Stories beyond violence: Personal stories of autistic people as victims of violence

Preface
The sixteen stories in this book bring you the personal, first-hand experiences behind the grim numbers shown by all the studies on autistic people as victims and survivors of violence. They will help you to gain some insight into autistic people going through trauma and living with scars, both physical and emotional, as well as the reasons for violence against autistic people remaining mostly unreported.

There is a great need for this kind of knowledge. If you search for information about autism and violence, the first things that come up are studies and media stories about autistic people as aggressors, about assessing the risk of autistic people acting violently and managing their violent behavior. You will find speculations about perpetrators of violent crime being autistic, with the implication that autism was a contributing factor in their actions. We hope that this book will raise questions about the reverse situation. What is it about autistic people that so often makes us the targets of violence, and how could the behavior of others be changed to stop this from happening?

Publishing these stories has been made possible by a grant from the European Women’s Lobby. Collecting and editing the text has been carried out by a team of autistic researchers led by Sara Rocha.