Yesterday I published a brief post on Flowers v. Gopal, in which some rich California folks are trying to declare a neighboring autistic child a public nuisance. I’ll have more to say about the case, including answering the, “but but he wasn’t a nice kid!” comments I’m getting (short version: If he didn’t have autism and they wanted to sue, they’d use personal injury law or something, not public nuisance. Public nuisance law presupposed it’s uncontrollable. Anyway).
I’d like to collect other stories about the ways that neighbors have tried to control your disabled child through the legal system – either lawsuits, calling the police, or calling child protective services or departments of children and family services (or whatever your state has), or trying to get the school to expel your child because of their behavior to other children, etc.
You can post them in comments (now with Disqus, which hopefully will work better). You can post them on my Facebook threads. You can send them to me over email. If you send them to me over email, I can keep them confidential.
Please share widely.
The first time child protective services was called because my daughter didn't appear to my neighbor to be in school. In fact, the schools were so clueless that I had to pick my daughter up every day between 9am and 10am because the school couldn't handle her. This was in 1998.
CPS came for a visit, spoke with me, called the school and determined there was no problem.
The second time was the same year. My daughter was at a neighbors and wanted to stay to eat dinner with them. The neighbor wanted her to go home. My daughter told the neighbor there was nothing for her to eat at home.
The neighbor called CPS and they came for another visit. They saw my cupboards and fridge full of food and apologized.
I asked the nice woman from CPS why she thought the neighbors called in instead of simply asking me. She said it was because of my daughters odd behaviors.
Many people do not interact with neighbors when they have an issue. They call Code Enforcement, , County, CPS. I don't understand people… Try talking to the person first. Why do a lot of people avoid problem solving?