cheerfullycatholic:

Disability Day of Mourning: The Need to Mourn and Celebrate the Worth of Disabled Lives

by Sophie Trist — Every year on March 1 the Autistic Self-advocacy Network (ASAN) and other disability organizations hold vigils all across

Rehumanize

Since ASAN began keeping track of disability filicide cases in 2014, it has collected the names of thousands of people with disabilities murdered by their relatives or caregivers since 1980. You can view the full database of names and stories on the DDOM website. Teru Inaba was an 83-year-old, bedridden Japanese woman who lived with cognitive disabilities. She was murdered in Tokyo on February 2 by her adult child, who punched her in the head several times and reportedly told police that he was tired of caring for her. On January 11, 87-year-old Joan Marcela Wheeler of Oregon was shot to death by her husband, who claimed that due to her chronic illness Joan was better off dead than alive. In October of 2020, a 14-year-old autistic boy from Nashville named Sayeed Nelson was murdered by his mother and stepbrother, who then tried to pass off his death as an accident. A developmentally disabled man named Derrick Christophe was murdered in my home state of Louisiana on February 17, 2020.