Former EastEnders actor Dean Gaffney was arrested on Christmas Day after a punchup with his brother, the News of the World reports today.
The 26-year-old - Robbie Jackson in the BBC soap - allegedly became involved in the argument after older brother Gary came home from the pub "blind drunk and spoiling for a fight."
The pair ended up trading blows before police were called, who arrested Gaffney after spotting a cut above Gary's eye.
Gary, 32, suffers from Aspergers Syndrome which can cause violent behaviour.
"You can't pick your family," Gaffney told the newspaper. "I had to protect my kids from my brother and I was right to do it. He was rude and aggressive.
"I told him to be quiet, then I told him to leave which is when the fight started. Now he's no longer welcome here."
think where we'd be if the News of the World had a reputation for reliable reporting. :roll:
Stella Moo
Nothing to do with the fact he was blind drunk, of course... HE HAD ASPERGERS!!!! A dangerous debilitating brain disorder! :roll:
May I say that, in general, we often know little more about a particular person, case, subject, event, than what we have read in a newspaper, or overheard on the wireless?
Yet here in the Afforum we often discuss reports in the NT media as if we were weighing up the merits of an actual event of which we had real knowledge.
The News of the Screws :roll: is well-known as an entertainment only loosely based on current affairs, but the NT pro-cure propaganda in so-called "quality" newspapers may be less easy to spot, because disbelief is more efficiently suspended by giving the illusion of learning without the substance.
To suggest that we are "prone to violence" is second-order pro-cure propaganda, since the majority will always agree that violence must be stopped and its causes "cured."
Stella
You are right Stella, most people know that alcohol is a factor in violent crime often, and that NTs are the vast majority of people arrested at the weekend for drunken fights etc, also in the report it states that his brother with AS was the one who was injured, and Dean Gaffney was arrested, not his AS brother.
Therefore, the story could have read, "Dean Gaffney arrested after injuring his brother with AS, a condition which can mean he is more vulnerable to bullying".
oh yes Amy....
Is slander more securely fastened onto those first prepared with a diagnostic label? Who can say?
Dustbin
ashcan
can ash
CAN
(fragment of Aspergian skipping song)
Stella Maru
Former EastEnders actor Dean Gaffney was arrested on Christmas Day after a punchup with his brother, the News of the World reports today.
The 26-year-old - Robbie Jackson in the BBC soap - allegedly became involved in the argument after older brother Gary came home from the pub "blind drunk and spoiling for a fight."
The pair ended up trading blows before police were called, who arrested Gaffney after spotting a cut above Gary's eye.
Gary, 32, suffers from Aspergers Syndrome which can cause violent behaviour.
"You can't pick your family," Gaffney told the newspaper. "I had to protect my kids from my brother and I was right to do it. He was rude and aggressive.
"I told him to be quiet, then I told him to leave which is when the fight started. Now he's no longer welcome here."
Going by the wording of that article, I imagine you read it here http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds18039.html rather than in the News of the World itself, or found the link to it via a similar thread on my site!
You'll be glad to know that as a regular reader of the DigitalSpy site which published their take on that particular story, I was quick to get in touch with the author of the report. I sent him a long email giving reasons why I and many of us aspies are getting fed up of the negative publicity of AS in the media and I was very grateful to get a reply from him.
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your message. I appreciate receiving your comments and hearing the points you make.
To give the readers some credit, I don't think that someone reading the article would have jumped to the conclusion that everyone with AS could become violent; in fact I suspect most would realise the alcohol aspect was at play.
The mention of AS was inherited from the original article, although from my (admittedly brief) research I initially found it to be a valid statement (
http://www.homeschoolzone.com/add/aspergers2.htm). Spending more time going through this today however I discovered several reports indicating "no link" between AS and violence.
For that reason I am amending the article accordingly; please accept my apologies for the confusion and thanks for clarifying things for me.
Kind regards,
Neil Wilkes
I also started up a discussion about it on the site's General Discussion forum...
http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/show...p?t=179948
although in typical fashion...it's now gone completely off-topic!
Welcome to AFF Andrew and thanks for letting us know about that.