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Geekery Today: posts tagged Texas
Beating up your teenage daughter isn’t just a good idea. It’s the law. (posted 11 June 2008)
If you happen to pass through Justice of the Peace Gustavo Gus
Garza’s court room, anyway.
(Mike Gogulski @ nostate.com 2008-06-08: Texas: Court-mandated assault for skipping school.)
Lawsuit: Los Fresnos JP ordered spankings
5 June 2008
BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS (AP) — A Los Fresnos family is going to court to prevent a Cameron County justice of the peace from ordering spankings in his courtroom.
A lawsuit filed today alleges Justice of the Peace Gustavo
GusGarza told a 14-year-old girl’s stepfather to strike her repeatedly on the buttocks in open court.If he didn’t, the judge said the girl would be found guilty and fined $500 for truancy.
The lawsuit by Mary Vasquez and her husband, Daniel Zurita, described the paddle provided by Garza as large and heavy and fashioned from a thick piece of lumber.
In a story for The Brownsville Herald, Garza declined to comment on whether he has people spanked in his courtroom. He also said he had not seen the lawsuit.
Zurita says he didn’t feel as if he had a choice but to follow the order.
In an affidavit, Zurita says that when he was through, the judge told him he had not struck the girl hard enough.
—KGBT 4 (2008-06-05): Lawsuit: Los Fresnos JP ordered spankings
Because he coerced the stepfather into beating and humiliating his 14-year-old daughter in open court, in front of strangers, by threatening to inflict a several hundred dollar fine and a criminal record on the young woman if he didn’t do it, Justice of the Peace Gustavo Gus
Garza believes that he didn’t order
the beating; he just offered it as a punishment option.
Much like a mugger offers you an option
between your money and your life, I guess:
Justice of the Peace Judge, Gustavo Garza was in court this morning after getting sued for his spanking punishment option. The plaintiffs are Mary Vazquez and Daniel Zurita. They want a temporary restraining order against Judge Garza’s spanking punishment. Instead, state district judge Abel Limas has reset the hearing for next Wednesday.
The parents of a 14-year-old teenager were in court, hoping to put a stop to Judge Garza’s idea of punishment. Their complaint says that Garza told the teen and her step-father that the teen would be found guilty of a criminal offense and fined $500 for not attending school unless Zurita spanked his step-daughter in the JP courtroom on April 9th. The couple’s attorney Mark Sossi, argued that Judge Garza did not have the authority to order someone to spank their child. But after the hearing Judge Garza told us again that he did not order anyone. Parents had a choice to either spank or pay up.
I’ve never ordered anybody to use discipline on their children in court.—Michelle Macias, KVEO 23 Rio Grande Valley (2008-06-06): Judge Gustavo Garza’s First Day in Court
Please note that when Garza says using discipline,
he doesn’t mean what the words would naturally suggest, that is, for the parent to exercise restraint in spite of strong feelings of anger or frustration. By using discipline,
Garza means parents lashing out rather than restraining themselves, beating their child or teenager with a wooden bat, and laying it on well, while they do so.
Of course, there’s more. Because there’s always more. Court-ordered teen-beating isn’t just a good way to deal with the victimless crime of choosing not to go to a government school. What with the criminalization of everything, especially everything that young people might do, it’s a good way to deal with all kinds of things. Like disabled teens who swear at school bus drivers:
A petition against Gustavo
GusGarza grew by two on the eve of a temporary restraining order hearing against the Cameron County Pct. 6 Justice of the Peace.The parents of two minors came forth Tuesday, asking 404th state District Judge Abel C. Limas to prevent Garza from ordering, encouraging or allowing spankings in his courtroom as punishment.
I wouldn’t hit a child with a paddle, particularly one with physical problems,plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Sossi told The Brownsville Herald late Tuesday. Sossi was referring to one of the two children, who suffers from a muscular-development birth defect and allegedly was spanked in Garza’s court.The child with the disability is a 14-year-old boy who used profanity toward a school bus driver. The second is a 14-year-old girl who skipped class, Sossi said, shortly after filing his amended petition in district court. The respective parents are Leroy Garcia and Rosa Valdez.
[…]
The parents also seek Garza’s removal from office [in addition to a restraining order].
After parents feel compelled to spank their children, they claim, Garza orders the children to bend over a chair placed directly in front of the bench. They are ordered to put their elbows on the arms of a chair with the buttocks facing Garza.
(Garza) has long engaged in this kind of corporal punishment under the authority of his office. Ten years ago when the defendant was a district attorney in Willacy County, he used the color and authority of his office to threaten criminal prosecution unless the parents struck their children with a wooden paddle he owned,Sossi states in the amended petition.The initial petition alleges Garza directed Zurita to repeatedly strike his stepdaughter on the buttocks with a large, heavy wooden paddle fashioned from a thick piece of lumber in open court and in the presence of other adults and juveniles.
Zurita stated in an affidavit that,
I did not feel that I had a choice but carry out the orders of the judge. When I was finished, Judge Garza told me that I had not struck (my stepdaughter) hard enough…Zurita and Vasquez also claim that they were in Garza’s courtroom when he ordered the paddling of other minors.
Garza said Friday that he has not kept count on the number of children paddled in his court.
—Emma Perez-Treviño, The Brownsville Herald (2008-06-10): More families file against
spanking judge
Justice of the Peace Gustavo Gus
Garza believes that Texas state law is on his side:
Judge Garza says his disciplinary option does not break any Texas law.
I believe and as you will find the law will support me. The penal code addresses it for parents and educators to use it for discipline, the family code obligates it.—Michelle Macias, KVEO 23 Rio Grande Valley (2008-06-06): Judge Gustavo Garza’s First Day in Court
I don’t know whether or not Garza really meant to claim that the Texas state family code obliges parents to beat up self-willed children and teenagers in the name of discipline.
