(trigger warnings for the history of mental asylums and abuse therein)
I want to be sick.
I don't know how to talk about this, so bear with me.
I discovered something tonight that horrified me so much I actually wanted to vomit. There's a place called Pennhurst, and as torrain says they put people like me in there [TRIGGER WARNINGS].
And they did terrible things to them.
Torrain, who found out about it at the same time as me says it in her post, some of it. The details in that link talk about it, the physical and sexual abuse. I know about those places. That's not the part that makes me so sick, no more sick than knowing about it every damn day does.
It's the fact that they've turned it into "a Halloween event, with make-believe. Family fun to scare people".
I looked at their site, the people who're doing it. I won't link to it here. You can find it if you want to. And they're not just using the building - they're using the actual fucking medical equipment - and they're gloating about picturing the "thousands of visitors coming through (their) attraction knowing that everything in (there) is real" and it wasn't closed until the 1980s and they're making fucking money out of what happened there, out of what happened to people like me.
They're selling tickets. It should be a fucking museum and memorial and they're making it family fun and to excuse what they're doing they've pasted on the plot of the remake of House on Haunted Hill (thanks to jasmine_koran for the tip-off) and people were beaten and tortured and raped because they were like me or they had a developmental disability or they were "bad girls" who liked boys too much and -
It was a major part of the start of the deinstutionalisation process and the disability rights movement, it was part of the start of a fucking civil rights movement and -
It will include a mock "morgue" and "crematorium," along with lobotomy and shock therapy rooms. In the crematorium, fake skulls are piled in a kiln, while a laundry bin filed with fake body parts sits nearby
and this is not okay. It's not. It's not.
ETA: apparently Pennhurst is a member of the International Sites of Conscience, a worldwide network of "Sites of Conscience" - historic sites specifically dedicated to remembering past struggles for justice and addressing their contemporary legacies. And they're doing this.
ETA ETA: The lives of the residents are honoured here and throughout that site, as are the staff members who *did* try to work to their benefit. What is remembered, lives.
If you want to donate to an organisation which does get it, you can go here.
I don't know how to talk about this, so bear with me.
I discovered something tonight that horrified me so much I actually wanted to vomit. There's a place called Pennhurst, and as torrain says they put people like me in there [TRIGGER WARNINGS].
And they did terrible things to them.
Torrain, who found out about it at the same time as me says it in her post, some of it. The details in that link talk about it, the physical and sexual abuse. I know about those places. That's not the part that makes me so sick, no more sick than knowing about it every damn day does.
It's the fact that they've turned it into "a Halloween event, with make-believe. Family fun to scare people".
I looked at their site, the people who're doing it. I won't link to it here. You can find it if you want to. And they're not just using the building - they're using the actual fucking medical equipment - and they're gloating about picturing the "thousands of visitors coming through (their) attraction knowing that everything in (there) is real" and it wasn't closed until the 1980s and they're making fucking money out of what happened there, out of what happened to people like me.
They're selling tickets. It should be a fucking museum and memorial and they're making it family fun and to excuse what they're doing they've pasted on the plot of the remake of House on Haunted Hill (thanks to jasmine_koran for the tip-off) and people were beaten and tortured and raped because they were like me or they had a developmental disability or they were "bad girls" who liked boys too much and -
It was a major part of the start of the deinstutionalisation process and the disability rights movement, it was part of the start of a fucking civil rights movement and -
It will include a mock "morgue" and "crematorium," along with lobotomy and shock therapy rooms. In the crematorium, fake skulls are piled in a kiln, while a laundry bin filed with fake body parts sits nearby
and this is not okay. It's not. It's not.
ETA: apparently Pennhurst is a member of the International Sites of Conscience, a worldwide network of "Sites of Conscience" - historic sites specifically dedicated to remembering past struggles for justice and addressing their contemporary legacies. And they're doing this.
ETA ETA: The lives of the residents are honoured here and throughout that site, as are the staff members who *did* try to work to their benefit. What is remembered, lives.
If you want to donate to an organisation which does get it, you can go here.