TW: ableism, suicide, eugenics

(TW: Ableism, Medical Abuse, Institutionalization) Florida Teen Dies After Disabled Mom Loses Custody

TW: Ableism, Medical Abuse, Institutionalization

The last time Doris Freyre saw her 14-year-old daughter, Marie, alive was around 1 p.m. on April 26. She watched helplessly as the disabled girl was strapped to a stretcher and sent by ambulance to a nursing home in Miami — five hours away from their home in Tampa, Fla.

Florida child welfare authorities had deemed Freyre, a 59-year-old single mother with six herniated discs and carpal tunnel syndrome in both her wrists, unable to take care of Marie, who had cerebral palsy and suffered from life-threatening seizures.

Marie, who was in state custody despite pleas from her mother that she could better care for her daughter at home, died alone just 12 hours later on April 27 — dehydrated and not properly medicated — of cardiac arrest, according to a Miami Herald investigation.

Neither a nurse nor a social worker accompanied the screaming girl en route to the institution. And her mother was not allowed to ride with the girl, who could not talk and had a rigid medication routine.

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(TW: Abuse, dehumanization) Some of the bizarre things I was brought up to believe

(TW: Abuse, dehumanization)

draggle-ella:

To make up for existing, I must be as capitally productive as possible.  The opposite of this is making more people who will potentially not be tax payers.

I cannot risk being expendable.  If I’m expendable, I’m a sitting duck.

(But don’t show off!)

I have no choice but to gnaw a hole into the world.

(But don’t do that!  Shouldn’t exist, anyway, much less make a mark!)

I’m unwanted.  I’m unwanted.  I’m unwanted.

Do everything.  Be nothing.

Aren’t you grateful you live in a time and place where women don’t have to be mothers?

You don’t want that for yourself.  You’re defective.  It’s not your place.

Not that you have a place. 

Put your dog to sleep.*  She’s disabled, therefore not productive.  Learn this, little girl!  But if you kill yourself, you’ll go to hell.  You’re not a person enough for us to care about this imposed Catch-22.

Love isn’t productivity.  Warmth is useless.

Don’t care for others.  It’s creepy.  Everything you do is creepy.

Your determination to survive is a threat.

Above all, happiness is forbidden and undeserved.

*Note:  I did NOT put Rose to sleep.  This infuriated people.

(tw sexual assault, abuse, ableism)

(tw sexual assault, abuse, ableism) 5ever asked: I think I have PTSD from being sexually assaulted, but I’ve found that people will outright tell me “you can’t have it because you’re not messed up enough” (oh i didn’t know you were a doctor!!) It’s really infuriating because it’s a perfect example of able people being SO CERTAIN that you’re making up your disability & that all there is to disability is what they can determine at a glance. sorry this is more of a rant than anything

There is nothing wrong with venting or ranting, that’s one of the things we’re here for!

And I’m definitely hearing you on this.  I think there’s also commonly some intersection with sexism here as well, in that often there’s an attitude that if you aren’t a soldier you can’t have PTSD, despite how extremely common it is (unfortunately) in people who’ve faced sexual violence or abuse.  Obviously, not all soldiers are men and not all people who face abuse are women, but that’s part of the assumption and it works in conjunction with r*pe culture and misogyny. 

I remember watching a special on PTSD by the BBC (not recommended!) and throughout the program there was an air of distrust of those who’d gotten PTSD outside of soldiering work, like they couldn’t possibly have been through real trauma.  This despite estimates that PTSD is one of the most common mental disorders, despite research that shows sexual violence and abuse survivors often have similar reactions and survival techniques to people who’ve lived in war zones, and despite the erasure this creates of all those civilians affected by war.  And I mean, it’s not even like people are great to soldiers with PTSD.

I also definitely think you hit the nail on the head with people who look for proof you’re disabled!  Unless they’re a doctor, unless they’re your doctor and have your permission, they should bug off.

(ableism including some in article, description of hate crimes, suicide, harassment, abuse, murder) 65,000 hate crimes against disabled people and rising. This has to stop.

(ableism including some in article, description of hate crimes, suicide, harassment, abuse, murder)  65,000 hate crimes against disabled people and rising. This has to stop.

Last night the ITV Tonight programme led the way with a documentary looking at the rise if disability hate crime, press propaganda and palpable apathy on the issue. There was a notable absence from Maria Miller, Minister for Disabled People, who couldn’t find fifteen minutes out of her day to meet the show’s presenter, disabled actor and stand up Francesca Martinez. However she offered a short, bland statement, memorable only because it didn’t address Francesca’s concerns.

The programme makers allowed the stories of disabled people who have experienced hate crime to be told, like Peter Greener, a man who despite working all of his adult life had become disabled and had to rely on benefits. His fluctuating condition, which meant Peter sometimes used his wheelchair and sometimes his crutches, was too nuanced a concept for one of his neighbours to understand. They videoed Peter without his knowledge and targeted him with verbal abuse, even throwing stones at his house and painting abusive graffiti on his fence. The neighbour was found guilty of harassment and criminal damage, and because of the disability hate crime aspect, got a ten week suspended sentence and a restraining order.

