BARBWIRE
by
 I'm a loser. How do I know? Because somebody's dead, the latest in a long
line of casualties I've been working 25 years to prevent.I never met her, but I knew Leslie Carter. I never met any of the others,
either. But I've done my best to patch up our tattered safety net to catch
them when they fall.I got started working for the rights of the mentally disabled quite by
accident in 1972. I heard that state mental health staffers had been
coerced to work for a certain pet assemblyman's re-election. Since the feds
were paying the salaries in question, a violation of federal law was
involved.It took me more than two years to break the story. By then, an advocacy
group had formed. Citizens for Humanity in Mental Health was headed by
Lolly Giudici. They persuaded Robert Plotkin of the Ralph Nader-affilated
Mental Health Law Project to look into Nevada patient care. In just three
days, he identified a laundry list of potential legal actions. The showdown
came at a public meeting at the Nevada Mental Health Institute in Sparks.
The citizens' group decided to accept the state's promise to do better.
Court supervision after winning a lawsuit would have worked a lot better
than what we have seen in the intervening two decades. Court orders have
teeth. Legislative and regulatory mandates have never worked.A 1978 legislative report stated that patients often received no
treatment besides drugs. Today, the Sparks institute remains basically a
dispensary of mismanaged medication and big-money subcontracts.While maltreatment of the mentally ill is nothing new, turning them into
the hardcore homeless can be traced to one guy with good intentions. Back
before he became TV's number one news punk, Geraldo Rivera was an ace
investigative reporter for a New York City TV station. One day in 1971, he
walked in, unannounced, to Willowbrook Hospital, a true snake pit of flesh
warehousing.People all over the big apple got sick while eating their dinner that
night. Instead of happy talk, they saw twisted children lying in their own
filth with flies all over them.In originating the video ambush, Geraldo Rivera accidentally pioneered the
era of patients' rights. The operative philosophy became treat them, or
release them. Flesh warehousing was out. Community based care was in.But "community facilities were not set up to provide continuing treatment
for patients being released," Dr. E. Fuller Torrey wrote in the Wall Street
Journal in 1987. "Adequate low cost housing for released patients was never
developed," he added. "The attempts by all three levels of government to
transfer the fiscal burden to one another and minimize their own
responsibility would be ludicrous if human beings were not involved," he
asserted.If that sounds a bit like Ronald Reagan's "New Federalism," you've got a
good memory. Reagan popularized cutting every budget but war and pork.
Combined with crumbling Vietnam vets, the mentally disabled began to get
very visible. The homeless problem was born.Referring to a closed New York hospital, Dr. Torrey said "some of the same
men who once used the building as part of the psychiatric hospital now use
it as a shelter - only now there are no nurses, no doctors, no activities
and no treatment." Sound familiar?In 1971, newly-elected Gov. Mike O'Callaghan pushed for and won
substantially increased funding for the state division of mental hygiene
and retardation. The money was sorely needed and the booming state had it
to spare, with plenty of extra help from the feds. Alas, the new
bureaucrats in charge soon learned how to milk the fresh cash cow.Public relations predominated over patient care. Getting federal funds at
any cost became the priority. The infamous "schizomobile" was put on
Reno-Sparks streets, cruising for anyone whose diagnosis might be stretched
to include schizophrenia because of heavy federal money available to treat
it. Sparks and Reno had a veritable schizophrenic epidemic, at least on
paper. When I exposed the practice, institute administrators announced the
program had been so successful that it was being eliminated.Every time we broke a new scandal, the perpetrators usually got promoted.
The names of the dead have never left me. Ada Marie Young was given
heavyweight drugs without a blood test to see what else she might have
taken. Drug interactions killed her. Jesse Ege, a severely retarded little
boy, was allowed to wander away into a frozen Nevada night. They found his
body along the Truckee days later. I got a top gun trial lawyer to
represent his grandparents, but the old folks were too infirm to see it
through.John Parra. Gloria Clower. So many haunt my memory. Gloria was a beautiful
but very insane young woman. At her family attorney's office, I viewed
grisly police crime scene photos of her death. She supposedly drowned
accidentally in a bath tub. "I suspect they killed her because she was so
much trouble," the lawyer told me. He showed me substantial evidence
backing up his charge.Despite deaths and budget increases, nothing seemed to change. In 1982, I
heard that the paper tiger of the hospital industry was due at the
institute. The Chicago-based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals
was coming to Sparks.My brother, who holds a master's degree in social work, told me "don't get
your hopes up. JCAH is not an instrument of social change. They basically
make sure all the paperwork's in order."My bro knew of whence he spoke. I had to threaten legal action to even get
an appointment with JCAH auditor Frank Mims. I told him that the same
conditions which had killed so many patients still existed. I implored him
to check actual conditions, not just file folders. Experts from the
citizens group had advised me to threaten lawsuits if Mims refused to look
into my allegations.I especially warned him of potential bathtub drownings. Alas, talking to
Mims was like talking to the Sphinx. He flew off to write his report
accrediting the Sparks institute for another three years, keeping that
federal money coming in.Exactly three days later, Doris Peltier drowned in a bath tub, just as I
had warned. Mims and Co. immediately announced an unprecedented reopening
of their review. For a few days, I felt like I had done something good. But
the golden glow fades fast when you advocate for the disfavored.And that's who they are. They are losers. They often can't speak
coherently. They are usually not pretty. They are often unruly, children of
the lesser gods.When I started tilting at the Nevada mental health windmill, Leslie Carter
was a black and beautiful three year-old. Fast forward a quarter century,
and that lovely child, now in an adult body, gets bludgeoned to death in
the restroom at Wingfield Park - just a few miles upriver from the
institute that kicked her onto the streets. Two little kids found her body.I never met you, but I knew you as I knew all the others. I'm a loser,
too, along with the rest of the living. You and your brothers and sisters
died for our sins. Every so often, another one of you gets sent to us as a
sacrifice to teach us the error of our ways.When will we ever learn to go and lose no more?TWILIGHT SZONY: Proving that God has a sense of humor, Reno Hilton boss
Ferenç Szony has been downsized. This Friday is his last day, the very
moment Hilton goes before local tax authorities asking for a $263,000
property tax reduction. Why? Because $20,000,000 wasn't enough profit last
year for our largest hotel-casino. The security guards Szony fired for
refusing to take a 35% pay cut plan to picket the hearing, then march
downtown. Join the fun at 10:30 a.m. Friday at the county commission
chambers at Ninth and Wells. I think Szony should be invited to walk with
the picketers--as long as he joins the security guards union first.Be well. Raise hell.Andrew Barbano is a Reno-based syndicated columnist and 28-year Nevadan.Barbwire by Barbano has appeared in the Sparks Tribune since 1988. This column originally published 2/16/97.Nevada Instant Type in Sparks and both Office Depot Reno locations. |