That seems odd. But I don’t know much about Texas state law, and he is Da Judge, so, for all I know, he may very well be right about the contents of the Texas penal code and the contents of the family code. The legal condition of children and teenagers throughout the United States is generally pretty appalling. But if he is right, then that’s a good reason to say to hell with the penal code and the family code.
To prove, that these Sort of policed Societies are a Violation offered to Nature, and a Constraint upon the human Mind, it needs only to look upon the sanguinary Measures, and Instruments of Violence which are every where used to support them. Let us take a Review of the Dungeons, Whips, Chains, Racks, Gibbets, with which every Society is abundantly stored, by which hundreds of Victims are annually offered up to support a dozen or two in Pride and Madness, and Millions in an abject Servitude, and Dependence. There was a Time, when I looked with a reverential Awe on these Mysteries of Policy; but Age, Experience, and Philosophy have rent the Veil; and I view this Sanctum Sanctorum, at least, without any enthusiastick Admiration. I acknowledge indeed, the Necessity of such a Proceeding in such Institutions; but I must have a very mean Opinion of Institutions where such Proceedings are necessary. […] In vain you tell me that Artificial Government is good, but that I fall out only with the Abuse. The Thing! the Thing itself is the Abuse!
Meanwhile, the comments thread, here’s how to maintain high moral standards and exonerate sadist judges in ten easy steps:
Conflate force with reason:
I myself have spanked my kids in the butt area. Only once in a long while to teach my kids right from wrong. […] Teach your daughter the consequences of not been in school. Don’t wimp out and try to be her friend.
—Sy A, Edinburg, comments on KGBT 4 (2008-06-05): Lawsuit: Los Fresnos JP ordered spankings
How are they going to learn if there is no discipline?
Blame the victim:
WHY IS THE BOTTOM LINE NOT SEEN HERE? These kids are not in court because they are honor students! They are discipline problems!!
Children with disabilities? That kid certainly was very able to run his mouth off to the bus driver. All this is drama for your mama.
Blame the victim’s parents:
The article never mentioned the mothers role or lack there of??? I wonder if the child has been late for school since the step-father opted to save her future by not paying the fine and allow a criminal history?
Man, these parents are something else. […] Obviously the judge is doing the job the parents have failed to do. I wonder if these parents read these blogs and feel just a little dumb for trying to milk the county for their child’s inability to stay in school or behave?
The kid’s step father couldn’t control the kid (Is he a wimp?). Far too many judges refuse to enforce the law. Judge garza should be recognized for enforcing the law. The parent had three choices: Make thge kid go to school, pay a fine, or paddle the kid–and he is now crying about his choice. Again, I ask if he is a wimp?
Blame the lawyers:
What these people don’t understand is that the only one that will come out winning is the lawyer(s). The more petitioners, the more the lawyer gets and the less they get.
These people are being led by the nose by sharks, aka lawyers.
Blame the victim’s socioeconomic class:
I bet you she will be pregnant and on public assistance before she is 18 years old. Thats all we need another dumb teenaged parent with an attitude. Sorry if it seems harsh but thats what it is. Just a thought!
—L Deleon, Harlingen, comments on KGBT 4 (2008-06-05): Lawsuit: Los Fresnos JP ordered spankings
I guess everyone forgets about the drop out kids from school who because of lack of education leads to no job and deperation for money which might lead to theft,burglary (your neighboorhood)robbery. More drain on the goverment assistance.
Blame other youths, unrelated to this case, because you presume that the youths in this case are kind of like those other youths:
I feel compelled to spank my child as well too but I don’t. I would if she acted like some of these punks though.
Some kids do need a good spanking. Especially if this punishment averts any other form of criminal activity.
I wonder how many people would make the same comment if they worked in a public school you have no idea what type of behavior kids have in school. Texas Law allows the parent to discipline their child but when the parent wants to do so their child threatens to call police and file assault charges against them.
Impugn the parents’ motives without evidence:
Man, these parents are something else. Jumping on the band (more like BANK) wagon to gain notoriety. WHY IS THE BOTTOM LINE NOT SEEN HERE?
If the parents thought this was embarrassing then they should have paid the fine. A choice was given so why are they crying about it now. The lawyer and the parents are probably doing this for the money.
—I. Flores, Mid Valley, comments on KGBT 4 (2008-06-05): Lawsuit: Los Fresnos JP ordered spankings
[The story says only that the parents are seeking a restraining order against Garza and, if possible, his removal from the bench. As far as I can tell there is no mention of their seeking monetary damages. Not that there would be anything wrong with it if they are. —R.G.]
Compete to see who can go most over-the-top in their praise of beating and terrorizing children:
Go Judge Garza! It’s about time someone taught kids now a days about discipline. This lawsuit is a joke. If we as parents don’t want to be at this point where we are at court having to spank our kids in front of a group of people, we need to start doing it at home.
—N R, Los Fresnos, comments on KGBT 4 (2008-06-05): Lawsuit: Los Fresnos JP ordered spankings
I think their is always two sides to the story. Many of the kids today need corporal punishment. I am thankful that my principal and school community still allow my principal to spank kids. As a school administrator it is very simple to know what school still uses paddling and which one doesn’t. Most of the ones with the most discipline problems do not spank. I would like to hear more about why this J.P. ordered the spanking. A firm supporter of spanking. Get’m Judge.
As we were growing up we got spanked, not beat, and we grew up just fine. I believe in spanking on the buttom. It is even in the bible. […] Save you children now while you still can, don’t be too soft on them. I had my children spanked in school if and when they did wrong. There is nothing wrong with a spanking here and then when done right. I am all for you Judge Garza, God Bless You.
