Culpability Model: Part II

This is going to be hard.  I have a similar reaction to this situation as I did to that Wikipedia article about the boy who was lobotomized.  If I sit too long with it, I start to cave in. 

Two weeks ago, we got a new participant/client at work who has Asperger's Syndrome.  I said only a little bit about it a few days ago.  It is brain damage and creates developmental disability.  She has trouble with subtle social cues and boundary issues and impulse control.  I've been trying hard to work with her on expressions of affection and also attachment that don't go all the way to sexualization.  When she's with me, she does pretty good.  She happened to be staying at the Shelter with me because she left home at 23, wanting to get out from her Mother's moralizing fundie-churchianity and also explore her lesbianism.  As a legal adult, she has every right.  However, she is not an adult in every way.  In some ways she's like a 2-year old who can't stop reaching out for Momma when they want to be picked up.  She paws and grabs people and touches people regardless of whether or not they want it or if it's safe for her and whines when she can't get it for whatever reason. 

The rules at the Shelter prohibit any sexual contact at all, except for a quick goodnight hug and kiss between partners who came into the Shelter together.  But no matter how many times and how many ways they told her to stop, she just wouldn't stop getting into situations where she'd be touching people.  No matter how many times or how many ways I tried to explain her disability, they wouldn't stop punishing her.  The situation escalated.

I told my boss that I could see the handwriting on the wall and something needed to be done urgently.  He heard that as the signal to try and "get it into her head" how important it was to control her behavior.  I tried to explain that this was not working and something else needed to be done.  She needed a change of environment that accommodated her limitations so that she wasn't being triggered constantly.  He interpreted that as not having faith or hope that she could recover or manage this problem and that is not what we were about.  I disagreed, but because this was a power relationship, I felt silent and nothing was done. 

As the situation escalated more, I met with his boss and after combining our separate perspectives on everything, I explained my dilemma.  She immediately came with me to the Staff Meeting and helped me by putting her Voice to my concern and this time he heard it.  Since then, we've consulted with more of her long-term care-givers and they all agree: her behavior is dependent on the environment she's in.  If others can be appropriate, then she can be too.  If not, then she does what they do and is extremely vulnerable.

In this line of work, there is not supposed to be "rankism".  And there isn't, as long as we're conscious of what is going on.  But unconsciously, it happens all the time.  We're all just so used to it.  So, he worked on changing his tune.  He still get's triggered and can go back to "The Bad Place", but he's working on it.  This non-profit agency is a peer-run, self-help org for mental health clients.  The inmates are running the asylum.  It's an evidence based practice that declares us uniquely qualified to understand and help people who have mental illness, instead of disqualifies us.  It's pretty amazing.  I'm extremely lucky to have found this job. 

So!  One thing led to another and we couldn't put a strategy in place quick enough and my client/friend was "exited" from the Shelter after two men and one woman harvested what they wanted from this young developmentally disabled adult.  The Staff at the Shelter put her on the street while the two guys and the older woman who had their own sexual boundary issues and manipulated her were spared.  And since I openly tried to defend her and maintain discretion and confidentiality boundaries at the same time, I am now seen as a trouble-maker.  The divide-and-conquer tactics employed to implement their policy were totally transparent.  Her last night was Wednesday.

Last night, I worked late again and was driven home by my boss's boss.  Thursday and Friday were both 7-9-hour days.  After coming in and changing into my jammies, I sat myself down on the floor in front of my favorite Staff-person and asked him if he could help me make sense of what happened this week.  We talked for about a half hour.  He told me alot.  I learned that they honestly don't believe that she has actual trouble controlling her impulses, that the disability is just an excuse.  It was interesting the way he put it.  He said, "She was told over and over in many ways, by many people and in many contexts to stop with the behavior and she just wouldn't stop.  So what does that tell you?"  I answered, "Yes.  What DOES that tell you?"  But he didn't listen or hear me.  I learned that they are just not trained or equipped to deal with people with issues like that.  So I asked him if they would like to get training and develop protocols for this type of thing and he said that they have invited Mental Health to come and train them, but MH has not yet gotten around to it.  I learned that he used to be a professional criminal and he knew the offending guy from jail and knew that he used to do just exactly what she accused him of doing.  I learned that they rules were developed and time-tested to work best.  I learned that he is very confused between what personal and impersonal is.  So, I just sat there as the wave of tragedy rolled over me and pulled me down, down, down.

He has no idea.  And the Staff there is carefully insulating themselves and one another from any possibility of getting any idea.  They are protecting themselves from one form of Institutional Trauma while they inflict the other form on the most vulnerable in our society. 

The line I came up with to describe this is this:  The protocols and rules they have developed are inadvertently rewarding the strong and cunning while they crush the weak and innocent.  The good of the group outweighs the good of the individual. 

I need some time to recover.  This was traumatizing to me in the extreme. 

By a shear stroke of luck, we at work found an uncertified "Board and Care Facility" that is able to take her in and she didn't have to spend a night in the street.  But this was lucky.  If we didn't find anything, she could very well be dead by now.  So, I still see her at work and we talk and laugh and I engage in non-sexual affection with her and she's so attached to me, but she really doesn't have the ability to comprehend just how dire her situation was.  The only thing her radar is tuned in to is where and when she will get her next dose of affection.  She can't make decisions based on anything else. 

So this is one end result of the Culpability Model in this type of institution.  If you keep treating something as a punitive issue, then people shape their stories around guilt and innocence regardless of whether this is really how it is.  For someone who has no capacity for guilt, this is totally warped and unacceptable and can't come close to describing the situation accurately.  In my first post about this, if I were to tell the man I met in the Coffee House - which I am now in, btw - about what happened this week, I'm afraid he would come unglued.  Seeing as how he errs on the side of declaring the Mentally Ill innocent of making bad choices, while the drug and alcohol addicted are given no such pass, I would imagine that he'd have visions of burning this place to the ground dancing in his head.  Or, perhaps I'm just projecting my own frustration.  I certainly can't afford to express such desire openly seeing as how this is the only means of having a roof over my head at the moment. 

Oh, and incidentally, since this all happened, the transitional housing program in town which is run by the same people, are now making trouble for me and hassling me because I like to have a beer now and then.  I might be dropped from their program.  I will be exited from the Shelter at the end of January regardless of whether or not I have been housed.  If my HUD doesn't come through before then, I have no where to go.  The only place in town that offers a bridge between the Shelter and permanent housing is this one organization.  And apparently, I'm on their shit list.