35 Comments Posted by jj

Maybe they thought that they would sell the site to someone else shortly after closing it? It would probably be more appealing (and easier for everyone) to just sell the site and the furniture all together. If that was the plan, looks like it didn't work out.

As always, fantastic pics Motts!

Yeah, I've only ever seen the grated doors in forensic mental hospitals, too.

Yeah, this room is definately bigger than my first dorm room in college...

Sorry,,,,this ended up being longer than I expected.

I agree with pretty much everything said, especially that things are not as simple as good or bad.

Most people in institutions don't want to be pitied (but some do, remember we're talking mental illness in many cases).

The majority of care providers do give a damn and are good people, but under certain conditions (e.g. overcrowding, understaffing, undertraining) everyone has a breaking point. This is one way abuse occurs.

Everyone thinks the sort of abuse that went on at places like Pennhurst were overt to the general public, as if anyone in the general public would know about it if it went on today. It took alot of investigative reporting to urge on institutional reform, first in the 1940s, and then again in the 1960s and 1970s (I guess people forgot about it in the 50s).

Institutional abuse still occurs regularly, especially against underage patients and severely impaired patients. For example, I used to work at a private psych hospital with a very good reputation for a decent number of years. From the inside, they seemed to average about 2 incidents of likely sexual abuse and many, many incidents of physical abuse. Yet, most of these aren't known to the public and nothing is done about them internally (I even reported several incidents myself only to see the conditions, and staff members, on the unit stay the same!).

It was true that ALOT of abuses went on at Pennhurst (and was therefore more obvious), but there were ALOT more patients. However, today's abuses are less obvious for various reasons. Instead of widespread neglect as well as other forms of abuse (like at Pennhurst and other places), there is now mostly physical and sexual abuse. Many of these abuses go unfounded because (a) victims are unwilling or unable to come forward, (b) a single victim's or accuser's account is often not enough to result in meaningful action, (c) hospital lawyers make it hard for a staff member to be proven liable, and (d) if all else fails, the lawyers settle civil ca$e$ quickly and include language/term$ that make it unlikely that families will pursue criminal complaints (many families prefer paydays and not criminal justice).

To come full circle, it's NOT as easy as saying these obstacles are a bad thing. There are TONS and TONS of allegations of abuse that are complete BS (I've witnessed these too). Some families scheme for paydays, so in this regard, it is good to make it hard to prove abuse.

So, like someone said, (Lynne I think), it's never as easy as Good vs Bad. Just please keep trying to learn as much as possible about something.

Here are some good places to start:

Unforgotten: Willowbrook 20 years later (This is a DVD with Geraldo's original expose from the 70s, a good watch)

Suffer the Children (This is an expose on Pennhurst specifically, available as linked by Motts on the main Pennhurst page. There is a color one available from the "vault" on NBC10.com)

Books by Grob (these are mostly historical books on institutions and related topics,,,"The Mad Among Us" is particularly good)

I went in yesterday and i cant find a lot of these places