Tony Attwood and Isabelle Hénault, the World Is Watching

Clinical psychologists Tony Attwood and Isabelle Hénault have been very successful in book sales, speaking tours, and other presentations regarding autism. Unfortunately, they also are very closely associated with both Maxine Aston, inventor of the bogus Cassandra disorder, and the infamous Massachusetts hate group FAAAS, which has repeatedly claimed that autistics are violent by nature and abuse their family members. Both Attwood and Hénault are members of FAAAS' professional advisory board and presented at FAAAS conferences for several years beginning in 2000.


Conference photo, a.k.a. Tony Attwood's Hall of Shame

(l-r: Karen Rodman of FAAAS, Hénault, Attwood, Aston)


In March, both Attwood and Hénault gave presentations at a conference in Sydney, Australia, sponsored by a group called ASPIA, which claims to be a support group for people involved in relationships with autistics. Sound familiar? Yup, it's another hate group peddling the same old garbage. I posted a blog entry last month illustrating the hypocrisy, bigotry, and total lack of ethics in such groups and how they destroy relationships. Nonetheless, Attwood and Hénault have continued to appear at these events, no doubt because their association with the Cassandra cult has been very lucrative over the years. The Cassandra groups have provided them with buyers for their books, conference fee money, and increased name recognition. In return, the presence of credentialed psychologists at these events has given the Cassandra cultists an appearance of legitimacy, which has helped them to suck in new converts. Seems like a win-win situation—except for bothersome little details like integrity, decency, and the human rights of autistics and people with disabilities.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network has posted an online petition calling on Tony Attwood and Isabelle Hénault to renounce their Aston/FAAAS/ASPIA connections and to make a public apology to the autistic community, as well as to the cross-disability community regarding FAAAS' insinuations that all people with neurological disabilities are likely to be abusive. This is not the first time members of our community have raised the issue with Attwood and Hénault. Several concerned people have tried to discuss it with them in private. However, their usual mode of response has been to make nice soothing sounds, wait for the pesky autistics to go away, and then go right back to consorting with Aston and FAAAS. Not surprising, given Tony Attwood's history of minstrel show attitudes toward autistics. Now that it is all out in the open, we'll see if they respond in a more meaningful way.

I have stated before on this blog that minority communities, such as the autistic community, have both the right and the responsibility to police themselves and to ensure that those who seek to exploit their people under the guise of providing services are not allowed to do so. As we have seen with other civil rights movements, minority groups who struggle against intolerance can exert significant economic power by refusing to patronize vendors who knowingly spread intolerance. When professionals claim to have expertise in meeting the needs of the community's members, but are in fact spreading harmful stereotypes for financial gain, the community would be well within its rights to say to them: You're fired. Whether that happens with Attwood and Hénault will depend on their willingness, now that their unsavory associations have become widely known, to change their ways and make a genuine apology for the harm caused by their associations.