Doug Passon
Appearances
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
They go online because it's so much easier to communicate with a person when you're not face to face and all that social stuff. And online is just a cesspool of epic proportion that there's nothing but trouble there. You're vulnerable in any number of ways. But it's also this idea, so now you're online, but you have this issue. This is the second pillar. What is it?
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
Hyper-focus, areas of high interest. People on the spectrum, I think it's a way they manage anxiety, just become so interested in one thing and always into that thing. Great. Online, you can go as deep and as wide as you want to go on any topic.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
And you may hope that it's World War II airplanes, but a lot of times it may be QAnon or some crazy shit that they just keep going and going and going and going. The last pillar is the executive functioning component. So now you've got all this information and ideas in your head and you don't know what to do with it.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
And you come up with a dumb idea like shooting up an energy facility or going to meet this girl or whatever it is. And you have this rigid thinking, which is once you get this idea, it's very hard to get out of it. You have executive functioning, which means you can't plan and predict consequences.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
What happens three steps down the road if I do this thing and I end up in jail for this thing or my family ends up devastated and bankrupt from this thing or some child, God forbid, ends up getting traumatized from this thing? That's not the way the autistic brain works. And that's how they find themselves in this terrible trouble. And guess what?
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
That's why the suicide rate for autistic people is off the charts. Loneliness, rigid thinking, this is a solution to a problem, I can't think of a better one. And then total lack of how is this going to affect the rest of my life, my family's life, everybody. And it's those three pillars I think explains that, really.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
I was always passionate about the law and always passionate about criminal defense. I wanted to be a public defender, passionate about justice issues. I chose that path, but I was always making films and immersing myself in story and reading all the books, taking classes. Eventually, those two things intersected, and I figured out very fast the system was so dehumanizing.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
Yeah, yeah. And that is what I think we would call The idea of mind blindness. It's this idea of perspective taking. It's so central to what we do because, again, the default is, of course you knew how this person would feel about what you did. Let's take the child sexual abuse material, right? It's a picture. And it's a picture of a child being abused in unimaginable ways.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
And the neurotypical goes, who looks at that picture and is instantaneously repulsed because we have perspective taking. We can basically go into the mind of that child or even that abuser and understand how terrible that situation is. Autistic brain can't do that. Much of what we do is education and there's really two ways you can educate somebody.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
You can educate them with the science and the facts, the scholarly articles, the erudite speeches and everything else. But me, I'm a storyteller. And I think the more you could just tell stories that bring this home better. Here's a simple one. I mentioned I have a son on the spectrum. He has a little brother who's not on the spectrum. And you know how a little brother looks up to big brother.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
There's a four-year difference. And one time, little brother, both into gaming. And little brother had this really cool game. And he wanted to show his older brother. He was so excited. He was sure that his older brother would think, that's cool. The older brother looked at him blankly and said, I really don't care, and walked away. The neurotypical brain looks at that and goes, what a jerk!
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
That was the meanest thing ever! How could he do that to his little brother? But guess what? The truth is, he wasn't interested. And he just was being honest.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
telling him the truth which we're always telling people on the autism spectrum are supposed to be rule followers we're always telling them tell the truth so in his mind he probably did a very good thing by telling his brother i'm not interested but how do you think his little brother felt it was like he might as well just punched him right in the gut and he didn't know any better but guess what all i had to do is sit down with him and have the conversation and help him understand
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
They're not irrevocably broken. They're not going to be dangerous. They're not dangerous people. They're not people with malintent. They just don't intuit the way we do. But once they learn the rules of social interaction, they can manage that just fine.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
That's why Mahoney would tell you, because there's no formal studies about this, but he keeps anecdotal statistics on all of his cases about what is the recidivism rate. In other words, Once an autistic person realizes how badly they deviated from the rules and norms of society, what are the chances they're going to do it again? And the answer is almost zero.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
There's literally almost zero recidivism rate among the autistic population. They are the most highly treatable offenders in the criminal justice system.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
And we're not even at the autism piece. This is just the criminal justice system. When you get charged with a crime, you're reduced to a stack of paper and a file and you're going to be defined by the worst mistake you ever made and that's as much as you are and will ever be and you're a monster and we need to punish you to the fullest extent of the law and blah, blah, blah.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
Wow. For autism?
