Teen With Asperger's Syndrome Opts to Educate Kids Who Beat Him

Gavin Stone is a teenager with a lot of compassion. According to his mother’s viral Facebook post, after a group of kids surrounded and beat her son on Friday, June 26, Stone opted not to press charges and instead teach his attackers a valuable lesson.

Stone, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and ADHD when he was 3 years old, has struggled to find longtime friends. He “can appear rude, impatient, ‘weird,’ detached, or uninterested, but this is not intentional,” his mom, Cortnie Stone, wrote on Facebook. After his alleged attack, Gavin Stone suffered a mild concussion, bruised esophagus, fractured nose and black eye.

 

 

 

The teenager did not press charges — he instead requested his attackers’ “community service be disability related, that they write a paper on Asperger’s, and that they watch a 20 min video statement he taped while their families were present so they could see the damage they did and hear the event from his perspective,” according to Cortnie Stone’s Facebook post.

A family friend, Susan Moffatt, shared that post (with permission), adding some of her own commentary. Moffatt’s post has been shared more than 140,000 times. “If I get through to just one person tonight that THIS IS NOT OK then I have accomplished my goal with this post,” Moffatt wrote. She added:

If you are reading this, I hope you talk to your teens, tell them about disabilities you can’t see, teach them to be tolerant of people that are different, teach them that if they continuously see someone alone that maybe it is not their choice to be alone, remind them to ask questions first and get to know one another.

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