SYDNEY, New South Wales, Australia: A sobbing Daniela Dawes, ringed by police and prison officers, did the unimaginable on August 12 and buried the autistic son she is alleged to have murdered.

Released from jail for the ceremony, she watched as 10-year-old Jason, who died on August 7, was put to rest.

It is alleged that Dawes, frustration overwhelming her, suffocated her son at the family's Kings Langley home.

On August 12, the Dawes family and friends were torn by a tragic double dose of grief as they tried to come to terms with Jason's death and the traumatic circumstances surrounding his mother's imprisonment.

Many of them are behind Dawes, with Jason's uncle Darren saying: "The family is standing by Daniela 100 per cent. Everybody's got some feelings, of course, towards what has happened, but ... for 10 years these people cried for help and it just didn't come."

Jason's father, Craig Dawes, comforted his wife silently, beyond words at the sight of the boy's tiny white coffin flanked by teddy bears, balloons and flowers.

On leave from Mulawa Women's Detention Centre at Silverwater, Dawes looked stunned and downcast as she filed into the Leppington chapel, which was brimming with tearful mourners.
Her wrist bore the bandage that told of her struggle - she is said to have tried to take her own life after Jason's death.

Darren Dawes - Craig Dawes' elder brother - hinted at the division and confusion among family and friends over the tragedy. "There are a lot of people in there who will take a long time to get over this, but at the same time there are a lot of people who will absolutely support the Dawes's," he said.

Detective Senior Constable Steve Dempsey, who was at the funeral, described the family's emotional position as tenuous. "The family could erupt. The whole situation is very volatile," he said.

But it was also a day full of love.

Jason's 13-year-old sister, Alana, made a brave and moving eulogy for a brother she loved and misses.

Tears flowed as Eric Clapton's heartwrenching ode to his own son's death, Tears in Heaven, rang through the chapel.

The ceremony ended with young cousins and friends joining Alana in sending a dozen red, white and blue balloons into the sky to the words, "Fly through the fields, be on your way, don't wait for me."

Darren Dawes spoke of the love and sorrow that poured out as Jason was remembered.

"Jason was a lovely little boy," he said. "Unfortunately, he couldn't speak and he was autistic. He was a bundle of nerves and a bundle of activity. If you can understand this young fella running around all day, every day, 24 hours on the go except for when he was sleeping ... that's what they had to work with," he said. "But no one has a sense of relief that Jason is gone. It's devastating for the family."

Darren said that he and his brother Craig were angry at the situation the family had been placed in. "There's a lot of anger because people don't understand every circumstance. They don't understand all the facts and details, but there's also a lot of anger towards the government and the system that has let Daniela down," he said.

The family plan to fight Daniela's charges fiercely.

"We are now into defensive mode. She's not guilty of any of the charges that they're putting forward," he said.

The pressures on parents of autistic children were so great nearly 85 per cent of their marriages broke down, the president of the Autism Council of Australia said on August 12.

Andrew Brien, whose own young son suffers from the condition, said that parents invested so much time and energy in their autistic children that other parts of their lives were greatly affected.

Autistic children are sometimes known to attack their parents, injure themselves without complaint and run off without explanation, making supervision a full-time job.

"There is no intention behind this," Brien said. "They are not nasty kids. They just don't understand the world. They are either trying to understand or are just exceedingly frustrated."

Brien said that autistic kids had to be taught every single life skill individually.

Toilet training can take years, if it works at all, and sometimes every single word has to be taught to children one by one. Leaving an autistic child alone, even for just a minute, can spell disaster.

Thanks to their often high pain threshold, they sometimes will not cry out or call for their parents if they are injured. "Their perception of danger may not be the same as other children," Brien said.

Adding pressure to parents in this situation was the perception among some in the community that autistic children's behaviour was the fault of the parents.

On August 12, New South Wales' Minister for Disability Services, Carmel Tebbutt, offered condolences to the Dawes family.

"I appreciate the enormous sorrow his family is experiencing," Tebbutt said. "Jason did receive therapy services on an ongoing basis through on of the Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care's local School Aged Therapy Teams. The NSW Government is aware of the challenges face by families and carers of children with a disability and has responded with a wide range of services."

NEW DELHI, India: President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam made hundreds of autistic children smile on August 19 when he mixed with them and asked them to ‘‘spread their wings of imagination and soar high in life."

The emotional President - inaugurating School of Hope, a Delhi-based research, training and therapy centre for children with autism and multiple disability, run by the noted educationist Shyama Chona - declared:  "Love and compassion can move mountains, crush them and carve valleys out of them, where flowers of all colours bloom. Like any other normal child, if we nurture them with love and empower them with education, they can become rising stars and soar high in life."

President Kalam said that children with autism needed psychological, physiological and neurological help, apart from encouragement.

The scientist in him came to the fore when he said: "With great progress in science and technology, it won’t take long for the scientists and researchers to find solution to this. Research is being carried out to see if the right hemisphere of the brain can perform the function if the left hemisphere is damaged. Efforts are on to implant a bio-chip in the brain of such children to enable them to live a normal and healthy life. Even stem cell research can make a huge difference in the lives of autistic children."

Narrating his personal experience with more than 200 special-needs children two years ago in Thiruvananthapuram, the President said: "I was moved when I saw an exhilarating cultural performance put together by these children. It inspired me to write a poem in Tamil which was later set to music by a composer from Kerala."