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
yes it's a slow slog but i love to hear the stories about these judges after 30 years i'm still an optimist about human beings and the human spirit and i think fundamentally judges are trying to do the right thing it's incumbent upon us to give them the information they need to make the right decision so that goes back to the lawyers aren't equipped to tell these stories they don't know
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
You hear those stories. They're scattered all over. And then there are some prosecutors who get this. You maybe offer diversion or better plea agreement. And there are judges who get this. And then there are some who just don't get it or don't care. There's legislation that's creeping in just in little dribs and drabs. I love Malcolm Gladwell. He talks about the tipping point.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
We are nowhere near the tipping point. I feel like we're on the very, very front end of building awareness and making widespread, lasting, systemic change. But you have to keep pointing to those little small victories just for the simple fact that it validates. We're not just blowing smoke here as defense lawyers. This is real. What we're telling you is real.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
You don't have to take our word for it. Look at these judges. Look at this legislation, whatever. I'd like to see changes to the federal sentencing guidelines. I have reached out to some of these groups, and I hope that we can spearhead that. I know there's been attempts to make changes to federal legislation, but I think it's got to be one step at a time, one state at a time.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
one jurisdiction at a time, one judge at a time, and eventually there will be a tipping point. And here's the sad truth. I don't know if it's going to be 10 years from now or 20 years from now. I hope it's not 30 years from now.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
But we're going to look back at the way we treated people on the spectrum who found themselves in trouble, and we're going to be horrified and ashamed about it, that we didn't understand this better and we didn't understand it quicker.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
And I just saw that over and over again. And my job, especially given that most people who find themselves indicted, charged with a crime, they're going to end up at sentencing. That's the odds. You know, the odds are, you know, even in, I work mostly in the federal system, 96, 7, 8% of those people are pleading guilty. They're not even having a trial. So you know they're getting sentenced.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
I, there's so much. We've talked about this from the perspective of someone who's in trouble. I think the most important thing is part of the perspective of someone who's not in trouble. I'm a parent of an autistic child. And I know the horrors that await them if they aren't given proper resources, if they aren't properly supervised, if they're left to their own devices to be online 24-7.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
Parents don't understand how vulnerable their children are. And not just to being in trouble running a follow-up, but to being victimized online, too. My son went to an autism school, a high school, that was created by a woman who there were no good schools for her son, so she made an amazing school. And I gave a talk to the parents. Just so you know, these are the danger zones.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
Make sure you understand and you're on top of this. God forbid this happens to your kid. It's going to devastate you. You've talked to the parents who have kids who have been in this system. I cannot imagine the pain and trauma that they go through every second of the day. So I gave this talk and it was a litany of like worst case scenarios.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
And I think people were interested by it and they were grateful for it. I even had one parent come up to me and go, so interesting, but that would never happen to my Timmy. And guess what? A month later, the FBI was knocking at Timmy's door because Timmy posted something online about a pipe bomb. Now, Timmy was actually literally a rocket scientist. Brilliant kid.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
But he built model rockets, and he would call the engines. They'd call them pipe bombs. Guess what? When the FBI hears you talking about explosive devices on Reddit or wherever it is, you're getting a knock at the door and that's the last thing in the world that you want. I just think the most important thing is I don't know if parents understand how vulnerable their kids on the spectrum are.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
And by the way, a lot of parents, they have kids, they're struggling. They may have gotten the school psychologist to say, I think they're just ADD. They may be on the spectrum, but you don't want that diagnosis. It's just going to stigmatize them and they'll still get services. No, you get the diagnosis so you can understand exactly what your child needs and set about giving it to them.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
And that is the very best way to head tragedy off at the pass.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
All right. This has been great. I so appreciate you.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
And then the small percentage of people that go to trial, they don't always win.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
i found myself trying to be really just being a storyteller and showing the humanity of my clients my clients yes they made a mistake yes there's going to be a consequence but the question is what's a fair consequence and the only way you can measure that it's not by the crime it's by you've got to judge the person as much as you're going to be judging the crime and that's the only way you can judge what is a fair consequence so
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
What is your life story? And that's my thing. I'm a storyteller. And I need to make sure that the people that are making these life and death decisions understand the human being behind the crime. So I started making movies and cases.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
2005 was actually my first video, and I figured out it was a really powerful way to advocate. In the federal system, a lot of times the first time the judge ever lays eyes on a client is at sentencing, because they've gone through magistrate and other lower court judges to plead guilty and these ministerial things.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
And now all of a sudden, the whole time they've just been, like I said, stack of paper and a file. So you can get this video. It's a short documentary about the case or the client explaining who they are, why they did what they did, why they're not going to do it again, whatever the case may be. And then the judge has that in advance of sentencing.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
So he or she has actually had an opportunity to essentially meet the client, sit with the client, experience the client in their own world. So eventually I left the traditional legal practice to go focus on making those movies. And that's what I do for lawyers all over the country. And I help them build the story.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
You don't get to the movie until you know what the story is that you're trying to tell. And then we make these movies. When I left, that was 10 years ago, and I just envisioned myself being the movie guy. But guess what happened?
