Kiley Developmental Center in Waukegan, IL

These pictures were taken in a patient's room at Kiley snake pit within the last few days. Illinois taxpayers, in full and perhaps willful ignorance, fund these horrible places, where developmentally disabled adults are warehoused, neglected and abused with absolutely no provision of effective treatment or habilitation, whatsoever. Where the money really goes is anybody's guess, but reportedly there are justice investigations in progress, so maybe we'll find out soon. Maybe some of the heads heads that ought to roll, finally will.

Kiley is run by the Illinois Department of Human Services ("IDHS"--which could more appropriately stand for the Inhuman Department of Horrific Slavery). Key names of perpetrators of this disaster at Kiley snake pit include Tanisha Hankerson, Tanya Piephoff, ("The Evil") John Cosgrove, and Kinga Mucha.

"Experts" on the mind (optimism)

Recent events seem to validate what is a reality for me, but a reality that has not been shared by most people or the society around me, maybe until recently. This would be a victory. (I am proven right, and "they" are all wrong.) But there is also sadness and a strange fear. 

My sadness recalls a scene from the end of the movie Schindler's List, when Oscar Schindler (played so brilliantly by Liam Neeson), was surrounded by a crowd of liberated Jews whose lives he had saved from the Nazis. The war was over, Schindler was a saint to these people. He had once been very rich but he was broken now, he and his wife wore the poorest clothes as disguise to escape from advancing Russians, and he broke down, sobbing uncontrollably when he looked at the car he was about to leave in, mumbling, "I could have got more out, I should have sold this car. One more, one more...."

Since 1945 there has been an ongoing holocaust of souls perpetrated by the Gruppenführers and Oberführers of psychiatry. I weep for every individual who has succumbed. So many people I should have rescued but didn't or couldn't, even some people I loved!

The fear I harbor recalls plots from the Robert Redford-Brad Pitt movie Spy Game or various, far darker versions of case officer-agent relationships. These remind me of Richard Helm's understanding of trust (there's never sufficient reason for it, ever: it is always an arbitrary decision taken purely as a luxury that can be afforded), or the tragic conclusion of Smiley's People by John le Carré: "I have destroyed him with the weapons I abhorred and they are his. We have crossed each other's frontiers. We are the no-men of this no-man's land." I've had nightmares where I become a psychiatrist, psychiatrists and their slaves are my only friends, and no one else understands me.

I have adopted (and adapted) an old habit from Cato the Elder, adding "Psychiatria delenda est!" to almost any conversation or statement, however non-sequitur. The Roman was right about Carthage, and I believe I am right about psychiatry, it must be destroyed.

A Congressional roundtable hearing on mental health was held yesterday morning in the U.S. House, by the Oversight Committee. I was thrilled to discover that Laura Delano was one of three guests invited to testify. When I first met Laura more than a decade ago, she was a nobody (but for her family name), who was still trying to recover from psychiatry, and my sense was, still afraid. Now she is a thought leader, an expert. She is as effectively anti-psychiatry as anyone I know, although she goes to pains to disavow that label. (I wish she wouldn't!) I hope she is completely secure, because people will surely try to ruin her.

The Chairman of the hearing (Congressman Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin) opened with a statement that included, "I think the mental health establishment in this country is such a total scandal... We have so many people entering the mental health establishment thinking they will solve their problems, and in so many cases instead of solving their problems, they made their problems so much worse." He added at one point that he believes many people who seek help from psychiatrists would be much better off never having anything to do with them at all. He is 100% right about that!

Meanwhile, Bob Whitaker and Mad In America just put out a compelling article exposing the apparent trend toward re-institutionalization (under a guise of protecting the public from all the dangerous crazy people) as leading to policies that violate basic human rights. I know from my own legal work in Illinois that the morale of institutional mental health workers continues to tank. United Nations authorities have weighed in for a couple years now to say involuntary psychiatric "treatment" should be abolished. Even Federal Reserve banks are weighing in against involuntary "hospitalization" and "treatment". It is worth recalling Thomas Szasz's prediction that psychiatry will wither away if it loses its legal authority to coerce people and force drugs or shock on them in the name of "medicine". That is exactly what I understand various obvious social trends, and many political conversations and events, to portend.

