I use the person's names below, but I knew neither of them at the time of the incidents; they were effectively strangers. There were many more people involved in the abuse of me but these two people are the most disturbing, and the primary causal reason I have to take medication everyday for my cPTSD, and paralysing flashbacks. I am now (and was then) very clearly autistic. I hope by naming these people I get some sort of relief from fear (standing up for myself), but I also hope that people can learn something from this so more lives aren't ruined.
I use the phrase "for no reason" on this page repeatedly. If they had any reasons, these reason were unknown to me then, and are still unknown to me now; which is in itself psychologically painful.
Firstly there was Sam Cowley: I was happy, smiling, and walking home and then this kid turned to look at me, and then almost immediately ran at me, and proceeded to repeatedly punch me in the face. I had no idea what was going on. I was unable to muster any attempt to defend myself (due to my low self esteem and other reasons).
I just kept walking backwards away from the thing that was hurting my face. But Sam Cowley just followed me and kept punching. Then a whole bunch of older kids came to just watch?!? [Please: if you see someone being assaulted at school tell someone in authority.]
Fortunately.... eventually.... someone in the crowd took pity on me (after I must have stood there and received possibly fifty punches straight to the face) and restrained Sam Cowley. I was at this point bleeding from the lips. The attack went on long enough for me to walk backwards up and back down the playing field. I was just praying he'd stop. He did not stop.
To add insult to injury, and to further confuse my mind, my only friend at the time invited me to Sam Cowley's house?! Sam Cowley had apparently told him what had happened, and now I'm supposed to be friendly with someone who attacked me for no apparent reason??!?
Not long after this attack I had an encounter with Paul Rydzyk. To this day, what he did frightens me. It was so evil I can barely comprehend it. I was happy with some new school equipment that I bought. I was smiling and playing with it. He came over to my desk, and just destroyed it right in front of me, with total impunity. He was, again a stranger who I'd not had any interaction with at all before this.
I'd like to think some kids are just evil, but why did they have to pick on me? I feel there must be a reason; something more to it. Certainly the behaviour of autistic children does tend to lead to more abuse, by other children who don't understand them, but we weren't that young really and I don't know what behaviour I was exhibiting to entice this abuse; I was really very shy.
I know I will never recover from the abuse I suffered at school. I will always be wary of strangers just attacking me for no reason. I live a life of almost total social paralysis, and constant fear. I can't even think, or hear certain words without flashbacks, and this makes it very difficult for those around me. My suicide attempts will likely continue because I don't understand people and they very clearly don't understand me; and I can barely sleep at all anymore.
I hesitate using the word "abuse" here, but I can see no way for the things described to be anything other than abuse, whether or not there were reasons other than pure malice for them to occur. I certainly didn't do these things to myself.
... there are many many more I am sure (like the person who wrote in my electronic notebook "Call me when you have no life left". Why would you do that?! - Incidentally I bought the electronic notebook by doing two gruelling paper rounds I might add.)
Did these people abuse me because: 1) I was happy? 2) I was defenceless? 3) I was autistic, and lacked social skills? 4) They knew they could get away with it?
I wonder if any of these people have any shame about what they did to me. I know my father never did: he was an arsehole who just got it into his head that everything I did was "bad"; everything. I hope all the other people might say to me "I'm sorry. What I did to you was wrong." But I don't know why they did it. I just get the feeling someone was going around telling lies about me, so nobody defended me. I just don't know. I want to clear my name, because I never did anything to anyone, and anyone who thinks otherwise is mistaken; gravely mistaken.
The cost to the NHS must be hundreds of thousands of pounds. I could never cope with work because of my fear of people.
I did absolutely nothing whatsoever intentionally unkind towards any of these people and I never have to any person (or even animal/insect) ever, even though experiences similar to mine have produced many a serial killer.
Perhaps the secret to me having a happy life is total avoidance of people. Sadly the evil done to me lives on when the perpertrators are long gone. And worse, I know there are People like Sam Cowley and Paul Rydzyk everywhere; just drive somewhere and you'll soon discover them; YouTube is replete with sociopaths.
