[Update: The buzz is growing on this story. Kuff and Eye On Williamson have both covered it, and done great jobs. We also have this x-posted at DailyKOS, ePluribus Media, and MyDD and would appreciate any recommends. Plus, you can 'buzz' the story via BuzzFlash here, and Digg the story using the buttons within this post.]

The troubles at Texas’ facilities for the mentally retarded were starting to bubble to the surface during the 80th session of the Texas Legislature. Now, thanks to this report from the Dallas Morning News, we have a full-blown scandal on our hands (yet again):

Hundreds of residents at Texas’ state schools for the mentally retarded have suffered serious abuse and neglect at the hands of those paid to watch over them, a Dallas Morning News review shows.

Documents released by all but three of the 12 state schools operated by the state Department of Aging and Disability Services outline everything from horrific physical violence and neglect to frightening verbal threats, derogatory slurs and pranks.

You’ve got to be kidding me. We knew about the problems at the Lubbock State School. So did Governor Rick Perry. Yet, like the Texas Youth Commission scandal that has all but vanished from the headlines, Perry was evidently asleep at the wheel while nurses were beating the living hell out of patients, patients sat around for hours naked in trash bins, had sex with each other and worse—at a wide range of Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services facilities:

In one 2006 case at the Brenham State School, a nurse assistant kicked and punched a mentally retarded resident on the bathroom floor, fracturing three ribs and puncturing the resident’s liver. In a 2000 incident at the Abilene State School, an aide ignored a resident who was found hours later in a trash bin, naked.

Other employees have left residents covered in feces and urine for hours, made them eat off plates where they had vomited, and fallen asleep on the job, waking only after residents engaged in sexual acts.

This is horrible. I’d like to say this is as bad as (or worse than) the TYC scandal, but it’s hard to compare the two. In both instances, though, it involved systematic, institutional abuse while officials did nothing. It will likely be only a matter of time before we see illuminating e-mails from Governor Perry’s where complaints were, time and again, ignored.

Of course, the sate says they’re fixing it:

State officials say they have been addressing cases of abuse and neglect.

“In any direct-care environment, there are people who take advantage of more vulnerable people,” said Cecilia Fedorov, a spokeswoman for the disability services department. “Nobody looks at this and says it’s no big deal. We take it very seriously, and we continue to work to make sure operations there are the best possible for these residents.”

Though The News received employee disciplinary records for 474 confirmed cases of abuse or neglect since 2000, state health officials acknowledge they’ve counted nearly 300 confirmed cases in each of the last two years – about 1 for every 17 residents annually. There are close to 5,000 residents in Texas’ state schools.

How in the hell are you ‘continually’ looking at and working on a problem and still having one out of 17 residents abused in some way? Are you just looking at it and realizing something needs to be done, or are you doing it? Or, worse yet, are you telling all this to the Governor’s Office only to have that office sit on its collective hands and delete reports and fail to forward emails?
Other similarities to the Texas Youth Commission scandal? Here’s a big fat one [emphasis ours]:

In nearly 18 percent of the cases, the state school employee was fired; 33 percent resulted in suspensions. Confirmed cases of abuse are referred to local police departments, Ms. Fedorov said, but the agency doesn’t keep track of how many result in charges or prosecution.

Seriously, how hard can it be to keep track of something like this? With 1 in 17 being abused or neglected, I’m sure a few prosecutors across the state were (or, at least, should have been) deluged with cases.

And, more terrible cases:

• A resident at the Mexia State School died in January after three staff members used inappropriate and excessive force to restrain him.

• At the San Angelo State School in 2003, two employees removed the shirt of a female resident and threw her on the bed, slammed her against the wall and taunted her about her past sexual abuse.

• In 2004, a resident at the El Paso State Center was found outside, covered in feces with his pants below his buttocks, wearing only one shoe.

• A resident of the Corpus Christi State School was left crying and sweating in a hot van in the summer of 2005 for at least half an hour. The resident did not suffer long-term harm.

• An employee at the Abilene State School last year burned the nose and cheek of a resident with the end of a blow-dryer.

• An employee at the Richmond State School fed jalapeño peppers to residents in 2001 and laughed while refusing to allow them water.

• At the Lufkin State School in 2000, an employee left a plastic thermometer cover in a resident’s rectum.

• At the San Angelo State School in 2004, a group of staff members discussed sexual activity in front of residents, encouraging the residents to look at and touch other residents’ genitalia.

• In 2003, an employee at the Lufkin State School forced a resident to walk around the facility with socks stuffed in her mouth as punishment.

What is going on with the Department of Aging and Disability Services? ONE such incident should have resulted in memos to and surprise investigations at every facility. This many and entire staffs should have been given the number to the Texas Workforce Commission on their way out the door.

Has DADS simply employed a bunch of sadists or what?

And, wait for it—wait for it! Governor Perry doesn’t want us to compare the TYC scandal to the state school scandal:

Gov. Rick Perry’s office cautioned against comparing the state school system’s problems to those inside the Texas Youth Commission, the juvenile-justice agency still being overhauled after widespread sexual and physical abuse were revealed this year.

Perry spokeswoman Krista Moody said the governor stands by disability services agency Commissioner Addie Horn, who addresses each case “decisively and quickly.”

How can he continue to stand by her? He must be sleepwalking twenty-four hours a day. She should resign, or he should fire her. Perhaps none of it is directly her fault, but it’s clear she can’t—and hasn’t—cleaned up this mess yet.

And, more from the Perry Administration:

“It’s important not to sensationalize these incidents,” Ms. Moody said, noting that the Department of Aging and Disability Services didn’t become responsible for the state schools until 2004. “They should not be portrayed as though they happened yesterday, and no action has been taken.”

