Parents, advocates worry about societal attitudes after Massachusetts teen with Asperger's convicted for murder

From The MetroWest Daily News:

Parents of children with Asperger's syndrome and disability advocates hope that others will not look at kids diagnosed with the disorder and think of John Odgren (pictured).

Convicted last week in the 2007 killing of 15-year-old James Alenson at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, Odgren has Asperger's, a neurological disorder in the same family as autism.

Odgren's attorney, Jonathan Shapiro, had argued that a combination of Asperger's, attention deficit disorder and a host of mental illnesses left his client in the midst of a delusion when he stabbed Alenson.

While no one in the case attributed the crime directly to Asperger's, some local parents of children with the disorder worry that the trial and the media attention it drew has shaped public perception of the condition for the worse.

"I am concerned where certain aspects of Asperger's syndrome, or of autism in general, can be misconstrued to be tied in with a penchant for violence," said Phil Schwarz of Framingham, vice chairman of the board for the Asperger's Association of New England.

There is no such connection, said Dania Jekel, president of the same organization.

"They're no more violent than other people," Jekel said. "As a matter of fact, what we've been working with for 15 years now are children who have been the brunt of jokes, or are the victims of bullying or teasing. They're not doing things to people - people are doing things to them."

Kathleen Ryan - whose son has Asperger's and other challenges, and attends a residential school in Framingham for special needs children - worries that other parents will not hear that message.

"If a student in their child's school has Asperger's syndrome, they'll be petrified ... when they really don't need to be," said Ryan, whose son attends Reed Academy. She lives in Randolph.

People with Asperger's often have difficulty understanding social interactions, slower-than-average sensory processing, challenges with organizing and completing tasks, and sometimes intense personal interests or fixations, according to the Asperger's Association.

They sometimes are resistant to change or can be overwhelmed by sights, sounds, smells, tastes or textures, the association said.

"Yes, they can have IQs more than you'd ever believe ... but yet they don't understand the way they need to conform to society," Ryan said.

During the trial, the press has sometimes lumped Asperger's in with mental illness or diseases, which is not the case, Jekel said. "It's a neurological condition," she said.

In any case, Odgren clearly has problems that extend beyond Asperger's, she said.

"This is one particularly very complex child," Jekel said.

Schwarz, who has a son with high-functioning autism, said disorders in that spectrum have a long history of being misunderstood.

Odgren's reported reactions to the killing may have appeared like those people with Asperger's sometimes exhibit - detached or unfeeling - but seemed more a result of "delusional thinking," Schwarz said.

"It is not anti-social behavior," he said of Asperger's. "It is not sociopathological. It is not misanthropism."

Jekel said she hoped the public would look to more positive portrayals of people with Asperger's, such as Schonda Schilling's account of her son's diagnosis with the disorder, "The Best Kind of Different," or novelist Jodi Picoult's "House Rules."

While seeking to distance Odgren's actions from Asperger's, some parents of children with special needs seemed unsure about Thursday's guilty verdict and whether Odgren truly understood right and wrong.

In him, some parents familiar with special education saw a young man who seemed not to have received the support or treatment he needed, whether for Asperger's or other problems, too. Several who responded to an e-mail from the Daily News said there were no winners in last week's verdict.

After the trial, Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone last week also sought to make clear that Asperger's is "not attributed to violent acts." He also questioned if the system had failed Odgren, questioning how people had missed red flags thrown up by his behavior.

Parents said while they hope the case does not pressure schools or other families to place children differently solely because they have Asperger's, it can act as a reminder of the importance of properly addressing disorders and other mental struggles.

"As a society, we really don't have enough or sufficient support or help for people who sometimes need it," Ryan said.