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(tw abuse, suicide, self-harm, ableism, institutionalized ableism) Ohio And Florida Public Schools Lock Mentally Disabled Children In Closets

(tw abuse, suicide, self-harm, ableism, institutionalized ableism)

Ohio And Florida Public Schools Lock Mentally Disabled Children In Closets

To discipline misbehaving students, public schools in Ohio and Florida regularly send children to “seclusion” — isolation in a locked cell-like room, old office, or closet, NPR’s State Impact reports. Many of these children are special needs students and their parents are not always told of this disciplinary practice.

Ohio schools — where seclusion is almost completely unregulated — sent students to seclusion rooms 4,236 times in the 2009-2010 school year. Sixty percent of these students had disabilities. Florida schools have fewer cases, with 969 instances of seclusion from 2010 to 2011. The state has just three stipulations for using seclusion rooms: teachers may not choke or suffocate students, the room must be approved by a fire marshal, and the lights must be left on.

A joint report by StateImpact and Columbus Dispatch report found rampant abuse and lack of training of the punishment, which is meant as a last resort to deal with violent children:

But last school year, one Pickerington special-education teacher sent children to a seclusion room more than 60 times, district records show. In nearly all of those incidents, the children were not violent. Often, they were sent to the seclusion room for being “mouthy,” or whining about their school work.

Pickerington Special Education Director Bob Blackburn said the teacher in that classroom was new and that someone in the district has now taught her the right way to use the seclusion room.Other Pickerington teachers misused the rooms, too, though. In another classroom, children were secluded more than 30 times last school year. Two-thirds of those instances involved misbehavior and not violence, district records show.Far from benefiting violent or rowdy students, seclusion has been found to be deeply traumatizing, sometimes leading children to hurt or   kill themselves. In one special education school in Georgia, a 13-year-old boy hung himself in a seclusion room in November 2004.

Source by Aviva Chen @ ThinkProgress

The fact that they felt the need to make “do not choke or suffocate the students” says it all.  I was a mentally disabled child and had daily report forms filled out by my teachers on my behaviour and progress and this terrifies me because I can imagine how awful this would have been (especially since I did suffer from ableism in other regards during school).  This is an abusive practice, and if you live in the areas affected and are able, please write your school boards and let them know how unacceptable this is!

I am sick of how many times we’ve had to use the “ableism kills” tag on this blog.

(tw: abuse, institutionalization, ableism, neglect, death: please note that this article is very difficult to read)

(tw: abuse, institutionalization, ableism, neglect, death: please note that this article is very difficult to read)

Dark side of a Bain success:

A for-profit health company bought by Bain — that Romney profits from — has exploded in size and tales of neglect

It seemed a world away from the executive suites of Bain Capital when Dana Blum, a recent widow living in Portland, Ore., made the fateful decision to send her son Brendan to Youth Care, a residential program for troubled teens located in the suburbs of Salt Lake City.

Brendan, a 14-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome, had been extremely aggressive for years; he was even arrested a few times after attacking members of his family. Local therapists hadn’t helped, and six months after her husband died, Dana was frantically casting about for solutions. A consultation with UCLA’s neuropsychiatric unit convinced her that Youth Care’s therapeutic and educational program would finally make a difference.

Four months into his stay there, Brendan had earned a reputation as a temper-prone student who tried to shirk his obligations. So on the afternoon of June 27, when he complained to medical staff that he felt very sick, as if something were “crawling around” in his stomach, his concerns were dismissed. After 11 p.m., he woke up, complaining of stomach pain, and defecated in his pants. The on-duty monitors took him to the Purple Room, a makeshift isolation room used to segregate misbehaving students. There, he suffered a long night of agony, howling in pain and repeatedly vomiting and soiling himself. According to court transcripts and police reports, the two poorly paid monitors on duty did little more than offer him water, Sprite and Pepto-Bismol. They never telephoned the on-call nurse and waited until nearly 2 a.m. to contact the on-call supervisor, only to leave a voicemail. There was little else they felt they could do — Youth Care’s protocol on emergency services meant they were too low on the totem pole to call 911 themselves.

“They didn’t trust our judgment in emergency situations,” explains Josh Randall, a former Youth Care residential monitor, who wasn’t on duty that night. “If you’re working for $9.50 an hour on the graveyard shift, you don’t want to buck the system.” At any rate, the monitors had little expertise in how to respond — it was an entry-level job requiring only a GED, plus a CPR and safety course overseen by Youth Care itself.

When the morning staff arrived at 7 a.m., they discovered Brendan facedown on the floor of the Purple Room, his body already stiff with rigor mortis. The state’s chief medical examiner later determined that Blum had died of a twisted-bowel infarction, which requires emergency surgical intervention.

CONTINUE READING @ the source on Salon.com, written by Art Levine