Mayor Adams, and lessons of history

2023. Too many crazy people in the streets and the subways, embarrassing the city and the political leadership? Well there’s always the old standby: round them all up, get them out of sight, and pretend they’re “hospitalized” for their own good. 

The police can do it, after all, and when the ugly people are gone the city will look better. Maybe that will be worth some votes. Who cares if homelessness is really solved? We don’t know how to solve the real problem, but this is politics, we know that. 

1850. Too many slaves escaping to the north, making the South’s critical economic institution unstable and encouraging northern abolitionists? Well, let’s  pass this “bloodhound bill” to round them all up, and summarily enforce the old fugitive slave law.

There are plenty of entrepreneurial slave hunters, after all, so the plantation owners can always get their property back. Maybe that will save the Union. We sure can’t see how to solve this with Christianity, but it’s really politics and maybe we’ll avoid a destructive war.

Lessons. The great compromise of 1850 was bullshit.  Mayor Adams’ plan for so-called “involuntary assistance” (who can say that phrase with a straight face?) to those “suffering from mental illness” is bullshit. It’s not easy to bullshit human nature, you have to lie to yourself big-time. African Americans were 5/5 human (not 3:5) all along, and there’s no such thing as “involuntary assistance,” that’s a total oxymoron. These are not subtle facts, they are outstandingly obvious, common sense. 

The great compromise on slavery was a useless waste of time, it only incited everyone to total war. The dream of America as a Christian city on a hill was dashed forever at Shiloh, Antietam and Cold Harbor. The  New York plan to expand forced “treatment” will prove equally useless, and it will destroy any remaining public standing and confidence in scientific medicine. The overarching sociocultural value of health will be dashed forever at Elgin, Chicago-Read and Chester.  

Susan Knauss

 OK, once again, I promise to apologize for and retract anything that turns out to be untrue....

Susan Knauss ("Susie" to her slaves on K Unit) is an Activity Therapist at the legendary Illinois state "hospital", Elgin Mental Health Center (EMHC). According to the State Comptroller's website, she got her pay check for $6300.00 yesterday. Time for some Christmas shopping, Susie?

From a LinkedIn profile picture, Susie looks to be in her 50's or 60's, white lady, grey hair. She hasn't been at EMHC for very long, barely two years. She previously worked at St. Coletta of Wisconsin and Anne M. Kiley Developmental Center in Waukegan, IL. Bachelor's degree (maybe two) from Eastern Illinois University in 1990.

Being new at EMHC possibly accounts for a couple very serious mistakes Susie is making. For one, she has become a bit too close with some of her "patients". This is colloquially called boundary issues. In particular, Susie has been seen sitting in the K Unit day room with a couple of "residents" behind her, looking over her shoulder at her laptop screen, and pointing directions or touching the screen to navigate to whatever they wanted to see online. I'm pretty sure there are strict rules against allowing the slaves any internet access. 

A couple hundred years ago there were laws in the American South against teaching slaves to read, so there's precedent for the internet ban at EMHC. I disagree with it, but for now it's the rules. There's also a very clear precedent for the point about boundary issues, right where Susie works on K & L Unit as recently as 2017. It evolved into a huge flap, and is still costing DHS substantial legal fees. 

Another recent mistake by Susie may be even more serious. She inserted a report in one slave's medical chart, which detailed a whole conversation with him that just never happened. She totally made it up! Susie may think she can get away with this, because it'll be her word as a "mental health professional" against the "mentally ill" slave's word. But when you put something totally false in writing in a legal document, immediately after it supposedly happened (but didn't), there will be sharp, reliable memories that will contradict what you wrote, and you'll probably get accused of, if not charged with, perjury. 

I'm just sayin'. 

In case I don't post again in the next ten days, Merry Christmas to all!

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

I recently had an interesting back-and-forth on Twitter with a San Francisco psychiatrist named Joe Pierre. He had first posted a link to an article in Vogue, by a woman who was very thankful for her psychiatric diagnosis, which had apparently helped her by offering an explanation and the beginning of a solution to her hypomania.

I jumped on that, perhaps a bit roughly, by saying in ten years the same woman might think the exact opposite; I had seen many people change their minds about whether psychiatry had been good or bad for them, once the drugs stopped working and the brutal project of withdrawal began. Dr. Joe told me that I should "get past" my own professional experience, and my religious beliefs. Then I wouldn't be so predictably narrow minded and instead I would be able to envision positive outcomes from psychiatric treatment, and imagine circumstances in which involuntary treatment would be justified.

Well, I could have gone on and on about such suggestions and such arrogance. People don't "get past" their own experiences and their deeply held beliefs just because somebody else is sure of a different opinion. I suppose I can envision possible positive results from psychiatry and imagine justifications for forced drugging and shock; but I honestly think the results of psychiatry have been and will continue to be epically terrible, and forced "treatment" is just grossly wrong.

I still like Dr. Joe. At least I "like" him as an opponent with whom I can exchange restrained if hostile tweets, like some kind of ideological target practice. I think he's reasonably well intended and smart, and I learn from him. So I tried to cut to the quick by explaining that my "anti-psychiatry" views with which he so earnestly disagrees are all derived from a single position. That is: the study of the mind and the healing of mentally caused ills should not be alienated from religion, or condoned in non-religious fields.

To my surprise, this statement was not rejected, but quite productive of more good exchange. Dr. Joe wasn't sure exactly what I meant, but he quoted Carl Jung, from Modern Man in Search of a Soul: "Among all my patients in the second half of life -- that is to say, over thirty-five -- there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook."

