Disability Rights Center facing criticism for not protecting abused Riverview patient

Riverview Psychiatric Center is in the news again. This time the woman assaulted there was a patient, not a staffer.

An October 8, Portland Press Herald story blames Maine's Disability Rights Center for not taking faster and more decisive action when a Riverview patient was abused by staff:

The Disability Rights Center’s failure to immediately notify Adult Protective Services let down the abuse victim, critics said. 

“To just not report it because they could not urge others to do so is unacceptable,” said Rep. Richard Farnsworth, D-Portland, chair of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee. “This report should have been made within 48 hours.” 

On Dec. 2, a corrections officer pepper-sprayed a nude patient who was in her room and not threatening employees, and then restrained her for hours afterward. The incident was kept secret until a former Riverview nurse reported the abuse to Adult Protective Services in late February. The state immediately investigated and concluded that abuse had occurred. One Riverview employee was fired as a result of the incident, and a contract worker was no longer allowed on Riverview grounds.

The article quotes Helen Bailey, a lawyer at DRC, saying they were working to try to get the hospital to take action on the patient's behalf so that hospital administrators would learn better how to handle such issues. 

Bailey said it is counterproductive for her group to report abuse when it is the hospital’s legal duty to do so. 

“If we do it for (Riverview), then they don’t learn how to do it themselves,” Bailey said. “They don’t get the point that these events are abuse if we do it for them.”

Read the complete article:  Patient advocacy group slow to report abuse case at Maine’s Riverview Hospital

Short Stories and Essays in Breath & Shadow Vol. 10 No. 2

Alex Duvall's essay, "Tourette," mixes together the history of the diagnosis and his own personal history with OCD and  Tourette. He speaks to his disability as if addressing a person or a demon,  and uses a poetic style including metaphor and simile. Read the essay, "Tourette."

W.R. Hilary's "One More Needle in the Haystack" is a piece of short-short fiction that totally engaged me with its hypnotic language -- short, concise bursts of repeated words, sounds, and themes that have a different flavor every time they land.

Why are you always in the hallway, standing in that blue plaid coat with your face pressed against the dirty glass of the door so that they can all see you while the teacher speaks? Throw that damn coat away and wear the one she gave you. I don’t care that it smells like her. Wear it for your own sake.

Read "One More Needle in the Haystack."

Misti Shupe's memoir, "My Hair Dresser Stole my Mojo," tells the story of how a single haircut changed the author's life. While many children and adults with disabilities are abused because they're perceived as easier victims by their perpetrators, Shupe's diabetes actually protected her from further abuse. However, the lessons of putting on a perfect facade from her childhood live on in the adult Shupe's life until a rash decision to cut off her hair brings her face-to-face with who and what she really wants to be, a thrilling transformation to witness for Shupe's family, her readers, and Shupe, herself. Read "My Hair Dresser Stole my Mojo."

In "The Jungle," William Ward's short short, the narrator has a simple disagreement in the checkout line at the store that goes very wrong.

“This is not the jungle,” I reminded myself. “Not the jungle.”

So I did what the counselor taught me. I folded my hands palm to palm at my chest, bowed slightly, and said “Namaste.” But he must have caught my mental subtext that said, “You are one sorry asshole.”

Read "The Jungle."

Robert Kingett's essay, "Into a Memory," is a lovely piece of memoir, rich in sensory detail. Kingett reveals how hearing William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" takes him back into his childhood and how this poem offered him comfort and escape while the chaos of domestic violence raged around him:

After listening to the first line, I was transported to a memory that I did not even know I had: It is late at night, and I am six. I remember feeling the Braille calendar poised in my lap, my finger tracing the soft indentations of the moons among the days. A sound erupts from the living room and I look up, my ears picking up every shift of the air just a few rooms from me.

Read "Into a Memory."