The recruiter - for ignoring some RATHER relevant info: apparently the recruiter was told the young man was autistic and brought him into the Marines anyway. Gotta make that quota, dontcha know.
The drill instructors during boot camp, who kept him in despite ALSO being told of the autism.
Oh, and the boy himself, for being into kiddie porn. Don’t get me wrong - I despise the concept and thoroughly think this sort of thing ought to totally eff up someones life.
But the whole business with being recruited, and spending a year in the stockade… what a travesty.
I live in fear of the day the recruiters start coming after my kids. My son - who is also autistic - will probably resist them, but god help the services if he doesn’t - he’d be a horrible soldier in every way, and I’d hate to see his life destroyed as a result.
The severity of his autism must have been at the lower end of the spectrum. Passing Marine Corps Recruit Training is no easy feat, and I would think a person with autism would have a difficult time getting through it, let alone graduating.
It’s not just the physical fitness training, either.
You also have to remember to polish your boots. Make your bunk so right 'n tight you can bounce coins off it. Marching in step with your company. Memorising the “general orders” ( like here ) and his chain of command, which gets verbally quizzed at any time.
The Washington Post states that the Recruiter knew about the autism, while the LA Times says he didn’t. I am sure there will be an investigation done to determine as much of the truth as is possible. I am not coming down on PVT Fry, but at some point, the Private did lie. I don’t know what his motivation was for lying, but at least in the Army, we have the applicant fill out a medical questionnaire and this is reviewed by the Station Commander. The applicant is then sent to the MEPS, and is again questioned again by a medical doctor. At MEPS, the applicant is reminded that the answers he gives are his and that by signing the questionnaire, the applicant is responsible for his answers.
Further, neither story says if PVT Fry was “recruited” or if he went to the Marines in order to join. For all we know, the young man withheld the information about his autism and his addiction to kiddie porn from the Recruiter. It seems more likely to me that this is the case, as I do not know any Recruiter who would try to put someone in the Service that has a problem with child pornography. Remember that most of us will go back to our regular jobs at some point and I can’t think of anyone who would want someone like that in our ranks. Especially considering that we may have to serve in the same unit as a person such as this.
My first reaction was “well, of COURSE it’s an automatic disqualifier”… then I went out and googled and I cannot find a single reliable citation saying it is.
There are a lot of discussions of various mental issues which would disqualify someone - anything under “Learning, psychiatric and behavioral disorders” here would do it, and someone with autism is likely to hit at least one of the disqualifying conditions.
In general, with my experience with kids on the spectrum, most of them wouldn’t do well especially in a combat situation. Panic over loud noises. Inability to adapt to sudden changes in routine. Tendency to refuse to do things they don’t want to do. Tendency to argue with superiors. My son… well, I worry he’d at best wind up court-martialed, and at worst, would get himself and others killed
I’m hoping SSG Schwartz or some of our other military Dopers will weigh in.
The problem I see with anyone depending on my autistic son in a combat situation is that nobody knows what will trigger sudden paralyzing fear in him. Loud noises, boats, water, dogs, talking to new people, bugs - you never know from one moment to the next what his reaction will be. He becomes as rational as a statue and even harder to move. Then some unspecified time later, items from the “paralyzing fear” list are shuffled with items from the “I’m OK with it” list or the “ignore it even if it sets me on fire” list.
He would not go near his sneakers yesterday because there was a bug on one of them. The kid’s taller than me, but I knew from experience that if he was going to put on his shoes, I had to shake the bug off the sneaker into the back yard. Someone else helping out is not always an option when the unit’s under fire. And once this phase of bugs turning him into stone is done, he’ll probably grow up to be an entomologist. :rolleyes:
It is barely possible that my son could get through six weeks of boot camp and look normal enough to get by. If that happened, God help the people in his unit, because they will not know in any given second whether he’ll be helpful, or just a draw for enemy fire.
[QUOTE=Mama Zappa;11362724
There are a lot of discussions of various mental issues which would disqualify someone - anything under “Learning, psychiatric and behavioral disorders” [here]
(http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r40_501.pdf) would do it, and someone with autism is likely to hit at least one of the disqualifying conditions.
[/QUOTE]
I just went down that list, and can tell you that although that may be what’s on paper, it’s possible to get through anyway. We just had an Air Force recruiter visit the facility I work at, and two of our former residents are currently enlisted in the Marines. Both of them have length histories of residential treatment (one was picked up by her recruiter from our group home, so there was no question about her background), medicated mood disorders, and conduct disorders.
The article I saw this in http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=8130845&page=1 said the recruiter picked him up from a group home. While autism is not necessarily listed as something that precludes enlistment any “current or history of other mental disorders” certainly does section E1.25.26. The other thing that is odd is that he started to refusing to do things in boot camp and at that time they were told that he was autistic. When they confirmed it with his grandmother, who is his legal guardian, they said they were going to dismiss him and send him home. The other thing I can’t figure out is how they can court marshal him when he wasn’t even legally allowed to sign legal documents. His grandmother had guardianship.