I told Dr. Joe that I know too little about Jung, perhaps only that he was considered a bit of a mystic, and he treated Clover Dulles (wife of Allen Dulles) in 1945. With that thought (of Dulles), it suddenly dawned on me that the whole conversation was high irony indeed!

Here I was, in a dialogue in 2022, with a San Francisco psychiatrist who was only marginally willing to briefly tolerate me, and the subject of Jung/Dulles/1945 became a point of some agreement.

The thing is.... When wide-eyed, soft hearted American youths had to confront the corpses stacked up like cordwood, with others still barely breathing, at Dachau and Belzec and Chelmo, and when the public contemplated the Nazi Holocaust in Europe and the American holocaust at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the whole world realized on some level, we have to find a way to not ever do this again. That was 1945. Allen Dulles was still in Switzerland at the beginning of the year, with his wartime mistress Mary Bancroft, a devotee and patient of Carl Jung. By summer, they were joined by Clover Dulles. Allen, Clover and Mary all sought the help of Dr. Jung, each perhaps for a different problem (e.g., Allen for advice on how to influence the defeated German population, Mary and Clover probably for more personal, less political issues).

Eight years later, Allen Dulles signed off on Richard Helms' brainchild project, MKUltra. He also made sure that his own CIA had a complete monopoly on the world supply of LSD. The drug was initially considered by the MKUltra researchers to be a breakthrough offensive weapon in the emerging war for men's minds, by which anyone could be rendered psychotic with a single dose. But by the late 1950's various private psychiatric experimenters were recommending it for spiritual enlightenment of the whole American population. If one reads some of the reports by rich Hollywood celebrities (e.g., Adelle Davis, Auldus Huxley, Cary Grant) circa 1959 (Kesey and Leary were definite latecomers as acid celebs), it's easy to discern the over-the-top, Jungian mystical-religious, evangelical fervor.

I asked Dr. Joe if he was  aware of the connection between Jung/Dulles/1945, and the current exuberant promotion of "psychedelic assisted therapy" as a new breakthrough since SSRI antidepressants failed to cure chemical imbalances in the brain. The desperation of Dresden and Enola Gay hangs again over psychiatry's very bad year, 2022. He responded, "I agree, the connection that you imply is there."

More recently (just today, I think) Dr. Joe tweeted separately, "One of my least favorite phrases to hear is, 'I'm micro-dosing with psilocybin.' Not sure how they're defining 'micro-dosing,' but all the people I've seen using this phrase have been floridly psychotic."

I picture my Twitter counterpart strolling up Haight Street from the Grateful Dead House on Ashbury, in the direction of George Hunter White's Chestnut Street acid brothel/safe house on Telegraph Hill. I hate to underestimate him, but I can't help worrying that Dr. Joe, like almost everyone else in mental health, remains clueless. Materialistic "mind science" failed to provide any magic button for saving the world from Godless Communism in the last century; psychedelics and psychiatry will only encourage more florid psychosis in this one.

Maybe my San Francisco psychiatrist friend has some dawning suspicion that in the last resort our problem remains that of finding a religious outlook on life. Plus ça change.

But the rough beast LSD slouches again, towards America to be born. And guess what, today is Pearl Harbor Day.

Michelle -- on the count, or no?

It is contrary to regulations and law to have a staff who is being investigated for custodial sexual misconduct in contact with any patients.

STA Michelle Bogle is currently the subject of an Illinois State Police Department of Internal Investigations (ISP/DII) case, after a complaint by a patient alleging that she had been his lover. There is plenty of evidence, several other staff were witnesses, etc.

So pursuant to strict legal policy, Michelle should not be at EMHC, or at least not on any clinical unit where she would be in contact with and possibly able to seduce more patients. At the moment she's a suspected sex offender, and various people (e.g., OIG's Peter Neumer, as I pointed out yesterday) are responsible to protect consumers of the State's mental health services from her. The patients at EMHC are not Michelle's property, even though they are effectively at her mercy, and at the mercy of the institution which locks them away and is allowed to force drugs on them or call them degrading names, day-in and day-out, for years.

But I suspect that Michelle is at EMHC. In fact, several witnesses have told me that she's on M & N clinical unit, working as an STA. Yesterday I left a message with an administrator to inquire about this situation, but I never got a call back.

So this morning, I called M & N, at extension 3467, and asked for Michelle. The lady who answered the phone checked briefly, and then said, "Michelle Bogle is not here today. Try the other side, or try K & L."

Maybe they have removed her from patient contact, as they should have. But it sure seemed to me that Michelle had been on M & N recently, when she shouldn't have been. I don't think anyone is really very interested in protecting patients. I think they just want to get the cotton picked.

It will all come out. People knew, and didn't report. Sexual abuse of patients is endemic at Elgin Mental Health Center. The fundamental staff attitude is, they own the slaves, they can do whatever they want with them. But abolition will come. Psychiatria delenda est!

Peter B. Neumer and Michelle Bogle

I don't know Peter Neumer, so I hesitate to blame him for anything or say he's not doing his job....

But he heads up the Illinois Department of Human Services' Office of Inspector General (OIG). His organization is supposed to protect people like Mickey, an involuntarily committed "patient" (more accurately called a psychiatric slave) at Elgin Mental Health Center (EMHC). 

If I find out that anything I write here is untrue, I will apologize. But it seems to me that Peter Neumer's office does not protect the people it is supposed to protect. Hence, as a taxpayer I resent him for his salary of well over $100,000, which comes in part out of my pocket. He's a relatively worthless bureaucrat, in a state that cannot afford relatively worthless bureaucrats.

