Police, mental health staff, misidentify an 11yo non-speaking autistic child - handcuff her and inject her with anti-psychotics

Disability in our children gets misread and misunderstood - this time with harmful results.

Note - some readers may find this story distressing. Please, if you need, pause, make a cuppa, sit in the sunshine, or whatever you need to recalibrate and breathe.

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Last week I shared the report from the Donald Beasley Institute on a project titled Understanding Policing Delivery: Tākata Whaikaha, D/deaf and Disabled People. I didn’t expect to have another example to share quite so quickly. The headline on the article was bad enough, the article itself somehow worse:

screenshot from the article

What distresses me especially, is that I remember this case. I remember the girl’s photo, her name, her gentle shy smile at the camera. I remember the desperate pleas of a family searching for their child, as people and local police shared and re-shared posts across social media. The posts are all gone now, so I won’t name the girl.

But I will say that in those photos this child looked a lot my youngest. They are similar in age, have similar features, wear a similar intermediate school uniform. She looked like a lovely kid. I remember being worried at the time that something untoward had happened to her, and sending up a prayer or two that she was found alive and well. I guess in a way something did happen to her; staff at the mental health facility is what happened to her.

This is a shocking way to treat a non-speaking child who was communicating the best way she knew how. She went along with the police when they first found her, she got into the police car without issue, was non-violent. She wasn’t a threat to anyone. I suspect she thought the police were taking her home. When they instead arrived at Henry Bennett, she let the police officers know this was not the right place for her the only way she could - via her behaviour. They didn’t listen to what she was saying.

The justification by Police is very victim-blamery and, frankly, not good enough:

"She was unable to give the officers any details and did not have any personal identification on her"

Well of course not! What 11-year-old child carries identification? What non-speaking child can give strangers their details? Did the officers try signing? Did they write anything down or offer her the chance to write her name? Did they try any other form of communication other than speech?

I think about my youngest. How she still self-mutes around strangers or when she is overwhelmed. How tall she is, how strong she can be. How much she would resist being taken to a strange place by police.

I wonder, would anyone try signing with her? Would they write their words down on paper so she could write her name? Would they patiently wait with her until she was able to form words with her mouth and tongue?

I think, too, about ethnicity and culture and racism and bias. The 11yo, the missing 20yo, my child - all are Māori. Visibly Māori. At a guess, they look similar in the way that young, blonde, blue-eyed Pākehā teenage girls do. Except if you’re paying attention of course, and then they don’t look anything alike.

The police saw someone who looked Māori and didn’t stop to question their assumptions about who she was, or make an effort to verify her identity beyond saying she looked like the missing 20yo and assuming she was having a mental health episode.

Henry Bennett staff saw someone Māori arriving a police car, and didn’t stop to question their assumptions:

“police advised Waikato Hospital staff they had identified the young girl as a missing patient who was subject to community treatment orders under the Mental Health Act.”

Nobody at Henry Bennett made an effort to verify the child’s identity (presumably the 20yo was known to them?!), nor did they engage in non-verbal forms of communication, instead injecting the child against their will - twice! - with anti-psychotic medications. Horrendously poor practice. A terrible thing to do to a child. Mental Health staff should know better than this. Not once did anyone attempt to verify this child’s identity in the 10 hours or so that she was there.

This is what racism looks like in practice - misidentification, incorrect assumptions, and a failure to question either of these. It is also what ableism looks like in practice - assumptions around communication, mental capacity, and behaviour. In this case, both sets of biases collided, with horrendous outcomes for the child caught up in it all.

Appalling practice by trained professionals all round. It leaves me with limited confidence that either police or mental health professionals will be able to provide my daughter with support if she ever needs it. There is such a clear need for better practice when it comes to our non-speaking children.

As for the lasting trauma, the article doesn't say, but I hope the police and Henry Bennett provide this child and her family with a team of supportive professionals that can provide the advice, healing, and ongoing support needed.

my emotions on this topic feel a lot like this seaweed scattered on the shore