Tarnished Star (reflections by Jeff Garrison-Tate)

This past week has seen Texas mired in public disgrace and left many Texans looking for the biggest rock we can find to crawl under.  From the UK and Iowa to Spokane and Chicago, the world has learned of a little Texas city by the Gulf where people with intellectual disabilities are treated worse than animals by the very people hired to care for them: Corpus Christi.

I have spent time at this place, this “state school” that breeds atrocities and stinks the stench of nasty secrets.  Contrary to the images conjured by its name, this Corpus Christi State School is not another lovely state college by the beach where half naked co-eds romp around.  It is anything but a school, and has no academic mission or accreditation.  It is an institution.  A place where those who are vulnerable, those without family, those without words, are dumped under the auspices of it being a “really nice place”.  Kind of like what many children were told on the train to Auschwitz. 

This week it was reported that at least 11 state school employees (that’s right, state employees paid with your tax money) created “Fight Clubs” for their twisted entertainment.  These thugs would wake up people with intellectual disabilities in the dead of night, take them to a common room, and pit them against each other in what amounted to cage matches.  Like dog fights or cock fights for the entertainment of scum who have been allowed to wallow in sadism because no one held them accountable and because they are sick bastards. 

How could Texas have stooped this low?  How much longer will it be before Texas stops passing the buck and holds itself accountable?  Here are a few of the sick but convenient myths politicians, bureaucrats, and newspaper reporters have been buying into recently (in italics):

 Oh, these poor state employees who make such poor pay!  What you get is what you pay for.  These state employees become sadists because they are not paid enough money.  They are forced to place bets on human fight clubs to make ends meet.   Maybe if we paid them more money they wouldn’t be such sadists!  Or so the ridiculous argument goes. Really?  If we pay them $12 an hour or more, they’ll just be higher-paid sadists who can afford to buy real name-brand cigarettes.  In reality, these state employees start at almost $3.00 more an hour than community-based direct care staff (who do the same work) and they have full benefits while community-based staff have none.  There are some good people who work hard and care about people with disabilities and struggle to make ends meet in these hellholes, but their presence alone cannot change a deep-rooted culture of abuse.

I’m from Texas and I chew tobacco and I have a big truck and I don’t give a damn about those Federal fancy suits at the Department of Justice with their meddling know-it-all reports.  They don’t know anything about how it really is here.  Since 2005, the Department of Justice, yes, a federal agency, has been in Texas screaming about civil rights abuses, first in Lubbock State School, and then in all 13 of our large, state-run institutions.  The reports are graphic and they are damning.  They detail beatings, rapes, deaths, malnutrition, over-medication, under-medication, and other horrifying instances of systemic abuse and neglect.  Yet some folks are choosing to adjust their plate-sized belt buckles and dismiss horror after horror as shoddy investigating while they fight the obvious.  This isn’t Magnum PI or McGuyver!  This is the freaking Department of Justice!  

DADS: “We’re so sorry! We’ll do better next time!”  The state agency responsible for overseeing the schools is the Department of Aging and Disability Services…better known as DADS.  DADS, like some kind of scary parent that metes out wrist slaps with a ruler when everyone expects them to but spends the rest of the time pretending their responsibilities don’t exist.  DADdy, rather than being a loving parent, is a key player in this sick culture of abuse.  Its leadership smacks of arrogance and cries when it gets caught.  The commissioner, Addie Horn, is like a 4 year old.  She got called on the carpet this week for these unspeakable acts in Corpus and said she will do better next time.  She always says she’ll do better: after 53 people died preventable deaths at Texas institutions last year, after abuse and neglect allegations have skyrocketed, after the DOJ minced no words about how this state must be held accountable.  She hasn’t even demonstrated she can responsibly lead a kindergarten line.   She was raised in this failed system and knows nothing more than how to fail.  Her whiny pleas about how she will try harder aren’t enough when lives are on the line.  ENOUGH!   You are a public figure.  Get used to being picked on when you are ultimately responsible for the hell that has rained down on our most vulnerable.  Or fire yourself and go clean toilets.  At least you can’t hurt anyone too badly in a job like that.

