11 ms·

California teen with autism who vanished 3 years ago is found alive in Utah

120 points by MilnerRoute 5y ago

AtlasBarfed 5y ago
I hope he wasn't dumped by overwhelmed parents.
stuntkite 5y ago
I hope this reconnection doesn't put him into a situation he fled from and start a recycle of abuse. I hope he gets the help he needs, which is hard for autistic adults especially getting out into the world this way. Just because he was homeless and pushing a cart, doesn't mean he doesn't know how the world treats him and he had the ability to do his best not to give his name. He will likely repeat similar transient behavior. Which maybe that's not the worst thing in the world if he can get some better care. I know some delightful autistic hobos. The world doesn't want them for normal jobs and they're perfectly happy to camp, hop trains, and sing songs. It's a dangerous life but it's not a wrong life to choose. I don't need to know the drama of his struggle, but I just really hope people that can help him find a life that is less cold and more fulfilling and whoever put in him the need to walk away doesn't get to put that on him again.
- psyc 5y ago
  This is weird for me to read because years ago I met someone like this, and it always puzzled me. He just came up to me downtown one night and started chatting. He struck me as a little out there, kind of hippy-dippy. Seemed in good spirits. One of my neighbors knew him from a party. We all hung out with a few other people I didn't know. (At which time a middle-aged preacher uppercut a 6'5' drunk fireman so hard his feet left the ground and he landed on his head.) He crashed at my apartment. We hung out again the next day, and then he just disappeared. I didn't think much of it. I'd 'come up' with a bunch of neurotypical 'transients' with sad family lives who partied and crashed where they could. A couple of years later I thought maybe I'd look him up. I found a few news articles stating he (an adult) was "missing", autistic, and "ran away" from his "caregiver." Stated that he "functioned at a 12-year-old level." The autism part maybe explained some eccentricity, but I could not square that last part with the person I'd met. He seemed to know what he was doing (?) Based on the articles, he'd run away at least twice. No mention of parents, only a "caregiver." It was just weird. He was very, very chill, and very chatty. He didn't seem in distress. I suppose one could recast my first impression of rambling free-spiritedness as "functioning at the level of a 12-year-old"...? Just odd. I never did find a way to contact him.
  - stuntkite 5y ago
    Trigger Warning: Gonna talk about sexual assault and physical abuse below. "caregiver" is a big red flag for me. I'm on the autistic spectrum. My parents took a different tact and let me become an emancipated minor at 15. I'm not gonna say they did their best or that that was a good thing to do... I cannot as an adult fathom just letting the kid go to the wolves... but I survived. There is a massive contingent of people that HATE autistic people and feel like it's something to be "fixed". A lot of them frame that hate as helping. There are tons of laws and very questionable care giving organizations. The history is brutal. Frequently they are handed over to people who get into the role of caring for these people because they want to beat and rape people who can't complain (see Jimmy Savile). This isn't that dissimilar from the highly publicize Britany Spears conservatorship. There is money in taking care of an adult with "the mind of a 12 year old" also you can beat and rape them if you wanna. There is an old and "hippie dippie" model for spectrum disorders where they refer to them as indigo children and they claim that kids used to be called that because the baby was replaced by fairies and now speaks truths beyond their years. Look at the classic traits of a vampire. Being scared of water, can count things very fast, maybe has surprising strength and old wisdom. Autistic people aren't extra wise, they span the range of dipshit to genius like any other category of people. Autistic people do spend a lot of extra energy trying to predict a world that is confusing and hostile to them and when they vocalize how they navigate said world, it creeps people out who have to deal with a society that says lying is wrong but the rule actually is "fuck it, do whatever you can get away with." If you get hooked up to "caregivers" that take away your agency and you are an outlet of justifiable (to the abuser) sadism for them you can't run far enough. The state will put you back in their arms. Autism Speaks is a eugenics organization. Autism does not mean a person is unaware of the world around them, actually quite the opposite. Also the messaging that autism can be a super power is the same thing in disguise (see the most recent Predator movie or Baby Driver). It's a sensory disorder. It's not a lack of emotion, it's that overload frequently makes it difficult to respond to people and situations as "normal people" expect so abuse becomes a default mode for "caregivers". There are organizations that are CURRENTLY advocating for electric shock or physical harm to help "correct" autism. Yeah... (speaking about the perspective of a hypothetical person in a situation of abuse) Change your name, run away, hop trains. RUN if you can because you're autistic enough to see that people will always abuse you in any situation where you're put into the care of the ghouls that own your name. Even the Arc and Autism Self Advocacy Network have some massive problems including putting autistic people with weird abusive special interests into positions to hurt people who just want to live their fucking lives. I recently saw this video by a fellow I really relate to where he lays out all the things I say in a fit some times but... yeah. They lay it all out. The history of helping the disabled is pretty wrought with not checking in with the disabled. Also, I think they are a hilarious humorist and the rest of their stuff is fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOlEjWaejAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOlEjWaejAw - You Don't Seem Autistic - or - How I Learned to Love the Meritocracy _ Woohooligan Comedy
