbal means to talk to one another. (Homemade flashcards were a huge help.)
I understand the crushing weight of poverty, and trying to find money for one more thing while life itself seems too expensive to continue paying for. As a former single parent and as a parent currently living across the country from my co-parent, I understand the endless feeling of having too much to do and not enough emotional reserves to keep going.
As my son begins 3rd grade at his fifth school this year, I understand the weariness that comes from IEP meeting after IEP meeting after IEP meeting. I understand the frustration and grief from discovering that yet another program has failed to adequately meet my child’s needs.
As a very petite barely-over-100 lbs mother, I understand the concerns parents have about children who are bigger, stronger, and can hit them or hit them back. This is why I’ve never relied on physical strength to maintain peace and harmony in our home.
I can understand feeling suicidal; I cannot understand feeling homicidal, not to anyone who has hurt me and certainly not to my son who I owe everything to.
Much of the media, and a lot of the “autism community” blog posts have centered on Kelli as an understandable figure, driven to murder by the stress of having an autistic child. These voices are not helping. They won’t prevent the next murder or attempted murder. Instead they will excuse it, as they are attempting to excuse this one.
Autism Speaks released a statement that said, “We are deeply saddened by the incident involving Issy Stapleton.” That sentence would not indicate to someone unfamiliar with the story what happened – that Issy’s mother knowingly and intentionally planned and attempted to execute the murder of her 14-year-old child. The “incident” was a criminal action that could have cost Issy her life, and may very well cost her higher mental functioning.
Issy had been separated from her family, her friends, her school, and her cat so that she could live in a residential “treatment center” for autistic children between the ages of 7 and 17, called the Great Lakes Center for Autism Treatment and Research. Their own About Us page paints a negative, fear-mongering, and above all dehumanizing view of autistic children with this unsourced claim, “The average cost to society of a child diagnosed with autism, through age 55, is currently estimated at $3.6 million.” This way of talking about autistic people is atrocious – it contributes to feelings of worthlessness in autistic individuals, and it gives parents a doom and gloom mentality they really do not need to have.
One of Kelli’s online friends has blogged that, “If we do not understand what caused Kelli to break and work like hell to fix it in our own communities and in the system, we are all at risk for it. All of us.”
This is bullshit. The community did not try to murder Issy. The “system” did not try to murder Issy. Kelli Stapleton tried to murder Issy. Can we at least keep this most basic of facts in the case straight?
These murders can be prevented, but that prevention won’t take the form of more funding for the residential facility where Issy’s parents had her housed up until last Thursday, five days before her mother tried to kill her. That prevention must start with us, the parents. We are the ones responsible for our own actions, and if we cannot claim the minimum responsibility to not murder our children, we do not deserve to have these children in our lives.
If you sometimes fantasize about killing your child, get help. If you find it all too easy to empathize with Kelli, but don’t empathize with Issy, get help. Stop demanding more autism services for your child and start finding out what is wrong with you, and start fixing it.
As parents we should demand a better world for our children, not that our children fit better in this world. Autism is not a death sentence, unless a parent or caregiver decides to make it one. Decide better.
Angie's Anti-Theistic Thoughts 
Thank you for this very thoughtful post. Although I understand depression and how it can lead to suicide, I cannot comprehend how it can lead to homicide. This woman probably had more support than most parents of a special needs child could ever hope for. Her daughter had just spent six months being cared for in a facility away from home. She had the much coveted child-waiver that gave her trained support during all of her daughter’s waking hours. She had the support of her community.
I understand how the mother’s depression could make her blind to all this, but I cannot understand how it could lead her to attempt to murder her child.
yup. interesting that in a country represented by men who want to outlaw abortion and grant citizenship to fetuses, no one – not even Autism Speaks or the Great Lakes facility – showed any regard or respect for Izzy or even just flat out horror at having her mother try to murder her.
We can only agree to disagree when it comes to this subject as much of it requires us to take a step back and look at our own struggles and histories and personal experience with the very abusive side of autistic children. Just as the vaccination issue has divided the autism beliefs, the subject of taking care of the caregiver will do the same. Having some experience in the mental health field myself and being the parent of a couple autistic children, I can see exactly how Kelli could see no other alternative to keeping her family going. How about we stop judging each other and figure out how we can help support our own mental health while caring for our children. And if you can honestly saw that you have never once thought that homicide/suicide might be a better answer then more power to you because everyone gets overehelmed, one time or another and those choices are usually included in the list that you create while trying to brainstorm helpful plans of attack. Children are exhausting and autistic children are so draining on us that we have nothing left to even perform the most basic skills of daily living, we give everything and then some, don’t minimize the work involved. I get mentally numb from trying to keep these two moving forward while also minding the other 4’side as well. I feel for kelli, I hope this brings to light the needs of the caregiver…
Hi Jane! I’m going to judge every single murderous mother in the world until they stop killing their children.
I know it said comments were closed, but I am hoping that it will at least privately show up to you. THANK-YOU! For stating what should be obvious, but apparently isn’t in our society: What happened to Izzy was wrong and horrific. Her mother deserves to pay for what she did. If someone feels the way Izzy’s mother did, the NEED to get help, most importantly for their child’s continued safety and then to help themselves.
Well said my sentiments exactly +I am going to be using this statement a lot, “stop demanding more autism services for your child and start finding out what is wrong with you and fix it”. Brilliant. 🙂
Hi Angie,
I appreciate your thoughtful response to this situation. I think it is ok for the community at large to gain some type of awareness of what these parents are working through. Not to encourage another incident, but to provide the support and services that some families may need. To tell someone to pull up their bootstraps and not be stressed, depressed, overwhelmed and hopeless, is not an answer in itself. This dialogue must go much, much further than that. Being a mom with a young daughter on the spectrum, my heart aches for families that struggle to this extent, and yet from our greatest suffering comes our greatest strength. But it’s a long hard road to get there. By acting “horrified” by someone’s actions when there is a stress like this in play is maybe not helpful either… let’s talk about how we support families that are hurting this way.
Murder is horrific. I act horrified because of that.
Seconded. I would even argue that as an autistic grown man who has plenty to say to lawmakers and business about why it is wrong to murder a child for any reason, I have more of a right to exist than Kelli.