What should be the punishment for this crime?
Following the sentencing of youth baseball coach Mark R. Downs, Jr., on Thursday for offering to pay one of the players on his team $25 to hit an autistic child with a ball in June 2005, Daniel Torisky, president of the Autism Society of Pittsburgh, said this, according to the October 13th Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
“More appropriate would be for him to be subjected to the same pain and embarrassment that he arranged to be given to this autistic boy.
“This also reflects a lack of people at that level trained to include individuals with communication disorders, like autism, in social, recreational and educational settings, where appropriate.”
I am no judge; I am simply the mother of a nine-year-old boy with autism. I think what Downs did was wrong and cruel. But, beyond having to experience the “pain and embarassment” that an autistic person regularly encounters, I think that Downs ought also be “subjected” to learning about what autism is.
That is, Downs needs to learn that autistic children like the player on his team and like my son have different ways of communicating, acting, and being. And it is when people misunderstand these—as it seems he did, with life-changing results—that “pain and embarrassment” happen to another human being. To at least one human being.
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