Meanwhile, my friend Mickey is getting his butt kicked every day at EMHC, in retribution for reporting to Peter Neumer's office that a female Security Therapy Aide named Michelle Bogle carried on a sexual relationship with him. Michelle apparently committed the felony of custodial sexual misconduct, which might be thought of as a type of statutory rape. If Michelle is convicted of this, she'll have to register as a sex offender every year for the rest of her life.

Staff at EMHC are not supposed to have sex with patients, because they wield extraordinary power over them. Patients cannot legally consent to sex. Staff can deny patients their liberty. They can forcibly restrain patients and torture them. They can ruin patients' lives, and never be blamed because after all it's supposedly done in the name of "treating mental illness" and these guys are the experts.

American chattel slavery was much the same in the 19th Century. The plantation masters insisted that they were doing what really helped their negroes, who were best fit for hard labor and hard discipline. It was consistent with God's plan for the different races of man and the different beasts of creation. I don't think Peter Neumer would have been an abolitionist. I think he would have prospered as a high-level plantation overseer, dutifully producing the world's cotton, at least until Sherman arrived to burn it all down.

It has been several weeks since Mickey came clean to OIG about the relationship with Michelle. OIG turned the investigation over to the Illinois State Police Department of Internal Investigations. According to a phone conversation today, "It's a police matter now, OIG doesn't touch it while the police investigation is in progress." Well, OK.

But here's the thing.... The state police do not accept cases for investigation when there is no credible evidence. They are investigating this one, and that means there is credible evidence. When there is credible evidence of staff sexually abusing a patient, that staff is supposed to be removed from all contact with patients (not just the victim) until the matter is resolved. That's the law, intended to protect vulnerable people whose liberty has been restricted by the state "for their own good" and to protect the community.

Michelle Bogle may have been removed from patient contact briefly, but she is reportedly back now, on the M & N clinical unit every day, with lots of new opportunities to sexually abuse more patients. Somebody is violating the law, and Peter Neumer's office is failing to protect people. I tried to ask the EMHC administration about this today, but nobody returned my call. 

They're too busy driving the slaves to get the cotton picked.

Resistance and orders

In Orlando for Thanksgiving, thinking of a client who shares a name with a mouse….

A staffing yesterday was much about my guy having gotten into a physical altercation with a peer on the unit. It seemed hard to know for sure who really started it or whom to blame, but after some discussion, there were a couple takeaways for me. 

One. I have always told every client I’ve ever worked with, that they must cultivate a reputation, in their circumstances as a psychiatric slave, of being more able than anyone else in sight, to walk away from fights and frustrations. Don’t punch back, don’t tell anyone to suck your dick. You can take great pride in this, it has huge historical, religious and philosophical pedigree (e.g., “Turn the other cheek…”).

Nietzsche said recalcitrance is the nobility of the slave, but a soldier’s nobility is in obedience. My clients have to understand that their relationship with psychiatrists and with the nuthouse is that they are slaves. But their relationship with me and with their peers should reflect that they are soldiers. 

This is not absolute from the beginning, I am a lawyer and I do follow rules. It’s just highly aspirational. The distinction by the philosopher points to my very best clients.

The guy whose staffing I attended yesterday is really good at recalcitrance, and he’s very funny, so I love him for that, it’s how he got my attention. I just hope he’ll do what I tell him, because I believe he can be one hell of a soldier. 

Two. In the obvious understanding of nuthouse staff or “mental health professionals”, any so-called “patient” is absolutely nobody. A member of my guy’s treatment team, during the staffing yesterday, insisted that nobody saw him get slapped across his face by a peer to precipitate the altercation being discussed.

My guy protested, that was a lie! The incident was witnessed by somebody named Shonterellio (or something like that, I probably have the name wrong). So I asked him who Shonterellio was. He said Shonterellio was a resident. 

Oh, OK! The witness was a patient, which means he is a total nobody in the eyes of staff. He’s not believed, his information doesn’t count, he’s just another subhuman slave. To check this, I asked the staff who said nobody ever saw my guy get slapped, whether she would believe Shonterellio if he told her that’s exactly what he saw, that’s how the altercation began, my guy only fought back after he was hit first. She would not answer my question.

Which proved my point, I think. “Patients” in a psychiatric institution are subhuman slaves. They are nobody. I spoke to Shonterellio myself later. He seemed pretty competent to me, and he told me categorically, my guy got hit first, he saw it. 

The staff are idiots because they believe they are more able to perceive and understand than the patients. They make the same error that was made by the British in Kenya, and even by my hero, General “Billy the Torch” Sherman: discounting the value of intelligence from black slaves.  

They will pay for that mistake, if my guys can just follow orders. Unlike the psychiatrists at EMHC, I do not confuse control and help. 

Psychiatria delenda est!

Short peace (meditation on the news)

“Down range, when this happens, you just get out on the next patrol. You need to get it out of your mind. That is how you cure it. You cure it by doing more. Eventually you get home safe. But here I worry there is no next patrol. It is harder to cure. You are already home.”

Those were the words of the combat veteran who took down the shooter in the Colorado Springs Q Club massacre. His daughter’s boyfriend was murdered, amid too many other casualties. 

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra told warriors, “You should love peace as a means to new wars, and the short peace more than the long.”

From my own life experiences which might relate to such things, I would just say: BE yourself; don’t look at yourself or try to fix yourself, as though you could believe you are not already yourself. Assume a viewpoint, reach and withdraw from others and things, play, fight, get confused, have fun; just don’t ever forget that you can only be or not be, yourself.

Love peace as a means to new wars. Go out on the next patrol. Seek your enemy whom you can cherish and of whom you can be proud, and love your enemy. 