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
He is the lead autism criminal defense lawyer in the world, I would venture to say. He understood that the huge challenge in autism cases was to get people to understand the truth about our clients, because most people don't know what it is. They don't know why it matters. He understood that these sentencing videos would be a really powerful tool in autism cases.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
so i started working on these cases with him and eventually i got pulled back in to the traditional legal practice and i handle these cases now like mark does and i'm always pulling mark up going i need this i need that but and he's so generous so now i'm a lawyer i'm a filmmaker and now i'm representing these clients as well in various stages of the proceeding that's so great what led you to doing this
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
I have a personal connection to this because I have a son who's on the autism spectrum. I think I got the issues more than most. And here's the big problem. There are very few lawyers who really understand that they can even recognize the issue when they have a case, let alone understand what to do with it, how to develop it, how to present it, and why it's mitigating, why it matters to the story.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
I'm so grateful to come on your podcast because I'm really on a mission to educate lawyers first and foremost. You don't have to know everything about autism. It's okay. Just know enough to see it, to see the signs, and then dig around and make sure you've developed this part of it. Because we miss it all the time. What are the CDC statistics right now? I think it's one in 36.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
Let's extrapolate the numbers because I think I've handled about a thousand cases in my 30 years. which means how many of those clients were on the spectrum and I knew nothing about it for the first 20 years of my practice because we as a society still know relatively little about it.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
So how many of those did I miss and how much detriment, you know, how much damage resulted because I didn't know what I didn't know. And it's not a criticism of lawyers. You can't be expected to know everything, but we have to start opening our eyes to this issue. It's so crucial.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
Yeah, that's the $64,000 question because we're a strange breed. I don't know if it's the personality that's drawn to the legal practice. It's highly competitive. We've gone through years of school. Most of us have practiced for decades. We like to think we just know everything. It's the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
It's really interesting because when you talk about some of the hallmarks of autism, what is one of the major problems or obstacles? Rigid thinking. I would love to do a cross-sectional study of lawyers because I have a feeling that many of us are probably on the spectrum, especially the older lawyers have been doing this their whole career. This is how I do it. I know what I'm doing.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
I don't need you to tell me.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
and oh that probably doesn't matter anyway because they don't know what they don't know and i don't know how you combat that other than educate which is what you're doing again which is why i'm so grateful to be here and just hoping that a lawyer no matter how far you've gone in practice you still know that you always have something to learn that's just called life exactly
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
There's a lot to unpack. If I can speak to how I support the family, here's the interesting thing. I think more often than not, clients are coming to me and they're not diagnosed. They don't know. They've had these problems. They've struggled their whole life.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
And they've always just thought, I'm weird, there's something wrong with me, I'm whatever, I'm this, I'm that, and it's a horrible, lonely way to go through life. And the sad irony is this tragic occurrence of finding themselves ensnared in the criminal justice system is the first time they truly begin to understand what their struggles really are, and that there's a real diagnosis.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
And I call it the rush of insight.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
I'm a filmmaker, a storyteller, and the really good stories always have that big reveal, right? You didn't see it coming, but the seeds were always there. They were planted along the way.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
and i always use empire strikes back as my go-to example which is luke i'm your father i didn't see that one coming but then you go back and all the clues made total sense and then your whole story comes into focus and that's what happens when you get the autism diagnosis
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
The level of support is to say, look, I know this is horrible, and we're going to do our very best to navigate this, to run this gauntlet, and I'm going to be by your side through the whole thing. Look, here's the bright side. Now you know, and now you can start to get the right help, the right counseling, the right tools to navigate not only this stress in your life, but your life in general.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
because for most people on the spectrum life is unmanageable even if they're not involved in some kind of criminal activity and so there is a sense of relief and hope that the future can be better once they've figured out what's wrong have a path forward to fix it the bigger challenge is what you said at the beginning of this question which is the idea of people thinking well if they have a high intellect and they can carry on these really high level conversations then
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
whatever you're saying is not relevant. Of course they knew what they were doing was wrong. How could they not have? They graduated high school, they drive a car, they've held a job, they've gone to college, whatever it is, nothing could be further from the truth. And that is our monumental hurdle, and I'm sure Mark talked about that too, is breaking through that wall of
