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In 1979, as a college Freshman, I one January morning, while ill with what turned out to be mononucleosis, punched my live-in girlfriend during an argument. I was a parentally abused kid who'd finished his adolescence in State child protective custody and had never been in any trouble with the law or otherwise delinquent. An assistant prosecutor spuriously claimed the victim had sustained facial fractures, thus qualifying me for a felony battery charge. I was persuaded by a PD to plead guilty and was later sentenced to four years in prison.
After I arrived in prison, I obtained records demonstrating the victim's alleged injuries were spurious and I spent some time in the prison law library. Thereafter, I commenced legal proceedings to set aside my guilty plea and the conviction premised thereon. My litigational activities and efforts to obtain redress of my wrongful conviction earned me the attention of my prison warden, Stephen L. Hardy. The following four years under Hardy's custody turned out to be nightmarish and included years of disciplinary segregation.
In 1982, an illinois judge found that Hardy had conspired with the Illinois Attorney General and other officials to effect an unlawful incarceration of me and he ordered me freed. In anticipation of this, Hardy had sent a memo to the Illinois AG and his Department of Corrections Director asserting that examinations of me demonstrated I was not "formally mentally ill", but that he would nonetheless so assert in a petition to IVC me in the event I prevailed in my habeas corpus suit. True to his word, Hardy refused to free me when ordered to do so and had his guards instead drive me the two miles to the adjacent Chester Mental Health Center where I was held on a petition by Hardy to involuntarily commit me. While I was so held, Hardy and Illinois officials then petitioned all three United States Attorneys in Illinois to prosecute me for alleged violation of mail laws. Ten weeks after being put in the CMHC where angry psychologists, "social workers, and psychiatrists screamed at me to concede I was insane, two deputy U.S. Marshalls picked me up on a warrant alleging my remarks in a letter to an assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago contained a threat toward the "chief executive". After a brief federal jail stay, the federal authorities dismissed their bogus charges and freed me.
After my release I worked briefly in Illinois at labor, saved my money, and in September of 1983, mowed to Tacoma, Washington with a woman I later married. In Tacoma I went to college, bought a home, sold real estate, and started a family. The CMHC had given me a "poor prognosis" and diagnosis of "schizophrenia" which was "in remission" just 11 months earlier. During my two years in Washington State I was productive, well adjusted, and not involved in any criminality. In 1985, I returned with my family to Illinois, and from 1986 to 1989 I was a farmer and operated a machinery repair business. In 1989, I divorced my wife.
In late 1989 I received reports from several concerned persons that a 42 war old neighbor of my ex-wife who was volunteering to caretake my two young children was sexually molesting my then four year old son. My ex wife allayed my expressed alarm and concern by explaining the reports were fabrications by enemies of the accused molester. Approximately two months later, I began receiving further reports about this man and one evening following a binge of heavy drinking and some inquiries I confronted the local police department, the alleged molester, and my ex wife for answers to these accusations. Over the course of that evening and an ensuing alcoholic blackout, I am alleged to have struck my ex-wife with a chair and I was arrested and charged with aggravated battery.
The prosecutor and judge and everyone else involved explained to me that if I plead guilty but mentally ill (based on my alcoholism) I would be placed in an "alcoholism treatment unit" of the Illinois DOC to be "treated" for either seven or ten months. Following this advice, I plead GBMI. Upon arrival at the DOC's reception and diagnostic center, I was determined not to require a high security or escape classification, but my name triggered a "flag", and an "administrative override" was issued stating I was to be sent to Stateville prison, a facility reserved for Illinois' most violent, desperate, and incorrigible felons. At Stateville, bewildered staff surmised I was being selected for this special treatment due to my 1982 habeas corpus victory against Stephen Hardy and the DOC. At Stateville, I was moved to the Death Row cellhouse after I wrote the sentencing judge explaining I was not being accorded the agreed placement and he scheduled me to be returned to court. On the evening before my return to court, a prison psychiatrist called me to his office and related he was transferring me to the psychiatric division of the DOC at Menard (the prison from which I was ordered released in 1982) in an effort to comply with the sentencing judge's intent. In court the next day the judge told me he'd monitor my plight and instructed me to write him if the DOC refused to provide the alcoholism treatment program I was supposed to receive. Upon my arrival at the Menard Psychiatric Center (MPC) two months later, a prison psychiatrist stated the judge lacked the authority to specify my placement within the DOC and indicated he would order my return to Stateville. I visited the prison law library the following day and confirmed he was correct. I then wrote the judge and explained that he was without authority to make the plea agreement he made and renewed my bid to retract my plea. In response, the judge alleged my request wasn't timely (even though he explicitly continued the matter) and I responded by filing a post conviction petition. The judge had me brought back to court in October of 1990 and admonished "I don't want to see you get any more time than you already have." He then appointed a lawyer to represent me.
