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!