- riffic 5y ago
  this was exactly what I was worried about reading this article. The return to his parents seems like a terrible thing to celebrate without knowing what exactly happened to motivate him to escape in 2019.
  - duxup 5y ago
    To me that assumes something negative about the family.
    - riffic 5y ago
      This would be a solid assumption to presume. edit: I read your reply and I'm going to stop engaging right here. Sometimes intuition is worth listening to.
      - duxup 5y ago
        What do you think you know about these people?
      - zdragnar 5y ago
        My brother is literally the best person I know. He has the patience of a stone, the compassion of a saint and bends over backwards to make sure his family's needs are met. His son is autistic, and will, given the slightest opportunity, walk out of the house and wander off. It's just something he does, no matter where he is or who he is with (local day cares refused to take him after awhile because they literally couldn't keep the kid safe from himself wandering or climbing after a certain point). I worry for my nephew, because he has literally no sense of self preservation, and he is growing fast. At some point, he may need to be put in a group home, because he is nearly his mother's size (she's fairly short anyway) and my brother is the primary breadwinner for the family. Don't wag your klep when you've nothing at all to go on about someone.
        stuntkite 5y ago
        I think you should really spend more time with your nephew. ~~I deleted a bunch of shit. If you read that I'm sorry. Really, I know this stuff is hard.~~
- s5300 5y ago
  Yup, I’ve been mostly justifiably conditioned to believe that the overwhelming vast majority of missing persons reports for people 12-25ish are likely people running from abuse. Typically unfathomably horrendous abuse.
- 77pt77 5y ago
  > I hope this reconnection doesn't put him into a situation he fled from and start a recycle of abuse. Given his reluctance to give his name, this is highly likely to be what's happening here.
  - stuntkite 5y ago
    Very much agreed and I have no idea how to help. If you have any ideas I'd love to hear them.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
moralestapia 5y ago
A few days ago there was an Ask HN about how do you get along with your parents [1]. I've been reading a lot about this and other related topics, like how does one deal with narcissistic parents, which is a common thing actually. There's a lot of abuse that no one notices as it is not immediately evident as other sorts of abuse (i.e. physical, sexual, etc...), child neglect is so widespread nowadays that I'd consider it an epidemic. I recall reading a testimony of a child who was constantly and severely emotionally abused and he was talking about how come none of the other adults around him realized what was going on, even though he "was showing all the signs of living in an abusive household". The thing is that all of these signs are quite subtle and you have to know what you're looking for in order to start noticing them. For instance, the kid who almost never wants to be noticed, who is quite "shy", who is always complying with everybody may be under a chronic situation of ridiculing, demeaning or derogatory remarks at home, which has modeled this behavior and, sadly, stunted his emotional and social development. As I was reading this story, I couldn't stop thinking about how the boy would rather risk it into the wild rather than just coming back to his parents, for three years. This is a huge red flag, honestly, and while it doesn't necessarily imply wrongdoing from the parent's side it is definitely something that should be looked at with a lot of care and empathy for him. Sometimes, not even parents are aware of the kind of damage that they could be causing by choosing to behave in a way they consider to be "normal". I wish the boy the best, he still has his whole life ahead of him and I hope he finds his place in this world soon and without much trouble. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31047608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31047608
- chrismeller 5y ago
  You know what, I don’t talk about it… at all. It wasn’t until 20 years later and after I’d moved to a different continent and started seeing a therapist for completely unrelated reasons, but the therapist asked me what my childhood was like. I’d always thought mine was “fine” or “normal”. Divorced parents, like my friends. Younger brother and I living with our mother, like my friends. Aggressively “middle class”, like my friends. I described one time how my mother would (frequently) get home from a long day at work, not ask how our days were, start cooking dinner (Hamburger Helper or similar), and then one of us kids would ask an innocent question and she would fly off the handle. Turn off the stove mid-meal, storm to her room and slam the door. There was always plenty of cereal, sandwich meat, and canned soup in the house, so it’s not like we went hungry. Again, I thought it was normal. I’m now very closely approaching 40 and finally coming to terms with what that seemingly insignificant thing (to her) did to me. I’m not expecting every parent to have a guidebook for survival with kids, but WTF. Hey, at least I ended up being fiercely independent and learned to cook. I’m sure this kid (man now) will soldier through… he’s obviously survived this long on his own.
aaron695 5y ago

120 points by MilnerRoute 5y ago

I hope he wasn't dumped by overwhelmed parents.

