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.

Xiamara really is back, OMG!

Social worker Xiamara Ramirez has her old office back, on low-functioning N Unit again. (I haven't heard whether she's papering over the window so nobody can see what she's doing in there.) Amazingly, she was recently re-assigned as Gus' social worker (!!) when Joe "dumb-as-basalt-rock" Basso was moved to another unit for reasons unknown.

Joe was unable to accomplish even the most mundane tasks for his "patient" and apparently chose instead to just flat-out lie about having contacted community facilities which might accept Gus into residential treatment programs when he may be conditionally released from EMHC. Joe claimed he had been talking to people about whether they might accept Gus at the following facilities: Lydic Healthcare Center, HSI, Ecker Center, Thresholds, and HRDI (possibly among others).

The reason Gus is willing to accuse Joe of just flat-out lying about doing his job... is that Gus got the list of facilities Joe claimed he had called, and then checked by calling each of them himself and being told they never heard of Gus, or Joe, or Elgin Mental Health Center. 

In a recent monthly staffing, I also accused Dr. Vikramjit Gill of just flat-out lying, because he said he didn't recall anything about Xiamara Ramirez having previously been unwilling to be Gus' social worker. Dr. Gill was the one who recruited Joe "dumb-as-basalt-rock" Basso to become Gus' social worker when Xiamara unceremoniously stopped talking to Gus and refused to have anything further to do with him, actually quitting her position on Gus' treatment team possibly because she blamed him for my having insulted her on this blog. I even put her name in headlines, back in 2025 and 2024. (See, here, here, here, here, and here, maybe among other mentions in other articles).

In one other article from July, 2024, which has been very popular because of its racy headline, I made the point that sexual abuse of mental patients is absolutely endemic in IDHS psychiatric institutions, because those facilities are not really hospitals, they are slave plantations. The staff act as though they believe that the patients are their property, to be used for whatever benefits might be available. To me, it even harkens back to Sally Hemmings having Thomas Jefferson's babies. I mentioned Xiamara Ramirez in the context of accusing the whole system of such slavery. Maybe I shouldn't have, because I never believed Xiamara's door window was papered over so she could sexually abuse her patients. But it's the kind of thing people think of when they can't explain why she breaks the rules. It's such a corrupt environment that all manner of perverse  corruption almost has to be suspected any time anything looks odd.

Dr. Gill remembers that time, and the problems of Gus and Xiamara in 2024. In the recent monthly staffing, he specifically queried my mention of psychiatric slavery as "an over-exaggeration," maybe for Xiamara's benefit as she continued to sit in the room even after Gus had asked her to leave and made a very direct point that she cannot be his social worker. So I was disappointed that Vik would flat-out lie and pretend he recalled nothing about the whole brouhaha. But he's often between a rock and a hard place. He doesn't like many things about the institution, or at least he pretends he doesn't to me, and he keeps saying he's about to retire, but he never does. Who knows, maybe Xiamara has some kind of effective pull with the administration at EMHC. Maybe she's an agent of James Patrick "The-Almighty-Statewide-Forensic-Medical-Director" Corcoran, and she ran straight to him for air cover,with a new complaint about Gus and me, as soon as that staffing was over! (But this is speculative to a point of absurdity, of course!)

One fact remains. Gus has been told that his treatment team was working on a conditional release packet for the better part of the last year. But nobody has actually done anything. Either Joe was just too dumb-as-basalt-rock to try to find a placement, and lied when he told Gus he was working on it in order to cover his own incompetent rear-end, or there's a whole program from somebody else that is actually intended to mislead Gus and me.

Just incidentally, I noticed that a white KIA Seltos with Illinois plates had taken Corcoran's sacred parking place at EMHC the other day. Somebody is playing with fire!

Weird, weird thing, I sure can't figure it out! Someday it'll all be part of a book.