Was This Handled Properly? I Have No Experience with Autistic People.

The fact that he is disabled doesn't require you to allow physical contact with which you are uncomfortable.
Even if you had known that he was autistic, you still would not be obligated to accept inappropriate physical contact.
I have a good friend whose son has Asperger's, and sometimes goes random because of it. It is the responsibility of whoever is supervising him to bring him into compliance with acceptable social norms. It is not the responsibility of everyone else in the public square to inquire as to whether he has a cognitive disability when he acts inappropriately.
Those who were there with him and knew of his behavioral issues associated with his disorder should have been keeping an eye on him.

Yes, you handled it right.I have an autistic grandson who sometimes has an inappropriate response because he doesn't pick up on social cues. One of us will intervene when this happens. Where was the sister while this was happening? Family and friends know him and how he acts. They are responsible for guiding.this man into appropriate behavior. The sister should'be berm apologizing for her brother's behavior while telling you he's autistic. There is no way for you to know the cause of his grossly inappropriate behavior. She was also grossly inappropriate.

Updated

Yes, you handled it right.I have an autistic grandson who sometimes has an inappropriate response because he doesn't pick up on social cues. One of us will intervene when this happens. Where was the sister while this was happening? Family and friends know him and how he acts. They are responsible for guiding.this man into appropriate behavior. The sister should'be berm apologizing for her brother's behavior while telling you he's autistic. There is no way for you to know the cause of his grossly inappropriate behavior. She was also grossly inappropriate.

Updated

Yes, you handled it right.I have an autistic grandson who sometimes has an inappropriate response because he doesn't pick up on social cues. One of us will intervene when this happens. Where was the sister while this was happening? Family and friends know him and how he acts. They are responsible for guiding.this man into appropriate behavior. The sister should'be berm apologizing for her brother's behavior while telling you he's autistic. There is no way for you to know the cause of his grossly inappropriate behavior. She was also grossly inappropriate when she berated you.

Try not to feel too bad - you did the right thing. As a mom of 2 teens with disabilities, although I hope that people are understanding of their unusual behaviors, I also hold my kiddos to a "societal standard" and if they can't (or won't - sometimes their behaviors are can't sometimes won't), I need to intervene as their care giver and either leave the situation with my son or ask the person whom the behavior is being put towards if they are OK with this.

The person at fault isn't the guy, and it isn't you/the restaurant, it is his caregivers - the people who are responsible for keeping him safe and those around him safe. My guess is they got upset because they knew they weren't doing their job and I am guessing this isn't the first time this has happened.

I hate to say it, but an apology is not in order, should one be demanded of you or the restaurant. Admitting liability could go towards a civil action.

Good luck (and chin up - you can't read minds!)

what a horrible mother for not watching her disabled child. shame on her.
if she would of known about her child wherabouts then he would not of been kicked out. so not your fault.
you handled the situation correctly!
i would of responded to her "did you lkow he was autistic?" question with a did you know he was sexually harrassing someone? and that we could have him arrested?

You can't advocate for people retroactively. That is to say, if he'd already been to the hostess stand a few times, it would have been good if one of his party had followed up on where he was going. The mother was over the top and if she was so protective of him (and expecting others to make huge allowances for him), she should have been more attentive.

We had a situation years ago where someone in our poetry group asked for a leadership role in running an open-mike. After constantly being late and two outright no shows, we took the responsibility away from him. His girlfriend, also in our group, was furious with us-- she said he had a brain injury and couldn't remember scheduled events,appointments, without help. She claimed that we should have called him and reminded him. Maybe, if we'd known, we might have tried to work with him but no, you can't advocate for someone *after* they have made a mess of things. So, I think you did the best you could in the circumstances. We all want to be sensitive to the abilities/limitations of others, but if we don't know and aren't made aware, it's pretty impossible.

Wow well as the mom of a 10 year old with autism - I'm terrified of how he will be able to navigate the extremely complex social aspect that comes with teens and young adulthood.

You did nothing wrong - how are you suppose to know he has autism? and hopefully he learned from the consequence of being kicked out of the restaurant and will not get himself into more difficult situations. Also it is his parents job to overtrain him and put him in social skills classes. I would have asked you if you would be comfortable with him apologizing to you. His parents are the type that excuse away his behavior instead of teaching him appropriate behaviors.