And someday when there are no more patrols, when you stand on the suddenly quiet field of your greatest victory with all the world kneeling at your feet, and all the world’s treasure at your hands: then turn and walk away with nothing but the shirt on your back. 

You will live forever. 

Psychiatria delenda est!

Syed Hussain is no longer on White Cottage Unit

At one time, I'm pretty sure White Cottage was a clinical unit at EMHC that was a step down from medium security. I think there were civil patients there.

I don't know exactly when Syed Hussain, M.D., became the primary psychiatrist on the unit, but I know he was there for much of the time during which two patients named Paul Olsson and Shanovia Fowlkes were lovers and conceived a child. In fact, Hussain directly questioned Paul about sexual contacts, with female patients generally and with Shanovia specifically.

It's possible that Hussain was screening an allegation that he was supposed to report to OIG within four hours of any knowledge or suspicion. He is certainly arrogant enough that he might have done that, even though he has received training and knows perfectly well that screening allegations is contrary to the rules. Psychiatrists do not investigate abuse on the plantation units where they are overseers, because they are too likely to be the perpetrators of the abuse, and of course they are never going to do honest investigations of themselves.

Paul and Shanovia's baby girl is indisputable evidence that White Cottage was not run in such a way as to successfully and reliably treat mental illness as a medical problem, and enable people who have gotten better to be released. Rather, the "cottage" was run as a hut for slaves on a plantation. 

Maybe White Cottage was a breeding hut in this case: after all, that baby is a new involuntary participant in the custody industry in Illinois, which employs a large number of mental health and welfare workers, medical experts, administrators and guards, who wouldn't have jobs but for the slaves. If the criminal courts were to stop sending new slaves, they could be bred as an alternative! That worked in the American South in the Nineteenth Century. Syed Hussain might be right at the leading edge in applying this precedent for the Twenty-first Century therapeutic state. 

Shanovia was even told the moment the "treatment" team found out she was pregnant, that her child would surely go to DCFS (i.e., be born into slavery). Hussain's cohort, another White Cottage psychiatric overseer, was actually fired for telling her that, probably because it just made the whole operation too obvious.

And maybe that's why Hussain isn't on White Cottage anymore, too. The go-to coverup strategy in IDHS has long been to just move perpetrators and accomplices around. They may have learned that from abuser priests (or maybe the priests learned it from forensic psychiatrists -- but it's definitely the same tactic by a rotten but shielded, powerful institution).

It's not impossible that Syed Hussain, immediately after he suspiciously questioned Paul Olsson, called the OIG hotline and reported that his "patients" might be used as breeders by whomever was enabling them or encouraging them to become pregnant. It's not like nobody knew or nobody was complicit. Staff were involved. But I don't think he reported anything to anybody. At best, Hussain just figured he didn't want to know, it wasn't worth finding out.

And that's why Paul and Shinovia's little girl will go to Harvard. On the State of Illinois, which indemnifies it's employed plantation overseers.

Hey, hey, STA! How many patients did you f*** today?

Does anyone recall meeting an EMHC “patient” who was on conditional release at a Super 8 Motel a handful of times, to continue a love affair which started at EMHC long ago, as pay-back for your spouse’s infidelity?

Then there were other hotels, too, right? Remember that one right across from Rivers Casino? Another staff was there at the same time with her boyfriend. Remember?

Geez, you’ve got to be nervous! For one thing, it’s a pretty sure thing that you’ve committed a felony. And now that I know about it, I’m sorry but I’ll have to report what I know either to OIG or straight to the Illinois State Police Department of Internal Investigations. 

The future of your job is VERY dim. It’s hard to say whether your spouse will also be investigated, and get into almost as much trouble as you, for not reporting allegations according to OIG Rule 50. It’s also hard to know how many and which of your peers might be implicated. 

Beyond getting fired and probably prosecuted, I can more or less guarantee that you will be defending a lawsuit for years to come. Come talk to me now, maybe we can make it easier. The “patient” did care for you, even says “I love you,” and doesn’t want to hurt you if that can be avoided. 

More reports??

 STA's on K & L Unit:

Irwin, Carmen, Candy, Gabby, Andrea, Keannette, Mark, Shaletha, Angelo, Kayerra, Chris, Phillip, Kashon, Manara, Marvin, Marion, Ed, Mandisa, Cam, Kherri, Jeffrey....

Everybody was trained on OIG Rule 50 reporting requirements, right?

Each and every employee at EMHC is a required reporter, whether you are a social worker, nurse, psychiatrist, janitor, or one of the 21 STA's I've named here. You are all required to call OIG within four hours, if you merely have any slightest suspicion that a patient might have been abused by staff. You do not have to know abuse happened, and you don't have to have witnessed it, to be required to report an allegation.

There are all kinds of abuse, too. A patient can be abused physically (e.g., Baker in chains when he could barely walk), sexually, (e.g., various young men of color seduced into sexual acts by female staff between 2005 and 2022), or mentally (e.g., every patient told they'd never get out without taking drugs). And they can be neglected (e.g., patients not offered any treatment in which they can willingly participate). 

Every one of you guys has at least heard a rumor of something that falls within the OIG Rule 50 definitions of abuse or neglect. You should have reported that within four hours. If you didn't, you violated the law. STA's are not professionally licensed or beholden to the IDFPR like doctors and social workers. However, in order to work in a state healthcare facility (EMHC), you did have to submit to a healthcare worker background check, and you probably have to be listed in the Illinois Department of Public Health's Nurse Aide Registry. The Department of Public Health may make administrative findings about abuse or neglect. They may accept complaints that you failed to follow the reporting requirements of OIG Rule 50.

