Autistic boy receives £42,000 in discrimination lawsuit against the Scouts
'He’d made one mistake and then that was it, they wanted to make the rules and regulations. It was supposed to be a dialogue'
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Your support makes all the difference.An 11-year-old boy received £42,000 in compensation after his family argued he was discriminated against because he was autistic.
Ben Gleeson joined the 10th Harpenden Scout Group in January 2015, having previously been a member of the beavers.
But he was later told he could not attend camps or take part in certain activities without one-to-one supervision.
Arguing this was effectively a ban, his parents sued the Scout Association under the Equality Act.
The organisation said it had apologised to the family and launched an inquiry after settling the matter out of court.
Ben, who becomes anxious about change and needs to be told about plans, had an episode in March 2016 where he became distressed and tried to run a short distance from the scout group at a camp in an indoor venue.
He had been asked to change into a pair of shoes he could not find.
Shortly after that, the pack leaders said he could not travel with the rest of the group on a bus to events or participate in athletics.
They also said he had to have one-to-one supervision at other events.
“Pretty much every event had to be supervised on a one-to-one basis, which I felt wasn’t inclusive," his mother Beverly Gleeson told the BBC.
“I felt he didn’t need it. He didn’t have this level of supervision at school. He’d made one mistake and then that was it, they wanted to make the rules and regulations. It was supposed to be a dialogue.”
The scout group disputed a number of the family’s claims, but the Scout Association told the BBC the handling of the case was “completely unacceptable”.
In a statement, it added: “While cases like this are very unusual, we know that action must be taken. We have established an inquiry to investigate what went wrong in this case.”
Press Association contributed to this report
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