Commencing immediately after my October, 1990 court appearance, the prison psychiatrist, Nageswararao Vallabhaneni, began calling me to his office and threatening to commit me to the CMHC upon my release over my challenging my situation. I had been told that Stephen Hardy had become the CMHC facility director in 1986 and I reacted in terror to these threats. Unbeknownst to me at the time was the fact that Dr. Vallabhaneni was dually employed at both the MPC and the CMHC and daily was consulting Stephen Hardy. I desperately began writing to others in an effort to enlist their aid in averting my commitment to the CMHC. Among those I wrote were Congressman Glenn Poshard and the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division.
My efforts were to no avail. Due to no misbehavior or expression of psychopathology, I was taken on my release date to the CMHC. Per the order of Dr Vallabhaneni, I was placed on the single most restrictive ward in Illinois. During my first few days there my behavior was beyond any reproach. In response to politely requesting more paper and envelopes, a guard d screamed "Eyeryone go to your rooms!" I was ordered to a barren room. Approximately one dozen men crowded into this room and shouted at me to sit on the bunk therein. They began making statements such as these: "We don't give a shit about all your slick-assed legal papers. You are going to be here for a long, long time. We will be your worst nightmare. You are a shitbag. We can make up reports about you and nobody is going to believe you because you're a bug in a nuthouse now." I replied that I was not intimidated and would lawfully exercise any legal rights I retained whether they liked it or not. Nobody struck me, but it was clear that the CMHC administration had advised the guards and clinical staff that I was a "keeper". Thus began my extrajudicial, natural life incarceration.
One would think "Surely such a travesty could not transpire in America; surely the courts would prevent such an outrage." I faintly held onto that hope as I entered upon my madhouse incarceration. My first act was to obtain a copy of Illinois Mental Health Code and memorize it. Upon my initial court appearance, a local PD lawyer met with me in a room in the CMHC and he told me the court had appointed him to represent me. I tried to relate all the facts and my wish for a jury trial, independent experts, and witnesses and such. The lawyer impatiently cut me off with a "We'll discuss it in court." He then walked out of the room and a few minutes later my guards were ordered to bring me into the courtroom. As I walked in Dr. Vallabhaneni was being sworn in by a court clerk and I was seated between two burly guards. Vallabhaneni began testifying that I was mentally ill and had been a major disciplinary problem in prison. The PD lawyer then asked him to repeat what he'd just related. I interrupted and stated I had a report from Vallabhaneni in which he stated I wasn't afflicted with any serious mental illness and was appropriate to be released and that I had copies of prison records showing my behavior was faultless while I was in prison. The judge shouted at me to shut up and sit down. I complained that the PD refused to consult with me and wasn't at all representing me and the judge silenced me with a threat of removal. The judge then found me subject to IVC and I asked "What about the jury trial I demanded?" and the judge contemptuously replied "You just had it." The judge was the former State's Attorney who prosecuted Stephen Hardy's falsified 1982 petition to IVC me.
At my next IVC trial the court declared me "incompetent" to waive the PD inflicted on me and to defend myself. This time I pro se mailed a jury demand to the court and retained a carbon copy thereof. The PD sat passively as the State's Attorney selected six jurors, four of whom were the stated blood relatives of CMHC staff. When asked if he had any objections the PD replied "No, your honor." I stood and interrupted with "Your honor, I wish to exercise my preemptory challenges with respect to these jurors." For my effort I was told "Sit down and shut up Mr. Yoder. Mr. Brown will be representing you. One more interruption and I will have you removed from this court."
Despite appellate reversals of over half my IVCs, my trials are shams wherein a local PD inflicted on me waives all my rights and refuse to meaningfully defend me or consult with me. Only since amendments to the Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Code were made following the police standoff with Shirley Allen in 1997 have these proceedings been open to the press and public. Despite this, when a Belleville News Democrat reporter attempted to attend one of my hearings in 1999, he was excluded from the courtroom until after I was speedily processed through. This reporter complained to the facility and the Illinois Free Press Association. Recently the Citizens' Commission on Human Rights has attended a proceeding and corroborated my claim these proceedings are pro forma sham hearings.
My savings were quickly decimated. When I applied for social security benefits, my captors were able to persuade the local social security offfice to deny them to me on the premise I am a prisoner. An Edwardsville, Illinois lawyer agreed to pro bono contest this and obtained an administrative law judge victory in April. It is hoped I will now have nominal funds to hire counsel and defray the costs of experts.
