It is said that autism imprisons both the person who has it and their family. In cases as extreme as my son’s this is certainly true.
 By the age of four my son, who has both very severe autism and an extreme learning disability, could no longer cope with travelling away from home. As we are English living in Ireland this meant our annual trips to visit family and friends came to a sudden, grinding halt. We found ourselves in unwitting exile.
 Twelve years, and much improvement later, I thought my son had come to a point where we could successfully attempt a trip back home.
 Autism does not travel alone. Those who are affected can suffer a host of associated problems and my son is no exception. He has acute dietary and chemical sensitivities and at nearly sixteen has only managed toilet-training in the last year. Thus the planning of the trip was akin to a military campaign. I joked to a friend that it was like Hannibal crossing the Alps – except the logistics of taking elephants across mountains were simpler and this was no exaggeration.
 My son has no speech and understands only a limited number of single words relevant to his everyday life so taking him on a plane was not a viable option for our first attempt at travel. The anxieties involved in being closely confined in something he cannot comprehend  along with a large number of other people could be disastrous. We may have got him there but could have found ourselves completely unable to get him back again.
 So, armed with a car full of gluten and dairy free food, containers of specially filtered water (tap and many branded waters make him ill), spare pants (just in case) and a pile of Beano comics my son, my 19 year old daughter and I set out on a journey of four hours driving on either side with a ferry crossing in the middle.
 My son was brilliant. He loves car-riding and, twelve years on, was perfectly happy on the ferry so when we arrived at midnight in West Wales I was  quietly confident that we had the whole thing sussed. Until we got off the ferry.
 Bear in mind that I am a 56 year old single Mum travelling with two of my children, one of whom is severely disabled. We are all English. We are not likely candidates for either binge-drinking, terrorism, illegal entry or drug-running, although I have to confess that the numerous packets of gluten-free food mixtures in the boot may have looked suspicious.
 We were pulled over by a Welsh policeman who asked to see our identification. Whilst I got this out of my bag he bent down, looked through our window at my son and daughter and asked quite confrontationally if any of our party had been drinking, despite the fact that there was no reason to assume we had.
 My daughter answered quite genuinely that she does not drink. Although this is admittedly unusual in someone of her age it was true and did not warrant the sarcastic ‘Oh, so you don’t drink’ that she got in reply.
 I told the policeman that we were both teetotal and at this point he stared into the back seat at my son.
 My son looks older than he is. He cannot cope with anyone attempting to shave his face, it’s just too scary and invasive for him – so he is bearded and this puts a few years on him. He is also a good-looking lad and doesn’t, on a good day, always look too obviously autistic or disabled.
 He does, however, hate direct attention from strangers and the invasive stare of the policeman was met with a silent, poker-faced glare from my son.
 My confidence plummeted. All my careful preparation had not taken this kind of incident into account. This man, for reasons best known to himself, was picking on us and in doing so was creating a situation that could have gone horribly wrong. My son will react in one of two ways when put under this anxiety-making kind of pressure. Either he will hide under something or he will explode into loud and (given that he cannot speak) incoherent yelling. How this man, who had already made a presumption that we had been drinking, would have interpreted either of these reactions does not bear thinking about.
 Whilst my daughter and I have photographic ID, it is impossible to obtain  this for my son. One of the consequences of his extreme autism is an acute aversion to the close attention required to get a good enough photograph to obtain a passport or other relevant documentation. But as an EU citizen and a minor travelling between Ireland and England he does not, at present, require these anyway. Although it should be noted that the planned introduction of mandatory passports will cause major problems for people like him.
 As a precaution I had brought along a report from his psychologist that verified both who he was and his condition. When I produced this item, and only then, did the policeman have the good grace to wave us on.
 The incident frightened my son, left my daughter furious and left me decimated at the thought of how horribly wrong it could all have gone.
 The prospect of equivalent treatment on our return journey so overshadowed our holiday that I rang both the ferry company and the Welsh police to explain my son’s condition, tell them the likely problems and give them the date and time of our return journey. I did receive an apology and an assurance, both from them and from the ferry company,  that we would not encounter similar problems on the way back.
 However, as we drove through the checkpoint on our return we were once again pulled over, this time by private security, to have our car searched. It was only the intervention of a more senior official, who was clearly aware of who we were, that prevented us and all our belongings being removed from our car – a situation that would have been a powderkeg for my son.
 I cannot understand why we were singled out for this kind of attention other than that I drive a sporty red car and we are all quite trendy-looking and thus possibly fit some kind of preconceived stereotype. We watched boring beige saloons and terrier-friendly hatchbacks driven by grey-haired occupants being continually waved through with a smile.
The implications of this are twofold.
Observant terrorists, illegal entrants and drug-runners need only recruit a few discontented pensioners and their canine companions to their cause to ensure smooth passage.
Those travelling with autism in their party would do well to factor these possible complications into their already impossibly long lists of logistics if they wish to have any hope of the same.

This article was published on Indymedia.org in November, 2009.