12:36pm May 30, 2014

Locking dangerous people with vulnerable people is a disaster waiting to happen.

This also cropped up in a conversation I was having with someone, the one who wanted it to be easier to commit people involuntarily to psych institutions, so that people who wanted to kill people could be locked up somewhere.

And.

There’s this thing.

It’s a known thing. Even a studied thing.

In both mental institutions and the special education system, you get two groups of people funneled into these places:

1. People who are there because they’ve been bullying people, assaulting people sexually, otherwise harming or threatening to harm people.

2. People who are there for reasons that make it very difficult to protect themselves from harm.

I was sexually assaulted multiple times in mental institutions and special ed by people who were there because they habitually sexually assaulted people.

I had many factors that made me more likely to be vulnerable to this:

I had already been molested for years, with all that entails, including the fact that your molester will make inroads into your mind to make it easier for future people to molest you.
I was socially and physically passive, meaning I was not able to move away from situations. I was not able to remove myself before they became a threat. I was not able to remove myself after they become a threat.
Sometimes I was unable to move at all, and was assaulted at least once under those circumstances. (With a room full of people watching, who assumed it was okay because I wouldn’t remember. I did remember.)
I had poor social awareness, so I was unable to always detect the intent of people I was talking to, in realtime.
I didn’t understand hints, so if someone hinted to me that I should not sit next to someone, I would not understand that they were telling me I was in danger, or even that they were giving me a hint at all

And much, much more.

This meant that, as far as sexual assault and many other things were concerned, mental institutions and special ed involved throwing the shark bait in with the sharks.

Every time I was assaulted, it was either laughed off by the staff, or else they found some way to blame me for it happening – I should have seen it coming and got out of the way. I was also forbidden from discussing it with other students or warning other students. This was to “protect the confidentiality” of the perpetrators. Only once it happened to me was I introduced to other kids who had been assaulted by the same students.

This idea that mental institutions should be where we put predatory people?

Has no respect whatsoever for the people who will have to live there with the predatory people. The people who will, undoubtedly, become victims of whatever the predatory people decide they feel like doing to fuck with their lives. And they will come up with things to do, because that’s what bullies act like. Always.

I already don’t like institutions, but “mental institution should be easy to commit people to, so we can put predators where they won’t hurt anyone”, makes it clear that “where they won’t hurt anyone” means “where they won’t hurt anyone who matters to people on the outside”. Clearly the other inmates don’t count as “anyone”.