Nicky Reilly, who converted to Islam and was subsequently persuaded by extremists to become a suicide bomber has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 18 years after being found guilty of attempted murder and preparing an act of terrorism. His attempt to become a suicide bomber failed when the bomb he was preparing to detonate in a restaurant exploded while he was alone in the restaurant toilet. Nobody else was hurt and he survived his injuries to stand trial.
Much has been made of the fact that he has Aspergers Syndrome and learning difficulties. His defence wanted him to be committed for psychiatric assessment befor sentencing. According to one newspaper report the judge
said Reilly had been planning his attack for months and added: “His mental illness played no part in his decision to do what he did and he has not hidden behind it.”
It is not clear whether the judge was referring to Aspergers Syndrome as a mental illness or to Reilly’s learning difficulties. There have also been references to obsessive compulsive disorder and depression. Kevin Brice at Swansea University scanned the press and wrote
This is the line that is taken in almost every single story about Reilly; mental health problems are mentioned continuously in almost all stories with various form of mental illness cited:
Reilly had “a history of mental illness”, “he is mentally ill”, “has the mental age of a ten-year-old”, was “mentally disturbed”, “had learning difficulties”, “had a diagnosed mental illness”, “had been in residential treatment”, he was “sectioned under the Mental Health Act”, is a “former mental patient”, is “schizophrenic”, suffered from “Asperger’s Syndrome”, has “autism”, suffered from “an obsessive compulsive disorder”, “has psychiatric needs”, “has a very low IQ” and “can’t think for himself”.
In other stories it is claimed that Reilly has a history of self-harm and has made several suicide attempts:
Reilly “self harmed by slashing his wrists”, “ made two apparent suicide bids”, “he took an overdose when he was 16”, “he then stabbed himself in the stomach”, “had tried to commit suicide several times”,
Some of these references may be exaggerated or completely unfounded. The reference to schizophrenia was made by a friend of the family. Press reports of low IQ and a mental age of ten are belied by the fact that his reported IQ of 83 is just outside the standard deviation from the norm. If there was a league table for intelligence Reilly’s score would put him in the bottom half but nowhere near the bottom.
I am glad that the judge decided that Reilly was responsible for his actions and should not go to Broadmoor for assessment. Once you are in that place it is very hard to get out. Ask Piers Bolduc.
This interview with Reilly’s mother makes it clear that he does have mental health problems that require professional help. The judge agrees that Reilly has a mental illness. He does not regard that as relevant to Reilly’s crime. But should it influence his punishment? Is Reilly fit to serve an 18 year sentence in a high security prison? Society is now protected from Reilly. But will he be protected in prison? Will he get the help he needs?
Probably not. According to his mother Reilly never received adequate treatment for his obsessive compulsive behaviour, his self harm or his suicide attempts when he was growing up. Why should prison be any different? It will probably be a lot worse. According to the Prison Reform Trust
Many prisoners have mental health problems. 72% of male and 70% of female sentenced prisoners suffer from two or more mental health disorders. One in five prisoners have four of the five major mental health disorders.
According to Primary Mental Health Care in Prison mental health services in prisons are not yet equivalent to the community services that have already failed Reilly and so many more of the 200,000 people who pass through the UK prison service every year.
Still, it is as well to remember that if Reilly had succeeded in his crime I would not be asking these questions now. And I guess that the dozens of people who survived his botched attempt at mass murder care little for the answers. But if we are to advance as a society we ought to care.
February 1st, 2009
Posted by
Mike |
adults, criminal justice, mental health |
14 comments
Nicky Reilly, aged 22, is on trial for a failed attempt to bomb a restuarant in Exeter. He has Aspergers Syndrome and additional learning difficulties. According to media reports he has a mental age of ten. Five years ago he converted to Islam and began to attend the local mosque.There is no question of any blame attaching to the local muslim community in his home town of Plymouth. But two men, now believed to be abroad are alleged to have been involved.
