BCIFV home > Media Releases > January 25, 2001

BC INSTITUTE AGAINST FAMILY VIOLENCE
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For Immediate Release
January 25, 2001

Opinion Piece:

Sympathy for Latimer Misplaced

A UBC professor emeritus of special education looks at
why so many people feel compelled to excuse a father for killing his child

by Lynne Melcombe
BCIFV

A new flurry of letters to newspaper editors in support of Robert Latimer appears to reveal why so many people sympathize with him, says the Program Director of The Person Within.

"I think people imagine themselves in his position as it has been portrayed in the media, wonder what they would do in similar circumstances, and worry about judging him lest they be judged, " says Sally Rogow, a UBC professor emeritus of special education.

There are two problems with this, she says. "The first is that the facts we are told about Tracy are not all true. She was not facing painful surgery, and she recognized people and smiled a lot. There are many techniques available to help children like Tracy - alternate means of communication and ways of helping her participate, for example - but she seems to have had no access to them.

"Judgements about any child's quality of life, and radical decisions based on those judgements, are always suspect when they are based only on the presence of a disability, which seems to have been the case here," says Rogow. "Such judgements should be broad-based, holistic, and take into account the behaviours of the children and their interactions with family and friends.

"Quality of life can always be improved."

The second problem is rooted in societal attitudes toward children with disabilities, she says - attitudes that constitute emotional abuse. Rogow believes that recognizing and fighting emotional abuse of children with disabilities is fundamental to improving their quality of life, because the attitudes that drive emotional abuse are also behind more overt forms of abuse, as well as the sympathy they inevitably evoke.

It was her recognition of the need to address these attitudes that led to Rogow's idea for The Person Within, which consists of a 30-minute video, two-day workshop, and handbook on emotional abuse of children with disabilities.

"If we look at abuse on a continuum, at one end we see things like segregation of children with disabilities from mainstream classrooms," says Rogow. "The problem with segregation is that children with disabilities are, above all, children. Regardless of their disabilities, they have the same developmental needs as other children, and excluding them from age-appropriate opportunities to have those needs met is as inappropriate for them as it would be for children without disabilities."

Some people justify segregation by saying it's better for children with disabilities to be kept in 'special' programs, and that meeting the needs of one child in a public classroom takes away from the system's ability to meet other children's needs.

"It would never occur to the same people to say that the presence of 19 children without disabilities in a classroom takes away from the system's ability to give attention to the twentieth child," she observes. "They would simply say that adequate resources must be supplied to ensure that the needs of all children in the classroom are met.

"Yet when the twentieth child has a disability, it brings out the old attitude that meeting the needs of that one child takes away from our ability to meet the needs of the other children, because that child is seen as less deserving."

That is precisely the attitude that underlies emotional abuse of children with disabilities, and that same attitude leads to more extreme maltreatment further along the continuum of abuse - maltreatment that none of us would accept for children without disabilities.

"If Tracy Latimer had been a child without disabilities, no one would think twice about judging Latimer guilty of murder," says Rogow. "But because she had disabilities, people fall back on an old and unquestioned belief that she had fewer rights than any other child. Based on this attitude, many people not only excuse what her father did, but sympathize with it.

"That's why this attitude has to be addressed, and that's what we're doing through The Person Within."

The Person Within video and workshop is designed for all professionals, para-professionals, parents, and caregivers who spend time with children with disabilities. It was produced and is administered by the BC Institute Against Family Violence.

For information, to schedule a workshop, or to arrange an interview with Sally Rogow, contact the BCIFV, 669.7055, toll-free 1.877.755.7055, reception@bcifv.org or www.bcifv.org.