The stuff he did in boot camp, stealing peanut butter, repeatedly, and peeing in his canteen, and the fact that they knew he was asthmatic and autistic, and that he couldn’t sign his own legal documents says he should never have stayed in long enough to get court marshaled.
It seems the kid is paying for a whole lot of screw ups. The recruiter may, or may not have known that he was autistic, but he picked him up from a group home for the mentally disabled. What the hell did he think it was. The group home staff letting someone go with the recruiter when he legally couldn’t sign the paperwork seems to be at best negligent. The boot camp people should have gotten his ass out of there. It is just sad.
When I was in Navy bootcamp 20 years ago it was normally 8 weeks long, but if you didn’t quite cut it (without being bad enough to actually kick out) you’d be “recycled” into the class behind you. Usually it was because someone got injured, but sometimes it was for disciplinary or other reasons. About halfway through boot we had a woman cycled in who lasted less than 24 hours in our company before she was cycled out again. I’m not sure if she was mentally ill or mentally disabled but she had been in Orlando for five months. I have no idea how she passed the ASVAB and I don’t know why she wasn’t kicked out; I just remember that being the “first strike”, as it were - the first inkling that maybe the military wasn’t all that.
Probably directly after his recruiter said something along the lines of “Naw, don’t worry about it, that’s not a problem”. :mad:
Look, SSG Schwartz, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am accusing you of absolutely nothing, but you know as well as I do that there are a significant number of recruiters out there who are more worried about reaching their quota than they are about who they’re going to have to serve with three years from now.
To begin with autism is not a yes/no thing. Autistics vary from complete lack of language through fully functional and beyond. I once heard someone estimate that 50% of all mathematicians are somewhere on the autism specturm (mostly well towards the normal edge). I once had an autistic student (that was a very unpleasant experience) and had occasion, some years later, of meeting his father. Although the father was functional, my judgment was that he was borderline autistic. The student did manage to get a job as a computer programmer, but his language disabilities were pretty daunting. (He spoke at only one volume: blasting. He spoke in disconnected words. He spoke without any stress or tones.)
I really did not believe that was true until I read the ABC story. I really thought that the people I work closely with of all branches really did care about who they are putting in the Military. I guess I was wrong. I am almost embarrassed to admit that I serve with people like that.
I am still not sure completely where the fault line lies, and since I won’t be on the jury, I will never know, but I really do hope that appropriate action is taken against all wrongdoers.
Autism does run a complete spectrum, and it is probably likely that some people on the functional end manage in the military just fine, however, as the article says, it is probably a pretty good clue that the Marines might not be for you if you live in a group home because you can’t care for yourself.
Autistics make bad soldiers, as they don’t handle authority very well at all. Plus all the other reasons mentioned.
Hmmf…kinda hard to sympathize with the kid, if that part’s true. Any person who masturbates to kiddy porn deserves to be imprisoned and raped repeatedly, until his ass is dripping blood. Doesn’t matter if he’s autistic or not, it’s just wrong, dammit! :mad:
You’re a SSGT, yeah, an E-6? And have been in the military for, what, 10-20 years? Never not once in all the time you’ve been in the military you’ve come across an boot E-1 or E-2 that made you think “Good god, what was his recruiter smoking!?” Never ever come across someone who was discharged for “lying” despite the “But my recruiter said it was ok!” protests?
On edit: I should probably add that I was a CT which meant my shipmates actually had to go through SBIs (security background checks) that probably aren’t de rigeur for, say, the infantry, and because of that fact I saw a lot more people shipped out for “lying” than the normal gun-carrying grunt would. But, still - you’d think a recruiter would tell someone going into SCI-land that “Yeah, well, maybe your extensive pot-smoking background won’t qualify for a top secret clearance…”
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Very true…but on the other hand, this boy was autistic AND MR. (at least according to an article I read on another forum) He wasn’t one of those “eccentric " Sheldon types. Autisim runs the spectrum yes…but there’s a HUGE difference between “classic” autism and Asperger’s Syndrome. Hell…there’s an obvious difference between Asperger’s Syndrome and HFA.
(Aspies tend to be nerdy/geeky types. HFA tends to mimic more classic autism, but without the language problems. Actually wait…Aspies tend to have more “learning disabilty” style/severity social concerns and HFA tend to be more like classic autistic people with more “mild MR” style social concerns. I have to say that Asperger’s isn’t autism. It’s related…but it’s more like the social delays that ADD or LD people deal with.
However, if the dude was severe enough to be in a group home, there’s no way he could have had mild " can fake it” autism.
Actually, it is. Or at least it’s on the spectrum.
Aspies commonly exhibit classic “autistic” symptoms, with the key difference being there is no delay in speech development. Since this guy was functional enough to actually join the armed forces, I’d wager that he’s more Asperger’s than regular autism.
