Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Brian Kelmar:Breaking Down Barriers: One Father's Fight to Reform Legal Treatment of Autism
Thu, 10 Apr 2025
Send us a textBrian Kelmar shares his inspiring journey of creating Decriminalize Developmental Disabilities (D3), an organization helping families whose autistic loved ones become entangled in the criminal justice system. His personal experience with his teenage son's case revealed a shocking truth: many states fail to recognize developmental disabilities in criminal proceedings, despite acknowledging conditions like mental illness or addiction.• Working to change laws, perceptions, and education around autism in the justice system• Fighting against "counterfeit deviance" - when autistic behavior is misinterpreted as criminal intent• Successfully passing multiple Virginia laws including mandatory autism training for law enforcement• Creating diversion programs allowing judges to consider developmental disabilities during sentencing• Helping families navigate the overwhelming complexities of the criminal legal process• Addressing how autistic individuals can be easily manipulated into criminal situations without understanding• Providing resources and research documentation to level the playing field against prosecutors• Hosting monthly support meetings where families share experiences and learn from each other• Working to expand successful Virginia legislative models to other statesReach out to us at DecriminalizedDevelopmentalDisabilities.org or D3org.org if your family is facing these challenges. Remember: never let your child speak to law enforcement without a lawyer, educate them about vulnerable situations, and know that one person can create meaningful change - and that person can be you.https://tonymantor.comhttps://Facebook.com/tonymantorhttps://instagram.com/tonymantorhttps://twitter.com/tonymantorhttps://youtube.com/tonymantormusicintro/outro music bed written by T. WildWhy Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Chapter 1: Who is Brian Kelmar and what is his mission?
Joining us today is Brian Kalmar, who will share his inspiring journey with his autistic son and the legal system, which ultimately led him to establish D3, Decriminalize Developmental Disabilities. It's an honor to have him on the show. We're grateful to have the opportunity to amplify his story, sparking hope and driving meaningful change. Thanks for coming on. Sure.
If you would, tell me a little bit about your organization.
Chapter 2: What is Decriminalize Developmental Disabilities (D3)?
So we've created an organization that's called Decriminalized Developmental Disabilities. We work with families whose children or family members have gotten caught up in the criminal justice system who have either intellectual developmental disabilities or other developmental disabilities such as autism.
We work with them either from the start of the process when they enter the criminal justice system or as they're going through that process. We try to give them resources. We give them history of what's worked well, what hasn't worked well, and just emotional support as well. We have what's called a wine and wine once a month where you can do a little bit of both, but not too much of either.
So that you can share with other families what you're going through and they share experiences and learn from each other and support each other. We also work to change and that is the big part of our organization is trying to create change. What type of changes are you working towards? Change the laws, change perceptions, change the education.
So people understand autism and developmental disabilities and how these change. Family members get caught up in these situations because of their autism, not because they're criminal deviants. In fact, it's called counterfeit deviance. It appears to be deviant behavior, but it's not. It's a situation that they did not understand.
And once they do understand that, they go, oh, my gosh, I didn't know I was doing this. That was wrong. There's a lot of psychological and medical history and research to back a lot of this that we're talking about. How long have you been doing this? We started the organization back in 2016. We were originally called Legal Reform for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.
And we decided to rename it because what it really is, is we're trying to decriminalize developmental disabilities. And you see these stories all the time, you know, very tragic situations where people are shy. by law enforcement or kids taken advantage of or kids getting kicked out of school. And it has to do with sensory overload and how they process things. And then it gets them in trouble.
Yes, that's so true. This is a great thing you're doing. What led you to get involved like you are?
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Chapter 3: How did personal experience lead Brian Kelmar to start D3?
About 13, 14 years ago, my own son was a teenager. And he got caught up in a criminal justice process. It was devastating. And it has been devastating to not only to him, to us, to our entire family.