In 1995 1 began studying clinical psychology, psychiatry, psychodynamic theory, object relations theory, and every criticism of psychiatry I could find. To date, I have devoted about 6,000 hours studying the literatures in these areas. My conclusion is that biological psychiatry is hogwash and forced psychiatry is an outrage on the human rights of men and women. During my readings I encountered references to the psychiatric survivors community/movement and I began a correspondence with David Oaks of Support Coalition International and others. David expressed an interest in my plight and I sent him voluminous records supporting my version of events. Later, having learned that others are extremely reluctant to believe a "mental patient", I enlisted lawyers and others to write to Mr. Oaks to verify what I was relating.
On 7-7-99, David Oaks issued a Dendrite alert to Support Coalition Internationals' members via the Internet. In this alert he called on SCl's membership to contact Illinois' Governor to demand my release from further oppression hiding behind the mask of alleged "medical treatment".
On 8-8-99, St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter and New York Times best sellers list author Charles Bosworth ran a lengthy story reporting on my plight and the survivors community's involvement on my behalf.
In September of 1999, Larry Yellen, a Fox News reporter and legal analyst, ran across Bosworth's St. Louis Post-Dispatch story on me while he was researching the imminent release of a physician found not guilty by reason of insanity for murdering his wife and child. Yellen was struck by the fact that I have been held in a more restrictive setting than the controversial murderer and yet am charged with no crime whatsoever. He interviewed me on 1-22-99 on an open courtyard of the CMHC while two changing CMHC employee shifts gawked out windows at Illinois' most controversial mental patient, Yellen, and a camera crew. David Oaks graciously agreed to an interview and a Eugene, Oregon camera crew and reporter interviewed him there.
Whenever the press or media report on a mental patient they invariably believe a psychiatrist or other "expert" is indispensable to any understanding of the "patient". I had not lined up any experts sympathetic to my plight and Fox News requested I authorize the State to field its preeminent psychowhore, Daniel J. Cuneo, Ph.D., to provide the State's explanation for its controversial nine year incarceration of me. Cuneo is a registered clinical psychologist who has worked his entire career at the CMHC and he is utilized to testify against respondents in IVC trials here. He is also employed by both the defense and government in criminal cases. Cuneo was thus interviewed by Yellen. Cuneo stated during this news segment that I would, when given an opportunity, "erupt". (Cuneo is enamored of volcano metaphors.) He went on to state "He has not taken a machine gun and killed 400 people. What I'm telling you is-he doesn't have a machine gun in here. But his wish to destroy, to hurt, to maim, is still there." This was the alleged "scientific" basis for the government's diagnosis of me as insane and for their incarceration of me in a madhouse for nine years, i.e. baseless, hyperbolic characterizations of my supposed proclivities-straight from the script for a Hollywood horror movie.
Yellen and his camera crew were so impressed by the maniacal appearance of Dr. Cuneo's eyes that they did a close up of his eyes they put in a side box while interviewing him. Fox News thought it ironic that the expert alleging I am the most dangerous mental patient he has ever encountered appeared much crazier looking than I. I was given the same treatment for contrast. A lawyer friend made me copies of these images and sent them to me. A few days later the CMHC administration sent a "SWAT" team to my room to confiscate these, but not before I was able to send out several copies to friends.
The Fox News telecast marked the first time of which I'm aware that an incarcerated Illinois madman appeared on statewide TV to repudiate his madhouse incarceration. Larry Yellen foresees another telecast if, and when, volunteer experts examine me and agree to be interviewed.
In late 1999, I began challenging the psychopharmaceutical companies to examine me and my unique brain. I pointed out the following facts which, I believe, make mine the "Rosetta stone" of mentally ill brains:
1. I am alleged to be the most dangerous, unquestionably psychotic mental patient Illinois' unimpeachabie experts have ever encountered.
2. My brain has never been injured, infected, or drugged. (I'm "neuroleptic naive") Nobody has ever examined my brain. I've no genetic or metabolic disorders.
3. My condition has remained "unchanged" for nine years. "He's as worse now as the day he arrived."
4. 1 am alleged to harbor "mental illness" which the proponents of biopsychiatry allege are "well established brain diseases", i.e. bipolar disorder, a paranoid psychosis, and the OCD of "graphomania", Which is, according to Daniel Cuneo, "the incessant writing of letter after letter to the authorities".
I began my challenge by writing letters to Abbott Labs; Pfeer, Inc.; Zeneca; Bristol-Meyers Squibb; Eli Lilly; Smith, Kline, Beechum; Wyeth Ayerst; Novartis, and Janssen. Abbott Labs and Pfizer, Inc. had their Security Directors phone the CMHC to ask that I be restricted from further writing them. Abbott's security goon additionally accused me of "disturbing mail and phone calls" and melodramatically demanded notice of my potential release. I subsequently filed suit against this security cowboy and a Lake County, Illinois judge just recently ordered summons served on him.
