MURDERING DISABLED PEOPLE IS UNACCEPTABLE

I have no words to begin this post. And so I begin by admitting that I have no words. This article is what prompted me to write this post:

“Probation understandable for woman who killed disabled daughter”

I had read about the murder of innocent 28-year-old Courtney by her adoptive mother a couple of days before but had not followed up. Because these cases sadden me too much and because they always spark a firework of sympathy. For the murderer.

The same thing happened with this case. People started talking about how they could emphasize with the murderer. How they could understand why she did it. And now there was the very real possibility of a murderer getting away with parole for killing an innocent person. It would not be the first time either.

This woman poured a fatal dose of medication into her adoptive daughters feeding tube. She planned this. It was premeditated and she executed it exactly as she had planned. These are the facts.
It was murder. And even more so it was premeditated. This was not a tragic accident. And it most certainly was not involuntary manslaughter as the murderer has pleaded guilty to.

Liltz tried to commit suicide after killing her adoptive daughter – yet she survived.
She is critically ill with cancer and believed she would die soon – yet she still lives.
Courtney does not. Courtney is dead. Courtney was murdered. Yet I read over and over again how people feel sorry for the mother. Over and over the mother’s struggle is highlighted.

WHAT ABOUT COURTNEY?

Does Bonnie Liltz deserve sympathy? Yes, she does.

She deserves sympathy for suffering from cancer. She deserves sympathy for struggling with the fear and desperation that came with not knowing what would happen to Courtney if she as her caretaker passed away. She deserves sympathy for caring for her disabled adoptive child while being so very sick herself. She deserves sympathy for struggling with a lack of services, help, and ability to access both.

She does not deserve any sympathy whatsoever for murdering Courtney.

I am going to repeat this.

Bonnie Liltz does not deserve any sympathy whatsoever for murdering Courtney.

Courtney was alive. She was known to be happy. She deserved to live. She had no choice in this matter. And the person who made the choice for her had no right to that choice. Bonnie Liltz decided to become a murderer. She used her full mental capacity to decide to kill. I am sickened by that to the very core of my soul. And I am sickened by every single person sympathizing with this murderer specifically and with any other murderer like this one.

For every murder of an innocent disabled person you comment on with “I can understand.” there will be at least one caretaker of another disabled person reading and thinking “Yes. It would be okay to kill them.”

You don’t need to be a parent or caregiver of a disabled child to know that murdering children is wrong.
Your humanity should tell you that.

HOW DO WE STOP THESE HORRORS?

We as a society need to decide that murdering disabled people is never okay. It’s not acceptable, not understandable, not excusable, not justified. Murderers of disabled people do not deserve sympathy, empathy, or compassion for murdering a disabled person. Only if murdering us is known to be unacceptable will people stop seeing it as an acceptable “way out”.

We as a society need to make it clear that there is no such thing as “no other way out”. Often caregivers of disabled people refuse offers of services and help before murdering a disabled person in their care. But even if there is absolutely no support available that would enable a caregiver to continue caring for a disabled person, there are always other “last resort” options besides harming or murdering them.

Parents and caregivers of disabled people can always:

– give them up for adoption
– leave them with social services
– check themselves into a hospital or psych ward
– leave them at a hospital
– leave them at a police station
– leave them at a fire station
– leave them at a church
– leave them with a neighbor
– leave them at school/daycare etc.
– leave them outside their home
– leave them at a doctor’s
– leave them at a store
– leave them on the street if nothing else
– leave them with a family member in another home
– leave them with a family member in their home and leave
– yes, even with a minor sibling if that‘s the only option
– lock them in a room safe from them until it’s safe to come out again
– lock yourself in a room away from them until it’s safe to come out again
– leave them alone at home, leave, let someone know they are there

We as a society need to destigmatize disability. There can be no more disability tragedy narratives. Disabled people’s lives aren’t unworthy of living. We can’t see disabled people as “better off dead”. We can’t paint disabled people as burdens on their families, or society. Only if we see disabled people as fully human, their lives of equal worth to abled people, will our murder become as unacceptable as the murder of abled people.

Society needs to decide that murdering disabled people is unacceptable.
Every single one of us needs to decide that.

The most vulnerable people need and deserve the most protection.

MURDERERS OF DISABLED PEOPLE DON’T DESERVE SYMPATHY.

THEIR VICTIMS DO.

It saddens me to say that Courtney was not the first disabled person to be killed by a family member and it saddens me even more to say that she will not be the last.

March 1st is Disability Day of Mourning – each year the disabled community remembers those of us murdered by their family members. Here is the DISABILITY DAY OF MOURNING MEMORIAL SITE.

I have debated whether or not to link to some of the horrible cases in this post and have finally decided to do so. These innocent human beings deserve their names and stories to be known. They deserve for their murderers to be publically named.

All of the following are children who had their lives cut short before they even turned 18 years old. I have tried my best to find photographs of the children but could not find one for all of them. Please let me know if you can find any. They should not be invisible.

This is by no means a complete list. There are more. There will be more. But let this list be a reminder that disabled people are killed by those they depend on and who are supposed to care for and protect them.