Odgren faces life in prison

From the Boston Globe, WHDH-TV

A jury has found 19-year-old John Odgren guilty of first degree murder in the fatal stabbing of a fellow student three years ago in their suburban Massachusetts high school, rejecting arguments that Odgren was legally insane at the time of the crime. He now faces a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without parole.

Odgren’s lawyers had argued that his behavior was affected by Asperger’s syndrome, anxiety, attention deficit disorder and mood disorders that include symptoms of bipolar disorder and depression. They said he had experienced a lifetime of bullying and harassment, causing him to lose touch with reality and act out violent fantasies. Prosecutors argued that Odgren was trying to act out the “perfect murder.”

Odgren was a student at the Great Opportunities Program at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, which was designed to integrate students with disabilities into the school. He brought a kitchen knife from home and attacked James F. Alenson, a freshman student whom he’d never met, in a bathroom at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in January of 2007.

From the Boston Herald:

A parent survey by the nonprofit Massachusetts Advocates for Children finds that nearly 90 percent of children with autism had been targeted by bullying.

The survey … includes painful testimony from parents of autistic children who felt so tortured they stayed home from school for extended periods and even considered suicide.

“We were frankly shocked by the magnitude of the problem,” said attorney Julia Landau, director of the Autism Special Education Legal Support Center at MAC. “It took our breath away.”

See also:

Susan Boyle: I was beaten every day, reveals Britain’s Got Talent star – [UK] Daily Mail

UK reality star, Susan Boyle says in an interview that she was beaten by teachers and bullied by other students because she was a slow learner.

Writing in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, former special education worker George Byron Griffiths offers praise for pending Minnesota legislation that would outlaw school bullying of students with disabilities.

Griffiths shares the story of a former student, Eric, who faced harassment by an opposing team member while serving as the manager of his high school basketball team. Eric has Down syndrome.

I don’t have any illusion that simply passing the Safe Schools for All legislation will magically stop bullying in Minnesota classrooms. But the legislation sets a standard. And by specifically listing disability along with other attributes, such as sex, race, religion, sexual orientation and physical characteristics, the legislation makes plain that, when it comes to bullying, absolutely no exceptions should ever be tolerated.

Eric’s story establishes that a bully-free school is an attainable vision. The Safe Schools legislation introduces the possibility that the way Eric and his friends treated each other, and changed the attitude of at least one bully, can indeed become the norm.

See also: Students with disabilities face more frequent bullying than typical peers — press release from the Medical University of South Carolina

Researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina and elsewhere report that children with developmental or medical disabilities are more often bullied, ostracized or purposely ignored than other children.

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