Aspies For Freedom

Millsboro man faces unlawful contact charges

Two Rehoboth Mall employees helped police catch a man accused of unlawful sexual contact Thursday, police said.

By ANDRE L. TAYLOR
The News Journal - Delaware
02/11/2006

Around 9:40 a.m. Thursday a 24-year-old autistic man and his mother were walking through the mall when they stopped near some bathrooms. The man sat on a bench as the woman walked away, Master Cpl. Jeffry C. Oldham said.

At some point, police said, Elester Wilson, 43, of Millsboro, walked up and began talking to the man.

After a brief conversation, Oldham said, Wilson persuaded the man to walk with him to the men's bathroom.

Once inside, police said, Wilson allegedly took the man to a stall and closed the door, trapping him inside. Oldham said Wilson allegedly touched the man "inappropriately."

Police said when the man's mother returned from walking, her son was gone and she called into the bathroom. According to court documents, the autistic man ran from the bathroom when he heard her voice. His mother, according to court documents, saw her son fixing his belt buckle and screamed for security.

Wilson ran out a fire exit, where two mall employees got a description of Wilson and his car, police said. Based on the witness information, Oldham said, Dewey Beach police caught Wilson and turned him over to the state police.

Wilson was charged with third-degree unlawful sexual contact, second-degree kidnapping, endangering the welfare and offensive touching. He was released on a $15,000 bond.

Contact Andre L. Taylor at 324-2890 or ndretaylor@delawareonline.com.

Source: http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs..../-1/NEWS01

There are predators who exclusively look for anyone vulnerable to abuse, these attacks, 2 of which posted today, are not just chance, its by design. So though abusive attacks like this do happen in the general population, autistics are far more vulnerable, I would like to see a harsher penalty, and have vulnerable adult crimes treated the same as crimes against children in severity of punishment.

The law needs to be changed to at least provide more of a detterent, these abusers often rely on lack of verbal skills to evade charges as well.

I wouldn't say all autistic people are more vulnerable to this type of thing. You've got to admit this guy must have been very gullible or not  very bright at all to be coaxed into a dunny by some complete strangers.

I couldn't tell you how many times strange men approached me when I was a kid on the loose alone in the suburbs, but nothing ever happened to me. My mum taught me the difference between strangers and non-strangers, a pretty simple concept.

Well the people who are more aware are not targets in the same way. Studies have been done using sex offenders where they are shown videos of people in the street, and have been asked to choose a victim.

They look for certain things as triggers for potential victims.

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Just because some people are more easily taken advantage of, doesn't make them in any way responsible for crimes committed against against them. Let's be careful not to sound as if we are blaming the victim here.

Exactly! It's still not this victim's fault that he was attacked.

I didn't mean to suggest that the victim of the crime was in any way responsible, I was just pointing out that he is possibly not typical of all autistics.

"Wilson was charged with third-degree unlawful sexual contact, second-degree kidnapping, endangering the welfare and offensive touching. He was released on a $15,000 bond."


Wow. Here in Canada you'd be lucky if the police even showed up to take a report. The RCMP would say that the autistic man consented to follow the other man into the washroom. The RCMP would decline to lay any charges. That's the way it works around here.

Lili Marlene can't accept that all autistics are not highly intelligent people who would fall for something like this.  She doesn't like to see or read anything that makes us look bad.  She only wants to hear about the good things like comparing us to people like Einstein. IMO the positive generalizations are every bit as bad as the negative ones.

That is absurd, Theosoph. You must be basing your opinion of me on a small sample of the full volume of stuff that I have written (and it's quite a volume).

I don't see what is wrong with my interest in high-achieving autistics. A lot of people must find this subject interesting, as there has been quite a few books published on the subject in the last couple of years. It is important that the public be made aware that autism is not all negatives. If it were all negatives I wouldn't be arguing against genetic testing to eliminate it. If you read the books and journal articles about "famous aspies" I think you will find that the authors are not arguing that these autistics do not have problems or difficulties, quite the opposite. No one is arguing that there are two kinds of autistics: problem-free autistics and disabled autistics. Life is never that simple.

How often do strangers approach you for some kind of assistance, and the whole situation is genuine? It never happens to me. The only time I have ever had a person ask me if they could enter my home to make a phone call, it was an obviously stoned Aborigine. Of course, I refused (politely). If a stranger asks you to "Come help me find my lost puppy" you can be 99.99999% sure he has something nasty planned. When I was an adolescent a strange man actually made that exact same request to me. I thought "That is just the kind of thing a child molester would say" and I refused (politely) and walked away fast. One does not always need to have fancy "mind-reading" powers to detect deceit, one can often avoid trouble just by having some general knowledge and common sense.

It's hardly worth stating since I'm sure most of us are aware of this, but there is a well known psychological response to crime that causes uneducated or ignorant people to blame the victim for crime because it gives those people a sense of security that there is order in their world and supports the belief that we can always control what happens to us.  It is called the "just world theory". Unfortunately, this false belief leads to the false conclusion that, for example, women who are sexually assaulted deserve it because they were somehow morally lax or "asking for it".

Here's an interesting link to research on the "just world theory" that explains its implications for social justice:

http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/i...world.html

Some aspies I know are actively contemptuous of "common sense", the NT ways of thinking and common assumptions held by NTs. I know one such person in real life, and that person is a real sucker for con artists. Shysters seem beat a path to this person's door, as they are always complaining of being ripped-off or robbed. If you choose to reject a lot of the knowledge that is shared naturally in NT society, you have got to accept that you are "out there on your own" and are vulnerable to those who prey on the naive and uninformed.

I myself am sceptical about "received wisdom" and expert opinions, but I realise that I need to take the time and effort to sort credible shared knowledge from the old wive's tales, fallacies, nonsense and commercially motivated misinformation that also circulates. Some people (including aspies) don't do this, and their lives lurch from cynical paranoia to naive victimhood. I have little sympathy for such people.

Exactly Lili, and that is why you must form educated opinions about important issues that are posted here. Your suggestions that autistic people who have been sexually assaulted somehow lacked commonsense, or that single mother's whose children have died tragic deaths are comparable to women you perceive as whores is just plain ignorance and discrimination.

You have totally (in general and in detail) misrepresented my expressed opinions. It isn't worth my time to elaborate. I think you will find that my opinions are generally well-supported by credible sources, but often not "politically correct".