Please sign our petition

I AM founder of AS Support Group Online and Diary of A Painfully Shy Introvert (www.assupportgrouponline.org - www.assupportgrouponline.org/apps/blog).

We have a petition on the UK Parliamentary Website to amend the Harassment Act 1997 (petition.parliament.uk/ petitions/161325).

We started this petition because there are many of us with social issues/incapacities caused by our disabilities who have been classified as a criminal under the amendments that were previously made in 1997.

Autism/Aspergers and other mental health related conditions cause an individual to not understand social cues and they may behave in a way that others consider odd.

Therefore, this law makes these individuals become ‘victims of the system’ and it results in knock on effects, such as, being denied employment, education and even the right to have children - social services taking their children and placing them for adoption - (risk assessments are seen as scoring ‘high risk’ if you’ve been given a criminal label).

Is it really fair that these individuals are effectively ‘punished’ for their disability? Well this law is doing just that.

So, please sign the petition and share it with those that you know - we have six months to get 100,000 signatures in order to get the issue debated in parliament. Emma-Lucy Thomson

by email