Help an Autistic Abuse Survivor Rebuild His Life

I am looking to help an Autistic man who escaped a severe abuse false imprisonment at the hands of his family restart life and be able to afford the necessities he needs. Immediate needs are clothing, bedding, we are also hoping to plan for long term needs like, cost of classes that will help with reintegration, etc.

TLDR: “Johnny”, a 23-year-old autistic man, was subjected to severe abuse and illegal activities by his father and stepmother in Rural Oklahoma. His parents falsely claimed autistic people cannot work or be independent, restricted him to their property, and supervised his rare outings closely. They took his Social Security payments, provided no personal allowance, and kept him unaware of his own financial details. Johnny's father, a convicted rapist and registered sex offender, physically abused him, particularly after an attempt to escape. The abuse included beatings, physical abuse, threats of violence, emotional abuse, and threats of institutionalization. Johnny was denied access to personal documents, education, and medical records, with his parents controlling and potentially misusing his identification and financial information. He escaped in the middle of the night with very little and needs some help getting established. He was only able to leave with a backpack and a trash bag.

We have made crime reports to the IRS, State Welfare office and Social Security Administration and the local police and sheriffs departments.

In late June, I read a post on reddit where someone was asking what autistic people are really capable of and able to do. This person, who said he was 23, mentioned that he has autism and that his parents don't allow him to leave the house. They told him that autistic people can't work, aren't allowed to be out in public by themselves and called him “retarded”. I was shocked and thought, "What?" The message was easy to understand and did not come off as someone who needed significant supports due to a cognitive disability.

I responded, "Hey friend, I'm autistic and my husband is also autistic and in his 40s. I'm working on an advanced college degree and my husband is a software engineer who is learning his third language." I added that it sounds like he has pretty low support needs based on what he said. He mentioned that he does all of the housework and takes care of his younger siblings, etc. So I offered to send resources via DM.

Essentially, I had been like, "Let me tell you the things we do as autistic people." I broke down the different levels of autism for him in the post and offered to send him resources if he needed them. He messaged back on Reddit, asking if I could DM him the resources because he really needed help and felt something was wrong.

We started DMing, and he told me things that didn't sound right and I felt he was in serious danger.

He wasn't allowed to do things like go off of their property or even go to the grocery store alone. At 23, he wasn't allowed to do anything by himself. He said that he only left the property one time per month to go grocery shopping and only under supervision of his step mom or another family member. He mentioned that he had a job in 2021, but his dad refused to drive him to any longer when his boss started cashing his checks and giving him the cash so his dad couldn’t steal the money.

He also mentioned that he had run away three weeks prior to our conversation, which was about six weeks ago now. The police stopped him, and his dad convinced the sheriff to tell him to go home. When he went home, his dad beat him and kicked him in the groin and claimed that the cop had said it was okay to do so because he had run away and was autistic. He believed his fathers claim as he had no reason up until this point to not believe him. He was brainwashed. I explained to him that cops wouldn't tell anyone it was ok to harm another person, even if they are your child. His dad was using the fact that he wasn't near the police officer to make up a story to scare him. He asked if I was sure, and I assured him that I was positive the police would not tell his dad it was okay to beat him. This beating was brutal from how it was explained to me. Focusing kicks to his groin.

I asked how he was able to communicate with me. He wasn't allowed to have a cell phone and the way that he was able to get on Reddit was that he had an Xbox and his dad let him hook the xbox up to the internet service because you need that to download video games. But his dad didn't know you could download apps and he got the Reddit app and that he had seen some youtube videos where people on youtube read other people's stories from Reddit and he thought maybe I can put my story on Reddit and someone would help me.

I began to gather more information on his situation. He lived with his biological father and his stepmom as well as two younger brothers. He stated he had childhood social security from Autism and his dad doesn't work. The family lives off of his social security disability payment and his step moms wages.He stated they also received government assistance and that is how they are surviving. He stated they lived in a trailer on his grandmother's property in rural Oklahoma.