—I. Flores, Mid Valley, comments on KGBT 4 (2008-06-05): Lawsuit: Los Fresnos JP ordered spankings
When I went to school, we were threatened with
the slap.
the school had two different types. They had a red leather slap and a black one. I forgot which one was thicker. The strap was used as a form of discipline and it worked. Kids were too afraid of getting the strap therefore they were obedient. Most kids were never given the strap because they knew better. Today kids are threatening and abusing their teachers. I’m beginning to think that the schools should implement the strap again.Spank Her Good
The judge should have had a police officer spank that brat. Getting a strong, muscle-head cop to do the spanking would have been ideal. Then I would have paddled the hell out of the parents too. They know when their child is not attending school.
—L Deleon, Harlingen, comments on KGBT 4 (2008-06-05): Lawsuit: Los Fresnos JP ordered spankings
I feel compelled to spank my child as well too but I don’t. I would if she acted like some of these punks though. How are they going to learn if there is no discipline?
time out?
I would take a time out from the spanking. There is your time out.Quibble over semantics:
What do you mean by
ordering a forced beating?
If it falls under the category of abuse causing bodily harm, then I don’t think it’s legal.As we were growing up we got spanked, not beat, and we grew up just fine.
—I. Flores, Mid Valley, comments on KGBT 4 (2008-06-05): Lawsuit: Los Fresnos JP ordered spankings
Spanking is without the use of an aide. A beating uses such, although corporal punishment is different than parental discipline.
Parents do not spank with a belt, flyswatter, switch - they bust ass or administer a whoopin!
They spank with a hand. And if the mark remains, it is child abuse.
@ Connie M (Catana) I don’t consider being hit with a board a spanking. It’s a beating, plan and simple.
If there are no marks, bruises or broken bones, it’s a spanking, plan and simple. If there are no marks, bruises or broken bones, it’s a spanking, plan and simple.
[Alberto Gonzales and Donald Rumsfeld would be proud. —R.G.]
Ramble aimlessly about the good old days and the decline of patriarchal traditions:
Hoping Good Old Times Come Back
As we were growing up we got spanked, not beat, and we grew up just fine. I believe in spanking on the buttom. It is even in the bible. Back in the days teenagers were allowed to work too if this was brought back up we would not have as much trouble today. We would go to school, work after school and we would respect our elders. There was not as much trouble as we have now. There was no time for trouble because we were occupied. I did all this and I grew up to be a responsible, repectable adult.
—I. Flores, Mid Valley, comments on KGBT 4 (2008-06-05): Lawsuit: Los Fresnos JP ordered spankings
What is with all these women not taking their husbands name? Do they jump around so much that it is too much to keep up with their last names, so they keep their’s?
When people engage in violence against children for victimless crimes
like ditching school or mouthing off to adults; when they claim that the violence is to teach
its victim a lesson; when you spend the first two decades of your life being indoctrinated and ridiculed and beaten and extorted into believing in, or at least acquiescing to, this kind of violent, legally-backed authoritarianism, and when this is dignified as raising a child
the right way, when howling mobs of sado-fascist blowhard bullies can be expected to ridicule and blame any parent who doesn’t toe that line and enthusiastically beat their own children, when that same bellowing blowhard bully brigade looks looks for absolutely any and every excuse they could possibly find to justify beating a child or a teenager and compete to see who can get the most down and dirty in their efforts to smear the victim and cheer on the violence; what sort of lessons
do you think that violence and that rhetoric teaches? What sort of a life, and what sort of a society, do you think that this kind of physical and verbal environment prepares these children for?
Further reading:
Dr. Anarchy answers your mail #5: Wherever I go, he goes…. (posted 19 May 2008)
… the occasional advice column that’s taking the world by storm, one sovereign individual at a time.
This week’s question comes from a troubled teen, who wrote to us on the recommendation of long-time reader Chris Acheson. She wrote because she needs help with a question is about relationships and boundaries. How do you know when a concerned friend really has your best interests at heart—and how do you know when that concern crosses a line and endangers the friendship?
Dear Dr. Anarchy,
I have a friend who says he’s really worried about some of the bad decisions I’ve made in the last few years. He thinks that I’m
acting out.I know I haven’t always made the smartest decisions, but now he’s following me around all the time to try and make sure I’m not getting into trouble! He even says he wants me wear a shackle around my ankle with a G.P.S. unit, so that he’ll always know where I am! I told him that sounded too much like Big Brother for me! But he says:You can paint this thing as either Big Brother, or this is a device that connects you to a buddy who wants to keep you safe and help you graduate.. I know he’s just trying to look out for me, but this makes me really nervous! Is he right? What should I say?Sincerely,
Truant in Texas
Dear Truant,
If this guy were really your buddy,
then he would respect your boundaries, and he would try to support you instead of trying to make you do what he thinks you should do. I know that he tries to cover up his controlling behavior by using euphemisms and acting superficially friendly. And I know that you want to believe that after all these years, he really does want what’s best for you. But you need to take an honest look at this relationship. The truth is that your buddy
is acting like a control freak, even a stalker, and you deserve much better than buddies
like that. You need to break off this relationship as soon as you possibly can.
Yours,
Dr. Anarchy.
That’s all for today. Just remember, folks: people are more important than power. And everything is easier when you reject the State as such.
Next week: Dr. Anarchy answers your romance and marriage questions!
See also:
House of Representatives rejects war funding bill (posted 15 May 2008)
I just heard about this via e-mail a few minutes ago:
An unusual coalition of antiwar Democrats and angry Republicans in the House today torpedoed a $162.5 billion proposal to continue funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into next year, eliminating, for now, the one part of the controversial bill that had seemed certain to pass.
