Aspies For Freedom

Mother's Bridge Death Plunge With Her Autistic Son Was Act Of Love, Say
Sisters

     By Alexandra Wood

http://tinyurl.com/pet4u

     A mother's decision to leap off the Humber Bridge with her 12-year-old
autistic son was an "act of love", her grieving sisters say.
     Alison Davies's body was recovered from the River Humber in April two
weeks after that of her son Ryan. CCTV cameras caught them falling from the
bridge eight seconds apart.
     Lindsay Cook and Julie Armand spoke lovingly of their sister
yesterday, saying they did not want her to be remembered just as the "woman
on the bridge". They also said they would try to raise public awareness
about Fragile X syndrome – the condition that Ryan had.
     "She was an independent, proud and private person. Ryan was the focus
and purpose of her life," said Mrs Cook, of Stockport.
     "She had a deep, abiding and consuming love for him. Without him I
don't think she would have lived as long as she did. She had the double
whammy of depression and Ryan's disability to cope with. And she was a
single parent. She fought battles and she got tired."
     At 12 Ryan had a mental age of seven and life was getting increasingly
difficult as he was picked on by bigger boys, who would tease him about the
way he spoke.
     The sisters believe many cases of Fragile X syndrome, which is passed
from mother to child and affects about one in 1,000 to 2,000 males, go
undiagnosed. Ms Cook said: "It is our duty as a family to highlight this
illness. Alison has given us this opportunity. We would rather she hadn't
but she has."
     They said that they did not blame social services, although more could
have been done. Respite care had been arranged with another family for Ryan
but that had not worked out and Ms Davies did not always take the
anti-depressants prescribed.
     "The help she got from social services was patchy," said Ms Armand.
"There was no one to bounce her worries off. She was vulnerable and needed
proper counselling. I am surprised she was not seen as higher risk."
     Of the family only Mrs Cook's husband Andy, a father figure to Ryan,
has seen all the CCTV footage of the pair on the bridge. In their final
moments they looked "like two people playing", he said. "There's a sense of
peace that she had made a momentous decision."
     An inquiry into the deaths will take place later this year.

• • •

love?!  more like a coocoo mother that wanted out becuase taking care of the child was too hard.  i doubt ryan wanted that...he probaly wasn't looking to end it.

why are these mothers looked at as heroes instead ofthe selfish homicidals that they really are?

Murder is not love.
Her sisters may be in mourning and looking for excuses.

It is almost certainly an expression of grief - rather than accept their sister as a murderer they can now view her as a martyr.

Ballastexistenz just wrote a very powerful essay on how much harm is done by people who sympathize with the perpetrators of such crimes, rather than with the victims:

http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=112

Thanks for the link to the post by Ballastexistenz, they wrote much of what I feel in a way much more eloquently than I ever could.

At best, it's suicide. At worst, it's murder. How anyone can think this shows love, I have absolutely no idea.

"There's a sense of peace that she had made a momentous decision."

Absolutely disgusting.  

"Respite care had been arranged with another family for Ryan
but that had not worked out and Ms Davies did not always take the
anti-depressants prescribed."   She could have given up the child, even temporarily if she felt she could not care for him instead of killing him.  

There was case in my city.  The father, depressed and suffering from some mental illness, took his daughter and threw her head first off a highway overpass then he followed killing himself.  The child, by some miracle, lived.  No one praises him for what he did.  It was a tragedy.

Is it just me or has there been a lot of this kind of thing lately - people basiclly saying "It's ok to maltreat, abuse or kill disabled kids if it's interferring in normal NT goings on"

If public services were so "patchy" where were her sisters when she needed respite care?  The sisters say they're surprised that the services didn't realize she was high-risk; well if the sisters knew, maybe they should have pitched in a helped a bit more.
Alison

If that's love, then Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre would be considered a real Romeo. :pfff:

Interesting M that the dad didn't get much sympathy, it's very much only mums who get a free pass in situations like this.

I'm not so upset by the mum's sisters, who's going to want to think of a relative as a murderer.  But this was not an act of passion, it must have been premeditated.  There were other options available to her, including going to Social Services and giving up Ryan.  Simply going by the events on the Humber Bridge she is a murderer.  

What's getting me is that this reporter, who should be above the emotions of the situation wrote up the story in such a way.  She can't call it a murder because that's something for the inquest to decide but nowhere in the article does she mention that Ryan was killed.  It's all about how tragic it was the that murderer died.

Just makes me sick.

All very true - common media perceptions of these events sometimes comes close to praising the killer for the actual killing and implicitly damning the victim for being so difficult.

However I don't think the solution is to point the finger at the sisters and say 'why didn't they help'? The idea that looking after the children should be left purely to families is a very old fashioned idea after 50 years of the welfare state. There *should* be much more help for parents, and in particular those looking after disabled children, or single parents and those on low incomes. Some people speak far too little of these issues.