I hope this reconnection doesn't put him into a situation he fled from and start a recycle of abuse. I hope he gets the help he needs, which is hard for autistic adults especially getting out into the world this way. Just because he was homeless and pushing a cart, doesn't mean he doesn't know how the world treats him and he had the ability to do his best not to give his name. He will likely repeat similar transient behavior. Which maybe that's not the worst thing in the world if he can get some better care. I know some delightful autistic hobos. The world doesn't want them for normal jobs and they're perfectly happy to camp, hop trains, and sing songs. It's a dangerous life but it's not a wrong life to choose. I don't need to know the drama of his struggle, but I just really hope people that can help him find a life that is less cold and more fulfilling and whoever put in him the need to walk away doesn't get to put that on him again.

psyc 5y ago
This is weird for me to read because years ago I met someone like this, and it always puzzled me. He just came up to me downtown one night and started chatting. He struck me as a little out there, kind of hippy-dippy. Seemed in good spirits. One of my neighbors knew him from a party. We all hung out with a few other people I didn't know. (At which time a middle-aged preacher uppercut a 6'5' drunk fireman so hard his feet left the ground and he landed on his head.) He crashed at my apartment. We hung out again the next day, and then he just disappeared. I didn't think much of it. I'd 'come up' with a bunch of neurotypical 'transients' with sad family lives who partied and crashed where they could. A couple of years later I thought maybe I'd look him up. I found a few news articles stating he (an adult) was "missing", autistic, and "ran away" from his "caregiver." Stated that he "functioned at a 12-year-old level." The autism part maybe explained some eccentricity, but I could not square that last part with the person I'd met. He seemed to know what he was doing (?) Based on the articles, he'd run away at least twice. No mention of parents, only a "caregiver." It was just weird. He was very, very chill, and very chatty. He didn't seem in distress. I suppose one could recast my first impression of rambling free-spiritedness as "functioning at the level of a 12-year-old"...? Just odd. I never did find a way to contact him.
- stuntkite 5y ago
  Trigger Warning: Gonna talk about sexual assault and physical abuse below. "caregiver" is a big red flag for me. I'm on the autistic spectrum. My parents took a different tact and let me become an emancipated minor at 15. I'm not gonna say they did their best or that that was a good thing to do... I cannot as an adult fathom just letting the kid go to the wolves... but I survived. There is a massive contingent of people that HATE autistic people and feel like it's something to be "fixed". A lot of them frame that hate as helping. There are tons of laws and very questionable care giving organizations. The history is brutal. Frequently they are handed over to people who get into the role of caring for these people because they want to beat and rape people who can't complain (see Jimmy Savile). This isn't that dissimilar from the highly publicize Britany Spears conservatorship. There is money in taking care of an adult with "the mind of a 12 year old" also you can beat and rape them if you wanna. There is an old and "hippie dippie" model for spectrum disorders where they refer to them as indigo children and they claim that kids used to be called that because the baby was replaced by fairies and now speaks truths beyond their years. Look at the classic traits of a vampire. Being scared of water, can count things very fast, maybe has surprising strength and old wisdom. Autistic people aren't extra wise, they span the range of dipshit to genius like any other category of people. Autistic people do spend a lot of extra energy trying to predict a world that is confusing and hostile to them and when they vocalize how they navigate said world, it creeps people out who have to deal with a society that says lying is wrong but the rule actually is "fuck it, do whatever you can get away with." If you get hooked up to "caregivers" that take away your agency and you are an outlet of justifiable (to the abuser) sadism for them you can't run far enough. The state will put you back in their arms. Autism Speaks is a eugenics organization. Autism does not mean a person is unaware of the world around them, actually quite the opposite. Also the messaging that autism can be a super power is the same thing in disguise (see the most recent Predator movie or Baby Driver). It's a sensory disorder. It's not a lack of emotion, it's that overload frequently makes it difficult to respond to people and situations as "normal people" expect so abuse becomes a default mode for "caregivers". There are organizations that are CURRENTLY advocating for electric shock or physical harm to help "correct" autism. Yeah... (speaking about the perspective of a hypothetical person in a situation of abuse) Change your name, run away, hop trains. RUN if you can because you're autistic enough to see that people will always abuse you in any situation where you're put into the care of the ghouls that own your name. Even the Arc and Autism Self Advocacy Network have some massive problems including putting autistic people with weird abusive special interests into positions to hurt people who just want to live their fucking lives. I recently saw this video by a fellow I really relate to where he lays out all the things I say in a fit some times but... yeah. They lay it all out. The history of helping the disabled is pretty wrought with not checking in with the disabled. Also, I think they are a hilarious humorist and the rest of their stuff is fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOlEjWaejAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOlEjWaejAw - You Don't Seem Autistic - or - How I Learned to Love the Meritocracy _ Woohooligan Comedy
riffic 5y ago
this was exactly what I was worried about reading this article. The return to his parents seems like a terrible thing to celebrate without knowing what exactly happened to motivate him to escape in 2019.
- duxup 5y ago
  To me that assumes something negative about the family.
  - riffic 5y ago
    This would be a solid assumption to presume. edit: I read your reply and I'm going to stop engaging right here. Sometimes intuition is worth listening to.
    - duxup 5y ago
      What do you think you know about these people?
    - zdragnar 5y ago
      My brother is literally the best person I know. He has the patience of a stone, the compassion of a saint and bends over backwards to make sure his family's needs are met. His son is autistic, and will, given the slightest opportunity, walk out of the house and wander off. It's just something he does, no matter where he is or who he is with (local day cares refused to take him after awhile because they literally couldn't keep the kid safe from himself wandering or climbing after a certain point). I worry for my nephew, because he has literally no sense of self preservation, and he is growing fast. At some point, he may need to be put in a group home, because he is nearly his mother's size (she's fairly short anyway) and my brother is the primary breadwinner for the family. Don't wag your klep when you've nothing at all to go on about someone.
      - stuntkite 5y ago
        I think you should really spend more time with your nephew. ~~I deleted a bunch of shit. If you read that I'm sorry. Really, I know this stuff is hard.~~
s5300 5y ago
Yup, I’ve been mostly justifiably conditioned to believe that the overwhelming vast majority of missing persons reports for people 12-25ish are likely people running from abuse. Typically unfathomably horrendous abuse.
77pt77 5y ago
> I hope this reconnection doesn't put him into a situation he fled from and start a recycle of abuse. Given his reluctance to give his name, this is highly likely to be what's happening here.
- stuntkite 5y ago
  Very much agreed and I have no idea how to help. If you have any ideas I'd love to hear them.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