Instead, House members voted to demand troop withdrawals from Iraq, force the Iraqi government to shoulder more war costs and greatly expand the education benefits for returning veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict.
The surprise on war-funding left antiwar activists on and off Capitol Hill exultant and Democratic leaders baffled. House leaders had broken the war-funding bill into three separate measures, the first to fund the wars, the second to impose strict military policy measures opposed by President Bush, and the third to fund domestic priorities, including expanded education benefits and flood control work around New Orleans.
But that legislative legerdemain became the plan’s undoing. Democratic leaders knew that many members of their caucus, who have vowed not to approve another penny for the Iraq war, would reject the supplemental appropriation for the conflicts, but they expected Republicans to push it through. [Utterly despicable. —R.G.] Instead, 131 House Republicans voted
presenton the measure, incensed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and a few of her lieutenants had drafted the war bill largely in secret.[…]
The House actions were a dream come true for the antiwar movement.
It is time now for Americans to be heard and for this Congress to move forward with the safe redeployment of our troops,exulted Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) who called on the House to use the $162.5 billion in war funds for domestic priorities.
For the first time ever, the U.S. House has now taken decisive action to bring this war to a close,declared Alan Charney, program director of the antiwar group USAction.When the Senate takes up the bill, its version will include war funding, but prescriptions on troop withdrawals and torture will probably fall to a GOP filibuster.
—Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post (2008-05-16): War Funding Bill Stalls in House
I suppose what’s most likely is that the funding will be re-added in conference committee, or a new emergency
funding bill will be thrown together while the party whips are lashed extra-hard and the warhawk Republicans kiss and make up with the doughface Democratic leadership.
But there is a glimmer of hope today that there wasn’t yesterday, shining through the cracks in the both the War Party coalition (of leadership
Democrats and warhawk Republicans), and in the ruling majority. I don’t know whether this is just a stumble, or the beginning of a real fall, for the bloody-handed, doughfaced Democratic leadership.
I’m too cautious to expect a fall, but I do hold out a little hope. And when they do fall, you can expect them to fall fast and hard. Stay tuned on this one.
See also:
Texas psychoprisons (posted 5 May 2008)
Trigger warning. The news report I discuss includes verbal descriptions of sexual exploitation and extreme violence by caretakers
against male and female patients under their control. It may be triggering for past experiences of violence.
In the past, when I’ve written about violence committed by government police officers or prison guards, I’ve often written something like this:
Please note that if you or I or anyone else without a badge and a gun acted like this, the people around us would more or less universally conclude that we’re belligerent and dangerous lunatics. In fact, if you or I or anyone else without a badge and a gun acted like this, and it was caught on camera, we would soon be in jail for on a charge of assault and battery. When someone with a badge and a gun acts like this, and it’s caught on camera, with a very few exceptions, the worst that ever happens is that they might get fired. The most common response from the powers that be is either to do nothing at all, or else to give the pig a paid vacation and a verbal reprimand.
That’s a point that I stand by, and that I think is vitally important. But one thing you’ve got to remember when thinking about that point is that the class of government-privileged cops and prison guards is larger than the obvious cases you might first think of when asked. Badges and guns
come in a lot of shapes and sizes and prisons can be found in a lot of places. Sometimes the badge is a gold shield and the prison is a penitentiary surrounded by razor-wire and high fences. Sometimes the badge
is a white coat, the gun
is a syringe, and the prison is the locked mental ward
of a hospital. What matters is not the external form, but the underlying relationship of power, and when so-called caretakers
have the legal power to restrain, confine, hold down, drug, shock, spy on, and otherwise coerce or violate a so-called patient,
to treat
her against her will, to force her to remain in a locked room even if she wants to leave, and to chase her down and force her back into that locked room if she tries to slip out without permission, then those so-called caretakers
function as a jailers, and their hospital
as a prison, no less than the corrections officers
and correctional facilities
of the official State prison system.
This is, by the way, a basic point that needs to be made, and needs to be accepted, whether or not one accepts presuppositions of institutional psychiatry, and whether or not one accepts the common practices of involuntary civil commitment, the imprisonment of criminals deemed legally insane in State-run psychoprisons, drugging patients
through the use of force or deception, etc. etc. etc. If you accept those presuppositions and you support imprisoning and forcibly drugging people who, for example, try to hurt (only) themselves, or who have hallucinations, or who steadfastly cling to beliefs that the majority of people consider irrational, then you should go ahead and defend that. But that is what you need to defend—imprisonment and coercive force—not some sentimentalized helping professions
myth in which caretakers are helping willing patients through a disease just like cancer or diabetes.
If you have cancer and diabetes, and you decide (for whatever reason) that you’d rather suffer or even die from it than undergo the conventional treatments, nobody has the legal power to force those treatments on you against your will. And therein lies one of the fundamental political differences between real doctor-patient relationships and psychiatry as it is practiced today. If you want to try to defend psychiatry as it’s practiced today, that difference—the fact of psychiatric imprisonment—is something you’ll have to admit, and where you’ll have to start.
And for those of us who have spent some time watching how the official State prisons and their prison guards work, and who know that the pervasive violence and domination that runs through the system, even when it is judged excessive
or abusive by the powers that be, should be dismissed as Yet Another Isolated Incident carried out by A Few More Bad Apples, but rather recognized as the natural and inevitable result of the kind of environment fostered by the unaccountable power of government enforcers—well, for those of us, things like the Dallas Morning News’s recent report on intense, pervasive abuse of patients
in Texas’s state psychoprisons should be an outrage, but (heart-breakingly) not at all a surprise:
Last year, one [Texas] state mental hospital employee tackled an adolescent patient who was sobbing for his mother, dragging him across the floor by his wrists and hair.