And one of the things that just shocked me and really got me just saying, how can this happen, is during the sentencing, the judge said clearly this person has a developmental disability and didn't understand the situation. But unfortunately, the Commonwealth of Virginia does not recognize developmental disabilities. That just stuck with me for years. It's like they recognize mental illness.
They recognize alcoholism. They recognize drug abuse. They recognize PTSD. But how can you not recognize in the criminal justice system something that you're born with? A developmental disability, the part of their brain works differently from a neurotypical brain. And how can that not be taken into account? So I started telling my story about my son.
And the way we originally started was we were asked to speak at a webinar. with the arc of the U.S. on criminal justice, typically on their webinars. And this was back about 14 years ago. Webinars and Zooms weren't that big. And they had about 100, 150 people across the country sign up typically for a webinar. They brought up our situation and our topic of autism in the criminal justice system.
And over a thousand people signed up. It went over the capacity of what the webinar could handle. And there were even more waiting to get in. So we spoke with the ARC afterwards and we said, so myself and another lady, Carol Neskis, and I, we said, well, we're not the only ones in the world that are facing this. We thought it was us. We thought it was an isolated situation.
And so why don't we form a subgroup of the ARC of the U.S. ? And we did. Another person joined us, Jude Harrison. And just by word of mouth, people go, oh, yeah, let me tell you. And everyone had a story. Oh, my gosh, this is a lot bigger than we ever could have imagined. So we turned it into a nonprofit.
From then on, I usually get two to three people from all over the country that call me about their son or their daughter or their family member. It's even probably bigger than that. A lot of parents don't want to talk about it because they are embarrassed or shamed.
I talk to parents and they don't even tell their own family members that their son or daughter is caught up in the criminal justice system like this. Unfortunately, it's getting more and more common.
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Chapter 4: What legislative changes has D3 successfully advocated for?
When you started, what were some of the first things that you did? When you look at it, you have a big mountain to climb. Many times, the only thing that you can do is inch by inch, foot by foot, with hopes of climbing the mountain all the way to the top.
Well, that's really how I look at it, and that's exactly how we look at it, is the things that we're changing as we say we're chipping away at the mountain. So one of the things that I said, what's our first line of defense? Well, we have to educate people with developmental disabilities about situations or what's correct behavior and what is incorrect.
And once they learn, since they're very rule-bound because it helps them understand the world around them, because the world is overwhelming and confusing sometimes. Once they learn the rules, they stick to the rules because they can revert back to that and go, okay, I'm supposed to do one, I'm supposed to do two, I'm supposed to do three.
But they will never, it tears them apart to deviate from that. So one of the things we said, well, we have to educate them. So I had talked to a lot of people. I met with the local ARC, and they introduced me to my state legislator. And she was... a very, or she still is, a very sharp lady. She was a doctor. She understood it.
So what we did is we introduced legislation that year that said, if you have an IEP for a person with developmental disabilities, you must include as part of that education, starting in kindergarten,
And every single grade all the way through 12th grade, appropriate behavior education, whether that's sexual health or whether that's understanding the things that they go through as they develop, you know, as a teenager. What are appropriate behaviors? For example, we've had autism kids. They watch football. What is the football players after they do a good job?
They pat the guy on the back, on the backside, you know, or on the back. So they think, well, if I do that, I'm telling this person great. Well, you do that to a woman, right? That's an assault or even to a person, another person assault. But they see this and this is a very popular sport and they're watching this and they go, oh, look, that's how he's congratulating. So I should do the same thing.
And they mimic that situation. So something as benign as that to them not learning about sexual behavior. And where does anybody find any information? You Google it. And that can take you down a rabbit hole, down to some bad places. And they don't understand that because no one has ever explained it.
Most of us learn about these appropriate behaviors from our friends and in the locker room as we were growing up in junior high and high school. The autistic individuals, a lot of them don't have families. I don't have friends like that. They're the odd one. They're the weird one out. So nobody talks to them and nobody takes them on. So that's how we kind of evolved and developed.
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Chapter 5: How does D3 educate law enforcement about autism?
