The Gloucestershire Echo has reported on local con artists who are calling at people’s homes, pretending to be deaf.
This isn’t a story limited to the UK. This video on the BSL Zone website shows how gangs pretending to be deaf operate in Paris.
Extract:
Police are warning people to be cautious after reports that con artists could be operating in the Tewkesbury area.
Following incidents of a group of Eastern European people pretending to be deaf calling on people’s homes in Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset, it appears the fraudsters may have moved into Gloucestershire.
Residents in Tewkesbury took to social media to talk of their suspicions about the group, who have been trying to sell photocopied artwork using signs that say they can’t speak or hear.
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Cathy
March 23, 2016
So sad to be impersonating deaf people! And we are not all of that disposition. It is really cheeky and we could easily catch them out by using sign language! Then we will see who is clever!?
donaldo of the wasatch
March 23, 2016
That is why, for me, the deaf victimology is so self defeating and destructive. That is how society perceives us too often! So when some emphasize that a “sign” based education should be the emphasis – this is specifically why I say not so. We are too often pitied – not RESPECTED. To develop in individuals the full measure of confidence and competencies that includes Listened to and Spoken language must be the emphasis. Then issues like this cannot and will not happen. Creating a cult of pitied individuals is not nirvana. That is a prescription for a “victim.” You can use the Donald Trump posture with bluster and loud volume, but you cannot ultimately win with that strategy. We should be not only “competitive”, but exceptional. So instead of the “poor dear” they perceive and sense an extra ordinary person not a “deaf” soul. I say that with over 61 years experience of seeing a more mainstream template work in my life and others since I received, first, hearing aids, on my 4th birthday – 1955. Bilateral Cochlear implants over the last 4 years. I still fall short at times, but I share with others how to communicate better and it is largely successful. I create the accommodation needs and do not wait for others to “take care of me” as this story illustrates succinctly. So over time, the situations of pity” are replaced by there is that extraordinary individual, who is also deaf. The deafness becomes secondary to the competency and confidence which often un-nerves them, because they expect to see the “poor deaf dear.” Even professionals who work with the deaf/Deaf are unnerved.