Piers Bolduc on You and Yours

 This letter was forwarded to the Asperger UK group today with permission of Cris Bolduc, mother of Piers Bolduc.  I urge anyone with access to BBC Radio 4 to listen to You and Yours tomorrow. Piers was misdiagnosed as mentally ill  and placed on powerful antipsychotic drugs. When he wounded a man while on medication he was sectioned and sent to Broadmoor, the top security prison for the criminally insane, which contains serial killers, mass murderers and sex offenders.  While there he was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. The Daily Telegraph campaigned for his release and in 2004 he was transferred to the Hayes Unit, the only secure unit specifically run for people with Aspergers Syndrome.

BBC RADIO 4 ‘YOU & YOURS’ this Thursday, 13th September 2007 at 12.04 mid-day.If all goes according to plan the programme we have recorded with the
BBC, on various occassions and locations since May, will be aired
THIS Thursday 13th September on RADIO 4 ‘YOU & YOURS’ at 12.04. Its
all about lack of care/units for adults with Asperger Syndrome and hi-
lites our son Piers’ tragic case.
Apologies in advance if its re-scheduled for sometime the following
week but that is the way it goes in the media! As I write it is still
on course for this Thursday. Although a great deal of recordings were
made, after editing it will be cut down to size so don’t blink or go
and make a coffee or you might miss it! I just feel that ‘every
little helps’ (to borrow a phrase!) not only for us and Piers but
other families struggling within the minefields of flawed placements
and the postal code lottery of accessing support and services.
You should be able to ‘listen again’ by putting: You & Yours listen
again, into your computer’s Google search a few days after it is
aired.
Please excuse the Round Robin but it is the quickest way to alert
everyone!
AllBestCris

Here is the article that celebrated his release from Broadmoor 3 years ago.

Asperger’s man is released from Broadmoor

By Daniel Foggo

Last Updated: 7:40pm BST 07/08/2004

A man suffering from Asperger’s syndrome who was wrongly sent to Broadmoor after being misdiagnosed with schizophrenia has been released after a campaign by The Telegraph. Piers Bolduc, 28, was put on powerful drugs which he did not need and held at the hospital for the criminally insane since he was 19, despite not suffering from mental illness or having any convictions. Asperger’s is a mild form of autism which is fundamentally unresponsive to drugs, because it is a condition and not an illness. He was finally transferred last week to the Hayes Independent Hospital in Bristol, the only facility in Britain that caters specifically for people with Asperger’s. [continue to article] Who knows how many other autistic people are being misdiagnosed and mistreated within our mental health system. And I know that for many mentally ill people the system is just as bad.

Who is to blame for our son’s death?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2007/07/30/hasper130.xml&page=1

This story is so sad and so avoidable. My son is not so different from Tim Whattler. He is doing OK at the moment.  But this was not always the case. We are not so different from Tim’s parents. We fought similar battles on our son’s behalf. Often we lost. We couldn’t understand it either.

We are lucky. Our son has survived. But it should not be about luck. Tim’s death is a waste; such a loss. It is not a tragedy. It is a crime, though I doubt there will ever be a guilty verdict.