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http://www.donnawilliams.net/
In 1992, an Australian man with no qualification in the field of autism
began a campaign to discredit Donna Williams. He took his obsession to the
media and pursued her for years. He sought a public debate on the question:
Is Donna Williams really autistic ?
A social comment by Donna Williams.
In 1989, when High Functioning Autism was basically unheard of,
Asperger's Syndrome virtually non-existent and the general stereotype of
children with autism seemed to have 'forgotten' the one third of whom are
echolalic rather than non-verbal, I wrote my autobiography. My manuscript
was not called Nobody Nowhere, nor did it refer to autism. It was called '
Dolly; autobiography of a disturbed child'. The original manuscript had no
postscript analyzing my behaviors and their meaning to me. Nor did the
original manuscript go further than my adventures to Germany. At the time I
wrote the manuscript, I worked in a hospital as a copy typist and data entry
person and took the manuscript to a psychiatrist in the hospital. I had no
dream to publish it, nor dreams of fame nor money. My dream was to find out
what was going on, then burn the manuscript and jump in front of a train- no
more, no less- life was simple.
The original manuscript did not mention the child psychiatrist who first read
the manuscript in response to my question to tell me why I'm like I am. I
had entered his office and told him all the things I'd ever been called,
'mad', 'stupid', 'deaf', 'disturbed', 'autistic'. Only one of these had I
ever seen written on paper, that was the word 'disturbed'. At the time I
wrote the original manuscript, I had researched Schizophrenia but didn't
comfortably fit the descriptions. I didn't have auditory or visual
hallucinations, was not overly deluded (except that I still clung to two
imaginary friends since infancy and was in love with my reflection) and was
fairly rational and logical. I had, by that stage, an honours degree so in
spite of attention problems, difficulty with reading and keeping up with
language, I was not stupid. I had acute hearing and was very musical, in
spite of the meaning dropping out of spoken words, so I was intermittently
meaning deaf, but not actually deaf. I was certainly both disturbed in my
emotional, cognitive and perceptual development and was fairly comfortable
with the label of being disturbed but knew this didn't account for all else
which was going on with me. I didn't know what autistic meant and had only
repeated the word to this man as the description given to me by my father in
demand to my question of what was 'wrong with me'. When I wrote the original
manuscript all I knew of the word 'autistic' was that it meant 'withdrawn'
and I thought, 'so what?'.
After reading it, this psychiatrist asked what I intended to do with the
manuscript. I told him honestly that I intended to burn it and he asked if
he could keep it and send it on. I asked for his opinion. He said he
thought I was autistic. I looked up the word and that was the first time I
had read about autism. The original manuscript remained virtually unchanged
from the book later published as Nobody Nowhere except for the addition of
the pages from Germany onwards- from the age of twenty-five. This
psychiatrist based his view on the original pages alone.
In the year that followed, prior to the publication of the book, like any
thinking person, I sought to meet others with autism to see if they were
'like me'. I did not seek a diagnosis and had no interest in one. I had
returned to Australia and approached an autism support group and asked where
I might meet others like me. This support group mentioned me to Dr Lawrence
Bartak, one of Australia's most well known experts in autism and I was given
a message to contact him and that he would help me. I met him at Monash
University, thinking he was going to introduce me to others 'like me'.
Instead he took me to a room and did some tests. I had no idea what they
were for but knew they were to do with finding out how people think and
perceive. I did them because he seemed a nice person and because I thought
he would then get on with the real business of helping me meet those 'like
me' (I figured they were in this building somewhere). At the end of the
testing I asked, 'what's all this rubbish tell you anyway?'. He said 'it
tells me you're autistic'. I challenged him, 'how do you know I'm not just
mad?' He answered me factually, 'because mad people don't have the kind of
results in these tests like you just did'. That was how I got diagnosed.
It was a year after this accidental diagnosis, in 1991, my first book, Nobody
Nowhere was published. I wrote to all the people mentioned in the book to
let them know they were featured and to warn them (in this era when high
functioning autism was unheard of) of the surprise they might find the book
had been packaged by the publishers as an 'Nobody Nowhere; autobiography of
an autistic girl'.
One of these who received such a letter was an ex-lecturer of mine, Chris
Eipper. He was not a friend. I had spent two social moments with him in my
entire life, both were brief and in the company of my entire class. Both
were in bars and in both cases I drank red wine, got buzzy, chattered and
left. Outside of this contact I knew this man only as the lecturer in front
of the class and as my thesis supervisor which entailed a total of ten 30
min. sessions in his office over the course of a year within which I was to
discuss the progress of my thesis. In this time this lecturer's language and
behavior were questionable and arousing and I wrote of this in Nobody Nowhere
as 'he was cunning and sarcastic, constantly prompting and jibing me into
responses'. These prompts and jibes included comments from him such as 'I'm
not trying to shaft you you know' and 'I think perhaps you might have been a
child prostitute like in the film Pretty Baby' together with physical
displaying which I found provocative and invasive and which made me respond
in a rather erratic and manic way which lead him to describe me as 'an
enigma'. I feel the true source of this lecturer's fascination with me began
here, when I was twenty-two, five years before I ever wrote Nobody Nowhere.