I'm sure I will continue to attempt suicide (if I'm not already dead as you read this), because who can live in a world with so much abuse, and not understand it at all. I've even got abuse from NHS staff following an overdose(!!?!) - there really needs to be better training for NHS staff to deal with autistic people (if this is the cause), although I personally have no clue why I was getting abused by them; just like I have no understanding of why any one of the people on this page would do what they did. If it was something I could change, I would, but at the very least I'd need to know why it was happening in the first place. I doubt there is anything I can do, because people just again and again assume I am doing something other than what I am doing; assume I'm something other than what I am: socially awkward and scared of everything. I try to save a pigeon and people assume I'm trying to harm it; total strangers!
There are Paul Rydzyks and Sam Cowleys everywhere and this fact terrifies me..
This webpage about abuse of autistic people rings very true for me.
Peter McCoy and David McCoy: Sadly I have realised, far too late, that my autism led me to think I was friends with people, like Peter, who never were my friend and probably didn't like me one bit. I wasted decades of my life associating with Peter, clearly under a delusion; I'm sorry for this, and I'm sorry if I forced myself on you. I'm sorry he and his brother would believe for one second the terrible accusation they made when we parted. It seems you never understood me at all, nor appreciated how I much I did to fight your corner. The whole thing was a terrible mistake, for which I paid dearly.
I may be totally wrong about this. I certainly can't find any explanation why Sam Cowley attacked me that day in particular; I was simply walking home, playing with a stick, and making happy noises to myself. Given that as soon as he saw me that day, he immediately attacked me, then maybe he was just waiting for me?
One a prior day I was walking home and I was gaining on two people in front of me, and I wanted to pass them. I could have either taken the long way around them, or walk straight ahead between the one on the right and a sandpit. As I was about to pass them, the one nearest me (Sam Cowley?) closed off the space between himself and the sandpit, almost knocking me into it. I made a noise which meant "woah. don't knock me over", but with my autictic vocabulary came out as simply "oooooooh" and I had to bend away from the sandpit and towards him to not topple over. It is possible that he thought I was trying to scare him. Nothing could have been further from the truth as I was already at this age terrified of getting near people, yet that day.... I thought it ridiculous to walk the long way around these two people when there is a gap right in front of me.
So is it possible that Sam Cowley was go agrieved by some misinterpretation, that the next day ( or whenever ) he decides to commit a violent criminal act against me? Did he tell all those people who watched the one-sided assault that I was bullying him? Did he tell Paul Rydzyk this and hence why he also committed a criminal act against me? Did they both ruin my life for this? Sam Cowley even mocked me on a bus after this event, because I was too scared to talk to the bus driver who missed our stop; a fear that HE was very instrumental in creating.
I don't know if any of these guesses are right. I suspect I will never know. Sadly guesses won't bring my friend back. I don't even know if I want to be right about this, because my social paralysis is because I have no idea what thing I may do, or say (or don't say) that might be misinterpretted with similar horiffic consequences. As many people will know, a harmless autistic man was punched and killed because of something he said. I fear one day this will happen to me.... Maybe now I should welcome it.....
My whole adult life now I have had flashbacks, mainly to being punched in the face. Whenever I catch myself feeling happy about anything at all I'm suddenly transported to being punched in the face. (I was happy, about things I've long forgotten now, immediately prior to Sam Cowley smashing in my face, and I was happy playing with my school equipment before it was destroyed by Paul Rydzyk. Being happy is now permanently associated with feeling bad about myself.) Sadly this has now completely ruined my chances of achieving anything because I actively try to do things so badly that I couldn't possibly feel good about what I'd done. Either that or I'm so nervous of making a mistake (and being attacked for it) that I can't perform my best in that way. I also destroy my own prized property, because Paul Rydzyk says I don't deserve it.
If only I could convince myself I deserve to feel happy; (and it is okay to make mistakes) but I just can't seem to do it. Society today seems to be pathologically predisposed to assume malfeasance everywhere.
Andrew Betts - A Misunderstood Neurodivergent/Autistic