The Illinois Administrative Code carefully lists criminal violations which disqualify a person from employment in any health care facility. Among them are sexual misconduct with a person with a disability, custodial sexual misconduct, and abuse and criminal neglect of a long-term care facility resident. If you suspect that any staff at EMHC have committed any such offenses, and you do not report your suspicion according to OIG Rule 50 requirements, you are complicit in the offenses. 

I'm not sure whether complicity alone, or turning a blind eye, would disqualify you for the job of STA. Maybe we'll have to see.

More on how & why it doesn't work

 A couple examples.

At a staffing for James yesterday, the "treatment" team was strangely silent. Nobody wanted to say anything about this "patient" -- a black man in his 80's who has been locked in the Elgin nuthouse since 1987. Tom Zubik once confided in me that they really don't want him to die there, it wouldn't look good....

But it's looking more and more like James probably will die a slave. He hasn't taken any psych drugs for decades, and he never gets in trouble, never fights or even argues much any more. The last time he had a roommate with whom he wasn't getting along, everybody blamed the roommate, not James. I know because I represented the roommate, too. Needless to say, James is psychiatrically stable. There's absolutely no good reason why Illinois taxpayers should be footing the bill (about $1000/day) to feed and house James in a secure "hospital" because of his "mental illness".

Nevertheless, a couple people worry (or pretend they do) that James might still believe he's the king of Egypt. Dr. Malis and one or two other M.D. psychiatric honchos are just itching to see whether they can change somebody's personality and beliefs with meds. That's a wasted agenda, but after all James did kill somebody back in 1985, so the masters can probably continue to own him in the hope of experimenting on him until he dies. 

I had to get a court order a couple years ago just for James to be allowed to go to an outside medical clinic without being chained, when he could barely walk. Dr. Malis, perhaps channeling Dr. Mengele, insisted that chains were necessary and appropriate. I was all set to hire a photographer to get a picture of James being stuffed into the EMHC van in chains, the ultimate image of a slave, and blow it all over the media and the internet. I think I told Administration i would do it, too.

________________

Mother S, a "patient" housed on the notorious White Cottage clinical unit, who not long ago was told by her psychiatrist that she had better terminate her pregnancy (which had begun on the clinical unit, while Mother S was an involuntary patient), was very angry this morning. They've had her on 15-minute checks for most of the past year. That means she can't go to the library or the gym, and she has to be physically observed by staff four times every hour, around the clock.

It is the furthest possible departure from a "least restrictive environment," intended to prevent disasters like a patient suicide, in the short term. The medical records state, several times every day, that 15-minute checks are continued "to protect Mother S from sexual harassment by male peers." Anyone reading the chart immediately thinks, wow, how can sexual harassment of this one female patient continuing for so long? Who or what is out of control here?

Today, Laurie, the nurse manager on White Cottage, along with the psychiatrist Dr. Singh, met with Mother S and told the truth: the EMHC Administration (i.e., not the treatment team) says Mother S must remain indefinitely on 15-minute checks, as punishment for the fact that she embarrassed the facility by getting pregnant on the unit. They have this woman checked every fifteen minutes, around the clock, to make sure she isn't getting pregnant again! 

Mother S had her baby girl, by the way, in late May, 2022. She was just never allowed to hold her. The facility was severely embarrassed by this blessed event of a new life coming into the world, because they are supposed to prevent "patients" from having sex, with each other or with staff. Everybody thinks the father in this case is another "patient" who was also supposed to be prevented from having sex; but it's not a sure thing, it might have been a male staff. The results of a long-delayed paternity test are not yet in. 

The rotten psychiatrist who tried to force Mother S to have an abortion was fired, so at least there is some temporary justice in that. (They'll hire him back as soon as the flap blows over though, just like they hired Erica Ware back at Chicago Read.) But meanwhile the Administration is thinking, "Well we can sure prove Mother S is not being allowed to have sex anymore... permanent 15-minute checks!" 

It was probably Michelle Evans' idea. More than any other individual, the embarrassment comes to Michelle, as the titular master of this particular slave plantation. She probably implemented the cruel strategy through somebody like Jennifer Matthews. Jennifer is a white, well spoken, long-experienced social worker, who can be relied on to maintain public relations for a "hospital" even as an overseer of slaves.

But one other suspect in addition to Michelle Evans is worth mentioning.... Jai Kaul is now the Nurse Manager on K & L Unit (of course! see recent article). She was Nurse Manager on White Cottage during the time when Mother S conceived a child. Her potential liability is obvious.

In any event, there is no reasonable "treatment plan" for Mother S. The clinical team and the Administration can only try to make her, and her incriminating history of getting pregnant and giving birth while involuntarily locked up in a supposedly secure, state-operated psychiatric "hospital" (sarcastic quotation marks), disappear. "Disappearing" her mostly means punishing her until she just can't resist anything anymore. Give her enough drugs, enough insults, enough restrictions, she'll lie down and die as a person. 

The next thing they'll do is transfer her to a more (not less) restrictive clinical unit at EMHC, like one of the UST units, M or H, with the most violent female slaves who hate Mother S and will be prone to physically attack her. But that's all part of "treatment", right?

And that's the only kind of "plan" they have. We Illinois taxpayers are on the hook for this quackery, or this crime against humanity, or whatever the hell it is.

James and Mother S are wonderful examples of how and why this doesn't work.

Psychiatria delenda est!

Jai - K & L Unit Nurse Manager

The thing about the Nurse Manager job is, you know everything that's happening on the unit. That's what the job really is, the Nurse Manager has to know everything that's happening on the unit. Everybody goes to the Nurse Manager with problems, complaints, requests, whatever. Staff and patients. She's the most important overseer. the one whose job corresponds most closely with that of plantation overseer.