The year before, another brought a female patient into a hospital bathroom and sexually abused her.
And dozens more have participated in brutal beatings at the psychiatric hospitals since 2005, employee disciplinary reports show – using chokeholds, headlocks and threats of violence to restrain the patients under their watch.
In all, 72 employees across Texas’ 10 state mental hospitals have been fired in the last three years for allegations of physical abuse, according to a Dallas Morning News analysis of state personnel records. Hundreds more have been terminated for other violations, the records show, from sleeping on the job to over-medicating mentally ill patients.
[…] Among the allegations of abuse and neglect state hospital workers have been fired for since 2005:
A worker at the North Texas State Hospital slammed a clipboard on a patient’s head, dragged her by her feet and kicked her in the legs and buttocks.
An employee at the Big Spring State Hospital failed to notice a patient who knotted her sheet and strung it around her neck. The patient was blue by the time staff found her.
At the Austin State Hospital, a male employee brought a female patient into a private room for her to carry out a sexual act on him.
An employee at the Austin hospital tackled a juvenile patient and pinned the patient’s neck and head to the floor, bloodying his lips and face and breaking his glasses.
Other employees were punished for offensive treatment, from using racial slurs on patients to making verbal threats and sexual advances. Some ignored patients’ cries for help while they watched TV, played video games and wrote text messages. Others stole state property and sold tobacco products to patients.
[…]
Jason Evans called 911 in November during a bipolar meltdown and was admitted to the Terrell State Hospital. Days later, the 34-year-old was dead – and his parents still don’t know why.
State officials told the Kaufman couple that their son, who was severely mentally ill but in good physical condition, had been disruptive that evening, and records obtained by the family indicate hospital workers medicated him before sending him to sleep. Mr. Evans was apparently found hours later in his bed, and was no longer breathing.
Lynn Evans, his mother, said psychiatric hospital workers attributed the death to natural causes, and doctors said her son had lost oxygen to the brain. But she and Mr. Evans’ father, a pharmacist, have been unable to get specific details about their son’s death. They believe Jason was effectively overdosed by hospital workers trying to restrain him.
It was a disease. Jason couldn’t help it,said Mrs. Evans, choking back sobs.In my heart, I will go to my grave knowing that hospital killed him.Mr. McBride said that the agency is prohibited from confirming the identities of anyone in their care – but that any unexpected deaths are investigated by the Department of Family and Protective Services or by local law enforcement.
There were no deaths among Terrell State Hospital patients last fall from anything other than natural causes,he said.
And anyone who has followed the official response to past prison abuse scandals (cf. GT 2008-02-21: Mississippi Corrections, GT 2008-02-05: Rapists in uniform, GT 2007-10-28: Corrections officers, etc.) should be outraged, but not at all surprised, by the fact that state Mental Health
officials have responded to the threatening, neglecting, assaulting, raping, and torturing of imprisoned patients
in the usual way that prison bosses respond. That, when the administrators are forced to admit that abuses have happened, the individual psychoprison guards are usually administratively disciplined,
or at worst fired, rather than arrested or sued like the violent criminals that they are. That, when asked, the official mouthpieces of the mental health
prison system reply by lying, covering up, whitewashing, isolating, or minimizing the extent of the violence against patients, by making excuses for the perpetrators, and by telling a bunch of sob-stories about the hard luck of supposed trained professionals who are expected to actually do their tough job without hurting people.
State officials say there will always be some reports of abuse and neglect in an institutional setting. And they say they take any allegations of mistreatment seriously. But the records show that as in other state-run facilities, abuse and neglect are systemic.
[…]
The state’s juvenile prisons, group homes for the disabled, and state schools for people with mental disabilities all came under fire last year for reports of widespread physical and sexual abuse.
[…]
Officials with the Department of State Health Services, the agency that runs the psychiatric hospitals, say abuse and neglect are
absolutely notpervasive – and verified cases are actually dropping.In the last two years, they confirmed 15
Class Icases – the most serious abuse. On average, investigators substantiate 5 percent of the more than 2,000 allegations they examine annually. And 90 percent of patient deaths since 2005 were attributed to natural causes, agency spokesman Doug McBride said. Five were suicides, and none were the result of abuse.
Keep in mind there are about 7,400 employees, 18,000 patient admissions and probably hundreds of thousands of staff-patient interactions in a year,Mr. McBride said.State officials acknowledge that the psychiatric hospitals are stressful environments; there are times, Mr. McBride said, when employees
do not handle a situation appropriately.But they say the rules for reporting abuse and neglect are stringent – and confirmed cases of physical and sexual abuse are reported to police.And they balk at the suggestion that conditions bear a resemblance to the state schools for people with mental disabilities, where the U.S. Justice Department has intervened twice in recent years.
The state psychiatric hospitals, which have about 2,500 patients daily, had 137 confirmed abuse cases in 2007. The state schools for people with disabilities, which have twice as many residents, have an average of 300 confirmed abuse cases per year.
But some advocates fear the mentally ill patients may face greater risks. Patients of the psychiatric hospitals are largely indigent, transient and not connected to their families, so they have few allies as they bounce through the mental health system.
It’s a population that’s easy to abuse because they’re not on the radar in any way,said Richard Hansen, a Texas mental health advocate who was chemically restrained, shackled and beaten to the point of broken ribs years ago while suffering from bipolar disorder in a New York mental hospital.[…] Mr. Hansen said many employees are conscientious, but conditions vary from hospital to hospital and ward to ward. Some are simply warehouses, where patients are often overmedicated and ignored. In others, patients frequently turn up with unexplained injuries, he said.
