1,384 Comments for Gaebler Children's Center

For the first paragraph I refer you to Jerry Sandusky who worked daily for decades with people who had no idea he was abusing children. I dare say most of them would and some still do say wonderful things about him.
The staff you know may of may not be the abusers these people here are speaking of. Again your experience is limited even though you worked in the building.
I used Mengele as a comparative for the people who abused me and were and still are as far as I know well thought of by everyone who counted. I did not count even after something came to light. You r misunderstanding that plain fact which is clear in what I wrote should point you in the direction of how it is you are misunderstanding the pointy of that post and how it is you are denying these people's valid reports of having been abused.

Your illogical attacks on the adult children and defense of unnamed people for unspecified offenses makes me suspect you. I get a "me thinks thou doth protesteth too much" vibe from it.

You can believe as you wish but you cannot deny that you were not always present and thus are unable to state as a fact that what these adult survivors of child abuse are saying. Your use of code words like "worst of the worst" and other dated and invalid abusive labels applied to children says more about you than you think it does about them.
It's 2012 get a clue.

Pookie you seem to forget you were in a setting with people who had committed heinous crimes. Not all but some. They might not have shared with you their entire history but I know from talking to staff their backgrounds. Safety to staff, patients and nearby residents is and always must be the highest priority.
Apology? I remember all the times I went to ward B or other wards and the younger kids would see me and say "Billy will you play a game with me" and I would play some board game or just talk with them. I remember buying kids Christmas and going away presents. I remember kids saying to me before they left "I'm going to miss you".
I remember one boy who wanted me to paint his name on his storage box with stencils. I took it downstairs and spray painted his name on it and gave it to him. When he left he gave me that box. That box with the name "Sammy" painted on it is under my bed 25 years later.
Apology? I think not.
That said, nothing I say is ever going to change your mind. I hope some day you find peace.
I

Flushed first of all, you weren't there and shouldn't even be commenting on something in which you have no first hand knowledge.
I knew the people who worked there, socialized with them and have first hand knowledge of the committment they had to the children.
You can believe it was a cabal of people intent on abusing children .

I know of an OT statf so respected they wrote books on their experiences at Gaebler that are read by people in that field to learn from, I know of staff who were college students in psychology who wanted first hand experience in their chosen field, I know of staff who spent their own money to buy presents for their one to one kids, I knew of staff that when they did find an instance of abuse reported that person to the authorities and who was tried and convicted.
I never knew a staff member conducting Mengele-like experiments and quite frankly to make such a comparison, especially by someone who never set foot in the building, is absurd, idiotic and demeaning to all the staff that tried their best in a challenging envrronmentt.
In closing, get lost you don't have a clue.

I Worked There,
WOW, you really have a nerve. Yes, the staff did want to work there, what they got paid had nothing to do with anything or any of this. They loved to egg as on so we would act out, you weren't there on the Wards with us, you weren't there to see what the staff did to us and how they would munipulate us and verbally,mentally and physically abuse us, you have no idea what went on. As for we had a great school with teachers, Yo ASSHOLE, we were locked in the fucking building to go to school, if we got priviledges to go outside, we were still in a locked black fench with a swing set, merry go round and basket ball net. Once in a blue moon they would take us on a nature trail walk thru the woods, but, once again, you had to earn that priviledge, and it was really hard to get it. Yes, I honestly believe that staff loved their job because they got paid to hurt children. You tell me how you would like to be thrown down on the cement floor, arms pulled behind your back and then thrown in a seclusion room and left in there til they felt like getting you out, they didn't let you out to go to the bathroom so kids would pee all over themselves, and sometimes they would rip our clothes off and use leather restraints and tie us to the bed naked on a cold rubber green mat and never covered us up and left us in there like that for hours, I mean really, you are an asshole to say the least. If you worked in the boiler room like you said you did then you honestly have no clue as to what went on behind the locked closed doors. Oh and this they never talked about wanting to do bad things to us kids, bullshit, yes they did, we as kids even heard it, they would say to us, remember we control whether you stay out of your rooms and the seclusion rooms so you will do whatever we say and want or you will pay the consequences, really? threatening us, you weren't fucking there so you have no clue as to what was said to us. As for planning activites for us, not on my friggin Ward they didn't and I was on Ward D. I got locked in a shower room, a 1 stall shower room, and had to be let in by a key and bang on the door to be let out, can u fucking imagine that? you are so mean to judge us and to stick up for the staff. The staff,the dr's, Thomas Heathwood, the therapists and conselors were in total control of us and made sure we were their friggin puppets. They did do activites once in a while but, that was just a cover up to get our mind off of the abuse they were giving us. As for you comment about the seclusion room maybe being wrong, but, the staff were low wage people working there, that is really shitty of you to say, so if they got paid a lot of money you are saying they wouldn't have abused us but, because we were kids with problems and they didn't get paid much to deal with is they had the right to treat us anyone they felt fit? WOW, it must be so great to be you and not be so judgemental. You really owe all of us on here an apology, you are really a poor excuse for a human being.