moralestapia 5y ago

A few days ago there was an Ask HN about how do you get along with your parents [1]. I've been reading a lot about this and other related topics, like how does one deal with narcissistic parents, which is a common thing actually. There's a lot of abuse that no one notices as it is not immediately evident as other sorts of abuse (i.e. physical, sexual, etc...), child neglect is so widespread nowadays that I'd consider it an epidemic. I recall reading a testimony of a child who was constantly and severely emotionally abused and he was talking about how come none of the other adults around him realized what was going on, even though he "was showing all the signs of living in an abusive household". The thing is that all of these signs are quite subtle and you have to know what you're looking for in order to start noticing them. For instance, the kid who almost never wants to be noticed, who is quite "shy", who is always complying with everybody may be under a chronic situation of ridiculing, demeaning or derogatory remarks at home, which has modeled this behavior and, sadly, stunted his emotional and social development. As I was reading this story, I couldn't stop thinking about how the boy would rather risk it into the wild rather than just coming back to his parents, for three years. This is a huge red flag, honestly, and while it doesn't necessarily imply wrongdoing from the parent's side it is definitely something that should be looked at with a lot of care and empathy for him. Sometimes, not even parents are aware of the kind of damage that they could be causing by choosing to behave in a way they consider to be "normal". I wish the boy the best, he still has his whole life ahead of him and I hope he finds his place in this world soon and without much trouble. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31047608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31047608

chrismeller 5y ago
You know what, I don’t talk about it… at all. It wasn’t until 20 years later and after I’d moved to a different continent and started seeing a therapist for completely unrelated reasons, but the therapist asked me what my childhood was like. I’d always thought mine was “fine” or “normal”. Divorced parents, like my friends. Younger brother and I living with our mother, like my friends. Aggressively “middle class”, like my friends. I described one time how my mother would (frequently) get home from a long day at work, not ask how our days were, start cooking dinner (Hamburger Helper or similar), and then one of us kids would ask an innocent question and she would fly off the handle. Turn off the stove mid-meal, storm to her room and slam the door. There was always plenty of cereal, sandwich meat, and canned soup in the house, so it’s not like we went hungry. Again, I thought it was normal. I’m now very closely approaching 40 and finally coming to terms with what that seemingly insignificant thing (to her) did to me. I’m not expecting every parent to have a guidebook for survival with kids, but WTF. Hey, at least I ended up being fiercely independent and learned to cook. I’m sure this kid (man now) will soldier through… he’s obviously survived this long on his own.

aaron695 5y ago