Besides the fact that it is just a lie to claim that a problem that has involved hundreds of employees in the last three years alone is somehow absolutely not pervasive,
one of the most important factors simply goes unmentioned here — that it is really, really easy to get away with far more violence and abuse than crops up in verified
official reports, simply because guards tend to stick together against any allegations made by inmates, and because they can act with an incredible amount of impunity when officials will never trust a victim’s testimony, and will happily wave it off, whenever it’s convenient to do so, as the product—literally—of feeble-mindedness or insanity. No wonder that 5% (and dropping) of the 2,000 abuse allegations filed every year end up getting verified
by the officials.
And, to cap it all, no matter how bad and how widespread the abuse may get, the administrators can always count on the pro-establishment wing of their supposed critics to go to the public and to the legislature to beg for even more tax money and even more prison guards to be sent into the psychiatric prison system, so that the very people who created these maddening prison-ward hellholes can be rewarded for their institutionalized violence by being allowed to take even more money from taxpayers to go on doing the same old thing:
The state psychiatric hospitals, like other systems for vulnerable Texans, are chronically starved for cash, advocates of more state funding say, and services at the local level can’t keep up.
[…]
You get what you pay for,said Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, who has bipolar disorder.When you financially dumb something down, you make services cheap, something’s got to give. Unfortunately, it usually ends up being a mentally ill or disabled Texan.[…]
Aaryce Hayes, a mental health policy specialist with Advocacy Inc., said the Department of State Health Services is working to improve the state hospital system, from incorporating trauma-informed treatment into care regimens to increasing employee empathy training. It is also trying to reduce reliance on restraint and seclusion to keep control of patients.
They get it,she said.They want to see a culture change.But it’s hard to improve when the state hospital system is so overburdened, Ms. Hayes said. Right now, the state funds just 27 percent of mental health needs in the community – meaning everyone else rotates in and out of crisis care. There are more than 450,000 adult Texans with serious and persistent mental illness, everything from schizophrenia to major depression, Ms. Hayes said.
If we said we were serving just 27 percent of people who had cancer, or diabetes, nobody would be comfortable with that,Ms. Hayes said.Money is a persistent problem. In 2003, lawmakers stripped $100 million from the state’s mental health budget, Mr. Coleman said – funding that has only partially been replaced.
The Legislature approved $82 million last year to improve community mental health crisis services, said Robin Peyson, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ Texas chapter. But Texas ranks 48th in the country in per capita funding for people with mental illness, so that money only begins to address the shortfall.
There are not services at the community level and there are not enough beds in the system,she said.If you have inadequate funding, you’re just supporting this cycle, this revolving wheel.
The reality is that what is needed is not more money, or more guards, or better training, or even a culture change.
A culture change would be a step forward, but the real solution that is needed is something that goes far deeper: a solution that strikes at the root from which that culture and these conditions grow. What is really needed is a power change, so that psychiatric wards are no longer artificially packed by court order, so that patients can leave and seek help through other means if conditions become unbearable, and so that supposed patients are no longer treated
against their will and held down at the mercy of their helper-captors. If you make a hospital into a prison camp, then it should be no surprise when the hospital caregivers
start acting like prison camp guards. The only thing to do — the only thing you can do that will not just recreate the same problem in a superficially different form — is to respect the will of patients, to treat violence against them as a real crime worthy of punishment, to repeal the laws that privilege and protect their captors, and to break open the doors and tear off the straitjackets that hold them back from living their lives as human beings, rather than as objects of pity and coercion.
Free the Texas 2,500!
Free all psychiatric prisoners!
Further reading:
- GT 2008-01-06: Shiva on
abuse
andmisdiagnosis
- GT 2007-10-29: For her own good
- GT 2008-02-21: Mississippi Corrections
- GT 2007-11-09: You got served and protected.
- GT 2006-04-14: Over My Shoulder #19: Robert Whitaker (2002), Mad in America on metrazol
therapy
- GT 2006-03-18: Over My Shoulder #15: Robert Whitaker (2002), Mad in America
Tyrannicide Day 2008 (posted 15 March 2008)
Happy Tyrannicide Day (observed)!
Today, March 15th, commemorates the assassination of two tyrants. Today is the 2,051st anniversary — give or take the relevant calendar adjustments — of the death of Gaius Julius Caesar, the military dictator who butchered his way through Gaul, set fire to Alexandria, and, through years of conquest, perfidy, and proscription, battered and broke every barricade that republican institutions had put in the way of military and executive power, until he finally had himself proclaimed dictator perpetuus, the King of Rome in everything but name. On March 15th, 44 BCE, a group of republican conspirators, naming themselves the Liberatores, rose up and stabbed Caesar to death on the floor of the Senate. Meanwhile, Thursday, March 13th, was also the 127th anniversary (give or take the relevant calendar adjustments), of the death of Czar Alexander II Nikolaevitch, the self-styled Caesar of all the Russias. Alexander was killed by grenades thrown by a group of anarchist conspirators on March 13th, 1881 C.E., in an act of propaganda by the deed. In honor of the events, the Ministry of Culture in this secessionist republic of one has proclaimed March 15th Tyrannicide Day (observed), which is kind of like President’s Day, except cooler. Instead of another dull theo-nationalist hymn on the miraculous births of two of the canonized saints of the United States federal government, Tyrannicide Day gives us one day in which we can commemorate the deaths of two tyrants at the hands of their equals — men and women who defied the tyrants’ arbitrary claims to an unchecked authority that they had neither the wisdom, the virtue, nor the right to exercise. Men and women who saw themselves as exercising their equal right of self-defense, by striking down the would-be tyrants just like they would be entitled to strike down any other two-bit thug who tried to kill them, enslave them, or shake them down.
