12 February, 2010

A sad reality

An intellectually disabled, autistic boy who escaped from a locked respite home was found dead, face down in a creek.

Less than an hour passed between Julian Stacey, 11, disappearing from the Spectrum Care facility in Mangere and his being found by police in a nearby creek on Sunday afternoon....

Julian's death is not being treated as suspicious, but the care home had a padlock with a number combination and children are supposed to be supervised.....


He said it was possible Julian had learned the combination for the lock.

Mrs Hankins said Julian was autistic and had a severe intellectual disability.

"He would have no idea of personal safety," she said. ' Julian was a good climber who scaled fences easily and loved water. But he would never have waded deeper than waist-height, she said.

"They think he may have fallen and may have been unconscious when he got to the water."


full article here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10625691

Assessing intellect in people like this is like looking for clear, colourless marbles in a bunch of transparent coloured ones.

The retardation (for want of a better term) is pervasive, sometimes very pervasive, but it is not global like it is in most intellectually retarded people.

I live with a child like this. She is of near normal, possibly above average intelligence so has grown out of escaping, mostly.

She still vanishes, in plain sight.

Turn your head for an instant and she is gone.

She comes back when called these days....most of the time....

3 comments:

Oswald Bastable said...

Always a worry of ours- mine thinks he can walk on water...

Oswald Bastable said...

The last Great Escape involved running up the middle of SH2.

As much traffic sense as a hedgehog...

sweetpea said...

I have spent hundreds of dollars on swimming lessons, I have lost count how many she has had, almost more than the other two kids combined. She has also had lessons at school.

As far as I have been able to determine she still can't swim. My other two can.

At least she usually stays clear of deep water and was able to get herself to the side the one time I saw her go out of her depth.

I still have to go looking for her nearly every time we go into a big store. At least she usually stays in store or waits outside in plain sight. Not that that helps when you are still searching the DVD section.

This is a kid who is as tall as I am, you would think she would be hard to loose. I always feel such and idiot when I start calling her. More often than not I get a hard tap on the shoulder with "uumm Mum...here I am".