At a state institution for people with mental retardation in Texas, six staff members have been charged with taking part in staging what have been called human cockfights, using residents with mental retardation. The accusations have raised questions about how workers trained and hired to care for some of the most vulnerable people in society could instead treat them with cruelty.
The fights became known only because one of the workers lost his cell phone. It was found and turned over to an off-duty police officer. The phone had videos of more than a year of staged late-night fights, some as recent as this past January.
[blockquote].. Sobsey says one way to reduce abuse is to make institutions smaller and link them to communities such as families and churches. That way, they’re less isolated and more people are watching.[/blockquote]
That is probably right. These cases have happened all over the world and have in common: a closed community; absense of regular outside inspection, contact and visiting; complaints not being listened to, whether from staff or ‘clients’, failure of training, failure to do background checks, people staying in the same job for too long, absense of guidelines and lack of compassion. It happens in mental hospitals, orphanages, childrens’ homes, correctional facilities, old peoples’ homes, schools, even military training schools.
One has to be absolutely rigorous in guarding against the abuse of the vulnerable as it can happen at any time, anywhere, and sadly does.
We have one of the state schools here in my city. Last week, some inspectors showed up for an unannounced visit at night — this is a new measure to see exactly what’s going on at these facilities.
My views of the state schools are mixed. On one hand, I think we need them, as our homeless population in this country is comprised of mentally deficient folks with no place to go. Care for the mentally ill is abyssmal in the U.S. On the other hand, I do think that group homes are preferable. The problem is that no one wants a group home located near them and they aren’t problem-free, either.
Pageantmaster, I could not agree more. I have some personal experience on this – my twin brother and I were born early, and my brother suffered brain damage – CP and mental retardation. Back in the early 60’s, there were no home healthcare options, and my parents had to send him to one of the state homes when we were 4, since my Mom could no longer care for him at home
He was in one of the big state homes in Pontiac, MI, (we lived in the Downriver suburbs south of Detroit) until we were 12.5, when MI moved patients out to regional, small group homes.
Since we were one of the few families to actually visit their family member (every 2 weeks – 1 weekend per month in Pontiac, 1 weekend per month we brought him home), my brother received good care at the big state home. It was sad to see that most patients were just dumped and forgotten by their family members.
The small, regional group homes were excellent, and were like small nursing homes or assisted living centers. Good care, and my brother was close enough for us to visit a couple of times per week.
If more family members would stay involved, then these problems would either not happen or would be found earlier. Overworked state inspectors can only do so much.
This kind of barbarism is showing up all over the place. One of the other bloggers from Canada has posted examples from up there, involving brutality to special needs people.
In Minnesota and South Dakota, there have been at least three recent cases of volunteers abusing elderly residents of nursing homes.
There are costs to autonomy. Our cultural assertion of “personal spirituality and values” is not working. In fact, it seems to enable evil individuals while expanding the very group-think it claims to reject.
Those using the RCL for Sunday’s lessons will hear of the exclusive claims of Christ. No, they can’t be imposed by the state. But if the church is not proclaiming the way, the truth and the life, expect the wide and easy road to hell to get the most traffic, lies to fill public discourse, and a the shadow of death to cover more and more of the land.
As it happens, I worked in the Texas Mental Health/Mental Retardation system from 1974 to 1998; I worked in two different state schools (for folks with mental retardation), a state hospital (for folks with mental illness), 3 different MHMR community centers (I ran some of those small group homes for a few years, as well as some other programmatic activities), and I worked in the state central office for 5 years. Reading this article, I thought primarily of the things that weren’t said.
First, the population of the state schools is very mixed. It includes profoundly mental retarded persons with multiple physical disabilities. It also includes folks with severe behavior disorders. In the past, there were also mildly retarded persons with legal charges against them, although there are community homes and prison units for those folks now and I’m not sure the schools are still serving that group. All of which adds up to the fact that state schools now serve folks who don’t fit into community homes, as presently consituted. For example, the physically handicapped usually have severe medical needs; moving them into community homes can create another kind of isolation and risk for those folks.
Don’t get me wrong: I worked for years to downsize state facilities through creation of community services. I believe in it. It’s just a more complex issue than small facilities. And that doesn’t count the political pressure to maintain facilities that are usually the biggest employers in the rural areas where most of them remain. We thought the politicians would let us close some facilities back when the state built a lot of prison facilities back in the early 90s, but they wanted prisons and state institutions.
Fr. Fountain: in fact, 450 instances of abuse is a small number statewide. I remember when each facility might have that many, and most went unreported. In fact, extensive mechanisms exist to report and investigate abuse, probably more effective in the state facilities than in small group homes. Night shifts are always a problem, more for sexual abuse than violent assaults. I would be interested to know more specifics about this particular instance. That it went on for awhile and no one knew is peculiar. Facilities are little towns: everybody tends to know everything. My guess is that the leadership of the facility is lax; a superintendent should be around every building on every shift frequently on a variable schedule.
Well, there is much more to know. It’s wrong to write something like this off as an isolated affair, and also wrong to assume this sort of thing is endemic in the system. More information and fewer assumptions are needed.