Carly Jones MBE is an autistic woman and campaigner for the rights of autistic girls and women. In this article Carly highlights the need for safeguarding autistic girls, based on her professional experience and recent book, Safeguarding Autistic Girls.

I started aiming my advocacy and policy work more towards awareness of safeguarding after finding out how important this was. From an online survey I carried out with autistic people, I found that autistic people experienced less abuse after they were diagnosed as autistic. Some experienced none, or were able to report and stop the abuse. Having a diagnosis and support makes us safer.

I am not only referring to autistic people who are less verbal, and/or have higher personal care support needs, I am of course referring to all autistic people. The ability to seamlessly speak in no way correlates to the ability to seamlessly communicate. 

Autistic people have differences and challenges in recognising and reporting abuse. To recognise abuse you have to understand your own mental and physical boundaries. 

If you are an autistic person who has acute hearing, but every time you’ve begged someone to turn the TV or music down they’ve said “it’s not even loud!”, you start to question your own perspective. In relationships, when someone replies “but I didn’t even hurt you” you’d be more likely to accept it. After all, your entire life you’ve been told your way of experiencing the world is wrong.  

Bullying and mate crime 

One common example I see often in my work is that of bullying and mate crime. 

Bullying is the repetitive, intentional harm to another person of any age. Bullying can happen face to face or online.

Mate crime is a form of crime in which a perpetrator befriends a vulnerable person with the intention of then exploiting the person financially, physically or sexually. Mate crime perpetrators take advantage of the isolation and vulnerability of their victim, in order to win their confidence. 

Why it might affect autistic girls

Sadly, most people have at some point in their lives experienced bullying. Bullying isn’t “normal” but it is extremely common, particularly in the school and workplace. 

Girls who are autistic have a greater vulnerability when experiencing bullying, because they may not be able to recognise and report it early enough. Take at face value the bully’s “it was just friendly banter” excuse, perhaps even brushing off the bullying as what it means to have friends or be in a gang. This leads to greater vulnerability when bullying bleeds into mate crime. It can also mean they are more vulnerable to not recognising and reporting crimes such as economic, domestic and sexual abuse, as they become older.  

How professionals can support autistic girls

Professionals can support autistic girls by ensuring their school environment is autistic friendly. I don’t just mean adapting to sensory differences, for example soft lighting - I mean truly autistic friendly. 

Autistic girls report to me that they dare not admit they are autistic at school, because the word autism is the latest derogatory term in the playground. “That’s so autistic” or “don’t be autistic“, or using it as term to mean “odd” or “weird”. Schools need to make sure that this form of hate crime is not acceptable.

I also believe that buddy systems should not be used in schools. The system, whereby well-intentioned professionals buddy an autistic student with others, may leave the student vulnerable to bullying without a way to escape. Schools need to be very careful to ensure that no bullying takes place within this system, as the autistic student may find it difficult to understand why it is happening.   

Instead, autistic girls need professionals to help them not only learn what a good friend is, but also what a good friend is not. Unstructured time at school is the most vulnerable time for autistic girls, yet often the most unsupervised time of the school day too.

Professionals should develop social clubs for autistic students during these unstructured times, but they should not be labelled as autistic clubs. Instead, they should be based around what interests the autistic girls have, yet be open for all to attend. This way autistic girls have a safe, supervised and enjoyable haven for the unstructured times of the school day. They will meet other students with similar interests to them, and friendships will be able to grow organically and safely. 

Further information

Jones, C. (2021). Safeguarding autistic girls. Strategies for professionals. Jessica Kingsley Professionals