Hopefully your mind and heart will be at ease hearing this from a parent in their shoes my son also had an intellectual disability not just social deficits as party of his autism.

This family is doing their son a real disservice. They're allowing him to roam around unsupervised (suppose he said something to someone who got angry and punched him in the face?), and accusing others of "mistreating" a disabled person, instead of kindly and patiently explaining to their family member (AGAIN, probably for the millionth time, but...) how we behave in public and how we treat others. And then they should have demonstrated to their family member how to politely apologize and how to treat others, regardless of disability or ability. And then they should have taken care of him.

I am sure they are tired. I am sure that they sometimes feel defeated, and like they're getting nowhere, and that the world is a tough place for severely disabled people and their caregivers. It is. But they're just adding to the problem. He's autistic. They're acting entitled and making excuses. He is innocent. They're not.

The reason you're feeling badly is because you have compassion and common sense. Who knows? That young man could possibly have learned better social propriety if his family had worked with him. Instead, he acts inappropriately, they accuse you of discrimination. Leaving him unsupervised, and allowing him to leave on his own (when the manager asked him to leave) possibly exposed him to danger, and that's frightening.

Even if this was a one-time thing, perhaps they were embarrassed, but that's no excuse for their behavior. You handled things very well.

I would have said, in a loud voice, "YOU NEED TO BACK AWAY AND STOP TALKING ABOUT MY BREASTS" when he leaned in and got within inches of my face and started making lurid comments about my breasts.

If the family knows he does this activity then it's their job to manage him in public. They must know how incredibly rude he is.

In developmental disability fields we have whole sheets of goals, outcomes, implementation strategies for teaching people person space and how to socially interact with people in different ways. Such as hugging mom compared to hugging a cashier at Walmart compared to how they are allowed to greet people in the work place.

He was booted from your business due to being rude, suggestive, inappropriate, and unsupervised by his family where they must know he acts completely incorrect.

If a review of your business is put on any community pages in FB please make sure you boldly tell your side of the story such as this.

I was standing at my post waiting for customers to enter our place and a man walked up to me and acted in a flirtatious manner. But it quickly became very uncomfortable for me as he moved on to getting right up next to me and leaning in towards my face, making comments about my breasts, .....(add every detail here) to such a point that I contacted the manager on duty. I was very uncomfortable at this point. When the man came back again I pointed him out to the manager and he asked the man to leave due to his inappropriate actions toward me, the manager thought he was high or perhaps drunk since he was stumbling around. After this people came up and informed us this man was autistic. He was not being supervised by his family nor did they step in and tell him to step back from me nor did they try to teach him about personal space and things that are not acceptable in the community."

This will share your side of the story in a way that shows you had no idea he was handicapped nor did he have family that was overseeing his experience in the community setting. This is sad, so sad for him and who he represents when he's out in the community. I would feel the same as you but I would have loudly told him that my breasts are none of his concern and if he didn't go find a seat until it was time for him to be seated he would have to leave.

Then every single person in the waiting area would have known he was saying crude and rude things to you and watched him more closely for you and perhaps his family would have intervened sooner.

To the best of my knowledge, being autistic is not an excuse for sexual harassment.
If his mother was upset, then where was she when he was trying to get physical with you?
She needs to keep a better eye on him.

Just because he's autistic doesn't mean the behavior towards you was okay. Autism may be part of the reason, but it is not an excuse.

If this sort of thing is something that he's prone to do and hasn't yet learned to manage, it means his mother (or another caregiver) should be more diligent with monitoring his social interactions.

You and the restaurant handled it fine. You have no way of knowing what someone's disability is, or isn't. What did the family expect? That you would give the guy a list of possible diagnoses that he might have? That would be none of your business. And the reasons aren't the issue - the behavior is. What was done wrong here is that the family allowed him to roam around unsupervised. You could get into a debate with his mother, answering her "Gee, no, how would I know he's autistic? And how would that change his attempts to kiss me and touch my breasts?" But it would have done no good. What SHOULD have happened is that the family members would come upon the scene, say, "Bill, you need to leave this lady alone and come with me." If they so chose (and it's their option), they could say "He's autistic and doesn't understand social conventions" or even "He has a mental disability and meant no harm, but I am sorry he bothered you." That would keep the management from calling the police or throwing him out. But they didn't do their job. They are uneducated about how to handle someone with a disability and the inability to read social cues or observe personal space. You did fine. PERHAPS (and this might not work in all cases), you could ask a person like that (mentally challenged, even drunk) if he's here with anyone, and have your manager escort the man back to his party, to see what reaction they get. A simple, "Your friend needs to stay with you and stop touching the staff members in their private parts" would have sufficed regardless of the cause of the man's actions, and would put the family/friends on notice that he's welcome on the premises if he keeps his hands to himself.

