No Wire Hangers!

Blogpost #5

TACC-Texans Against Civil Commitment: Moosejaw72; April 18, 2022

In 1981 Faye Dunaway portrayed Joan Crawford in the movie Mommie Dearest and uttered the lines. “No wire hangers. No wire hangers, ever.” While the movie portrayed Crawford as a psychotic, abusive mother, some would argue that the movie and the book written by her adoptive daughter were fiction and not fact. Surprisingly that is the case with most things that are told by one person to another.

I would argue that abuse is abuse no matter the form-physical, mental, emotional. There are volumes of stories that can be told about the ongoing abuse, minor to major at the hands of the Texas Civil Commitment Office (TCCO) and Management Training Corporation (MTC) in the Texas Civil Commitment Center (TCCC).

Case in point, the facility has been severely understaffed by guards (funny that we call them that with residents) and therapists (don’t get me started with that title) especially since Covid began. We have repeatedly expressed concern about this. Sometimes guards would cover more than one building at a time while men were locked inside. Recently, a fire broke out in one of the units and a guard happened to be there. BUT, what if, what if, it had been one of those many days when guards are covering other units and the men are locked inside. Like today, April 24, 2022. Recipes for disaster. All the men were out safely and it was a lighting fixture, but what if… Maybe this is neglect more than abuse, but all the same.

One week prior to the protest at the facility, the men were told that every Friday there would be events going on with the staff. They had a cookout, played baseball, and had a variety of things going on with the weekly promise of more to come. Well it came and went. Mental abuse? Emotional abuse? Some would say, get over it. I would say this is par for the course. False hope and false promises given by the people in charge of caring for men in a therapeutic setting (supposedly). I say it was good for TCCO and MTC to pretend to have concerns about the men prior to the week of a protest. Since then, NADA! Let’s build them up and tear them down. Men were threatened with a case if they even waved at any protestors. AND, no baseball, no cookouts, no events with the staff since that FALSE FRIDAY.

TCCO’s goons like to call the men ‘manipulators”. Yet, some of these men and their families have been told they were ready to “Tier up” two, three, even up to 4 years ago. No movement. The men have gone through three, four, five, six, and sometimes more case managers that all promise the elusive “Tier up” over and over again. So, is this the “treatment” waiting room for those that are ready to “Tier up”? Who waits that long for anything? That is definitely mental and emotional abuse. Continuing to promise good things and failing to deliver. Toying with their emotions time and time again.

And now, now the latest excuse for not being “Tiered up”-TCCO claims they don’t have enough therapists to treat the men to tier them up. Last year, it was that TCCO hadn’t secured housing for men to “Tier up”. What’s the next excuse–the Earth is really flat??? There are men that can secure their own housing; there are men that have family they can live with right now. This shouldn’t be an issue. TCCO has had since 2015 to find appropriate housing for men that complete the program. Oh wait, men don’t complete the program unless they leave dead. This is DETENTION, not TREATMENT. That makes it by definition–UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

TCCO told the news that 13 men have been released since 2015. We disagree since most of those were not from program completion, but rather lawsuits. Plus, 13 men since 2015. Really? We are proud of a program of “treatment” that gets 13 released out of 552. That’s a whopping 2.4% success rate. Uh, 97.6% failure. TREATMENT?? Plain old fashioned UNCONSTITUTIONAL DETENTION under the guise of treatment.

Marsha McLane is responsible for the stewardship of approximately 28.4 million dollars a year of taxpayer money (TCCO’s website says the cost of the program is about $45,000 per client per year). How many of you would invest your money with someone that only successfully earns money for 2.4% of her clients?? How many of you would invest in a 97.6% loss??? Guess what, you are already doing it!

Marsha Dearest is wasting taxpayer money on a for-profit shadow prison scheme. Modern day enslavement. Sounds like abuse to me. “No wire hangers, No wire hangers, ever”, my ass!