Part 3
The Search
homeless = yesterday's insane
When I talk of
the insane or insanity, I am talking in the context of the time I was working
there and that was from 1976- 1977, and being politically correct was not even
heard of. At that time any part of society that didn’t fit into the norm were
classified as either criminal or mentally insane. Homeless people although
fully functional, meaning they were able
to take care of themselves were often institutionalized as opposed to being
able to exist on their own in society. In some ways this was a benefit to some
of those less fortunate. But still the institutions such as Apple Creek that
existed at that time were highly understaffed and lower and higher functioning was
allowed to intermingle. The quality of their life I am sure, though I was not involved
in their direct care, was very impersonal and at times their personal safety
was compromised to the point of death at times. Some of the abuse was a result
of patient attacking another patient, but there was also care providers who
also subjected residents to physical as well as sexual abuse.
I would have a chance to observe residents
that were allowed to roam the grounds of the hospital complex, and sometimes we
were called in to retrieve residents who were running from the grounds
themselves. One guy who was observed in one of our fields walking and then
running away, when we pulled a truck over to check him out, ran to a ditch and
cowered listening to his radio when surrounded, we waited for security to come
and grab him while we just watched him. He would make animal noises all the
time listening to his radio. When security arrived and we were trying to get
him out of his hiding place or at least he thought it was , he began to run and
the guard told us to tackle him if we had to in order to avoid him getting to a
road an possibly be hit. This guy could haul butt as most of the residents
seemed to have a lot of brute strength, and you should never underestimate them.
We finally caught up with him as about 15 people surrounded him and finally a
guard was able to grab and subdue him. All along his radio was being held to his ear and he never lost
his hold on it despite being roughly handled and shoved into the car.
As they would
shove one foot in the car, he would shove the other foot out, and this went on
for about 5 minutes and soon the guards tired of it and rolled the window down
then leaned in through the window and held his legs while other tried to shut
the door. That worked and soon he was whisked away. And even though he was
listening to his radio, it never had any batteries and wouldn’t play as they wouldn’t
issue batteries to the residents for fear they would eat them or else? I always
wondered what song was playing in his head. Put your right foot in, shake it
all about!
Another time we
were called to look for a girl who they had no idea of where she went and that
she may be with a mongoloid child, but they felt that they were still on Apple Creek‘s
hospital grounds. This was almost 2000 acres and a fairly large farm comprised
of woods and farm land almost a mile square with few mostly rural roads they
could patrol. We formed search teams and the state highway patrol took an area
around the hospital to search in the immediate forested area closest to the
hospital. We students were to first search all the barns and outbuildings for
any signs of the patients. It was my thought that some of the patients were
kind of primal in their basic mentality and seeking shelter may be their first
option. They had been missing for over twenty four hours, meaning they had
already spent the night outside in 40 degree temperatures and a barn or out building
may have been where they would go and find some comfort. At almost any time our
group of about ten students fully expected to find them, still time was of the
essence in finding them. I was in charge of the students as we went from barn
to barn and I would emphasize to be sure and check every little nook or cranny,
to climb up on hay in the mows, or any place where one might hide and as we
went from barn to barn, we would improve on our searching techniques as we
gained more knowledge and experience of what to look for.
It took us a half
a day and as we were finishing up word had come around that the female resident
was found close to one of the barns in the woods dead. Also the second resident
who was with her was also found. It was all kind of crazy and at one point
helicopters were buzzing around and sirens rang the hillsides, and with the
news cast an overall pallid eerie gloom over the whole place, as we tried to
resume some normalcy, but in the back of our minds we were asking why and how this
could happen. Also in a way I was glad it was not us that found here and
instead law enforcement as that was their job to accept things like that. We students
accepted the job with hopes of finding her and her friend alive and death was
not part of what we expected.
Answers would
come but not the right ones and it took a lot of time to finally come up with a
possible scenario to her death, but not until they tried a mentally incompetent
mongoloid child incapable of the murder, and finally they would convict and
later overturn their findings as he would never to be mentally competent of
doing anything planned, to the extent of these murders. It was assumed that
since the mongoloid boy was found with the girl that it was him that was the
killer. But apparently he always followed her around and had never exhibited
any type of sexual behavior capable of rape and death of this girl. Instead it
was believed to be a resident care giver who actually did the deed and was
never caught. Soon after she was found two caregivers quit the facility and
were investigated but were never charged for lack of evidence. Besides the
state had already had their guy in the form of the mongoloid child who was
incapable of defending himself or even stating who the real killer was. Unfortunately
he may still be walking free.
On top of
that the parents of the girl, who died, would file in court, a lawsuit charging
the state with incompetence in dealing with the handicapped. That Apple Creek
state institute and all state institutions were under staffed and widespread
patient abuse and neglect was running rampant in the state mental system. As a
result of this court action the state lost, it began to reintegrate patients
back into society through the use of half way houses and smaller better staffed
private care centers for those severely mentally retarded, eventually doing
away with the institutions altogether. Some higher functioning adults were discharged
to be on their own, and now roam the streets and make up part of our homeless sector,
and still should have some sort of care but for the most part are neglected by
our lack of funds to provide any minimal care for the homeless, except that
which is provided by the charitable organizations. Food stamps and other
benefits for the poor and disabled are dependent on one having an address to
which they can receive mail, and a lot of these people unfortunately cannot
apply for help with food or heat subsidies as they do not have an address to which
they can receive mail nor benefits and must be dependent on charity to be able
to sustain themselves. Also they are blight on neighborhoods in poorest
sections where they tend to aggregate as they beg for change and scavenge what
they can.
Now more and more
I see as cities enlarge themselves and once urban areas let down and turned to slums
are being migrated on by the rich. The lower class residents who had called the
slums their home are being shoved out to make way for new high rise apartments,
and the wealthy are complaining about soup kitchens to feed the homeless that
are blighting their neighborhood and are enacting laws to restrict their use. In
one case a 98 year old man was recently arrested for providing meals to
homeless people in Florida. If we shove them out their homes then where are
they going to live? It is a problem our capitalist society needs to accept as
their responsibility and part of the expense in making a profit. No building
permit should be issued for new construction till studies are done to see what
effect the new construction will have on the homeless. Remedial efforts at
attacking the problem should be in place before any building commences. Shoving
them out of one place will only exaggerate the problem and make it worse for those
who are dependent on social services that were located originally close to
where they were. To be possibly across town or further in the countryside away
from everything would only make health and welfare services almost impossible
for them to obtain.
The mentally ill
are red ink on our ledger, but we all need a little red ink to find out where
the bottom is. Knowing we never want to end up there, and hope it never happens,
but those folks who are less fortunate and have no choice in their care and can
only expect our society to provide the barest of essentials, and depend on that
red ink. The sad part is that even in the wealthiest of families there is
always a chance that one may have a mental illness and that help for them is
often shunned, and Apple Creek was the place where they used to take those that
high society no longer had a use for and could be quietly excluded from view
and guaranteed to not interfere with their afternoon tea social. Now they have
to spend more money quietly locking them away for their nonconformity. The rich
and wealthy are the ones that are most capable of making a difference and made
a tidy profit off the lot of us and, yet are the most needy when it comes to
mental illness. Because their surely has to be something wrong with those
people who have made millions and billions who only want to share when they
have their name at stake and only for those issues they feel are most important
like Gates and Buffet has done. They depend on everyone else to deal with the
little stuff like homelessness and mental health. These issues are as old as the hills and with
few answers except deal with them. They choose not to, and instead fund other nonprofit
adventures guaranteed to provide them a tax free savings on their fortunes.
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