If Tucson taught us nothing else (other than everything is Sarah Palin’s fault), it taught us that there aren’t enough resources anymore for the mentally ill and criminally insane.
While it’s dangerous to advocate locking someone up against their will and stripping them of their rights for the “greater good,” sometimes common sense needs to be used. When Jared Loughner first started making threats against an elected official, he should have been arrested and sent for a psych evaluation. Perhaps last week’s tragedy could have been avoided.
There are other cases where mental illness is more obvious, such as in the case of transsexuals. Yes, I know it’s contentious because of all the politically correct lobbying by gay rights groups we’ve been subjected to over the past few decades, but try to remember that it wasn’t so long ago that homosexuality was listed as a mental illness. And anyone who wants to self-harm themselves to the point of mutilating their genitals shouldn’t be considered capable of making the distinction between right and wrong.
Here’s an interesting case out of the UK, about a judge suspending the sentence of a drug dealer because it would be “stressful” for him/her:
A cross-dressing drug dealer has been spared jail after a judge ruled it would ruin his chances of completing a sex change.
Ian Morris, 41, who has changed his christian name to Jean, is due to start hormone treatment next week, having been trapped in a ’sexual nightmare’ since childhood.
He ended up in court after police intercepted nearly 2kg of the hallucinogenic drug ketamine which was sent to his flat.
But his lawyers pleaded with Judge Mark Horton to spare him a jail term because he is at a crucial stage in becoming a woman and would find it ‘difficult’ in a male prison.
The judge agreed and suspended his 11 month jail term at Bristol Crown Court.
The Judge - who referred to the defendant as ‘Miss Morris’ throughout the proceedings - said: ‘I am in no doubt that you have led something of a nightmare existence as a transsexual for the entirety of your life.
‘The result is you have walked something of a sexual tightrope, leading to an extremely sad and depressing existence.
‘The reality is this is your final chance to change difficult areas of your sexuality.
‘You have received Government funding and if I send you to prison I would be sentencing you to a continuation of your sexual nightmare, possibly forever.’
So here you have a judge and counsel playing along with the charade that this is perfectly ok, when perhaps therapy and treatment is what this person needs, even if it has to be forced upon him by the state.
It brought to mind this old case from Montreal:
May 25 [2007] is the 20 th anniversary of the criminal blaze which razed the 1906-built Church of the Redeemer, which boasted some of the most impressive architecture and stained glass this city will ever know.
The Unitarian church at Sherbrooke and Simpson was torched in a suicide attempt by the church’s organist, transsexual Wilhelmina Tiemersma, 38, who was a suicidal man named William before getting an operation in 1984 and becoming a suicidal Wilhelmina. That was not to be the only organ that she would destroy.
S/he - who had been institutionalized in an insane asylum for a month in 1970 - answered an ad and became the organist of the place until May 25, 1987 when she came in and opened a gas valve and lit music manuscripts from the 1840s with a candle and left to roam the city. S/he confessed to being aware that the church caretaker Ruben Pradier, his wife and two kids would likely die as a result of her actions, although she returned six hours later to warn them to leave.
Firemen Pierre Letourneau, 31 and Jean-Pierre Longpre, 32, both fathers of three young children, died when a wall collapsed on them while they were perched on a ladder dousing the inferno.
S/he was originally charged with second-degree murder but was only sentenced to eight years for criminal negligence causing death. She was sentenced in 1988 and released in 1990. In 1991 she was invited to give an organ concert at Christ Church Cathetdral. She is reportedly still alive, on welfare.
Not related to homosexuality, there was this tragic case here in Toronto a few days ago, where a police officer was killed by a homeless (potentially) schizophrenic man.
Less than two weeks ago, Richard Esber Kachkar was huddled outside a crumbling St. Catharines building, one he bought for $29,500 only to leave vacant for years as he lived on the streets.
This morning, the 44-year-old man is at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, recovering from gunshot wounds suffered during a violent rampage in which a Toronto police officer was killed.
What happened in between remains a mystery. How did a once-married father of two — known around town as a friendly, neatly dressed, aspiring business owner — wind up at a Toronto homeless shelter Tuesday night, mere hours before allegedly stealing a snowplow and killing Sgt. Ryan Russell?
“I think we’re all just a little bit in shock right now about the whole thing,” said a longtime friend of Kachkar’s family, who asked not to be named.
“It just goes to show you, you never really know. People make choices you just never expect.”
People knew this man was messed up. They knew he needed help. Instead, because the right to freeze your balls off on the street trumps the necessity of care, his mental derangement was ignored in favor of expediency.
I saw this myself, living in the shelter system last year. The mentally ill are left to wallow in their disease (and yes, we had a pre-op tranny living in the house, too) while the bureaucrats in charge of their well-being merely shove starchy food down their gullet and ignore any problem beyond a shortness of toilet paper in the upstairs loo. There isn’t even support in the shelter system to help the willing access mental health services, let alone those who don’t realize they have problems.
In Toronto, there’s a heavy emphasis on addiction support and recovery in the mental health system, with less care available for those who have organic mental illness. And again, that addiction support is only for those who are willing to accept it. In either case - addiction or organic illness - a crime has to be committed before anyone can step in. Threatening behavior isn’t enough.
In the last half century, asylums and hospitals for the criminally insane have been all but eliminated, as have resources for those who live beyond the walls of “the bin.” These places were deemed “inhumane”, and were replaced by shelter beds and social workers who spend much of their time filling out forms for other social workers to read. This might work - it has worked - for someone like me. But it won’t work for someone who lives inside an otherworld inside their mind, and sees no reason to ask for help escaping it.