K & L Unit has about 60 or 70 staff. Jai, the Nurse Manager, talks to all of them more than anyone else does. There are about 50 "patients" on K & L, who are the objects of all staff attention. If not for these 50 "patients" the 60 or 70 staff would not have jobs on this plantation. Most of the routine daily communication among the 60 or 70 K & L Unit staff is about one or another of the 50 "patients". In theory, the overseers watch the slaves very closely and know them very well.

Likewise, the "patients" know the staff really well. At least one witness in deposition stated that the patients really don't have anything else to do, it's their job to know everything they can know about the staff. It actually does become the job of patients for their own purposes, even though they are supposed to have a job called "recovery". The fact that a senior level staff actually said, under oath, that the real job of patients is learning everything they can about staff, is telling in a dark way. It reminds of me of the principle that the first and highest duty of any prisoner of war is to escape!

But I digress... I didn't actually think about that statement (that the real job of patients is to know everything about staff) until I started writing this article, which is supposed to be about Jai, the K & L Unit Nurse Manager....

Maybe I'm misinformed in some respect, but from what I have learned about how regular business on a clinical unit at EMHC is done, it's NOT possible that Jai didn't know about the obvious "boyfriend and girlfriend" relationship between Gabby Garcia and the "patient" Latwon, long before I actually saw it. Gabby and Latwon were sitting in the day room on K, holding hands and playing footsies, for godssakes! Gabby had been going in and out of Latwon's room (and I don't mean just standing at the door for a moment to deliver a message) for quite a while, and all the same telltale behavior had been known by people on L, when the two lovebirds had been over there before being transferred to K.

(The transfer of a patient from L to K Unit to cover up staff-patient romances has such a historical pedigree! But again, I digress... more on that another day.)

Who would be so gullible as to believe that not a single one of 60 or 70 K & L staff and 50 K & L "patients" ever made any comment, or winked in suspicion, to the one person whose job it is to know everything that's going on? 

I think Nurse Manager Jai knew about allegations (as carefully defined in the OIG Rule 50 educational materials), about Gabby and Latwon. I think she failed or neglected to report within four hours, as required. 

That's a violation of the law. And of course, it's something that the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation may choose to investigate. Jai is a licensed nurse. At least, for now she is.

Yo! K Unit social workers…

The following five people, as best I know, are the professionally licensed social workers on K & L Unit at Elgin Mental Health Center:

Dan, Jessica, Matthew, Jennifer, Lindsay.

"Professionally licensed" means, specifically, subject to the authority of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) under many laws which have the intention, basically, of protecting the public. When a licensed social worker breaks the law, especially if he/she breaks the law that directly applies to their job as a social worker, and if the IDFPR hears about that (which can easily happen since people can file complaints on line), they tend to ask questions.

For example, if Dan, Jessica, Matthew, Jennifer or Lindsay were to just suspect, or just hear rumors, about Gabby Garcia and a patient named Latwon being "boyfriend and girlfriend," and if they did not call OIG to report that within four hours after hearing the rumor, they would actually be breaking the law. OIG Rule 50 says you have to report mere rumors, even if you know they couldn't possibly be true.

There are other licensed professionals on K Unit who are in the same situation. Today is just social workers' day.

OMG! I just realized, anyone who reads this article has gotten this rumor, about Gabby Garcia and Latwon.... I'm sure you'll be calling OIG before someone reports you to IDFPR for not following the law.

Why it doesn’t work.

In the final analysis, all the laws, rules, policy, etc., designed to prevent sexual abuse of patients by staff at state-operated mental health facilities doesn’t work because people don’t care. Ordinary employees in the Illinois Department of Human Services are not willing to do anything themselves to stop sexual abuse. 

They are trained repeatedly and regularly that they must report any suspicion of abuse to OIG. But they are very happy to presume that somebody else must have already reported the same suspicion they might have (it’s an old rumor, everybody’s heard it), so they don’t really have to report it themselves. And after all, OIG has too many cases already, there’s no way they can keep up, so why add to that mess?

Plus, nuthouse staff have little appreciation for the fact that the power differential which they wield over every involuntary psychiatric patient makes any sexual or romantic relationship manipulative or abusive. Thomas Jefferson probably never felt like he was abusing Sally Hemings either, right? But look where that got our country….

Beneath the failure to understand—e.g., that Erica’s seduction of a patient at Chicago Read, or Gabby’s dalliance with Latwon on K & L Units at EMHC, or Faisa’s refusal to even ask what was happening to her patient when she knew in 2017 that Administration was hiding information—is in fact abuse, and the failure to understand that the staff is always the abuser, that no matter the appearances and circumstances, the patient is always a victim, never consenting, never receiving a “benefit”… beneath that circumstantial failure to understand… lies a much more fundamental misunderstanding. 

Like almost everyone else these days, nuthouse staff don’t know that an individual person is not just a biological mechanism. They don’t consider life itself to be a fundamentally spiritual phenomenon, and it never occurs to them that the “patient” who is locked up as not guilty of a violent crime by reason of insanity is just like them, an immortal spirit. That “patient” just seems dangerous, or disgusting, or extremely difficult to understand. The people who had been shipped from West Africa looked that way, too, as they were paraded onto an auction block at Charleston Harbor under the gaze of wealthy bidders who so proudly, obviously by their own genius and most noble efforts, produced the incalculably valuable commodity of cotton for the whole world. 

