I'm sincerely thankful you don't have kids and that your parents are relatively healthy, as are your brothers. I'm assuming you don't have a partner either. I really hope nothing happens to change the health and well being of your family. When and if it ever does, if you have kids, if you have a partner, as your parents age and get dementia or worse, and you face home or 'home' care, you get on back to me, ok?

I just want to say, good luck to you, your parents and your brother. I know how hard this is. I hope things turn out well if you sue, or if you don't sue. And I pray your brother gets a good place to live.

A few years back I went to a care 'fair' in my local county, put on by the county and the local ARC. It was for people with retarded and autistic dependants. I expected people from the county health services, local homes, etc. I got a huge room full of 'caregivers' trying to sell me their 'product'. It was really shocking, frankly. And when I did talk to the government workers, finding them at one table amongst about 20, I was underwhelmed by what they had to tell me. At the time they were pushing that everyone should have a job. And the companies at the tables around them were offering 'trainers' and 'helpers' and 'consultants' that basically did the job while the disabled person (if it were my sister) rocked and hmmmmed and flipped. The government paid for the 'consultant'. It was so damn unrealistic. Had any, ANY of these people spent time with the severely disabled? I'm very bitter, as you can see, about that. My Mom and Dad have been dealing with it for 50 years. I have no idea how they've survived...

I just want to commend you and the people who have replied to you that are in the same situation. My sister is severely autistic and approaching 50, which means my parents are approaching their late 70s. They've cared for her all their lives. As they get older, I'm taking over some of that care. But... I will never be able to do what they have done. I can not devote the entire rest of my life to her. My mother cries, because she cannot, will not, ask me to do that, and yet she can't bear the thought of my sister in a home such as the one described in this article. And frankly, I can't do what they have done, not and still have a life. So I guess my sister will end up in a home, like this one, and I'll have to check on her every couple days or something. I don't really know what else to do, and society is basically unwilling to come up with a decent answer at this time. Anyway, good luck and gods bless. I hope it works out fab for you and your child.

We are still stuck in medieval times when it comes to 'punishing' some animals. Back then at least they gave them a trial. Now we just kill them, and the only reason is our species getting revenge on theirs. 'Taste for human flesh' bleh. Stupid. The guy was already dead. It was taste for carrion, which all bears have!

PS Does human flesh actually taste that different than, say, pig flesh, or chicken? or snake or rodent? Especially after death? I doubt it.

I really hope they can go to the park. But... here's what going to a park when my sister was 5 or 6 or even 10 was like (she is severely autistic).

Mom: Great, here's the park. Ok, you kids, stay close. <Sister> will be with me.

Kids: Running, playing, having a good time.

Sister weighs 40 to 80 pounds (depending on age. She was skinny). She's screaming. Loudly. In terror. People are looking.

My mom is carrying my sister. Or she's in a wheelchair thingie (what they had 30 years ago). My sister is screaming in terror at every thing that touches her or might touch her. The wind. The sun. A leaf. If she's made to walk she's screaming in pain because some autistics have hyper feelings in their feet, like knives shooting through your skin, and she can't handle it yet. She's not old enough. She walks on her toes when she does walk. Her spine will be forever slightly deformed because of this, although we don't know it yet.

Sister has had enough. We've been there maybe 10 minutes. She starts to fight. She bites my mother's arm. Then bites her own arms and hands, harder and harder. She's bleeding.

All the people there are staring at us. Me and my brother are back at the car. We know the drill. My Mom is there too, eyes suspiciously bright. (When I was older I'd realize she was weeping). My sister is screaming, flailing, flapping in her arms like a fish. She gets put into the car and immediately quiets down for a minute or two. She's in a familiar place, and it's dark and comforting. My brother and I file in and sit next to her.

Mom, trying to put a good face on it: 'There, that was fun, wasn't it?'

Now, eventually we worked out how to manage sister and we did have a lot of fun times, ALL of us, at parks, camping, and so on. But it took years of learning, experimenting, my mother and father becoming experts in autistic behavior, teachers and officials' help... Years. Her care is still 24/7. And I mean that, 24/7. No breaks, ever. My parents trade it off. I help several times a week.

And... my sister is a good one. She's quiet now, she's calm most of the time, she's a sweet innocent thing. But man, her childhood and teen years were often from hell for all of us.

