Last year, Texas identified 19,800 students as autistic. That is a stunning 1600 percent increase since 1990, largely because of better diagnoses.

Social services are strapped, and private help is expensive.

But help is now coming from new places for overwhelmed families by the crippling neurological disorder.

Douglas is better now — his mother has spent the last half hour restraining him.

“He can pick up anything,” Marie Pemba said. “He broke several TVs in the house.”

The 10-year-old boy has violent episodes about twice a week, sometimes putting him in an emergency room.

“Sometimes I will be driving him — he will attack me on the road,” Pemba said.

The inability to communicate and a sensory overload of sorts can explode into aggression.

But Pemba never really knows the immediate triggers. That is one of autism’s cruelest traits, along with its genetic component.

Big brother Henry is also autistic, but not violent. Both boys attend public schools and are barely verbal. Henry is 13.

It’s the same age, when Matt’s parents pulled him out of public school.

“They said as far as educating him he had reached his limit,” mother Monica Fisher said.

First they home schooled their son. Then they hired autism therapist Julie Lang.

“That can make night and days difference,” Lang said.

Matt — now 16 -- has defied all the experts.   He reads at a second grade level, writes in cursive and can even multiply and divide.

“Determined, disciplined one-on-one and encouragement to build that self esteem,” father Todd Fisher said.

But private therapy costs up to $80 an hour, schools for the autistic cost more than $20,000 a year, and government programs have long waiting lists  

So along with other nonprofits, religious groups are now “standing in the gap.”

The CDC said currently, 1 in 150 children have some sort of autism. That meteoric increase is also showing up in Sunday schools.

Grace Church of Humble recently remodeled three classrooms just for special needs children. Half are autistic, including Henry and Douglas.

“I think any child can be helped,” Lang said. “I really believe that.”

Fueled by her belief and faith, Julie will train church volunteers to do more than baby-sit.  

She will also work with autistic children and their parents to do more than just survive.

“We know that there are several churches in the area that have begun programs like this,” Pastor Mike Acosta said.

For Acosta, autism is a growing problem, from which he could not look away.

“I call it irrevocable responsibility,” he said. “You can’t un-see it.”

It is an isolating and exhausting disease that can wear down a parent’s strongest ally - hope.

“I have hope,” Pemba said. “I feel like he is still young.”

“We cried for years,” Fisher said.

But the Fishers refused to surrender, and now even the simplest family moments are sweet victories.