In the news recently, we heard the shocking story of a child being "thrown" into the crocodile enclosure at Johnson’s Zoo in Cambridgeshire. Thanks to the bravery of the zoo owner's wife, the child – a three-year-old boy – survived but with serious injuries.
Of course, there has been an outcry from the public when it was made known the man arrested at the scene was a 20-year-old man with severe learning disabilities. He was at the zoo with two carers; apparently – from eyewitness accounts – enjoying his time there.
The outcry was along the lines of "people like him shouldn’t be let out – even with carers". In some corners of the internet this spiralled into comments like "this is why people like this should have been killed at birth." This latter comment has regularly been used for all disabilities and any age group across the internet for the last couple of years, so it wasn’t surprising.
But let’s look at this a different way. In saying the following I’m not negating the harm caused to the little boy or the devastation felt by his family, I just want to give another point of view.
Some witnesses said neither of the carers were looking at the young man in their care at the time – with at least one of them on their phone. This has not been corroborated at the time I write.
Caring and kind
Many who have learning disabilities are caring, kind and observant, and – as one person has pointed out – the young man may have seen the little boy struggling to see into the enclosure; having seen this, in an effort to help, he may have headed to the child to pick him up so he could see better. Having seen how people react loudly around an adult with learning disabilities when they are perceived to be stepping out of line, the first reaction tends to be to scream at them and run towards them. This causes a fight or flight response that, in this case, may have caused the young man to "throw away" what is causing the reaction – in this case a young child.
To everyone around him, this would have looked like a deliberate act of throwing the child into the enclosure.
As I’ve said, this doesn’t negate the seriousness of the incident, but if this is the case, there were many things that led up to the incident that shouldn’t have happened, and if done correctly would have meant the child didn’t end up in the enclosure.
In the current culture of anti-disability, this has caused another hate bomb to explode, this time with the backlash centred towards those with learning disabilities.
Just being aware of how to interact with those who have learning disabilities would have been helpful in this major incident: I’ve seen upfront how a bad response can sometimes cause an adult with a learning disability to react in a way that endangers their own life.
As a church it’s good to welcome those with learning disabilities and not fear them. I know from experience that even in churches some will react badly to these wonderful people when there is a case like this in the news.
It’s good to be prepared. You could chat to Count Everyone In, a wonderful charity that works alongside those with learning disabilities and also trains churches to do the same. Follow their social media to see where their training is happening – or maybe get together with other churches in your area to book some training: www.counteveryonein.org.uk and www.facebook.com/counteveryonein.
When someone isn't ready to call themselves disabled
For the first two articles in this series, see: "My church friend has become disabled: What do I do?" …