I asked him if he was comfortable giving me his name and birth date so I could look and see if there was some sort of conservatorship or other guardianship readily available. I explained to him what a conservatorship was and I asked did you have to go to court at all or talk to a lawyer after you turned 18 and he said no that his parents just said because he was an “R word”, they were in charge of him for the rest of his life and that he was lucky to even have a place to be with them, they threatened him with institutionalization.

I looked him up on both the OK state website and PACER and did not see an indication of a conservatorship. There is a name change court order from when he was younger he explained that to me like prior to my search, he had stated he had a different last name as a kid and his dad wanted him to change his last name so they had matching ones. The police have since confirmed, there is no conservatorship and he was able to leave at any time, but his parents kept him trapped.

I also I found that I found that his dad was a convicted rapist his dad was a jail guard who raped an inmate his father is also on the sex offender registry.

And I found child abuse charges from when Johnny was in foster care, the charges were against the against the father. Johnny had told me prior to me finding these charges that when he was a kid his dad said he hit his sister and they took him away and anytime Johnny would get in trouble even his dad would drive him to that foster house and tell him he's gonna leave him there because he was scared of the foster parents. I couldn’t find much on the charges except that after a few years the charges were dropped.

After Johnny left most recently in June, his father threatened him with security cameras in order to keep him in the house 24/7 and to force him to be compliant. Johnny did not believe that he was free to leave because anytime he would try, the police would be called and he would be severely punished or beaten.

I asked him if he had ever gone to the store alone, even Walmart. He stated he was only allowed to leave with parental supervision or with his school when he was in school.

I asked him if he knew a social security number or had access to any of his personal documents or if he knew anything about himself. He said that his parents told him that he was the “R word” because he had brain scans that they showed he wasn’t able to do anything and his medical records were none of his business. He was not even allowed to know his own social security number or where his birth certificate was located. Johnny wasn’t even aware that he had actually graduated high school, his father kept telling him he hadn’t due to the fact he was “r word” and we were able to actually get his transcripts and he had a 3.41 GPA.

I had asked him about his disability and if he was getting SSI. He stated he was, he wasn’t sure how much per month he was getting, but he thought maybe it was around $750.00 per month because that's what his dad had mentioned once a while ago. He also stated his family received food stamps. Recently, we learned that Johnny as also getting money from OK DFS. Johnny has never seen any of this money nor did he even know who his representative payee was. We have requested an investigation with SSI and OK DFS as well because Johnny believes his parents stole the money and did not use it appropriately. Johnny was not even given a 5.00 per month stipend, despite what should have been incredibly low costs of living for the area (the home and property they lived in belonged to his grandmother and the average rent for a room in the Bristow area is quite low comparative to most areas).

I verified his identity and his location. Once I was fairly certain he was who he said he was, I contacted shelters who suggested that because he was an SSI recipient we should contact APS before they could help. I filed a report with APS on his behalf (at his request) and provided an email address that they could contact him at, as at this time he did not have any other way to communicate. The APS worker told him that her supervisor stated unless he was willing to involve his family in the planning all she could do is send him resources that he would need to contact himself. He told her that he was not willing to involve his parents in the planning, because there was a high risk of violence. I understand his decision, his father had already been physically violent against him and he was afraid this would escalate. He had confided in me that he was scared the only reason he was being kept alive was for his social security check.

I spent days trying to find shelters or anywhere that could take him. Because he did not have access to his social security money or even his social security number he had no way to rent housing. Unfortunately there were no real options, especially because he was in the middle of nowhere with no transportation, one DV shelter even told me that transportation is their weakest point and they rarely have rides for DV victims. I finally reached out to a mutual aid group in OKC who was willing to help and pick him up whenever we could make it work. They spent about a week and a half trying to find shelter for him. But it came up short. I eventually asked my parents if they could take him in and give him a place to stay in their backyard cottage. They agreed.

In the middle of the night, Johnny was picked up by the mutual aid group and with a plane ticket I purchased, dropped him off at the OKC airport and flew him to stay with my family members in FL on July 17th 2024 until more stable housing can be found. He is welcome to stay there as long as he needs.

There was a missing persons report filed on Johnny in OK. My parents contacted the police and let them know where they could come see Johnny and verify that he was safe and choosing to be there.