First off, you don’t need to sensationalize someone being left naked in a trash bin. That pretty much sensationalizes itself, don’t you think?

Second, regardless of when these incidents happened, this administration has shown us not one iota of evidence that such behavior is not continuing. The system is broken, and, while perhaps it didn’t break yesterday, no one has provided credible evidence to show it is fixed today.

And, when DADS took over the State Schools is totally immaterial. They are just trying to pass the buck back to HHS or the old MHMR. That’s not going to work, and they can look at pretty much every piece of news coverage of the TYC scandal to figure that out.

The bottom line here is this:

•This is yet another failure of the Perry administration and his appointees—whom he consistently refuses to hold accountable.

•This is an indirect result of the 2003 and 2005 budget cuts and reorganizations forced upon the people of Texas by the Craddick-Dewhurst-Perry dominated and controlled legislature. And, there are individual legislators (mostly Republicans) who bear personal responsibility for this (because they wanted it, they voted for it, and by God, they damned well got it—and, look what good it did!)

•Rick Perry has once again been asleep at the wheel. We’ve seen and heard how much his office really knew about the Texas Youth Commission scandal he claimed he was only aware of because he read it in the paper. Thus, it’s unrealistic to think Perry (or at least his staff) wasn’t aware of what was going on in the State Schools. If someone’s child/sister/brother is beaten near to death on a bathroom floor, you can bet the Governor’s office probably heard about it.

On Friday, state officials revealed that 186 mentally retarded and disabled residents have died in state facilities in the last 18 months.

Of course, the state claims this isn’t unusual for such facilities, but the number seems quite high and is very suspicious given that a justice department report sent to the Governor in December revealed an alarming pattern of abuse and neglect at one facility, the Lubbock State School. There, 17 people have died; the remaining deaths were at 12 other residential care facilities for the mentally retarded.
The DOJ report noted about the LSS that, “a number of these deaths raise concerns regarding the quality of care that LSS residents receive.”

Of course, if that is happening at the Lubbock State School, I strongly suspect that similar conditions exist at other state facilities. Obviously, if the “powers that be” at the TDADS let conditions at the Lubbock facility deteriorate to this point, chances are they’ve failed to provide adequate oversight for other facilities as well.
Of course, as with the Texas Youth Commission scandal, Perry wants everyone to “take a deep breath” and let things simmer down:

Gov. Rick Perry was given the 43-page report addressed in letter form to him last December. He said Friday that people should “take a deep breath” before jumping to conclusions about another scandal brewing in a state rocked for weeks by allegations of sexual abuse at facilities where youthful offenders are incarcerated.

“That report is I think about 18 months old and there have been a substantial amount of reforms that have been put in place and so I think again if we’ll just take a moment, take a deep breath, ask the appropriate questions of what has been done, then a lot of the concerns that that report had will be addressed,” Perry said.

Wait a minute. “Take a deep breath” and ask what has been done? No way! Nothing was done when state officials found out that terrible conditions existed at the Texas Youth Commission, so why would this be any different?

A U.S. Justice Department report sent to Gov. Rick Perry just before Christmas said there had been more than 17 deaths at the school since June 2005.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Wan Kim, the same official who this month cited horrific, life-threatening conditions at a Texas Youth Commission lockup in Edinburg, said investigators found that Lubbock State School employees improperly restrained residents, sedated them or left them “sitting in the hallway or lying in bed looking at the ceiling.”

The report said patients, many of whom are unable to move, speak or feed themselves, were given insufficient medical care. In some cases, they were given solid food even if they had a history of pneumonia from inhaling food particles, the report said.

In one cited case, employees found a woman unresponsive but failed to perform CPR or call for help for a half-hour. Paramedics determined she had been dead for hours because rigor mortis had already set in. And, in that case, investigators found employees had falsified reports to indicate someone had been checking on the woman.

Mr. Kim said many of the problems are indicative of a facility that is woefully understaffed.

The Lubbock school’s “failure to protect residents from harm stems from inadequate supervision, the failure to appropriately detect and prevent abuse and neglect, and an inadequate incident management system,” the report notes. “Consequently, residents are exposed to significant harm.”

First we have a situation where kids are getting raped and the governor does nothing. Now, we have a situation where people are dying and the governor does nothing. What’s next?

Luckily, a Democrat, State Sen. Elliot Shapleigh (D-El Paso), is demanding that something finally be done now that Perry’s office has sat on its proverbial tail:

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh called on the Senate Health and Human Services Committee to look into the state school and suggested a wider look at Texas’ care of the mentally retarded. The state operates 13 facilities, including one in Denton, that provide round-the-clock care for the mentally retarded. There are about 350 residents at the Lubbock school.

“I want to know what happened at this state school,” said Mr. Shapleigh, D-El Paso. “And I want to know if there’s a systemic issue at other state schools.”

Of course, sensing the coming tidal wave, Perry’s lapdogs are begging us not to compare this situation to TYC:

But Mr. Perry’s office cautioned Thursday against comparing the state school system to the problems inside the TYC.

Spokesman Robert Black said the state’s Department of Aging and Disability Services, using an outside consultant, undertook its own investigation of the Lubbock facility shortly after the Justice Department visited in June 2005. The agency has installed across-the-board changes since then, he said, from appointing a new management team to hiring new medical directors and incident managers.

“The report issued in December does not reflect the current state of the school,” Mr. Black said. “Some would like to ramp up another emotional issue. But to compare [the state school system] to the TYC would be totally inappropriate. They’re two completely different situations; the only thing they have in common is they’re both state agencies.”

No, they also have in common that they evidently suffer from bad management and a governor who’s too busy trotting off to Dubai to know what’s going on in his own state facilities.

Tags: Lubbock+State+School, Rick+Perry