Another very encouraging development is the unexpected difficulty and increasing complexity of getting psychedelic drugs approved for treatment of psychiatric conditions. The so-called "renaissance" of psychedelic research thankfully did not bring these psychosis-inducing poisons out of the anti-drug "dark ages" after all. Hopefully this impossible so-called "science" will be remembered as a brief, quirky chimera or simply forgotten by history.

More and more people, if cautiously, seem to accept my admonishment that the study of the mind, as distinct from the body or the brain, and the healing, as distinct from mere profitable servicing, of mentally-caused ills... should not be alienated from religion or condoned in non-religious fields. Mental health is NOT naturally a medical issue. The mind is not understandable as a bio-mechanical machine, and a person is absolutely NOT a mere animal to be controlled.

In any event, I sure hope my grieving for souls lost to the psychiatric holocaust can soon be over and my nightmares will not come true!

You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free

This title is well known from 8:32 of The Gospel According to John, and as the official motto of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The coincidence is interesting and perhaps darkly ironic.

The truth will set people free from having to cover up and constantly service their own lies, that's for sure.

In civil litigation, lawyers are cynical. "The Truth" is reduced to whatever portion all the ornate rules and complex tactics will permit each side to tell. I am a mediocre lawyer at best: I certainly do not have the ornate rules and complex tactics at my fingertips the way some attorneys do. I came to this professional practice for the sole purpose of eliminating psychiatric coercion and harm from mental health. My purpose contains enough truth to feel like it sets me free, or should. Most of the time I hate servicing lies.

I've been a lawyer for 25 years now, so my truth is not entirely impractical. At the moment I represent the Plaintiff in a civil rights case in the middle of discovery, and the Illinois Attorney General's office lawyers who represent the (state-employed) Defendants seem to be mis-estimating my client in a major way. Basically, they think he's a crazy liar when he's not. They will be happy to short-cut the Plaintiff's deposition, by keeping it remote, not investing in the necessary logistics to do it in person.

Ultimately, the Defendants' mis-estimation would be to my advantage. In theory, I should let them make their mistake. That's how a corrupt, secret intelligence operation or a proper Sun Tzu strategy could work (as beautifully depicted for example, in my latest favorite TV series, "Berlin Station").

People think John 8:32 and the CIA motto is about God and spies. In fact, it's only about an individual spirit with a purpose that may be worthwhile or true. The error is seeking the living in a place of the dead. (Luke 24:5-6, just to stay a bit biblical.)

Truth is not there in ornate rules, complex tactics, the tomb. It is risen.

Tanisha Hankerson: WHY does criminal abuse & neglect continue at your institution?!

... and just incidentally, how in hell did you ever get appointed to the Governor's Office Academy of Leadership? That's pretty embarrassing when your institution is a DISASTER. You are only an "emerging leader" in snakepit bureaucracy and corrupt waste!

Division of Developmental Disabilities, Illinois Department of Human Services

This is what they do with our tax money: here are just a couple of many ugly pictures documenting criminal abuse and neglect, showing the supposed "professional expertise" of these corrupt bureaucrats:

Tanisha Hankerson! You are CRIMINALS and liars at Kiley!

Yesterday I sat for a few minutes in a meeting at Ann Kiley Developmental Center in Waukegan, IL, as an advocate for a developmentally disabled adult and his mother/guardian. The facility had about eight clinicians and administrators in the room. There were additional people in Springfield on remote conference, and a detailed agenda, including an elaborate but utterly cynical "service plan" which everyone apparently expected to spend considerable time working through. I had the following statement prepared, and I made it pretty quick.

Janauary 3, 2026 Statement to Staff at Kiley Developmental Center

To be clear, I do not yet represent this resident of Kiley or his mom and guardian as legal counsel in any formal proceeding in any jurisdiction. I'm here only because they asked me to be present, and you invited me to the meeting.

