Autistic people have a hard time defending themselves because certain types of autism creates a difficulty to speak fluently and strongly. I was friends with a few autistic kids when I was younger and I even had to defend one of them myself because he was autistic to the point that all he could do for defense is say "shut up" or "forget you" because his autism was too strong to allow him to speak fluently. Like, whenever he would speak, he'd be full of "uh" and "um" and "well".
He was bullied to the point that he tried to walk home during recess back in middle school. I had to get a teacher to stop him because he wouldn't even listen to me.
There was another time where a group of kids tried chasing him across the parking lot to try and beat him up and I had to chase after these people and smack them to the ground with tackles and stuff to get them to stop chasing my friend. It really made me mad that people would actually try and hit somebody like that just because they act ridiculous when they can't even help it.
So, for those of you saying that he could have stood up for himself, he most likely couldn't. If you're autistic to the point of being unable to defend yourself verbally or physically and you don't have a best friend to back you up, it could get really ugly.
