Poli-ticks

Anniversary of Ladd Center closing resurrects memories

By Arlene Violet
Posted 4/4/19

A recent article about the anniversary of the closing of the Ladd Center, which had housed developmentally disabled adults, resurrected some humble feelings. It was my privilege to represent …

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Poli-ticks

Anniversary of Ladd Center closing resurrects memories

Posted

A recent article about the anniversary of the closing of the Ladd Center, which had housed developmentally disabled adults, resurrected some humble feelings. It was my privilege to represent residents through their parents and the then-named Rhode Island Association of Retarded Citizens (RIARC) to close the facility. The path was fraught with obstacles.

To refresh memories, the Ladd Center was an inhumane warehouse. Its residents had teeth pulled without Novocain, while stitches sewed up damaged skin without any pain medication or anesthesia. Parents were kept out of the wards, since they met their loved ones in a comfortable community room. Back in the wards, residents curled up in a fetal position with sheets thrown over them. Some patients were so drugged that they would fall to the ground and stay there or walk around in a stupor. When the residents urinated or defecated on themselves they stayed soiled until they were marched into a same-sex group shower and washed off with a hose before bedtime.

RIARC and a group of parents initiated a lawsuit in 1978 by hiring a Boston lawyer because they felt that an instate lawyer would kowtow to the politicians and administrators. After more than a year when the lawsuit went nowhere, the then-Executive Director of RIARC, Jim Healy, approached the newly-formed nonprofit advocacy agency, Rhode Island Protection and Advocacy System (RIPAS) and its Executive Director, Margaret Tormey, to take over the lawsuit. At Peg’s urging, the RIPAS Board, led by George Nazareth of Cumberland, allowed me to take over the lawsuit. RIPAS had a lot to lose because its $50,000 operating grant came from the state and the women on the Board who had handicapped children or adults overcame their fear of retaliation in voting “yes”.

I quickly got the state’s attention by filing motions in federal court demanding the state to produce the residents’ medical records and “care plans” mandated by law. I knew they had nothing near compliance with legal requirements. When they ignored the motion to produce the documents I filed a motion to adjudge Governor Joseph Garrahy, RI Department of Human Services, Tom Romeo, and Ladd Center Administrator, George Gunther, for contempt of court.

Predictably, RIPAS funding was then threatened. The hearing room was jammed with parents who showed up to protest and the money was continued.

A seminal meeting was thereafter held. The state players hemmed and hawed about having no funds. Looking at Governor Garrahy, who had marshalled considerable political capital wearing his lumberjack shirt on TV during the ‘78 Blizzard, I said, “Despite your folksy image you are anything but with your allowing these conditions at Ladd Center; I promise you that I will have Sisters of Mercy at every public gathering you attend carrying picket signs until you do the right thing, so just do it now”.

While I’d like to think that it was my great legal skills that produced the Consent Decree that led to the closing of Ladd and the establishment of group homes with community programs, I know in my heart it was the specter of Sister Mary Henry et al, the guts of Margaret Tormey, and the women whose husbands had abandoned them when they gave birth to a handicapped child, who risked everything. I salute them.

Arlene Violet is an attorney and former Rhode Island Attorney General.

Arlene Violet

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