But people under the influence of psychiatry are in a worse position to understand what a human being really is, even worse than the kings of American cotton in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Mental health professionals are carefully taught to believe that a person is merely a brain. A brain is merely a biological machine which can ultimately be entirely understood and controlled by the most noble doctors, without reference to any concept of soul. What a “patient” might claim as his or her own honest personal ideas, reactions and emotions are really, in the nuthouse or on the plantation, unworthy of respect. They are animal instincts, or mere chemical connections between neurotransmitters and receptors. Surely it all can, and probably should be, controlled across the whole world, by incalculably valuable psychiatric drugs or a whip. 

In this context human love, which is so inextricable from sexuality, becomes either invisible or the Holy-of-Holies. It is certainly never part of normal, mundane business or subject to written, institutional rules. 

Everyone knows, instinctively, that it’s a fool’s errand to punish people for who they love or to regulate sexuality. They also know instinctively that forensic psychiatrists are slavemasters, and forensic social workers are plantation overseers. 

But they all pretend otherwise at least once every two years, when they do the required OIG Rule 50 training over again. They all pretend: “Oh sure, we will certainly report any suspicion of abuse to the hotline within four hours, to protect our sla… er, sorry.. patients!” In the nuthouse the pretense is so easy, so automatic, because there’s an even more endemic pretense, which is the tragic basis of the whole horrible system. 

Everyone collecting that paycheck on a union salary and looking forward to that union-negotiated pension pretends that we can find and deliver medical cures for unwanted thoughts, emotions and behaviors, and that medical science is the route to human salvation. They all pretend that the psychiatric slave system operated by the Illinois Department of Human Services is about helping the mentally ill with wonderful medicine.

It’s just not true. And that’s why it doesn’t work.

It doesn't work

A Valentine’s Day card in February, 2017, bears the following hand-written message to an involuntary mental patient, from a Mental Health Tech named Erica, at Chicago-Read Mental Health Center: 

“Happy Valentine’s Day… The best gift I could give you is my words… Getting to know and learn you these past couple of months has been quite the experience. I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me no matter how small. You’ve made quite an impact in such a short time whether you know it or not. Regardless of whether we work out later on in life or not you will always hold a special place in my heart. You brought me back from one of the darkest times in my life. I couldn’t tell you what makes me happy or who I was. I had gotten caught up in saying I wanted to do so many things, and had lost my motivation for life. Meeting you changed a lot for me, there was something about you that inspired me to want to do more in life and just help me find myself and for that I’ll forever be grateful. I don’t know what lies in the future, but one thing I do know is I can see you in it.”

Doesn't it seem likely that this Valentines Day card, with this message, evidenced a romantic relationship? Approximately five years later, Erica was interviewed by the Illinois State Police Division of Internal Investigations. She admitted to them, after desperately, awkwardly, trying to deny it for two and a half excruciating hours, that she had carried on a sexual relationship with the patient to whom she gave the Valentine's Day card.

Erica never did admit that she smuggled in the burner phone the patient used to collect the naked pictures she sent to him. She said, well, maybe the patient got those pictures which had already been on her cell phone, and sent them to himself, she didn't know how he got them. The cops clearly didn't buy it.

In fact, the result of the investigation was a recommendation to the Cook County State's Attorney that Erica should be prosecuted for custodial sexual abuse. The State's Attorney declined, supposedly just because of a statute of limitations issue.

Here's one thing though: there is no statute of limitations on the investigation by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of allegations of custodial sexual abuse. A caller from OIG's Springfield office confirmed that they had received reports about Erica and this patient. So they may still be investigating the allegations, or maybe the allegations were classified as unfounded or unsubstantiated. No doubt OIG has documentary evidence of this. The public should probably ask who OIG interviewed and what evidence they looked at.

Or, maybe they never did investigate the reports they got, or maybe they never got reports. Maybe lots of other staff covered up for Erica, for years, because she speaks fluent Spanish and is also fluent in sign language, so she is a uniquely valuable, trilingual mental health tech. She still works at Chicago Read Mental Health Center now. As soon as the State's Attorney elected (on a legal technicality) not to prosecute, despite the findings of the police investigation, she was brought right back into her old job, where she is once again in close contact with patients.

There is, however, no question that there was a love affair between this staff at Chicago Read Mental Health Center and a patient who was not able to consent. Anyone who listens to the recorded police interview will be quite sure of that. Anyone who sees the Valentine's Day card will know it.

Love affairs are nice. They can have quite an impact in such a short time, as Erica wrote, and bring people back from the darkest of times. 

But they are not allowed between staff and patients in state nuthouses in Illinois. There are good reasons for this, and there is a whole lot of very strict policy, law, and requirements for timely OIG reports, all intended to prevent love affairs between staff and patients in state nuthouses in Illinois.

The question becomes, why doesn't it work?

Yo, K Unit nurses!

The following people, as best I know, are all professionally licensed nurses on K and L Unit:

Leah, Victoria, Imelda, Joe, Tony, Olu, Marie, Judy. 

"Professionally licensed" means, specifically, subject to the authority of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) under many laws which have the intention, basically, of protecting the public. When a licensed nurse breaks the law, especially if he/she breaks the law that directly applies to their job as a nurse, and if the IDFPR hears about that (which can easily happen since people can file complaints on line), they tend to ask questions.

For example, if Leah, Victoria, Imelda, Joe, Tony, Olu, Marie, or Judy were to just suspect, or just hear rumors, about Gabby Garcia and a patient named Latwon being "boyfriend and girlfriend," and if they did not call OIG to report that within four hours after hearing the rumor, they would actually be breaking the law. OIG Rule 50 says you have to report mere rumors, even if you know they couldn't possibly be true.

There are other licensed professionals on K Unit who are in the same situation as Leah, Victoria, Imelda, Joe, Tony, Olu, Marie, Judy. I'll probably name them later. Today is just nurses' day.

