My new hero

Steinhauer

Steinhauer

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Without giving too many details I wanted to share something that happened to my neice on Halloween.

My neice is hereditarily HoH (like me) and was misdiagnosed with Aspberger's Syndrome.

Asperger syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What many audiologists will tell you is that HoH individuals are misdiagnosed ALL THE TIME. When you cannot hear what is being said, you tend to have difficulty in socializing. It is not the result of Aspbergers, it is the result of being HoH.

Anyways ... she has been an easy target by bullies. She was targetted this past Sunday evening when she was walking home from a friend's house. It was broad daylight. She saw a group of boys that she knew from the swimming pool in the subdivision she lives in. They were neighbors. She went up in a friendly way and went to give one of them a hug.

He attacked her and tried to rape her in broad daylight. She ended up getting a bloody nose, was kicked in the stomach and thrown on the ground.

My neice was taught to fight back, and she did. She fought for as long as she could (it lasted nearly an hour). 2 boys were involved and a third intervened to stop it and she got away.

The police have arrested the boys involved and there have been over 20 charges filed. The one who kicked her has priors.

Me and mine are awaiting to see if they will be charged as adults (all are minors).

I just wanted to say that my neice is my new hero. She is taking this very bravely and knows to fight back, and to fight back hard against behaviour that is absolutely not tolerated.

She bruised them up pretty bad.
 
What does Asperger's have to do with defending herself?

Are you implying Aspies are so socially inept they don't know when or how to defend themselves? That they don't know right from wrong?
 
souggy said:
What does Asperger's have to do with defending herself?

Are you implying Aspies are so socially inept they don't know when or how to defend themselves? That they don't know right from wrong?
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I think you are "reading into" what I was conveying.

She was misdiagnosed with Aspbergers. She is HoH and does not have Aspbergers. The link between being "socially awkward" has nothing to do with Aspbergers and everything to do with being HoH.

I went through the same thing growing up. I made no implications about people with Aspbergers (her school counselor did).
 
souggy said:
So what does Asperger's have to do with the attempted rape?

Why bother including it?
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It has nothing to do with the rape. It was included to show how HoH people can sometimes be misdiagnosed with a condition that they do not have.

It also was included to show just how easy of a target HoH people can be.
 
So why preface Asperger's prior to the tale?

Proof she doesn't have Asperger's? It's not like diagnosed Asperger's walk around with horns.
 
souggy said:
So why preface Asperger's prior to the tale?

Proof she doesn't have Asperger's? It's not like diagnosed Asperger's walk around with horns.
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Agreed. The whole Asperger's thing was completely unneccesary to the story.
 
Steinhauer said:
Anyways ... she has been an easy target by bullies.

My neice was taught to fight back, and she did.
Click to expand...

Steinhauer said:
It also was included to show just how easy of a target HoH people can be.
Click to expand...

What the boys did was despicable. Thanks God she is ok.

but.... since you said she has been a target for bullies and how easy it is for HoH people to be a target... shouldn't she be taught on how to AVOID the situation? I mean like... "don't talk to strangers. don't get in the stranger's car or house. don't wander off on your own." etc.
 
Jiro said:
What the boys did was despicable. Thanks God she is ok.

but.... since you said she has been a target for bullies and how easy it is for HoH people to be a target... shouldn't she be taught on how to AVOID the situation? I mean like... "don't talk to strangers. don't get in the stranger's car or house. don't wander off on your own." etc.
Click to expand...

Proactive action is the solution.
 
Steinhauer said:
I just wanted to say that my neice is my new hero. She is taking this very bravely and knows to fight back, and to fight back hard against behaviour that is absolutely not tolerated.

She bruised them up pretty bad.
Click to expand...

I'm bothered by that part. How is it heroic to beat them up even though they're bad guys? There's nothing heroic about beating up bullies. I've beat up bullies for picking on my friends and there's nothing heroic about it. It disgusted me.

It's heroic to risk your life to save people in need but there's nothing really heroic about using your fists against bad behavior. I don't condone violence.

Think like Ghandi. or Dalai Lama. A wise person once said "To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence." That's heroic to me.

Now before you go around implying that I said your niece should just not fight back and let him rape her... no that's not what I'm implying. What I'm saying is that she should be taught to avoid a potentially bad situation from happening to her... not praised for using her fists.
 
jillio said:
Agreed. The whole Asperger's thing was completely unneccesary to the story.
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I don't have a problem with him calling her a hero for standing up, however... I am still trying to figure out what Asperger's have to do with the story? It confuses me!

