Me being interviewed by Zachary Fink, a reporter from NJN news, in the post-hearing press conference. None of this footage was used in the NJN news segment on TV, so I thought I'd post what my friend recorded up here.
All video footage recorded by Daniel Uhl.
**INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:
AG: Amy Gravino
ZF: Where are you from?
AG: I'm originally from Port Jefferson, NY, but I live in Montclair, NJ.
ZF: Spell your last name?
AG: G-R-A-V-I-N-O
ZF: Okay. Tell me, you testified today about what you were diagnosed with?
AG: Uh, Asperger's Syndrome
ZF: Tell me just a little bit about that, and is there a spectrum, where do you fall in the spectrum, and what could be, you know, I guess learned about your case?
AG: Well, I see Autism as sort of a family, and Asperger's is kind of a cousin that everybody knows about but no one ever sees, except at Christmas and Easter. Autism being the spectrum that it is, Asperger's would be considered to be on the higher-functioning end, with the impairments being with social skills, and, uh, sensory issues as well, certain perseverations, and obsessive interest in certain subjects, but not so much with a lot of the speech issues that present in classic Autism. That's sort of the gist of it.
ZF: When did you, sort of, become aware of that, and what did you do, I guess, initially, then, when you became aware of that?
AG: Well, I was diagnosed when I was 10 years old, so I was just a kid. Um, my parents knew that something was amiss, and they, through many serieses of knowing this guy and that guy, and going through the chain of events, I wound up at Stony Brook University's Child Psychology Department, and I was diagnosed there by a child psychologist who met with me for about 5 minutes and he knew that I had it. And this was 1994, when Asperger's was just added to the DSM-IV, so it was amazing that I was even diagnosed at that point. Um, and again, I was just a kid, I didn't realize that other people didn't think the same way that I did, I just, I thought everybody else saw things the same way that I did, and that's when I started becoming aware that they didn't, and then I didn't know what was wrong with me that I couldn't see things the way that they did. So, it started-- I started turning inward and really coming to hate myself because I couldn't get friends.
ZF: Tell me, I guess, about what treatment you do that feels that it's really beneficial.
AG: Uh, honestly, I really didn't have much in the way of treatment because there wasn't anything back then ... I had biofeedback which consisted of having electrodes on my chin and my head with je- cold jelly and moving balloons over a wall with my mind. And, um, I had some social skills classes and things like that. But it wasn't really that, you know, beneficial. I did see a speech-- speech language pathologist in high school and middle school, but there were other kids there with other diagnoses and it wasn't specifically tailored for someone with Asperger's, so it wasn't really beneficial to me that much because it was not things that I really needed help with, and so they didn't know what to do with me. There were no academic issues, which was what most of the special services in school were for. Any my academic issues only got bad when my social problems were so bad that my academics would start to be affected.
ZF: Final question: Are you happy to see this happen today, and has it taken years to see this step in the right direction in terms of really becoming aware that this is something they need to address?
AG: Definitely. I'm- I'm trilled that this bill has passed and that I could be a part of it. Um, I think that, you know, it is a- a serious concern that we hope that individuals, you know, like the little girl that I once was could get some help right now and have the services that they need so that they could become really productive members of society, and hopefully, one day become self-sufficient so that they're not a financial burden on the state or on their parents who, of course, do love them and would do anything for them, but now we can hope it won't tax them so greatly mentally and emotionally and financially, so I think this is huge, and I'm so pleased it could pass.
ZF: Okay. Thank you very much.
(off-screen applause)
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Amy Gravino's Testimony - NJ State Assemblyby Minikitkatgirl235 views
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