However (perhaps along with my clients--that will be up to them), I shall refuse to pretend that this is a meeting with "helping professionals" who ought to be respected for their good intentions and special ability. Some part of this group I'm talking to right now (not everyone here, I'm sure), are just flat-out criminals. I do not work with criminals, and I will not show them any respect. You know who you are better than I do, for the moment.

Going forward, I will work with people like the Illinois State Police and the U.S. Justice Department, who can bring the criminals in this room to justice. And I will work with members of the media who can expose the criminals to everlasting opprobrium.

Now I am going to leave.

That was all. I stood up and put my coat on, only inquiring about whether a transcript of the meeting would be available. The apparatchiks around the table, of course, vaguely and dumbly disclaimed any knowledge or any ability to answer that question. I also commented unofficially that if my clients were asked to sign anything that was not true (as I knew was the plan), they would be wise to refuse.

My clients joined me outside right away. It was their observation that the Kiley people had been shocked, which was fine, I don't care. The bottom line is, there are about 20 million taxpayers in Illinois who fund these people's salaries, benefits and pensions, and they would be shocked if they sat in on a day of what these so-called "public servants" actually do. For example, they brutalize people who are dependent upon them for "care":

This picture was taken by the mother/guardian of a resident at Kiley snake pit, within the last month. These wounds are barely healed. But the psychological wounds are definitely still festering. This resident hides in his room 22/24 hours a day, to avoid the violent criminals who do this to him. This is the "therapeutic milieu" the State of Illinois has created for its most vulnerable citizens! This is the "quality of care" provided by mental health professionals!

Xiamara QUIT Gus' team!

Xiamara Ramirez left Gus' staffing in a hurry last week. She pretty well raced down the hall ahead of me toward the Administrative offices. I don't know for sure, but at the time the thought I had was, "Oh, of course! She's going to complain about Gus and me." We had just made the point that there was no way she could be Gus' social worker. For some reason beyond rational imagination, she had just been appointed to that job after Joe Basso had been transferred elsewhere.

Gus was distraught, because he had been led along the garden path for most of a year with assertions that the "hospital" wanted to conditionally release him, and that his treatment team was working hard to find him community placement, which was the only task left before a petition could be brought to the court. It turned out to be all lies. Xiamara's appointment to the same position she had ostentatiously resigned back in the summer of 2024 (as Gus' caseworker) was the final blow which revealed the lying and once again, perhaps finally, ended this patient's willingness to consider that anyone at EMHC ever intends to help him.

There was more proof of the complete corruption Gus had long seen. Soon after the staffing and Xiamara's dash to Administration offices, Gus started hearing that he would shortly be transferred to White Cottage. There's not that much wrong with White Cottage itself. It's just that a transfer will mean no conditional release for him any time soon. That's a huge departure from what all these guys had been saying for months. It's a dramatic betrayal, which I unfortunately may have aided and abetted, by encouraging Gus to be cool and to believe that Dr. Gill and the rest of the treatment team and the administration were honestly trying to get him released. Gus' mom died last year. His father is not doing well. His sisters want him to be able to help, and he loves his family.

One interesting bit is that the facility can't actually transfer Gus right now because he had a positive COVID test (he was in fact very sick), and he has to test negative before they can move him around. He recently went to a local hospital for another medical procedure in a van while the security guard, Paul Bennett (Badge No. 45), was coughing and sneezing all along the way. Badge 45 was even told by the hospital receptionist that he had to put on a mask (but he never did). I told Gus to get better, but don't test negative for COVID! Are they going to force him to take a COVID test the same way they brutally force people to take unwanted psychiatric drugs, just hoping the test will be negative so they can transfer him to White Cottage even if he'll make other people sick? That would be interesting, right? EMHC is a "hospital" (it's totally laughable).

Whoever is pushing this transfer is cynically harming Gus' whole family for no reason but retribution (or possibly for the convenience of the institution, or possibly to further some cover-up of why Xiamara was papering over the window in her office door contrary to regulations). They need to make an example that tells all the other slaves at EMHC and the other plantations, "Don't ever complain, don't ever snitch, we will get you for that!"

As Xiamara ran past me down the hall, I could almost hear her thinking exactly those words.