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
complete misunderstanding. And you know, in the criminal justice system, people are inherently skeptical about defense lawyers to begin with, that we're just trying to get our clients off and lie and cheat and sell snake oil. So when it comes to autism, a lot of prosecutors call it the excuse du jour. Oh, this doesn't really make a difference, but so what? He has it. He's high-functioning.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
And so that means his autism is mild. I don't think your listeners can see these air quotes that I'm putting up, but I hate those terms.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
They don't tell the truth about the true struggles of an autistic person. Yes, they can have a decent IQ, maybe even a high IQ.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
But when you look at their emotional intelligence, their social intelligence, their receptive language skills, if you give some of these folks a test called the Vineland assessment, which is social adaptive language and adaptive skill set and all these things, they might come out as a 8, 9, 10, 11, 12-year-old child on these tests. When I try to explain to the decision makers why this is real,
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
couple of things i fall back on and i will say i don't want to create the impression that people on the spectrum are completely broken deficient in any way yes it is a disability but any disability can be overcome but i do think that it's a superpower and kryptonite all rolled into one it's that kryptonite aspect that we need to shine the light on and say okay how is this so debilitating
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
Kryptonite kills Superman, right? How can autism be so debilitating that it could cause you to commit a crime like, oh, I don't know, downloading child porn, meeting a 12-year-old girl for a sexual encounter in a parking lot? Now, your listeners, their skin's going to crawl, but these are the kinds of things a lot of people on the spectrum find themselves in trouble for.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
And then there are your basic fraud cases. How do they get in trouble for committing white-collar crimes? Not to mention like terrorism related offenses. Do you know how many 1-6 defendants are probably on the autism spectrum? I have a client right now who destroyed allegedly some energy facilities. Why? Because he's passionate about climate change.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
He knows everything there is to know about global weather patterns and history of climate change, the players, the coal industry, the fuel industry, the way this pipeline works, everything. And he's brilliant.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
Then he goes out and does something allegedly as dumb as shooting a gun in the middle of the night, nobody's hurt, but blowing some holes in a transmitter to shut down this little rinky-dink power station in the middle of nowhere. And the question is, how could someone so smart do something so dumb? What were they thinking? And the answer is they weren't thinking because that's what autism is.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
It's really an impairment of the way that your brain processes information. I know I'm talking a lot, so feel free to shut me down or interrupt or whatever. But the way I make sense of this in my own mind is there's a few pillars that lead to trouble, big trouble.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
yeah so i'm a criminal defense lawyer and i have been for almost 30 years and i'm also a filmmaker so my whole life was one of two tracks lawyer or filmmaker as long as i can remember and when college was over i had to pick a path and i chose lawyer it made more sense i think my folks were worried i'd be sleeping on their couch till i was 35 if i was a starving artist but
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
First is isolation. This part always chokes me up because I think of my own son. Thank God he's never been in trouble a day in his life. Why? Because probably since he was four or five years old, he had a diagnosis and he had parents who understood this stuff and had access to therapy and resources and have understood what potential pitfalls and dangers are. I do this work.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
How many times have I gone into my son's bedroom? Hey, just to make sure, kiddo, it's not okay to do X, Y, Z, right? And he's like, yeah, dad, thanks. This is the story I have a hard time telling with regard to isolation. I see pictures of my son when he's a young boy, two, three, four years old, and he has this beautiful smile, so happy.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
Now I look at these pictures, and he won't smile for a picture. He just won't. Emotional affect issues and things with autism, and I was looking at how much emotion and how effervescent and beautiful this boy was. And I asked my wife who, and she has a great background in this. She's a speech language pathologist and she worked with autistic kids in the school district.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
I said, Rach, do you think it's possible that autism is like comes later in life? Like it's an onset that progressive look at his emotional affect here and look at here. And she said, no, I think more likely than not that life has just beaten the smile out of our son.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
He was bullied with very little friends. Bullied. Always felt bad about himself. Teachers didn't understand him. Principals didn't understand him. So I'm sorry, I'm getting emotional.
Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Doug Passon: Breaking Down Barriers, How Understanding Autism Changes Legal Outcomes
What happens to these kids? They get isolated. They don't have the social interaction to where they can learn the things that neurotypicals learn about. This is the way you're supposed to interact in a sexual situation, or this is social reciprocity, whatever. So what do they do? They don't learn, but where do they go? You know where they go.