OMG! I just realized, anyone who reads this article has gotten this rumor, about Gabby Garcia and Latwon.... I'm sure you'll be calling OIG before someone reports you to IDFPR for not following the law.

HEAVY TRAFFIC WARNING!

It was recently suggested to me that any professionally licensed DHS employee who fails to make a required OIG report about suspected (or actually, even just rumored) sexual abuse of involuntary psychiatric "patients", should be the subject of a complaint to the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

I know there are rumors about this kind of thing almost constantly at Elgin Mental Health Center, Chicago Read Mental Health Center, Chester Mental Health Center, Alton Mental Health Center, Madden Mental Health Center... in short everywhere, on every plantation throughout the state system of psychiatric slavery. Just imagine if every mere rumor were actually reported to OIG!

A whole lot of DHS employees are licensed. Doctors, psychologists, nurses, social workers, barbers, dentists & dental hygienists, dietitians, locksmiths, opticians, pharmacists, and accountants... can all be subject to Division of Professional Regulation (DPR) complaints. Anyone can easily file complaints on line, too. 

Hence, if Faiza Kareemi (just one example) did not call OIG last week about the allegation that STA Gabby Garcia might have been sexually involved with a patient named Latwon on L and K Units, she failed to make a required OIG report under Rule 50, and a complaint against her medical license could go to DPR. If Faiza merely took it upon herself to call Latwon into her office and rake him over the coals about this allegation until he angrily denied it all, that would not have been good enough to avoid a DPR complaint. It would have been illegal screening. Faiza was strictly required to call OIG herself within four hours.

So I don't know guys, maybe everyone at EMHC will stop talking about this stuff and the whole rumor mill will totally shut down. Nobody wants to deal with DPR complaints. Either that, or OIG will notice a huge increase in their case load. The point is, mere suspicions, just rumors you might happen to hear, will put you in a regulatory situation.

The only other solution is: get an honest job outside the corrupt "forensic mental health" universe. You'll be much happier.

A very curious document

     Just hypothetically, just as pure fantasy, what if there were a sworn affidavit reading as follows...

AFFIDAVIT OF SILLY SYLVIE, THE DENTAL HYGIENIST

I, Silly Sylvie, being first duly sworn upon oath, depose and state as follows:

    1.)        I am of legal age and under no disability. I have personal knowledge of the events and facts referenced herein and could testify competently to them if called upon to do so.

    2.)        I am a licensed dental hygienist in the State of Illinois and practice two days a week for Ho-Hum Dentistry in Sweetest Valley Grove, IL.

    3.)        On August 8, 2019, my schedule included a patient at 5pm by the name of Mystic Wayles. Hereinafter is the conversation that took place between myself and Mystic Wayles. I immediately memorialized the conversation to the best of my ability. M is for what Mystic stated, and S is for what I stated (Silly Sylvie).

    4.)        I greeted Mystic in the waiting area and brought her back to my dental operatory.

    5.)        S:    Are you coming from work today?

    6.)        M:    Yes.

    7.)        S:    Oh, what kind of work do you do?

    8.)        M:    I'm a clinical psychologist at Elgin Mental Health Center.

    9.)        S:    Wow, that's a huge job, you must be very busy!

    10.)      M:    Yes, and now they've given me a position in forensic administration, too. So I have to do the work of several people.

    11.)       S:    Oh, my gosh! My brother-in-law works out by the Elgin Mental Health Center, in the unemployment division. It's a huge place.

    12.)       M:    I think there's a building on campus that deals with unemployment, but it's a different building than the one I'm in.

    13.)       S:    I'm not sure exactly where he is. It's either on the campus or close by. If you do forensic stuff, does that mean you have to go to court and testify in cases?

    14.)       M:    Yes.

    15.)       S:    That sounds awful! I'd hate it, with all the corruption in this state. Do you ever wonder how in heck they come up with the decisions they come up with in some cases?

    16.)       M:    Absolutely.

    17.)        S:    I just shake my head sometimes, it makes no logical sense, it's crazy.

    18.)        (There was a pause in our conversation, and I turned to my computer to bring up Mystic's chart. When she started to speak again, I turned back to face her.)

    19.)        M:    We have this one guy who was supposedly found unfit to stand trial, but he's totally fit, there's nothing wrong with him at all. He won't go to any of his court dates,but we can't do anything about that and he's just stuck there....

    20.)        S:    That sounds really bad. I bet you're talking about Peter Osborn!

    21.)        M:    I can't say any names....

    22.)        S:    Oh, of course. Just so you know, Peter is in Elgin Mental Health unjustly. He's fine, like you say. I know about the case because when I was in family court, they took my son away, just to churn up conflict and keep the case going to make more fees. People talk to each other, and you hear about other cases. That's how I learned about Peter.

    23.)        M:    But how can that kind of injustice happen?

    24.)        S:    Well, I hate to say it, but clinical psychologists like you write false reports saying people are unfit when they're not unfit. Then judges are perfectly willing to believe the false reports and rule accordingly.    

    25.)        M:    I suppose, maybe sometimes.

    

    26.)        S:    And I also hate to say it, but at some point the shit is sooner or later going to hit the fan, too. I mean, in Peter's case, there's a lot of, like, back channel political stuff happening, with people trying to get him out of there.

    27.)        M:    Really? Hmmm.

    28.)        (There was another pause in our conversation. It felt awkward, so I changed the subject.)

    29.)        S:    Well OK, let's talk teeth. 

Further, Affiant saith naught.

                                                /s/ Silly Sylvie, the dental hygienist

                                                (notarized)