I guess I am the abuse enabler for trying to put the blame on the abuser instead of an arbitrarily chosen mental disorder.
Did they conduct a full psychiatric evaluation on the father? Did they conclude that he only had autism? Any anger disorders that may have caused him to lash out more with more severity? Any personality disorders that caused a lack of empathy and an interest only in the self? Any intellectual disabilities that inhibited him from seeking better solutions (like wearing noise isolation muffs)? No? Because the father shot himself after being charged with child abuse? Because the case study was done on the child, after the fact, to study the effects of what was done to her, and not why those things were done?
You can conclude from the study that abuse is bad. With regard to the father, the effects of autism on abusive behavior is inconclusive at best. Yeah, it sucks that that happened to her. No one is saying “aw shucks, looks like the father didn’t have a definitive NPD diagnosis, I guess it wasn’t abuse then” because fucking obviously it was abuse and fucking obviously abuse is bad, you just don’t need a mental disorder to pin it on. There are other ways to become an abuser: generational trauma, neglect, and yes NPD.
On an entirely unrelated note, I caught my girlfriend cheating the other day, but I could not for the life of me figure out why, so I could only conclude that I was wrong and she never actually cheated on me in the first place 🤷🏽♂️