Thread by @AutismInspired

As abuse survivors, other autistic supporters, parents of ABA/PBS survivors and ex-ABA professionals in the UK, US and other countries, we've worked for several years with BCBAs and other ABA professionals who had begun to feel that they needed to do better for their clients. 🧵

Conversations on Twitter during the past two days have revealed how many ABA professionals remain blissfully unaware of the extent of the corruption in their own industry, and the abuse pipelines which many are inadvertently serving.

This thread will be built over time to provide information for professionals who have caught a glimpse of the extent of the abuse, and who are evaluating their own professional position in the light of these revelations.

It will explain the choices which other professionals made based on what they learned from working with autistic people as equals rather than as clients unable to give informed consent.

As a background, we begin with three preliminary artefacts for your optional perusal. We will refer to these in our discussion.

These provide a helpful frame of reference to understand the actions and reactions of professionals who have collaborated with us over the years.

The first is a short film made by and with autistic #AAC users.

The second is an article published after a survey of 900 ABA professionals revealed that many were unaware of the depth of depravity within their own profession, with support in the highest places. neuroclastic.com/900-aba-profes…

The third is an account of abuse within ABA which most BCBAs and other professionals would recognise as being abusive. (The child in the article eventually stopped eating and went onto a feeding tube.)

The goal of this third article is not to say, "See, you're all bad," but rather to illustrate that there is often no way for victims to get relief, with no agency that can support them in getting abuse to stop.

neuroclastic.com/mothers-aba-ex…

The ABA professionals we consulted were unable to say what this mother, with the knowledge and resources she had at the time, could have done to save her child from the trauma.

All of them recognised, however, that the ABA professionals in this account acted abusively, and none of them said, "I would have treated this child in the same way."

We hope that the information we provide over the next few weeks will be helpful to ABA professionals who want to be part of the solution, to save others from falling victim to similar abuses.

Perhaps you feel that you would like to talk further or even privately about your options for doing better, but you do not want to talk to a nameless group account.

At the end of the thread we will link you to some named individuals, so that you can choose who would be best to talk to.

We understand that some of the information we're sharing with #behaviortwitter may be bewildering to professionals who have only ever interacted with autistic children, or with adult clients who do not access social media as rights-aware activists.

We've learned that #BCBA #BCaBA #RBT and other #ABA professionals can feel awkward asking for guidance from #AAC users, such as those who use Coughdrop or ProLoquo4Text.

Some AAC users feel that their speech therapy was abusive, and see noncompliance as a social skill.

We anticipate conflict with behaviour professionals.

We also anticipate collaboration.

We've had both before, and expect more in the future.