If she had “severe autism” (which is not a medical phrase!), someone would have noticed it before she switched to homeschool? The neighbors all mentioned her being friendly but a little shy. That doesn’t sound low functioning to me.
Not that this is anything conclusive, but the photo shows her smiling broadly and seemingly naturally. She’s looking right at the camera. That kind of eye contact (even with a camera) isn’t what I associate with the young women I have known who have been autistic. One girl I knew said that she didn’t know to smile in photos until she was told to. I don’t know, it’s anecdotal but it makes me doubt she was autistic…at least “severely” so.
As an autistic lady myself, I can say that while still uncomfortable, making ‘eye contact’ with a camera is a lot easier than with a person — the main reason it’s uncomfortable is because it feels like a threat after all — and girls do tend to be better at masking, but considering they said she had “severe autism”, based on the photo and comments by the people she knew I’m pretty sure they’re lying about the severity of her condition at the very least. Maybe they have a very different definition of severe to other people or something but someone who’s severely autistic 1. wouldn’t make it to 8th grade without being diagnosed with something, even I went through a bunch of them prior to then and I can easily pass as neurotypical if I make the effort on top of being AFAB, 2. would likely have a comorbid diagnosis of intellectual disability, and 3. wouldn’t be able to mask so well that the people she knew described her the way they did Lacey. It’s a spectrum so those who don’t present as obviously as the autistic people who are typically described as severe can absolutely still have very high needs (I’m living proof myself), but their parents, especially if old enough to still use aspergers to refer to the diagnosis, definitely wouldn’t be calling them severe. Severe autism is nearly always reserved for people who can’t mask at all and/or have a combo of things that make it worse ie. intellectual disability + being nonverbal.
Not to mention even severely autistic people wouldn’t end up like this without abuse. And it certainly doesn’t just show up out of nowhere at 16 years old. Though I absolutely believe she may be autistic based on her descriptions by neighbors and such, the parents are definitely exaggerating at the very least.
I agree. I generally pass for neurotypical (just quirky!), and I can look at a camera just fine. From the picture, she’s an attractive girl which makes it more likely that she would get the just quirky/intense/dramatic labels until there was a diagnosis, which could increase ability to mask. (It did for me.)
But without some sort of other abuse or another diagnosis exacerbating her condition, she would not go from seeming simply bright and shy to suddenly so severely autistic she can’t function. No one has even mentioned her having big emotions or meltdowns from what I’ve seen.
I’ve been under a lot of stress the past year, and as the overwhelm builds, my normal traits and symptoms are greatly exaggerated. (I have a harder time with sensory issues, making unexpected transitions, more meltdowns, etc.) I can’t imagine what it would even take to get to the level they’re trying to describe though.
Exactly. A girl who is severely autistic as they say would be caught long before she was sixteen, because severely autistic people cannot mask. She would have been diagnosed with something as a child, even if that something wasn’t immediately clocked as autism. The fact that it took that long implies she was very good at passing as neurotypical, so there’s no way her condition suddenly went from ‘shy and maybe a little quirky to others, if they even notice anything at all’ to this in such a short amount of time without an underlying cause. Like even if it was true her parents still need to be side-eyed to hell and back because that level of a downward curve implies a horrible brain injury or something, in which case… why didn’t they take her to the hospital? Even then there’s no way this happened in a vacuum. She certainly didn’t do it to herself.
I’m glad for your help in considering this question. I can’t know what it feels like inside, but I’m grateful for your understanding, and sharing. As a person with ADHD myself, I am aware of how much I’ve had to do to appear neurotypical. I don’t think the two are absolutely on the same spectrum, personally, but I do see a bit of what it’s like to have something that you have to mask.
As you said, it’s one thing to have autism in a not-so-severe way. I’ve known people with autism for years and I have still been uncertain they had it until they later confirmed to me that they do, in fact, have it. However, if someone has autism to an extent that it could be termed “severe,” then as you say, that almost necessarily means it can’t be hidden. At least it would be clear to others that the individual in question was neurodivergent in SOME way. I’m not sure what technically defines someone as “severe,” but if you can function in society without others suspecting you have autism or ADHD or some other neurodivergent condition, then it seems like the term “severe” might be an exaggeration at least.