(Most of) the State Legislature: More money and more security cameras in common areas will fix things! This will cure the problem once and for all, and keep people safe.  Don’t these legislators realize that the person who died in Corpus a while back hung themselves in their bedroom, far from any cameras?  Don’t they know there weren’t any cameras in the bathroom at Austin State School where one man had a pipe jammed in his anus?  These evil bastards aren’t going hold their fight clubs in common areas where cameras are located.  And even if they do, a camera won’t deter them.  We’re talking about people who record exploitation on their cell phones!  This is the easy “solution”, negotiated so they can go back to doing whatever it is they do until another insane, unbelievable, too-horrific-to-make-up something happens and an enterprising news reporter with a conscience calls them on it.  Then the commissioner will say, predictably: “Sorry, I missed that one, too.  I’ll do better next time and I am doing my best as it is because I want to hunt down these scumbags and kill ‘em.  It’s not my fault though, ‘cause I didn’t actually abuse these people who deserve the best we have to offer.  I’m just in charge and I just want you to like me.”  And when the tears pour forth from unpentient bureaucrats and parents who swear their children will die if they are allowed out into the big, bad, integrated community, legislators will just have to put more money into “fixing” the institutions.  MO’ MONEY, MO’ PROBLEMS.   

During the last legislative session, we spent over $100 million to improve the conditions at Texas state institutions.  What did we get?  Thousands of allegations of abuse and neglect, 800 people fired for causing abuse, at least 53 preventable deaths, a swarm of DOJ officials in 13 institutions, fight clubs in Corpus Christi and suspected in San Angelo and Mexia.  We’re still waiting on the partridge, the pear tree, and justice for thousands of people stuck in the middle of a deadly and criminally inept system.  Merry Christmas, Texas.  We got sold.

It costs thousands of dollars less for someone to live free in the community with supports.  But institutions mean state employees get paid, legislative districts rake in the cash, local businesses stay happy, and Governor maintains the status quo.  So they stay open and all of Texas suffers for it.

You may say I am sardonic.  I am.  I am weary of nothing changing for these most wonderful people.  If given the opportunity and supports to live in the community, people with disabilities could brighten everything they touch.  I am tired of Texas failing these folks over and over again.  I am deeply saddened for those who have been hurt by those who are supposed to take care of them and I grieve for those who have died alone and forgotten.  I am angered by the persistence of apathy and claims that people with severe disabilities belong in institutions.  We know that everyone could live in the community with the right supports.  How else could ten other states have closed down all of their institutions? 

On top of all of this, there are 88,000 Texans on waiting lists for community services – their shot at the American Dream.  You sure don’t see a line of people waiting to go live in an institution!  We could serve 13,000 people in the community for the same amount of money that we waste incarcerating 4,600 people in institutions.  Their only crime?  Physical and/or mental difference.

The only way to fix the situation at Corpus is to get everyone out NOW.  And then bulldoze this death camp and seal it off like some kind of hazardous waste site.  LET THE PEOPLE GO!  Then the Governor can follow the lead of the overwhelming majority of advocates and our few champions in the Legislature to start closing the rest of these hell pits, leaving a few open for those families who want to exercise their legal right to institutionalize their loved ones.  At most, these remaining individuals would populate 4 or 5 institutions, rather than the current 13.

We are all a part of this corrupt system and each hold a piece of the puzzle that can bring the sadism to an end.  The legislature must have the courage to close these places.  The DADS leadership must hold people accountable and stop covering up their mismanagement of these hellholes.  We must lift up our collective voices and say NO!  End this madness.  Call your legislators and the governor and demand reform now. Terminate the losers at DADS and LET THE PEOPLE GO! 

Choose Freedom, 

Jeff Garrison-Tate, Community Now! Founder and Senior Legislative Director