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Is it a normal thing for autism vocational programs to use physical punishment?

I related in another threat that I feel my diagnosis with autism was more harmful than helpful. I was subject to a lot of heartache after I was daignosed, which resulted in just a lot of trauma.

I just want to know how common this experience is, and if this is at all okay:
After being told I was autistic, I basically lost all my rights and the "professionals" who were supposed to help me forced me into a conservatorship. I was then forced into a state program which placed me in a "vocational" program for "Autistic adults." The idea was that I would do short term work there while they helped me polosh up my skills and get a real job. But I was paid minimum wave, and despite being signed up as full time, they committed constant wage fraud against me. They forced me to work hours off the clock all the time.

The thing is I eventually started complaining a lot. After they started violating my privacy by calling my parents, despite my attempts to stop them, they got very agressive., Every time I complained about the conditions I worked under, they would lock me in a smelly bathroom for hours and not let me out. There was a lot of tralk about how I "didn't understand" things.

So then the owner of the business the hosted this business started to get angry at me about my complaints, he would ask me into his office for "A talk." He had a piece of rebar ion there. The kind that is set into concrete to keep it stable and strong. HE would yell at me and then he would make me stand against the wall and wack me on the side of the back with the rebar. He would make me take olff my clothes to show there were no bruises so bad that they looked like anything other than just tripping and falling.

Sometimes he hit me so hard he left a welt that fillerd with fluid. He would tell me he would hurt my family or my dog if I told anyone he did that.

I was well into my 20s but he called my mother into his office a lot. I begged him not to, but the state forced me into conservatorship, because I was consideed autistic and therefore had no rights.


He would say the wounds were due to me "being clumsy"

He insulted me a lot for being autistic.

One time he told me to go up on the roof to help install an antenna, but then he clipped me in the back of the knees with the rebar and threw me off of the roof. I am sure two of my ribs were broken, although they healed in a couple months.
Nobvody ever listened to me because he kept saying I "Didn't understand" and "Made things up" because I was autistic. I guess that's normal? He always told me it was my fault.

But in this autism vocational program., I was just subject to so many injuries and so mucb physical assault it was ridiculous.

I was often told this was the only way I'd learn.
BTW: I did eventually escape this and today I am a six figure making consultant, but for 7 years of my life I lived in fear of being hit by the rebar or locked in the bathroom or being the victim of malicious information leaks.
This is why I think being diagnosed with autism is harmful. BEfore diagnosis I was never subject to physical injury as punishm,ent.
Is this a common or acceptable thing?
 
I am in a different ohase of my life now. Inesvaped that and went bac wvhool. I live in the US. I do financial risk advisory. I help big companies understand their potential risks and what can be done to reduce them and how to insure risks and that kind of thing. I work with a lot of the biggest companies on this. It's a very important issue. I also help them with keeping private data secure and assuring they meet regulatory requirements.

It is very high level stuff, and I feel very priceledged to work with such bog companies on strategic goals. The idea of using physical punishment is...unthinkable. we would never do that. I work in a very formal upscale business world.

But back when my life was governed by the autism diagnosis it was the opposite. I was in a very lowmwage job and they punished me and insulted me every day.

I have had lawyers tell me I could sue but I cannot relive those experiences. It is too hard. They just beat me up too much.

Different world. I'm like a big shot now. But back then they literally spit on me.

I know this is not okay. Just wondering how common it is.
 
This is frightening. I am going the PTSD route just hearing this. So sorry you were hurt so badly. Perhaps when you retire, you can help those programs understand what abuse younger dx autistic youths may face.
 
You have total sympathy from me for going through this horrific experience. I’m so sorry :(

I won’t go into the whole story here but this happened to me too, in a residential program. I was literally tortured, had several near-death experiences, and now suffer from treatment-resistant complex PTSD.

There are a lot of other survivor stories here:
Survivors Breaking Code Silence - BREAKING CODE SILENCE
 
Sounds illegal and totally made up. I'm not saying I think it's made up, but that it's so far outside my reality that it sounds made up.
 
^The link I just provided is ample evidence that this kind of institutional abuse is sadly not made up and very common.
 

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