Others receiving challenges to attempt to demonstrate their "bad brain" theories on me are the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the National Mental Health Association, the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, and E. Fuller Torrey and the Stanley Foundation. Nobody has taken me up on my offer, but Fuller Torrey wrote suggesting I read his book Out of the Shadows. I did and found the following horrid suggestions in his book: Torrey, E. Fuller. 1997. Out of the Shadows: Confronting America's Mental Illness Crisis. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Op. cit., 152.
"Families also exaggerate their family member's symptoms to get the person
committed to a hospital. In a 1989 study of 83 families in Philadelphia, 18
percent "said they had lied or exaggerated to officials in order to get a relative
committed. Experience, they said, taught them that they had no choice. In fact
a number of officials with the Alliance for the Mentally Ill (AMI), a nationwide
support group for families, say they privately council families to lie, if necessary,
to get acutely ill relatives hospitalized .... They say they were attacked when
they weren't; they say their children tried to kill themselveswhen they didn't
.... 'How else are you going to get them help?' asked Joy McCoy, president of
the Delaware County AMI."39 Thus, ignoring the law, exaggerating
symptoms, and outright lying by families to get care for those who need it are
important reasons the mental illness system is not even worse than it is." Dr. Torrey says that the "mental illness system" is improved by "ignoring the
law", "exaggerating symptoms", and "outright lying". I recently reminded Dr.
Torrey and Laurie Flynn that it is criminal in Illinois, and, I am told,
the other 49 States to provide false information to get another subjected to
psychiatric coercions. In my letter to Laurie Flynn, I requested she publicly
renounce encouraging people to lie or bear false witness against others to cause
them to be IVC'ed or involuntarily drugged. My confrontation of those promoting
coercive psychiatry continues.
For many years I was relegated to using a two inch pencil stub and fools cap
to correspond and prepare legal pleadings. Notwithstanding that handicap on
my exercise of my First Amendment rights, I pro se won several lawsuits,
obtaining in one a permanent injunction in a U.S. court enjoining my captors
from ever drugging me in a non-emergency. Repeatedly, I won legal actions, administrative
actions, and verified oversight agency complaints with only these meager resources
at my disposal. Yet, for nine years the local court has declared me "incompetent"
to waive the focal PD foisted on me perennially. Recently, I won a two month
legal miniwar to obtain the possession and use of a laptop computer a psychiatric
survivor magnanimously donated to me.
The CMHC is located in the abandoned coal fields of a hardscrabble Southern
Illinois where unemployment runs high. The chief industry here is the CMHC and
several prisons, including Illinois' supermax prison, Tamms, and the former
U.S. Bureau of Prisons supermax, Marion USP. Jobs take precedence over the rights
of people who are demonized as the "worst of the worst", and as i told the viewers
of Fox News, as "Hannibal Lecter-type monsters". Wilhelm Reich explained this
sort of systematic mass rationalization in his book "The Mass Psychology of
Fascism". Just a few weeks ago the Tamms' supemax prison chaplain spoke out
about abuses there, and for his efforts he was summarily fired. This brave man
declared "I value my soul over a government job". In nine years only one CMHC
employee has ever reported what's being done to me and he did this confidentially.
The Citizen's Commission on Human Rights in St. Louis recently prepared a
scathing, ten page summary of my plight. Repeatedly, investigations by outside
groups and individuals have found that my captors claims about me are fabrications.
Illinois' Governor has hardened his heart to the pleas of the hundreds of
wonderful people who have called for an end to my oppression. This Governor,
George H. Ryan, comes from that county in Illinois where my grandparents and
great-grandparents are buried and from whence hails another Illinois victim
of psychiatric oppression, Elizabeth Ware Packard, who also fought tirelessly
for abolition of coercive psychiatry from within, and later from without, the
cell of a madhouse.
Despite living under conditions worse than what I endured in a maximum security
penitentiary, being told I am being subjected to an extrajudicial life incarceration,
enduring guard orchestrated attacks by felons, being the butt of particularly
vicious treatment by guards who are told I'm a hated persona non grata, and
struggling against the invalidating stigma of psychiatric diagnoses, I have
retained my integrity as a person and found meaning, work, and even friendship
in my life. I did this by rejecting dope, establishing and maintaining collaborations
with psychiatric survivors, and reminding myself not to ever give up and abandon
hope.
Any poor man or woman lacking family, friends, or money can easily be turned
into a non-person by a hostile government employing the ruse of psychiatric
commitment. Even my captors concede me to be "extremely legally sophisticated"
and if this can be done to me and be continued in the very face of widespread
condemnation, no poor person running afoul of government officials is immune
from this specie of oppression. Had I been one whit weaker, my ordeal would
have utterly destroyed me and turned me into one of the unfortunates surrounding
me in the bowels of this snakepit.
Contact information for Rodney and
links to action you can take.
39. Acker, C. & Fine. M.J.. 1989. Desperate for help, sometimes
parents lie. Philadelphia Inquirer.
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