667 Comments for Essex County Isolation Hospital

post your email

Im writing an essay on it

Flushed if you dont mind id like to email you and ask some questions about your experience because i am trying to gather sone ingormation about the hospital

LarryD it occurs to me you may have a misconception of the hospital and my presence. I was at the children's shelter which was on the grounds of the hospital in buildings formerly used for staff to live in. There was a children's ward in that hospital where people left children that normally stay home today, that is MS, Cerebral Palsey and otherwise developmentally outside the norm children. It was a dumping ground.
The abusers were the staff of that ward, the staff of the children's shelter smoe random nurses and other personnel of the hospital. There is a book by Michael D'Antonio called the Great Boys Rebellion about a place near Boston which pretty well describes the abuses and mentality of the abusers literally right down to the exact same wording of the threats used.. As I read it I wondered if maybe some of the staff in my case had worked there or visa versa. The abuse I endured exceeded what is described in that book.
I felt it necessary to mention this since I have seen many reports of former patients and family of patients who have good things to say about SOHO.
I expect I was under the control of people who it seemed to me used their access and trust of the doctors built through dissembling to seek out victims among the patients who had no family and were not particularly paid attention to by anyone.
These abusers were a well known fact of life at that hospital as it was common to threaten misbehaving children with being sent there if they did not come back into line.

exact same paint = that yellow paint. I'm guessing maybe it was not painted since then.

I remember I was taken to this hall and no one explained why but made sure to try to make me fearful of it. They alwasy did that with anything. I sat at that desk that is on end, maybe the exact same one, and took some kind of test a mean man or older kid sat at the other desk . I walked up to that office it was the exact same paint then as was the hall (I previoulsy mentioned), the room was full of desks and people. There was a woman sitting at a desk that was just inside the doorway. Her desk was set to face out the hallway but was a couple of feet into the room. She shouted at me not to cross the doorstep and after saying something humiliating me made me wait what seemed like forever until eventually someone came and took the papers from me. Then the mean man took me back toward the source of the photo where we had come in. I don't recall the exact path we took but it had been unnecessarily circuitous as everything they did and said ot me was to make sure I sounded wrong if I ever talked about it.

Thanks. Me too Larry D

I hope someday you & others subjected to this abuse can find some sort of peace @flushed. I look at comments on Opacity daily and caught your response. My thoughts are with you.

When I say damaged I mean they meant to inflict mental as well as physical damage. Inflicting brain damage that affected the speech center seems to have been a favorite kind of torture, at least it was with me.
Imagine being unable to communicate your thoughts. You can speak but no one ever seems to get from those words the ideas you are trying to convey and you cannot find the correct words to correct it. This is living hell. People have ideas about you that have nothing to do with the truth of who you are and your ability to speak is good enough they never believe you when you say "no I did not mean that I meant this..." being smart or clever only serves to make this worse. It is a soul destroying prison.

Thank you for the acknowledgemnt Larry D. I don't have an explanation for the time span between. I look at these pages now and then hoping to recall a name or something else more concrete than the memories of the torture and abuse. Mostly hoping some fellow victim finds this place and makes contact. I think that last few times I looked at this page I did not check for a new post.
The closest thing that describes the things that went on here has always been Mengele's torture of children. The only difference was intent of the abuse and desired outcome. These folks wanted damaged children still conscious enough to know what was happening as it was done and for them to know how and why they were damaged at the end of it. More recently I have come across a couple books, one by Michael D'Antonio, The great Boys Rebellion about a similar place in Massechusetts. And another book by Howard Dully called My Lobotomy about how his aunt had him lobotomized at age 12. The similarities from the eugenics to the specific threats and abuses used as well as accusations made (who the hell came up with the idea of smearing shit on walls?)makes me wonder of there isn't some cultural transmission of the knowledge and techniques abusers use via some weird national pervert organization.

anyone notice the shirt by the wheel?

A preeminently pretty picture of the process of patination!
(Paper, please!)

dat peeling paint.

i want that green one for my room lol

the darkness is calling me, just waiting for exploration :)