It is worth remembering in these days that the State has always tried to pass off attacks against its own commanding and military forces (Czars, Kings, soldiers in the field, etc.) as acts of terrorism.
That is, in fact, what almost every so-called act of terrorism
attributed to 19th century anarchists happened to be: direct attacks on the commanders of the State’s repressive forces. The linguistic bait-and-switch is a way of trying to get moral sympathy on the cheap, in which the combat deaths of trained fighters and commanders are fraudulently passed off, by a professionalized armed faction sanctimoniously playing the victim, as if they were just so many innocent bystanders killed out of the blue. Tyrannicide Day is a day to expose this for the cynical lie that it is. As many reasons as there are to criticize the strategy behind the assassinations of Czars, Princes, and Dictators Perpetual, the fact that the brutal absolute monarch of a monster State lay dead at the end is not among them.
There are in fact lots of good reasons to rule out tyrannicide as a political tactic — after all, these two famous cases each ended a tyrant but not the tyrannical regime; Alexander II was replaced by the even more brutal Alexander III, and Julius Caesar was replaced by his former running-dogs, one of whom would emerge from the abattoir that followed as Augustus Caesar, to begin the long Imperial nightmare in earnest. But it’s important to recognize that these are strategic failures, not moral ones, and what should be celebrated on the Ides of March is not the tyrannicide as a strategy, but rather tyrannicide as a moral fact. Putting a diadem on your head and wrapping yourself in the blood-dyed robes of the State confers neither the virtue, the knowledge, nor the right to rule over anyone, anywhere, for even one second, any more than you had naked and alone. Tyranny is nothing more and nothing less than organized crime executed with a pompous sense of entitlement and a specious justification; the right to self-defense applies every bit as much against the person of some self-proclaimed sovereign
as it does against any other two-bit punk who might attack you on the street.
Every victory for human liberation in history — whether against the crowned heads of Europe, the cannibal-empires of modern Fascism and Bolshevism, or the age-old self-perpetuating oligarchies of race and sex — has had these moral insights at its core: the moral right to deal with the princes and potentates of the world as nothing more and nothing less than fellow human beings, to address them as such, to challenge them as such, and — if necessary — to resist them as such.
I have been informed that March 15th is also commemorated as the International Day Against Police Brutality. Make of that what you will; what the Ministry of Culture will make of it is an excellent opportunity for a program of commemorative song.
Our first piece is a skolion for the Athenian lovers Aristogeiton and Harmodius, who assassinated the tyrant Hipparchus in 514 BCE, using swords they had concealed in ceremonial myrtle wreaths. In the Athenian democracy, the couple were celebrated as martyrs for liberty, and often remembered in hymns and songs sung before banquets. This is Edgar Allan Poe’s 1827 translation of the most famous surviving Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius; feel free to sing it at your Tyrannicide Day holiday dinner:
Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I’ll conceal
Like those champions devoted and brave,
When they plunged in the tyrant their steel,
And to Athens deliverance gave.Beloved heroes! your deathless souls roam
In the joy breathing isles of the blest;
Where the mighty of old have their home
Where Achilles and Diomed restIn fresh myrtle my blade I’ll entwine,
Like Harmodius, the gallant and good,
When he made at the tutelar shrine
A libation of Tyranny’s blood.Ye deliverers of Athens from shame!
Ye avengers of Liberty’s wrongs!
Endless ages shall cherish your fame,
Embalmed in their echoing songs!—Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius, trans. Edgar Allan Poe (1827)
Our second piece, in honor of the combined occasions for the day, is one of the most famous outlaw corridos from the south Texas borderlands, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, a cowboy and small-time farmer in Karnes County, Texas, who became a legal cause celebre, and a folk hero for many Tejan@s, after he fought back against a racist sheriff in June 1901. Sheriff W. T. Brack
Morris was interrogating Cortez and his brother, and accused them of horse-thieving — based on nothing more than the fact that they did have a horse, and Cortez met the description of the suspect in a recent horse-theft — a suspect who had been described only as a middle-sized Mexican.
Morris tried to arrest Cortez; Cortez told him off, and said that Morris had no reason to arrest him. The deputy who was translating mistakenly claimed that Cortez had said No white man can arrest me;
that was enough for Morris, who pulled his gun and shot down Cortez’s brother. Cortez fired back, killing Morris, and then fled across the state on foot. He managed to elude capture for ten days, repeatedly making daring and close escapes when surrounded and outnumbered by sheriffs, posses, and the rinches (Texas Rangers). The cops threw his wife, his mother, and his children into jail. Anglo papers called for him to be lynched, and Anglo mobs rioted against Latin@s in Gonzales, Refugio, and Hayes counties. After Cortez was finally captured and put on trial for murder, his supporters organized legal defense campaigns, arguing that Cortez had killed only in to defend himself and his family; eventually they got all but one of the murder convictions reversed on appeal. In 1913, they convinced governor Oscar Colquitt to grant Cortez a conditional pardon. Meanwhile, his fame spread in the countryside through this ballad.
Like all corridos, there as many different versions of Gregorio Cortez as there are performances of it. This version is stitched together from my favorite parts of some of the several variants transcribed by Américo Paredes; cf., for example 1, 2, 3.
Gregorio Cortez
Traditional (1900s–1920s).
