Angie Tomlinson

Jacinta Reynolds is a terrible liar and a master storyteller. She has a science degree, majoring in physics and specialising in astrophysics. She also happens to have autism.

While her autism has seen her struggle with social behaviour, it has also been the 23-year-old’s not-so-secret weapon in excelling first at Scitech as a science communicator and today at West Perth software development company Optika Solutions as a data scientist and technical writer.

Gian De Poloni and Kate Leaver

Miniature farm animals are being used to provide respite and support to children and teenagers with autism.

INKA respite farm stay at Lake Clifton, 110 kilometres south of Perth, is home to the fun-size animals including pigs, sheep, goats and horses.

Groups of children and teenagers with autism bunk at the homestead and work together to care for each other and the animals.

Shannon Hampton

A father who whipped his “severely autistic” son over the legs with a coathanger has been fined $1200 by a magistrate who said to use a weapon on his child involved “an appalling lack of judgement”.

Szu Sheng Lo, 41, admitted assaulting the 12-year-old after he had a “meltdown” at their in Canning Vale home in December.

The Armadale Magistrate’s Court was today told Lo hit his son on the back of his legs after he “took exception” to his instructions to change his shirt after a bike ride and before he went to church with his care workers.

Kathryn Bermingham

An Adelaide man who stabbed his autistic friend and decapitated a puppy during a “sadistic” crime spree has been jailed for at least three years.

James Alexander Rech, 20, was sentenced in the District Court on Friday for charges including assaulting police, aggravated assault and ill treatment of an animal on separate occasions in 2017 and 2018.

In sentencing, Judge Sophie David said Rech had repeatedly stabbed his housemate’s eight-month-old American staffordshire terrier in retaliation for an unpaid debt.

Yolanda Redrup

The company has filled a variety of roles in fields such as software engineering and cyber security, which the bank's executive general manager of technology and transformation, Andy Weir, said people on the autism spectrum often had a natural aptitude for.

The father of a young child filmed riding on a car’s roof rack in Perth’s suburbs says the four-year-old is autistic and any parent would understand how difficult children can sometimes be to control.

Police today charged a 36-year-old woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, with dangerous driving over the incident.

Shannon Hampton

A senior psychologist at a prestigious Perth school has been fined $2000 for assaulting a 12-year-old autistic boy by throwing a cup of water at him.

But a magistrate today acquitted Agni Angelkovska, 50, of using the boy’s hands to slap himself in the face during a “protracted” struggle at Christ Church Grammar School in November 2014.

During a three-day trial earlier this month, the court was told the boy had to be carried by four staff members at the private school to a sensory room after he had a “meltdown”.

Briana Shepherd

When Vanessa McKenzie attended school drop-off, along with the usual hazards of peak-hour traffic and stressed parents, she had to negotiate a clearer danger — her son Blake would bolt with no warning.

Kate Campbell

Claims from a world-leading professor, that autism is a silently growing monster and forms of it can be prevented, have prompted outrage within the autism community.

The Fiona Stanley Hospital precinct in Perth's southern suburbs is set to become home to one of the world's leading research laboratories - the Australian National Phenome Centre (ANPC). Harry Perkins Research Institute at Fiona Stanley Hospital to house Australia's first phenome research centre. Phenomics set to revolutionise the way disease is diagnosed and treated.

Kate Campbell