In the same year as Nobody Nowhere was published, this Sociology lecturer
sent a copy of one of fictional novels to my then publishers, Doubleday
Australia. He enclosed a letter portraying himself as 'a friend of Donna
Williams'. His novel was knocked back. Like so many hopeful writers, he
didn't get the publication he was seeking.
In the same year, an acquaintance I knew recalled he had visited her home
where she had mentioned my book and she'd been surprised by his vehement
reaction in putting it down. He had in the same year approached the
Victorian Autistic Society asking about books on autism and was recommended
my book and they were quite struck by his dismissive response.
In 1992 this lecturer took his obsession further and began to pursue the
media in an attempt to challenge my diagnosis and discredit my books. He
used his position as a lecturer in sociology to portray himself as Dr,
leaving the public ignorant to the fact he had no medical qualification nor
was he a psychologist or professional in special education or child
development. He played up the public impression hat he was 'a friend' of
mine.
Then a close friend of mine discovered this lecturer had put up public
advertisements seeking people who had known me. He was using his position as
a sociology lecturer to portray his pursuit of information as part of 'a
participant observer' study. He attracted an acquaintance of my family, a
man who had slept with me in my teens prior to the suicide attempt written
about in Nobody Nowhere and who had had a long criminal history but had gone
on to study at the same university as this lecturer. According to my father,
it was this man who lead this lecturer to my Primary School where he found a
teacher named Nan Caterina, who mistakenly thought she had been my teacher
(in fact there is a photo on my website of my real teacher- Mrs. Reeves who
was my infant and junior years teacher for three years running). This
lecturer's efforts fuelled an extortion attempt by my mother which is a
matter of legal record. I was told she had been in touch with 'a lecturer
friend of yours' who was 'gathering a file on you to prove you were not
autistic'. I was pressured to pay up or face an attempt at being publicly
discredited. I was legally advised this was extortion and not to pay
anything. I took this advice and chose to let her do what she liked. She
followed through with her threat and went to Adrian Rollins of The Age
newspaper. My father was approached and discredited her attempts to portray
me as a liar who had made up my entire life and pointed out that she was an
alcoholic with a psychiatric history (she had been sectioned when I was
three) and a personality disorder and was doing this to save face and for the
money. Mr. Rollins was approached by the solicitors, Hooton & Perkins as
well. He dropped the article. All of this is a matter of public record and
my mother has apologized for it and I accepted that apology in spite of the
public legacy of these actions.
Soon afterwards the lecturer followed through with his own article,
suggesting I was not autistic but instead perhaps schizophrenic or with
Multiple Personality, challenging experts to a public debate over my
diagnosis as autistic. The article was published and the debate did not
ensue. Upon the publication of my second book, this lecturer continued his
efforts to discredit me. He approached the ABC, challenging them that I had
duped them in an earlier interview. He offered them interviews with the
'witnesses' he had gathered, including a student, Marcia Devlin who had
shared a one hour class with me each week and who I had already wrote
negatively of in Somebody Somewhere in which she was called Vanessa, a man I
had never heard of who claimed to have had coffee with me and a psychology
teacher from when I was eighteen who again had never known me on a private or
personal level. Cathy Golan took up his offer. They based their view I had
never been autistic based on the memories of Nan Caterina, the teacher they
featured on the ABC radio program mistakenly thought she remembered me from
27 years before. She had described me as a lovely sociable little lass who
was good at reading. My reports from my real teachers showed a disturbed
child with challenging behaviours that disrupted the class and was unable to
understand what she read. The public damage had already been done. The
personal damage is something I still live with today.
Faxes appeared at the international universities that I was advertised to
speak at, warning the organizers I was not autistic. A review on my second
book was posted on Amazon.com, entitled 'A sickening manipulation of the
public for monetary gain' and directing people to the ABC radio interview as
evidence.
My mother has her own developmental challenges and her actions cannot be
compared to those of other mothers of children on the spectrum. In spite of
her actions and intelligence I see her as having her own disabilities and
like any person with a disability does not deserve to be persecuted.
Soon, I will speak in my own home state, the same state as this stalker via
media, the same state as my family. This is a big challenge.
The behavior of these people spurred me on to write my text books, Autism: An
Inside Out Approach and Autism and Sensing; The Unlost Instinct which have
dramatically changed the way people understand autism-spectrum conditions,
and my recent book Exposure Anxiety; The Invisible Cage. For whatever reason
you came to hear me speak - thank you for listening. Feel free to visit my
photos page on this site
where you can see my childhood photos (including a class photo with Mrs.
Reeves) and decide for yourselves.
Sincerely,
Donna Williams
Ps: Today I live on a gluten/dairy/sugar free diet low in Phenylalanine and
Salicylates.
I have a regime of supplements to address the diagnosed toxic effects effects
of metabolic disorders and to treat
related diagnosed digestive and immune system disorders which are part and
parcel of the physiological causes of my information processing problems and
Exposure Anxiety. Like many people on the autism-spectrum,
I also take 0.5mgs Risperdal which is a medication known to control
OCD/Tourettes type involuntary behaviours, ADD and ADHD. I find this also
controls the involuntary avoidance, diversion, retaliation responses of
Exposure Anxiety.
I don't do this for fun.
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