These sort of stories just anger us all, I know. But, these stories need to incite some public outrage.
CNN has a story about a Texas school for the mentally disabled where the staff appear to have been staging “fight clubs” amongst the students.
The situation came to light when a cell phone was found with videos. Yep, someone had been making videos of the fights since at least 2007.
Corpus Christi police received the cell phone a week ago, Wilson said, after someone found it and gave it to an officer working security at a hospital. The officer looked at several of the videos and then gave the phone to the police’s forensic unit for analysis. More videos were found in the phone’s memory.
“It appears it was some sort of a fight club,” Wilson said. Twenty videos were found on the phone, with dates going back about a year. All the videos featured the school’s “clients,” who are severely mentally handicapped, he said.
In case you are reading this: Mr. Security officer, you did right. Too bad you weren’t around to stop the fights.
Here’s how the fights are described by CNN:
On the videos, the clients “are not upset like they are being forced,” Wilson said. “They are being more goaded into it. There’s a lot of voices on there from workers … saying, ‘Look at that, ha ha’ … laughing, stuff like that.”
No clients are seen crying, upset or injured on the videos, he said, but none of the workers is seen stopping the fighting.
“The fighting entails pushing, wrestling and some shoving,” Wilson said.
So, likely there weren’t many injuries that would raise red flags. But, I am still enraged. What kind of sick person would encourage and get pleasure out of this?
To the Corpus Cristi police and District Attorneys: I know that the laws tend to be weak in fighting this sort of abuse. Please do everything you can to make sure the people responsible are punished.
Left Brain Right Brain 
The mentally disabled being cared for by the morally disabled..at times I find the world a very scary place…
I couldn’t say it any better than Kathleen already has. This makes me ill.
can i have a vomit bag please?
My recollection is that there was a case in an adult center in Southern California in the last two years. Abuse was recorded by a staff member on his cellphone. When he sold the cellphone, the new owner found the videos and reported the abuse.
The response? Ban cell phones for the staff members.
The question is…would the abuse have been found out if not for the arrogance of the idiot recording it?
Kathleen,
there is some discussion in the video segment that the school had complaints previously but there was never enough evidence to act.
Very scary.
Well it sounds as if there is enough evidence to act this time – six or more employees have been identified from the video clips. Reportedly arrest warrants will be issued for these few. If in fact they are employees of the “school”, I feel warrants should also be issued for those who were being paid to supervise these facilities.
Does anyone know what sort of sentence these ‘people’ might get?
I don’t know what the sentence might be. I fear that it will be lite.
This is totally off-topic, but I want to bring it to someone’s attention that Kristina’s old blog, “Autism Vox” has apparently been taken over by someone else. Doesn’t seem to belong on the Hub anymore, negative as it is.
Clay, I was caught by surprise as well. Apparently b5media, for whom Kristina formerly wrote the blog, made the decision and then redirected their RSS feed to point to the new blog, and so it was automatically picked up by the Hub software. I have removed it from the Hub and written to the author to explain my decision. Thanks for pointing it out.
I’m glad that’s straightened out, Dave.
Now what needs to be done to get The Daily
Gonzo *added*? That girl is funny!
http://thedailygonzo.blogspot.com/
According to the Smoking Gun, the employees have been charged with “felony indecency to a disabled person”. Hopefully because it’s a felony, if they’re found guilty they’ll do some serious jail time.
On the videos, employees can be seen and heard laughing and prodding the residents to fight.
There is some recent imaging research that suggests bullies’ brains could be hardwired for sadism. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), images of bullies’ brains showed that inflicting pain stimulated the brain pleasure centers of males who are unusually aggressive, but showed no activity in brains of normal males.
Could the Texas state school for the mentally disabled in Corpus Christi be hiring employees with “conduct disorder” a very serious psychological condition? We know that abusers seek out employment where there are helpless people they can victimize. Does Texas require any psychological testing of employees at its state institutions?
Ethic Soup has a good article on this research at:
http://www.ethicsoup.com/2008/11/bullies-may-be-wired-in-brain-to-enjoy-others-pain.html#more
too bad for those kids