I read the following article last night in the September issue of Vanity Fair. It is also on their web site, so I thought I would post the link. Even though it is not specifically about autism, it is about having a disabled child. In this case, Mr. Miller felt compelled to institutionalize his son when he was only a few days old. He never went to see him again as he was growing up. From all accounts, the son was/is a remarkable person.
http://www.vanityfair.com/fame/features/2007/09/miller200709
The article is 5 pages, but a very interresting read.
Long but interesting, and very very sad. I've enjoyed Arthur Miller's plays, but it seems hard to respect him now. Even if it was common to institutionalize special-needs children at the time, it seems like he could at least have seen to it that his son was at a good instituion instead of one where conditions were so poor that the Department of Justice sued the State of Connecticut.
On the plus side, the article said that actor Daniel Day-Lewis (married to Miller's daughter) is supposed to have been a good influence.
Thanks for sharing the link.
It was hard to read that someone would not use the considerable
One happy note of the story is the fact that a couple basicly acted as his parents, and he now lives with them as an adult.
The following part of the article caught my attention and it's good for parents here to be aware of.
Arthur Miller signed his last will on December 30, naming as executors his children Rebecca Miller Day-Lewis, Jane Miller Doyle, and Robert Miller. Daniel was not mentioned in the will, but he was named in separate trust documents that Miller signed that day, which are sealed from public view. In those, according to a letter from Rebecca Miller, Arthur bequeathed "everything left over after taxes and special bequests to his four children. This includes Danny, whose share is no different from mine or my other siblings."
It was a dramatic gesture, and one that almost no attorney would have encouraged. To receive state and federal funding, people with incapacitating disabilities must maintain assets at or below the poverty level. Any amount above that is often claimed by the state to pay for their care. To protect their assets and to get the maximum public funding, most wealthy parents of disabled children leave their inheritances to other relatives or create a "special-needs trust."
By leaving the money directly to Daniel, Miller made him too wealthy to receive government assistance—and left the Miller estate open to being hit up by the state of Connecticut for everything it had spent on Daniel's care over the years. Which is exactly what happened. Shortly after the will was filed, Connecticut's Department of Administrative Services "issued one reimbursement claim to Danny Miller," according to the estate's lawyer, for a "portion of his care when he was a minor." That claim, the attorney says, is now in the process of being settled.
What Arthur Miller's intentions were at the end of his life remain a mystery. Did he ignore his lawyers' advice? In choosing not to establish a special-needs trust, did he want to free Daniel from the limits of government funding, to provide more for him than he would get from public assistance? The only person in a position to answer these questions is Miller's daughter Rebecca, but she refused numerous requests to be interviewed. In response to a lengthy list of questions about her father's decision to institutionalize his son, his relationship with Daniel, and his 39-year effort to keep his son's existence a secret, Rebecca Miller, who also has never spoken publicly about Daniel and would not permit him to be interviewed, wrote: "The only person who can truly answer your questions is my father, and he is dead."