On March 2, disability rights advocates at ETSU held a Disability Day of Mourning vigil in Brown Hall.
The Disability Day of Mourning commemorates individuals whose deaths have been caused intentionally by their parents or caregivers, which is known as filicide.
The Disability Day of Mourning was started in 2012 by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network to mourn the death of George Hodgins, a 22-year-old autistic man who was killed by his mother. Following Hodgin’s death, many members of the public were sympathetic to Hodgin’s mother.
“When he was killed, journalists and the community alike did not acknowledge George as a human being,” said Courtney Johnson, the Day of Mourning’s Tennessee site coordinator. “He was called low-functioning, high-maintenance and was considered a burden on his mother.”
The names of 165 victims were read aloud during the ceremony as a slideshow of victim’s pictures played in the background.
“That’s actually what we consider the short list,” said Johnson. “A lot of vigils actually do the long list, which is over 1,000 names.”
The lists are compiled by the ASAN and given to Day of Mourning site coordinators to read at the vigils.
The short list is comprised of all the disabled filicide victims from the past year, which includes cases from previous years that weren’t discovered until last year.
“Over and over again, this narrative continues,” said Johnson. “Someone is murdered due to their disabilities, and society justifies this, and sometimes, the murderer gets away without even a slap on the wrist.”
The oldest known case on the short list this year was that of Thy Chan, who died in 1997 of medical neglect.
Thy Chan was a 16-year old girl with cerebral palsy who came from Cambodia and lived in Massachusetts with her foster parents. When Chan fell ill with a temperature of 106 degrees, her foster parents, who were aware of the severity of the illness, ignored her for two days before finally calling an ambulance. Chan died days later in the hospital of viral encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain. Chan’s death was considered to be from natural causes until January 2020, when her neglect was reported by a foster sibling.
“My life is not worth less just because I have a disability,” said Johnson. “We are disabled, and we are allowed to take up space in this world just like anyone else.”
