Responding to Serbian mistreatment
TTWS reader Ellen says:
I saw the NBC report, which was, of course, difficult to watch. More so because it brought back memories of being a 14-year-old volunteer in the early '70s at a "training school" in Connecticut where conditions were every bit as bad as the ones depicted in the report, right down to the teens and adults who were the size of toddlers.Having years later become the mother of a son with Down syndrome -- who's grown into a remarkably competent teenager with what we hope is a bright future -- I now know just how much potential was buried inside those urine-stained walls, full of barely verbal adults who were never taught to use a toilet properly, much less read and write and surf the Internet.
It's all very well to shake our heads about these conditions in a country still recovering from war, but how many people realize that their fellow Americans were treated just as badly within most of our lifetimes?
Comments
I saw a picture of a child in one of those Serbian institutions. I was struck by the fact that the situation and picture was almost identical to one I witnessed on a back ward in Laconia, NH in the early 70s.
People who express horror at the Serbian conditions need to come to grips with the fact that the ONLY difference between what's going on in Serbia and how we've treated developmentally disabled (and poor, they were often not disabled but poor kids in need of foster placement) children is time. We were doing the very same things 25 or 30 years ago.
In our state no one got out of the "school" for the retarded without being sterilized. That includes those aforementioned kids whose only disability was poverty and state underfunding of foster care. Yep, they were all sterilized too. I met them later, when they were grieving the fact they would never have children.
Pogo was right: We have met the enemy and it is us.
Posted by: Sherry | November 29, 2007 09:35 AM