I'm not at all meaning to bash you or pick on you. I agree with your sentiments (although I doubt many will do better than the father, especially not foster care). I just wanted to highlight how difficult something as fun and simple as 'going to the park' is when you are dealing with a severely autistic person.

I grew up with a severely autistic sibling. She's still with my parents, and now over 45 years old. She's a lovely, caring, sweet woman who can't take care of herself at all. She can't talk, she can't clean herself properly. She can make a sandwich, if you don't mind half the peanut butter on the floor instead of the bread. She likes movies and music. She's very intelligent, but rarely can communicate that to anyone. Life is a constant stream of frustrations and disappointments for her. We try to lighten that as we can.

She wasn't toilet trained until she was between 6 and 7. My parents tried, over and over again. She refused, preferred the diaper. It wasn't until she got into some chocolate ex-lax and ate it all (and suffered the inevitable) that she finally gave in and used the toilet. Me and my brother were toilet trained at between 1 and 1.5 years.

She spent her early years, until at least 7 or so, in a crib. She refused to leave, would wail and scream and tear her clothing... hit things, and more, if forced to leave. For a year or more she only ate graham crackers. Mom and Dad had to force feed anything else but a bottle, so they put vits and so on in her bottle.

When she was 12 or 13 she had a battle of wills with a 'teacher' in her special ed class. The guy wanted her to do something and refused to do an end run to get her to do it. (Most of us would feel the same, you can not straight talk my sister into doing anything, you have to weasel through it). Anyway, he escalated, she escalated, he escalated... until they spent about 3 hours sitting on the floor staring at each other. He forced her to do whatever one last time. She hit her head, violently, banging it on the floor. He gave up when she started bleeding and concussed herself.

She's banged her head to get her way ever since then. She now has a thick pad of bone and what looks like a closed up bullet wound on her forehead.

To counter that we would take her out onto the lawn when she was having a fit. Nothing to hit out there, and plenty boring. We had helmets to put on her, when we couldn't find a lawn. They sort of worked. Time, age, and some really nifty drugs have helped reduce her tendency to mutilate herself.

If my parents had been poorly educated, if they hadn't had my sister at a 'good' time for getting help from the state, if they hadn't had understanding friends and family, they probably would have locked my sister in her room too.

Now, maybe these boys aren't severely autistic. Maybe they are Asperger's or on the high functioning end of the spectrum. It doesn't seem that way though. If they weren't severely autistic, what he did is abuse. If they were, the state needs to get him some help with raising them ASAP. Yea, right. That'll happen.

Maybe this guy used the video games to escape. My Mom had a nervous breakdown when I was 5 to 7 (sister was 2-4). Her way of escaping I guess. I want to make it clear that living with my sister when she was young was not always awful, but it was awful some of the time. My parents were loving and good enough to keep it from us kids, most of the time. Now that I am an adult, I know what they went through.

We don't know the ins and outs from this story. I doubt the court will figure it out either. I hope the family gets the help it needs, the kids get some treatment, and the father learns how to care for them better. Not sure prison is going to do that. It's easy to stand outside and judge. It's not so easy when you are living with a severely autistic person every second of every day.

Universities that have been around for a while tend to be surrounded by slums if they are near/in a city. I got my PhD from University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. Once the Uni was situated on the west boundary of the city, in genteel countryside. Then in the early 1900s suburbs built up around it, middle class. By the 1980s and 90s when I went to school those suburbs were deep slums. The 'nice' areas to live move, but the Uni can't. At least three of the grad students in my department were mugged while I was there.

Once upon a time I thought animal shelters did good. But, now I really don't know, I just don't know. Poor, poor Blaze. What a stupid mess Everett animal shelter has made for itself. I hope the appropriate people are punished. It would kill me to have that happen to my beloved dog.

What you are describing IS a choke collar. It's just not a chain. It should be set up so that the leash part tightens when pulled and relaxes when not pulled. That's a choke collar. If you put it on backwards, with the leash running through the metal ring the wrong way, it can consistently choke, with no release. The more the dog/cat/human/whatever animal struggles the tighter it can get. And you end up with a strangled critter. I have no idea if this is what was done, but it's a simple mistake with possibly deadly consequences.

Here's a website about how to correctly put on a choke/slip collar. It works the same whether chain or leather or nylon. http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=2+2098&...