AWN Statement on False Claims
Autism Women’s Network wants to address a concern that has recently come to light. We are intentionally being broad in our statement and have chosen to not use personal names. If this causes you confusion then we apologize.
It has recently been discovered that AWN, in good faith, shared writings over the past year of an Activist who falsified numerous things about their life. While all the facts are still unclear, we have been able to confirm enough facts, and thus want to reach out to all of you who are feeling the fallout as the situation unfolds.
It is important to note that, as other community leaders have stated, these circumstances “should not bring into question valid communication methods such as AAC, FC, or RPM that many nonspeaking or partially speaking Autistic people use to communicate.” (PACLA, 2015)
Understandably, many of you feel betrayed, hurt and disillusioned by the dishonesty from this individual. Please know that AWN is aware and we’re making every attempt to assist community members through this crisis.
I think the best move for you would be to take this post down & say nothing, honestly. People who aren’t in our community can read this site & it could be harmful for them to know anything about this. In fact it may falsely implicate all of neurodiversity activism.
& Amy is not the only person this could wrongly cast doubt on either.
I think it’s a huge potential can of worms & is best removed.
These statements don’t need to be made where ableist people outside our community can see them.
I feel like it’s best that AWN simply remove the culprit’s posts, though of course the views of Amy & other non-speaking people should be sought first.
The posts have been removed from AWN’s networking sites.