Yeah, that's really good work. I've been doing this podcast for about a year and a half. I didn't even realize the situation was a situation. I spoke with a judge. He was just 17 years old. He told me the same story that you just said. He went into a prison situation where an autistic person was given medications. It actually made the situation worse. That was over 40 years ago, maybe even 50.
So how have we not figured out how we can help these people that end up in the prison system so they can be treated, hopefully to have a much better outcome for everyone involved?
Well, that's one of the things that we're trying to do with our organization is awareness. We are trying to educate the public like we are here on the podcast. I speak quite a bit on TV and radio and articles, and all of our co-founders do the same. So it's educating people. It's educating law enforcement.
We just passed a law here in Virginia last year through the Autism Society that says law enforcement must go through autism-specific training. And not only once in the academy. but ongoing autism training because they get into these situations when they're first responders. So it's educating law enforcement, educating police, and then educating the judicial process.
So educating the judges, the prosecutors, and defense attorneys. So part of one of the laws that we introduced said that if you are a public defender, and you are going to defend somebody with autism, you must have, within the past two years, a minimum of four hours training on autism. Because how can you defend somebody if you don't really understand anything about their medical condition?
Absolutely. I think that's very important. Understanding is the key for everything. This podcast is about understanding and trying to get the stories like you're telling now to the people that need to hear it. You've accomplished a lot in Virginia. What's the next step to get it to a national basis for everyone? This is happening across the country and of course around the world.
How do we get this from a local scenario to a national scenario?
I started it here in Virginia because obviously I live here and I live 20 minutes from our capital. So I was able to go down there and I'm able to go down there regularly and talk to legislators. We have grown, as I mentioned, our families are from every, I have them from all 50 states. And I have some people from Canada and I've even had people from UK. So it's educating our families.
to be the advocates and to push these issues so we have families that are speaking to their senators and their delegates we have reached out to the u.s congress i've spoken to over 60 house of representatives and senators about the issue As we all know, getting things done in Washington has been very challenging. And I spent a lot of effort on that.
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Chapter 6: How can D3's successes in Virginia be expanded nationally?
What can I do? And I walk them through the process. And I said, call your local representative. I'll help you through the process. I'll tell you what to say. I'll even be on the phone call. A lot of times I'm on Zoom calls. I just was on Zoom.
a zoom call with the maryland legislator and the autism society of maryland and we were working on legislation similar here so what we want to do is try and roll the legislation that we know that has been working here and roll this out state by state and sort of like you know the medical care that we have now i think it started with massachusetts and it started rolling out state by state and the u.s government said well geez
All these states are doing it. Why don't we roll this out nationally? So it's kind of the same theory of what we're trying to do is roll this out state by state and then push at the same time at the national level and say, this is a big deal.
And we're seeing this as a really growing issue because what has happened in our systems is we have some of the supports in place for autistic children in schools. Some are great, some are not so great, but at least there's some there. When they graduate from high school, they basically, as we always say as parents, they fall off the cliff.
All of those supports and interactions and things that are trying to help them are no longer there. And this is where a lot of our kids get in trouble. I mean, they're living in the parents' basement or they don't have any friends except people on the computer friends.
So we're trying to educate families how to get appropriate training and education and have laws that help support if they do get in this trouble.
When you have a family, they just find out their son or daughter might have legal issues. It's kind of like when they first found that their son or daughter was autistic. It's the big unknown and it's very, very scary. What do you do to help take away that fear they might have? After all, it is the legal system. It can be very scary.
What's the first steps that you do to guide them through that process so they can better understand what needs to happen? After all, it is the legal system. A lot of stress accompanies it, and it can be very, very intimidating to them.
I mean, that's a really great point. If you've never been into the criminal justice system, you have no idea what it is. What you see on TV and what is reality, it is, they're not even close. It's not even close. Most of us have never seen it inside of a courtroom other than for like a speeding ticket or a parking ticket, right? And you go before the judge and say, yes, pay your fine, goodbye.
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