I means how would it make a difference in her situation? :hmm: Dress less awkwardly? Stop wearing hearing aids? Have a therapy dog with her at all time? Or a hearing dog?
 
I've no guilt complexes if I'm forced to defend myself which can include beating the crap out of bullies once they attack physically just so I can get out of a situation. I'm not here to judge Steinhauer's story since I wasn't there on how it all transpired.
 
kokonut said:
I've no guilt complexes if I'm forced to defend myself which can include beating the crap out of bullies once they attack physically just so I can get out of a situation. I'm not here to judge Steinhauer's story since I wasn't there on how it all transpired.
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neither do I but is it heroic? praiseworthy?

I'm not judging his story. I'm questioning his reasoning on it.
 
Jiro said:
What the boys did was despicable. Thanks God she is ok.

but.... since you said she has been a target for bullies and how easy it is for HoH people to be a target... shouldn't she be taught on how to AVOID the situation? I mean like... "don't talk to strangers. don't get in the stranger's car or house. don't wander off on your own." etc.
Click to expand...

This sistuation is one where she knew the boys. They had never displayed this type of behaviour towards her before.

There was talk that one was on drugs at the time. But I don't know for sure.
 
Steinhauer said:
This sistuation is one where she knew the boys. They had never displayed this type of behaviour towards her before.

There was talk that one was on drugs at the time. But I don't know for sure.
Click to expand...

yes shit happens. Many college women were raped by someone they know - friends, roommates, classmates, etc.

She should be more cautious next time. These days... a group of boys... mostly a bad news. Her fists may get out-fisted next time. You never know and I pray it won't happen to her again but it will. Women's got it rough. Just about every single female friend I know have at least 1 hostile encounter. Some are not lucky.
 
souggy said:
I don't have a problem with him calling her a hero for standing up, however... I am still trying to figure out what Asperger's have to do with the story? It confuses me!

I means how would it make a difference in her situation? :hmm: Dress less awkwardly? Stop wearing hearing aids? Have a therapy dog with her at all time? Or a hearing dog?
Click to expand...

As I explained, a misdiagnosis based on characteristics of being HoH is targetting the individual.

It happens frequently in Georgia:

State sued for failing to provide mental health services for the deaf *| ajc.com

“How would you ever be able to be able to diagnose someone if you couldn’t communicate with them?” attorney Lee Parks said to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It’s a good example of a hole in the public health matrix that is heart rending."
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She is socially awkward because she is mainstreamed with hearing peers yet she is severely HoH.

She has asked me on several occasions to teach her ASL. Her mother (my sister) was just diagnosed with a hearing loss and last Christmas told she finally understood why I behave the way I do when hearing people try to talk to me. She always thought I was just being "quirky".


So, whether or not you feel it was necessary to include the fact she was misdiagnosed with Aspbergers, I felt it was necessary to point out how easy of a target a HoH individual can be. By bullies and professionals.
 
I think maybe Steinhauer meant she got an Asperger's diagnosis first? And they overlooked the hearing loss?

There are plenty of us who have both, but not everybody.
 
Jiro said:
yes shit happens. Many college women were raped by someone they know - friends, roommates, classmates, etc.

She should be more cautious next time. These days... a group of boys... mostly a bad news. Her fists may get out-fisted next time. You never know and I pray it won't happen to her again but it will. Women's got it rough. Just about every single female friend I know have at least 1 hostile encounter. Some are not lucky.
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I told her when she is old enough to make this decision, if she wants I will teach her how to handle firearms.


That raised eyebrows from my mom and my sister. My mother was "No ....waaaaay! Absolutely NOT!"

I told her if it had been me in my neice's situation, it would have ended about 3 seconds after it began - no need to fight off someone for an hour ....
 
And? Hearing people get misdiagnosed as well. Someone with severe ADD could be misdiagnosed with Asperger's in the wrong hands. Someone with OCD could be misdiagnosed as well.

So how does this story prove she doesn't have Asperger's? By prefacing it with the fact she's hard-of-hearing and has misdiagnosed Asperger's, the moral of the story is:

My niece almost got raped, and because she got out of it, she is not an aspie; but rather a misunderstood hard-of-hearing person.

I didn't put those words in your mouth. You said provided the details without a proper flow and without anything to link things together, the readers are left to their own devices because irrelevant details were included.
 
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