The facts of the case are straightforward. After becoming a Muslim Reilly became more intolerant of wrongdoing in others, both in his family and in the socially deprived area of town where he lived in an overcrowded flat with his mother and two half brothers. According to the Guardian,
Several say he began to criticise them for “ungodly” ways. “I used to hang around and cause a bit of trouble,” said one 19-year-old boy. “He started coming up to me and ranting about me. He was risking a kicking but we knew he wasn’t right in the head so left him alone. We knew he used to have a go at his family too, so we didn’t really take much notice.”
This behaviour is consistent with Aspergers Syndrome. Attempting to blow yourself up in a crowded restaurant is not. Reilly was naive and not malicious. His nickname as a teenager derived from his size and his gentle nature. He was known as the BFG, the Big Friendly Giant of the eponymous children’s tale.He was probably unhappy. A schoolboy acquaintance told the Guardian,
“He was a quiet boy. He was a follower rather than a leader. We used to have a laugh with him, tease him, but he never lashed out. He was a gentle lad.”
Where they laughing with him or at him? And would Reilly have known the difference? One reason he gave for his conversion was
that he had been told you will get a better life when you die if you are a Muslim.
The Guardian also reports on his personal distress when his girl friend ended their relationship. He became depressed, self harmed and needed psychiatric treatment. This experience added to his vulnerability. I surmise that it was this vulnerability that attracted those who recruited him to radical Islam and also explains why he was such a willing recruit. It is classic cult psychology. He had led a miserable life. It was easy to blame those around him and in Reilly’s case probably true. In Islam he had found personal acceptance and a rationale for his mistreatment in the “godlessness” of his tormentors. Then came the further, twisted logic that persuaded him that he could punish the godless and, through martyrdom, attain the “better life” which had thus far been denied to him. His recruitment last year would fit with his decision to change his name to Mohammed Rashid Saeed-Alim and intensify his religious devotions.
Thanks to the efforts of his unknown mentors, who are now believed to be abroad, he acquired the knowledge and the determination to travel to Exeter with bomb making materials with the intention of detonating them in a busy restaurant. He bungled the attempt, injuring himself and no others. Whether he is a committed terrorist or a witless dupe, he could easily have killed scores of people that day and clearly needs to be dealt with. But how?
The police, unusually in a case terrorism, seem quite sympathetic. He was treated as a vulnerable adult in police interviews. His mother, in a BBC interview, is convinced that Reilly is a victim and not a criminal. She thinks he should be in hospital and not in prison.
This whole affair raises a number of questions in my mind and I am not altogether certain of the answers.
- Despite the obvious connection with Islamic terrorism would it be more useful to consider Reilly alongside those unaffiliated lone killers who make the headlines with depressing regularity?
- Although I believe that Reilly’s autism is a part of the story, it is not the whole story and should not define our response. It is one thing to argue for accommodations in everyday life to assist autistic people. What are the ground rules for expecting accommodations when autistic people become a demonstrable threat to society?
- If Reilly had been an autistic Asian or Arab Muslim rather than a white autistic convert, how much sympathy or understanding would he be getting now?
- Should people like Reilly go to prison because, whatever your history of abuse, there can be no extenuating cicumstances that mitigate the crime of terrorism?
- If Reilly was not autistic he would be found guilty, go to prison for a long time and then be released. Using autism as a part of his defence may get him sectioned under mental health legislation and detained with no hope of release. Common criminals do the crime, serve the time and are freed to repeat the process or not. But if you are sectioned you can only be released if you can prove beyond reasonable doubt the unlikelihood of your reoffending. You are detained in advance for crimes you may yet commit.
With increasing numbers of people being identified with autism it is inevitable that there will be increasing numbers of defendants in criminal cases identified with autism. The mental health community has been there already with stereotypes of the criminally insane. We should take account of their experience whenever someone seeks to invoke autism or aspergers as a defence in criminal proceedings.