i'd be pretty irate at her if his autism is so severe that he's assaulting strange women in public and no one is there to help redirect him.
you did nothing wrong. in fact, you handled it very pleasantly and discreetly.
if he had been thrown out and punched, it would have been HER fault for letting her son wander unsupervised, just as if he were a small child. if his sister was there in the restaurant, why wasn't SHE watching him? at the very least she should have seen what was happening and apologized to you before taking her brother back to the table.
i feel sorry for this young man. it's not his fault he doesn't have the life skills to be out alone in public, but it's not yours either.
khairete
S.

You did NOTHING wrong. This awful mother excuses her son's behavior by yelling at other people who don't know. She is a real jerk and should be ashamed of herself.

He obviously cannot care for himself, which is why he was there with family, though it wasn't apparent to you. So they KNOW what he usually does, and they didn't let you know when he started this stuff. Mom should have gotten up and asked her son to sit down, and then told you that he is autistic.

Why she would yell "did you know he was autistic??!!" is crazy. Of course you didn't know. You can't tell most of the time.

Don't feel bad about this, AT ALL. This is NOT your fault or your manager's.

It sounds like you all worked with the information you had, and I get that she was being a protective parent. BUT - if she were REALLY doing her job, this situation would NOT have happened.

As the parent of an autistic male child, she was wrong. Seriously, flat out wrong. If he is behaving in a socially/sexually inappropriate manner it was/is HER JOB to teach him not to, and her responsibility to stay with him if he is unable to understand. It is not his fault if he has cognitive issues that make it difficult for him to understand.

This has nothing to do with autism. It has everything to do with the poor young man not able to comprehend his inappropriate behavior and not having proper supervision by people who KNOW that this is an issue. Or it's an issue with him being able to comprehend but not being TAUGHT proper behavior.

Sadly, many people assume that the disabled are asexual and "aren't capable" of mature relationships and they are never given the social/sex ed classes that their typical peers get - which is dangerous FOR THEM because they easily become victims, or "offenders" because they just plow into situations they have no knowledge of or experience with.

I don't think there was anything else you all could have done. It's a crappy situation if this young man, who has age appropriate urges, doesn't have age appropriate info to go with them (or supervision if he's cognitively challenged) so he doesn't get into these situations in the first place.

Oh jeez. The answer was, "No, I didn't know he was autistic. I thought he was drunk."

You'd think that a mother would have inured herself to someone misunderstanding her autistic son after twenty-five years, and stopped with the combative, militant attitude.

You did nothing wrong. Your response was normal and appropriate. She needs to get a grip. Not everyone wants to be kindly fondled, even by someone with autism.

Neither you nor the restaurant did anything inappropriate. You have the right to and deserve a harassment free work place. Having a disability of any kind is not an excuse for that behavior. Where was his family during all of this? HELLO....I'm sorry but he is their responsibility and didn't they know where he was going off to?
Rest asured, it's not you

Sorry but I find this really hard to believe. My SD is MOMR (moderately retarded). When she was younger (pre-teen) we had to watch her like a hawk. If we went to get the car washed, she would run up to the guys that wiped it down and try to hug and kiss them. She was just happy they cleaned our car, but obviously this was not ok on many levels.

So being the parent of a SN child, now adult, I can't imagine the parents/sister/guardian letting this young man just wander around a bar unsupervised if he has the tendency to behave like that. Highly unlikely.

Did you get enough information to get your homework done? Where do you go, St John? At least you guys stopped using the Jamaica zip that made it really obvious. Do they encourage you to come to this site?

Even in a large restaurant that has three bars you would know if there was a large party during a slow period and if he was flirting with you he would have been flirting with his actual waitress and management would know. You said it was slow enough that over a period of time you, a waitress, had enough time to hang out at the hostess station while he came back over and over.

Perhaps if you gave us the exact question you are stuck on we would be better able to help you.