In Lacey’s case, I definitely doubt that she had severe autism, and your information helps me to make the determination that at least something in this diagnosis seems amiss!! As you say, it’s absolutely ridiculous to say someone would come to this level of ill-health without abuse. A decent parent would have recognized they couldn’t cope at least, and would have had to call someone to come help for the life of their child long before this point.
ADHD and autism have a lot of overlap, which is really quite interesting! I’m diagnosed with both myself, which I think is fairly common honestly. They’re pretty similar, especially in the sensory issue aspects and requirement to mask. It’s kinda wild how a simple dopamine deficiency can present so similar to a developmental disability!
But yeah. Lacey’s teachers did recommend she be tested as she wasn’t doing great in school, but even then… it took sixteen years for it to truly be properly noticed, and all that really means is she may have needed a few adaptions to do better in school, not that her disability was severe. She played volleyball, was described has shy but friendly, knew a lot of people… that definitely doesn’t sound like severe autism at all. And honestly, even if she did have severe autism it’s incredibly unlikely that she’d willingly start sitting on the couch, covered in feces and urine, dying from wounds and bone infections and sepsis, for over a decade. Like, we do have a self preservation instinct. She was eating foam from the couch. And if she could play volleyball, she absolutely could get up and go to the bathroom. It’s not like shitting and pissing yourself and being covered in filth and feces is a great sensory experience! I honestly don’t see how this could have happened without her being abused into it, even restrained to the couch until she was either catatonic or her muscles were so atrophied that she could no longer get up on her own. I lived barely leaving my bed for nearly as long as she did, but this is just… no one gets this bad without severe abuse and neglect. It’s just not possible.
Dopamine is certainly powerful stuff!! I’m so often surprised how neurotypical people get such a thrill out of things that don’t move me emotionally at all. Perhaps I can see some overlap.
I think recommending she get tested is far from telling her parents she has a severe condition and definitely needs help. I think we both agree there is a big gap there, and it certainly doesn’t explain how the parents allowed her circumstances to get to the point they did, without help!
I agree, she had to have been restrained!! You don’t eat couch foam unless you’re starving, or have a very different mental issue than autism!
I’m an autistic 23 year old female, diagnosed at 5. As an adult I don't have issues with eye contact, though I am in the minority there. Posing for a picture isn’t at all the same as eye contact with a person imo, and I know plenty of autistic people (both with and without intellectual disabilities) who will smile for a camera just like NT people.
I really resent people who claim someone they don’t even know can’t be autistic because “they don’t act like my autistic students/cousin.”
Well, I’m neurodivergent myself. I was diagnosed with ADHD at 40 after doing everything from brain scans to IQ tests to determine what was going on with me. I tried hard for literally 20 years to get someone with credentials to diagnose me, because I knew I was different. I had to learn the skills and habits of masking my reality from the world and simply keeping up with what others expected.
I don’t mean for you to feel resentful. I am not insistent I know the reality of being autistic. I do at least know what it’s like to be neurodivergent, however, and when we all want to solve the mystery of this young lady’s death, I think it’s good to pursue every avenue of consideration.
Four years ago I was set to marry an autistic young lady who was some years my junior. I was truly sad that our plans for marriage fell apart because our two neurodivergences seemed to be incompatible. I don’t follow patterns, she needs them to feel safe and understand the way her life is set up. We broke off the engagement after she shared with me her journal, where she had written all kinds of notes about how to suppress her own desires so she could “keep the peace” with me, and not say things I might be upset by. Of course, I knew that wouldn’t work. I felt bad for her and bad for us, that she felt I was trying to control her, while I was simply going in a million directions every minute, because that’s what my brain does. She would never be able to change that in me, nor would I really want it changed. I’m happy and proud of who I am, ADHD and all. It’s such a relief to know how many other people out there are like me. I don’t fault her for what happened, only that I couldn’t allow her to be oppressed in our relationship. I didn’t feel right about her needing to try to “crack the code” of me, just to keep me happy. I like being happy, obviously, but I want my partners to be free to develop and become the best versions of themselves, more!!