En el condado de El Carmen
miren lo que ha sucedido,
murió el Cherife Mayor
quedando Román herido.Se anduvieron informando
como media hora después
supieron que el malhechor
era Gregorio Cortez.Decía Gregorio Cortez
Con su pistola en la mano:
—No siento haberlo matado,
lo que siento es a mi hermano.—Soltaron los perroes jaunes
pa’ que siguieran la huella,
pero alcanzar a Cortez
era seguir a una estrella.Tiró con rumbo a Gonzales
sin ninguna timidez:
—Síganme, rinches cobardes,
yo soy Gregorio Cortez.—Y en el condado del Kiansis
lo llegaron a alcanzar
y a pocos más de trescientos
allí les brincó el corral.Decía Gregorio Cortez,
con pistola en la mano:
—¡Ay, cuánto rinche cobarde
para un solo mexicano!—Cuando les brincó el corral,
según lo que aquí se dice,
se agarraron a balazos
y les mató otro cherife.Decían Gregorio Cortez
con su alma muy encendida:
—No siento haberlo matado,
la defensa es permitida.Salió Gregorio Cortez,
salió con rumbo a Laredo,
no lo quisieron seguir
porque le tuvieron miedo.Decían Gregorio Cortez:
¿Pa’ qué se valen de planes?
No me pueden agarrar
ni con esos perros juanes.Decían los americanos:
—Si lo alcanzamos ¿qué hacemos?
Si le entramos por derecho
muy poquitos volveremos.—Allá por El Encinal,
Según lo que aquí se dice,
le formaron un corral
y les mató otro Cherife.Ya se encontró a una mexicana,
le dice con altivez:
—Platícame qué hay de nuevo,
yo so Gregorio Cortez.—Dicen que por culpa mía
han matado mucha gente,
pues ya me voy a entregar
porque eso no es conveniente.—Venían todos los rinches,
por el viento volaban,
porque se querían ganar
diez mil pesos que les daban.Cuando rodearon la casa
Cortez se les presentó:
—Por la buena sí me llevan
porque de otro modo no.Deciá el Cherife Mayor,
como queriendo llorar:
—Cortez, entrega tus armas,
no te vamos a matar.—Decía Gregorio Cortez,
gritaba en alta voz:
—Mis armas no las entrego
hasta estar en calaboz’.—Ya agarraron a Cortez,
ya terminó la cuestión,
la probre de su familia
lo lleva en el corazón.Ya con ésta me despido
a la sombra de un ciprés;
aquí se acaba el corrido
de don Gregorio Cortez.Gregorio Cortez
Trans. (2008) Charles Johnson.
In the county of El Carmen,
Look what’s gone down
The Big Ol’ Sheriff is dead,
Leaving Roman dying on the ground.They walked around asking questions
and in half an hour or so
they found out the man who did it
was Gregorio Cortez.And so said Gregorio Cortez,
with his pistol in his hand,
I don’t feel sorry that I killed him;
what I feel sorry about is my brother.They unleashed the hound dogs,
to follow on his trail,
but chasing after Cortez
was like following a star.
He tore off down toward Gonzales
Not timid in the least;
Come after me, cowardly rinches;
I am Gregorio Cortez.And in the county of Kiansis,
They showed up to try and grab him,
A bit more than three hundred
There, and he jumped out of their corral.And so said Gregorio Cortez,
With his pistol in his hand:
Man, look how many cowardly rinches
For just one Mexican!But when he jumped the corral,
What they say around here is,
The bullets started flying,
And he killed them another sheriff.And so said Gregorio Cortez,
With his soul burning bright,
I don’t feel sorry that I killed him.
A man’s got a right to defend his life.Then Gregorio Cortez got away,
got away down the way to Laredo;
they wouldn’t have wanted to follow,
Now he had them scared to.And so said Gregorio Cortez:
What’s the good of your plots?
You can’t get your hands on me,
Not even with those hound dogs.And so said the Americanos:
If we catch up to him, what can we do?
If we go after him in a straight-up fight,
There won’t be many coming back.Out there by El Encinal,
What they say around here is,
They got him in another corral
And he killed them another sheriff.Then he met another Mexican,
And he said with some arrogance,
What’s the news? Tell me—
I am Gregorio Cortez.
They say that because of me,
They’re killing lots of folks
So now I’ll turn myself in,
because that ain’t fit at all.Down came all the rinches,
Flying through the wind,
Because they wanted to get ahold of
Ten thousand pesos like they were offered.When they surrounded his house
Cortez showed himself to say:
You’ll take me in by my own will,
And not any other way.And so said the Big Ol’ Sheriff,
like he was about to cry:
Cortez, hand over your guns,
and you won’t have to die.And so said Gregorio Cortez,
With a great big yell,
I’m not handing my guns over
Until you’ve locked me in my cell.And so they took in Cortez,
And that’s where it came to an end.
His poor family
Carry him in their hearts.And with that I’ll say my goodbye
In the shade under a cypress;
Here I’ll finish off the ballad
Of Don Gregorio Cortez.
Thus always to tyrants. Beware the State. Celebrate the Ides of March!
Further reading:
- GT 2007-11-23: The present anarchy of our commerce features a Tyrannicide Day commemorative t-shirt from the Rad Geek People’s Clothing Collective storefront
- GT 2007-03-15: Tyrannicide Day 2007: The fourth annual celebration, with an oration and a commemorative reading from Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, a dramatic retelling of the legendary Swiss tyrannicide which, if genuinely historical, was perhaps the most strategically successful tyrannicide in history.
- GT 2006-03-15: Tyrannicide Day ceremonies for 2006: the third annual celebration, with some thoughts on equality and a commemorative reading from The Tragedy [sic] of Julius Caesar.
- GT 2005-03-15: Happy Tyrannicide Day (observed)!: the second annual celebration, and some thoughts on tyrannicide and
terrorism
- GT 2004-03-15: Happy Tyrannicide Day (observed)!: the first annual celebration. It’s like President’s Day, only cooler.
- Professor Wilkes: Tyrannicide Not Terrorism
- Leo Tolstoy (1900): Thou Shalt Not Kill