Guilty: Man convicted of assault against autistic person
Earlier this week I posted about 19-year-old Taylor Feuer who was violently assaulted by teenagers in This is a difficult read: AS, Violence, and MySpace.com. More and more, there seem to be stories about violence against autistic persons in the news and here, sad to say, is another one.
Earlier this year on January 2nd in Edinburgh, Kevin Crowden, who has autism, kicked Elizabeth Alongi, a Canadian business student, very hard in the foot for no apparent reason. She and her boyfriend, Mark Logan, and Crowden swore at each other; Crowden is reported to be prone to kicking. Logan then chased Crowden from the Princes Street Boots shop into a clothing store, Zara, and followed him onto an escalator. He kicked Crowden in the shins, grabbed him by the shoulders, and threw him down the escalator. As Crowden lay screaming on the ground, Logan left the store. Crowden was treated for two fractures to his spine and cuts across his body.
As reported in today’s EdinbughNews.com, Logan was convicted of assault on September 29. Boots CCTV cameras show him as “‘happy and smiling’”; after Logan returned to the Princes Street Boots shop, he was overheard as saying to his girlfriend that “‘he won’t be doing that again.’” Crowden, who spent four days in the hospital and has made a full recovery, said yesterday “‘When I was on the floor, I was in a lot of pain and calling out for help. My head hit the floor and I broke my back which was very, very painful.’”
Logan has had two previous convictions for assault and Crowden seven. Sentencing has been deferred until October 23rd.
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POSTED IN: Adulthood, Crime, Legal Issues, Safety
2 opinions for Guilty: Man convicted of assault against autistic person
Ian Parker
Oct 1, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Just one more case of senseless violence being inflicted on Canadians abroad. (Sigh)
Seriously though, is it not just a wee bit troubling that someone with seven assault convictions is free to wander around unsupervised? If seven incidents resulted in convictions, how many others are there? At least one (Elizabeth Alongi) by the sounds of it.
This does not excuse Mark Logan - with two previous assault convictions he sounds like a problem himself - who got what he deserved. But SEVEN previous convictions? At what point does this become both a pattern of behavious and a serious public safety issue? 10? 20? Ever?
Kristina Chew, PhD
Oct 1, 2006 at 4:07 pm
As I read about this case in online sources, my head was spinning to figure out what the actual order of events was—the articles online tended to highlight the guilty judgement and Logan’s violence—-and the information about the 7 previous convictions only appeared at the end. I kept asking myself, what it would have been like to have been in Logan’s, Crowden’s, or Alongi’s shoes (excuse the metaphor). What if the person first kicked had been a child?
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