October 16th, 2008
Posted by
Mike |
Uncategorized, adults, mental health |
11 comments
Just as the supposed connection between thiomersal and autism has been replaced by Green Our Vaccines sloganizing about all the toxins in vaccines, so the specific reference to autism has been diluted with reference to other neurologiciacal and psychological disorders. I often read that one in six US children has some sort of mental health or neurological problem and it is often blamed on toxins in vaccines and in the wider environment. The largest single group are those who are supposed to have ADHD, with 2.4 million children in the USA on medication it accounts for 5 per cent. Depression accounts for another 5 per cent; Obsessive Compulsive Disorder between 1 and 3 per cent; Autistic Spectrum 1 per cent. A more recent addition is Bipolar disorder which moved up the scale from 20,000 diagnoses in 1994 to 800,000 or 1 per cent of US Americans under 20 by 2003.
I am sure that there is a lot of double counting here. Nearly half of all children with bipolar have another diagnosis, usually ADHD. Lots of kids with autism have depression or OCD. Children with Tourettes often have ADHD or OCD. Nevertheless there are a lot of children being diagnosed wth various neurological and psychiatric disorders and for many the treatment of choice is some form of medication.
But for Mark Geier, David Kirby and Brad Handley the broader picture is clear. Never mind the 1 in 150 with autism. They are just the tip of an iceberg. We are looking at 50 million potentially brain damaged US Americans. Something has to be done.
I think that we in the neurodiversity movement have been rightly skeptical of these figures. We understand how the prevalence for autism has been driven up by broadening the criteria, developing better screening and diagnostic tools, increasing awareness and even improving provision. “Build it and they will come come.”
Although there are problems with the abuse of medications with autistic people the big problem for many in the medical profession and for parents has been that there is no autism pill. The search for a pharmacological solution has seduced some autism researchers and led to some famous dead-ends. Frustrated parents have turned instead to alternative practitioners offering the biomedical solutions that I have criticized from the inception of this blog.
Broadly speaking autism numbers have grown in line with our understanding of autism. We have moved from a narrowly defined disorder to a spectrum. We have struggled within that spectrum to strike a balance between the concept of discrete categories of disorder and the dimensional approach which suggests that some of the differences exhibited by autistic people may be welcome additions to the diversity of human wiring. Nevertheless, developments within autism research and the debates they generate tend to take us forward.
But I detect a different process at work with those other categories and dimensions of disorder and well-being. There may not be an autism pill but there is a pill for ADHD, for OCD, for depression etc. Sometimes there are competing pills and off label pills seeking a new niche and a sales opportunity. What if the same pharmaceutical interests that the biomedical autism community revile for there role in obfuscating the question of an autism epidemic in the face of an obvious crisis for the mental health of our children [1 in 6 ferchrissakes!] actually generated that broader crisis in order to boost drug sales?
Now, let me say that I fully support the idea of children as autonomous learners, active agents in their own development. We now recognize the inner life of the child and recognize that when things go wrong and children experience crises in their emotional and psychological development they are entitled to help and understanding. But 1 in 10 ten year old US American boys on medication for ADHD? Something is clearly wrong.
A recent report in the New York Times exposes a real conflict of interest and shows how easily scientists, convinced of their own correctness can seriously compromise, not only their own credibility, but that of colleagues working ethically in the same field.
It may just be a coincidence, but those leading the drive to diagnose and treat bipolar disorder in children are also the recipients of large and undisclosed stipends from the pharmaceutical companies that prescribe the drugs used to treat those children. The key word here is undisclosed.
Doctor Joseph Biederman,
A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given Congressional investigators.
By failing to report income, the psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Biederman, and a colleague in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Timothy E. Wilens, may have violated federal and university research rules designed to police potential conflicts of interest, according to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. Some of their research is financed by government grants.
Like Dr. Biederman, Dr. Wilens belatedly reported earning at least $1.6 million from 2000 to 2007, and another Harvard colleague, Dr. Thomas Spencer, reported earning at least $1 million after being pressed by Mr. Grassley’s investigators. But even these amended disclosures may understate the researchers’ outside income because some entries contradict payment information from drug makers, Mr. Grassley found.