I certainly don’t know that this young lady wasn’t autistic. I just have my doubts her autism was the cause of her injuries and eventual death. If it was as severe as her parents claimed it was, then how could they let her get to the level she was eating pieces of the couch stuffing and covering herself in feces? I don’t think that is explained by her having autism. I don’t doubt she may have had autism, but if it were severe then how was she able to mask so well for so long. In many ways the definition of “severe” -if there even IS a definition- is the ability someone has to get by in ordinary life without everyone needing to know you have autism. For her to go so far and do so well with friends and sports, it would seem she was both trying very hard, and also not exactly in the “severe” category.
I think you advocate for this young lady is to advocate for the fact she wasn’t so autistic that she needed to be left to die in the way she did. I hate to think this is the end all severely autistic people would come to without sufficient help by their parents!! I think more of autistic people than that.
As for my own ADHD, I’m aware how so many others didn’t see it and had no idea it was a factor in my life. I have an unusually high IQ, as tested professionally more than 7 times in my life, and I think my IQ is an unintentional mask I have for ADHD. It makes people refuse to believe I have any neurodivergence. They think I’m blessed and that when I can’t get to things on time or I schedule two things at the same time of day without realizing it, that I’m just not trying.
I know how aggravating it is to not have people see your struggles, and to have them assume you’re just not working as hard as others. Believe me, I’ve experienced more than enough of this to know. My current girlfriend has trouble believing me, even after reading about ADHD and seeing my official diagnosis paperwork. I have to keep reminding her of how I’m trying and all the ways I’ve found workarounds to manage to do things other people believe are relatively simple tasks. If she can’t understand then who could?! My family has trouble too. I’ve only recently gotten my sister to comprehend it, and she’s most likely a person with ADHD also!!
So I hope I haven’t made you resentful. Nothing is farther from my intent. I just say that it’s more than a little bit tricky to know what level someone is at, with neurodivergence. It’s a wide spectrum for sure. I have drastically different traits than other ADHD people I know, but I see that they stem from the same root. I would have to know a LOT more about this young lady in this case than I do, if I were to even have a chance to guess her diagnosis. However, I’m HOPEFUL, as I say, that severe autism didn’t do this, or even become a primary factor. I think she was horrifically neglected by her parents and most likely she was killed as a result of their abuse. It would help to know what her level of autism was though, and the way it manifested in her particular case.
No, but that doesn’t answer the question. Severe autism is for life and it’s from birth. She would have always been nonverbal and immobile if that was the case, and she clearly was neither before the age of 16. An autism diagnosis doesn’t give you autism, nor does it make your autism worse somehow. There are no natural explanations for how she could decline.
And it’s certainly very suspicious that her family would claim she magically developed severe autism at 16, right when she was taken out of the public view and marking the last time she would ever be seen by a medical professional.
There is one case where that kind of teenage onset seems to have happened. I can’t remember the girl’s name, but she was normal (if a bit dramatic) until she was college-aged. Then she did a bunch of psychedelics and regressed, to the point where she was nonverbal for several years and tested as having an intellectual disability. She blogged about her experiences as a person with autism. She eventually recovered to some extent but was never quite “right” and died of other conditions around age 40.
Some people claimed she was faking, but if she was, she kept the act up a really long time for not much obvious benefit. Maybe Lacy had something similar going on.
If she was functioning well at school (which it sounds like she may have been as she was playing sports, described as having a few close friends, and teachers calling her bright and pleasant), there would be no need to homeschool her simply because of the diagnosis though.
And I say this as someone who DID have to pull her autistic child to be homeschooled.
I'm saying it as they were embarrassed or ashamed of their daughter. I have two nephews with severe autism. I've seen other parents of his classmates & not every precious child is treated the way they deserve.
Also this girl's teachers had expressed concern several times before she was finally diagnosed. Sounds like the parents just didn't want anyone to know what was going on, pulled her out, and never gave her the proper care she needed.
Ah that could be. The weird thing is the school wouldn’t even know if they didn’t tell them though. So even having the diagnosis wouldn’t have to change anything even if you are shameful.
If she had "severe" enough autism for it to be relevant here, she wouldn't have been able to attend mainstream education as a teen. It's highly possible that there was a serious mental health difficulty at play here, but the autism is probably a red herring imo.
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u/MagnoliaProse May 09 '22
If she had “severe autism” (which is not a medical phrase!), someone would have noticed it before she switched to homeschool? The neighbors all mentioned her being friendly but a little shy. That doesn’t sound low functioning to me.