Flused,
I totally agree with you, I am sorry you weren't thru such a bad experience as a child, and yes, "I Worked There" has no clue, he worked in the friggin boiler room, he had no clue what us children went thru, I don't care what he says, he is a jerk and very uncaring and mean and he is just trying to stick up tor the staff, but, he was never allowed on the Wards and if he was it was only for a second cause he worked in the boiler room. Of course all the staff are going to stick up for each other, that's what they did, there was mental and verbal abuse and physical and sexual abuse at us children, we were drugged with Thrazine cocktail, benadryl and shots of I don't know what, there were offices on the 4th floor where the staff could bring any child and do whatever he or she wanted to that child cause we got locked in every room, Gaebler was a sick place, the staff were horrible and abusing us was a high for them. Mr I worked there, has no clue but, he wants to act like he cared about us children. that is bullshit no he didn't, he didn't meet us or hang with us, so he is a friggin liar in my book, and if he knows so much then that leads me to believe that he didn't really work in the boiler room at all and he was a staff member on one of the Wards and he is just playing with our emoions and feelings like all the other straff members did. I think he is just full of shit personally. And this isn't for staff to comment on to begin with, I mean this site was made for us children who lived there and got abused, it's for us to share our stories with our fellow friends who were, it's for us to share and help each other, not for a so called staff member to stick his or her nose in where it doesn't belong, if he cared so much about us children like he said he did, then he wouldn't have called us mental and the worst children in the state. I will not stop and trying to get justice for us children and expose the dept of mental health and the abuse that they caused us and still cause children to date....

I Worked There,
I'd like to address your long post defending the staff and denying the claims made by survivors here. This is the second time on this board that a former staffer of a place where children were kept and abused came on and denied the stories of adult children who were abused in so many places across this nation. The myopia that allows this has given me an insight into why I can't get justice for myself who was abused in a different institution by staff whom I am sure could get the majority of their co- worker's to genuinely say and believe the good things you said about those you are thinking of when you said it about them, and yet they are monsters. Monsters exactly like Mengele and all the other people who tortured and abused children in WWII.

I'd like you to look at what these adult children say from your adult perspective now. Think of what is common knowledge now about abusive people. How clever they are at hiding, how they work to seduce the adults around them with false front as hard as they work to hide the abuse. The fact is they would never have openly spoken of abuse even with a co-conspirator it would have been in hushed tones in out of the way places. My abusers were insidiously evil. They were the heart and soul of that Hospital and nearly all the medical staff who weren't actually part of the abuser circle praised them easily and willing taught them things about medicine, medical procedures, and record keeping that they then used to abuse more children.

Yes things probably did happen as you say but that is a limited perspective of one man in situations in which other adults are hardly likely to disclose horrid evil things they did to the children they were being paid to protect. On here you have multiple people who reveal experiences and share stories that were apparently commonly spoken of among them at the time about how this or that staffer did this or that form of abuse on them. How is it that you think your limited perspective of situations in which it is hardly likely that such events would be revealed trumps the conversational discussion about what life was on a daily basis for these children?

It baffles me. I think at least part of it is the affection and enjoyment you got out if that job. I'd like you to consider that your perspective no matter how much listening you did was very limited.

Cool thanks for posting

Tell her she told me she would pay me back when she got her tax refund and then she told me that they kept her tax refund because she had outstanding student loans.
20 years later I'm still waiting.

I gotta go now. I have your email. I will write sometime. I don't see the staff anymore but I did keep in touch with some of them for a while. Unfortunatley a couple of them that I was close with passed away. I don't want to say publicly who they are.

Lol I'm taking all the boilers out of all the Lynn schools next summer, its s huge contract. I will def. See her. I'll relay the message. See if you can send me a pic I want to see who you were. Try to find one from around that time

I never heard that. He got her pregnant when she was a patient???

I was very friendly with Sue. She was smart and should have been the head of that department. If you have contact with her tell her she owes me $500.

I was there 89-92 and 82-84. Which time do you remember me from

And them closing was great for future would be kids that would be there I know one staff got a girl pregnant from ward D was that the one you were talking about? There was a lot of bad stuff that went on there. There were also a lot of staff that did care. I wish I could talk to some of them now. I did find sue from activities, she's a teacher in a Lynn public school

what years were you there

When it became evident they were closing I went back to school and got a degree in electronics. I got another state job as an electronic technician.
I was pissed off when they closed but it ended being the best thing as my current job pays a lot more.
I remember changing the coupling a few times on the little circulatiing pump they had under that tank.

When it became evident they were closing I went back to school and got a degree in electronics. I got another state job as an electronic technician.
I was pissed off when they closed but it ended being the best thing as my current job pays a lot more.
I remember changing the coupling a few times on the little circulatiing pump they had under that tank.