It is important to remember that the failure to disclose these payments does not automatically negate the work these men have done in the field of bipolar disorder in childhood. But if their financial relationship to the pharmaceutical companies had been known in advance I am sure that their work would have been subject to much more rigorous scrutiny. I hope that it is subject to such scrutiny now and not summarily dismissed.
We in the autism community have seen what arrogance can do when a talented individual like Wakefield becomes so convinced of the correctness of his own position that he disregards the normal conventions of science in the hope that history will vindicate him. But personal conviction can lead to self delusion without the necessary corrective of an honest accounting to your peers. And when we are talking about six figure sums from “Big Pharma” honest accounting takes on a whole new meaning.
June 8th, 2008
Posted by
Mike |
ethics, mental health, psychiatry, science |
4 comments
This letter was forwarded to the Asperger UK group today with permission of Cris Bolduc, mother of Piers Bolduc. I urge anyone with access to BBC Radio 4 to listen to You and Yours tomorrow. Piers was misdiagnosed as mentally ill and placed on powerful antipsychotic drugs. When he wounded a man while on medication he was sectioned and sent to Broadmoor, the top security prison for the criminally insane, which contains serial killers, mass murderers and sex offenders. While there he was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. The Daily Telegraph campaigned for his release and in 2004 he was transferred to the Hayes Unit, the only secure unit specifically run for people with Aspergers Syndrome.
BBC RADIO 4 ‘YOU & YOURS’ this Thursday, 13th September 2007 at 12.04 mid-day.If all goes according to plan the programme we have recorded with the
BBC, on various occassions and locations since May, will be aired
THIS Thursday 13th September on RADIO 4 ‘YOU & YOURS’ at 12.04. Its
all about lack of care/units for adults with Asperger Syndrome and hi-
lites our son Piers’ tragic case.
Apologies in advance if its re-scheduled for sometime the following
week but that is the way it goes in the media! As I write it is still
on course for this Thursday. Although a great deal of recordings were
made, after editing it will be cut down to size so don’t blink or go
and make a coffee or you might miss it! I just feel that ‘every
little helps’ (to borrow a phrase!) not only for us and Piers but
other families struggling within the minefields of flawed placements
and the postal code lottery of accessing support and services.
You should be able to ‘listen again’ by putting: You & Yours listen
again, into your computer’s Google search a few days after it is
aired.
Please excuse the Round Robin but it is the quickest way to alert
everyone!
AllBestCris
Here is the article that celebrated his release from Broadmoor 3 years ago.
Asperger’s man is released from Broadmoor
By Daniel Foggo
Last Updated: 7:40pm BST 07/08/2004
A man suffering from Asperger’s syndrome who was wrongly sent to Broadmoor after being misdiagnosed with schizophrenia has been released after a campaign by The Telegraph.
Piers Bolduc, 28, was put on powerful drugs which he did not need and held at the hospital for the criminally insane since he was 19, despite not suffering from mental illness or having any convictions. Asperger’s is a mild form of autism which is fundamentally unresponsive to drugs, because it is a condition and not an illness.
He was finally transferred last week to the Hayes Independent Hospital in Bristol, the only facility in Britain that caters specifically for people with Asperger’s. [continue to article]
Who knows how many other autistic people are being misdiagnosed and mistreated within our mental health system. And I know that for many mentally ill people the system is just as bad.
|
September 12th, 2007
Posted by
Mike |
Autism rights, aspergers, mental health |
17 comments
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2007/07/30/hasper130.xml&page=1
This story is so sad and so avoidable. My son is not so different from Tim Whattler. He is doing OK at the moment. But this was not always the case. We are not so different from Tim’s parents. We fought similar battles on our son’s behalf. Often we lost. We couldn’t understand it either.
We are lucky. Our son has survived. But it should not be about luck. Tim’s death is a waste; such a loss. It is not a tragedy. It is a crime, though I doubt there will ever be a guilty verdict.
July 30th, 2007
Posted by
Mike |
Autism, aspergers, mental health, parents, psychiatry, suicide |
16 comments
