Suffer The Little Children, Pennhurst State Home: Eugenics + Social Services - Pennsylvania

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• published: 23 Jan 2011
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Suffer The Little Children: A Peek into the History of Eugenics and Child Abuse by the State - Pennsylvania Pennhurst. (Full Documentary) The ground-breaking 1968 NBC10 Expose on Pennhurst State School by Bill Baldini. Haunting Similarities to current horrors of CPS Shelters + Group Homes (abuse, money benefits contractors, children worse off). Once called the shame of the nation, Pennhurst was the epicenter of a civil and human rights movement that changed the way the world saw people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The atrocities of neglect at Pennhurst resulted in Supreme Court litigation that sounded the death knell for institutionalization worldwide. Pennhurst was the battleground in a monumental struggle to secure basic human rights for the last group of Americans to attain privileges assumed to be the natural freedoms of all persons. Pennhurst's historic and beautiful campus is, like Valley Forge and Independence Mall to the east, hallowed ground in the struggle for dignity and self-determination, a western anchor to a freedom corridor, that, though stretching but a few miles, reaches all the way around the world. Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance seeks to ensure that those achievements won at Pennhurst are neither lost nor forgotten. http://www.preservepennhurst.com/default.aspx?pg=6 PA & EUGENICS - In 1913, the legislature appointed a Commission for the Care of the Feeble-Minded which stated that the disabled were unfit for citizenship and posed a menace to the peace, and thus recommended a program of custodial care. The Commission desired to prevent the intermixing of the genes of those imprisoned w the general population. In the Biennial Report to the Legislature submitted by the Board of Trustees, Pennhurst's Chief Physician quoted Henry H. Goddard, a leading eugenicist:- "Every feeble-minded person is a potential criminal. The general public, although more convinced today than ever before that it is a good thing to segregate the idiot or the distinct imbecile, they have not as yet been convinced as to the proper treatment of the defective delinquent, which is the brighter and more dangerous individual." More on Eugenics in Pennsylvania - -- In 1857 the Supreme Court handed down the Dred Scott decision while it held session at Bedford Springs in Bedford, Pennsylvania. Dred Scott and his family walked into the Supreme Court as free people and walked out as slaves. Transferring authority from the parent to the state produced profound subservience and slavery into the entire culture. Millions of American families are now experiencing the very same fate as the Dred Scott family, as "family courts" and bureaucratic slave-makers are committing the very same atrocities in eugenics "kangaroo courts." http://bedfordsprings.blogspot.com/ -- Eugenics in America, Began in Bedford, Pennsylvania and Continues to Destroy through CPS Fraud, Abuse, False Accusations. http://robertscourt.blogspot.com/2009/03/eugenics-in-america-began-in-bedford.html --- Cases --- PENNHURST STATE SCHOOL V. HALDERMAN, 465 U. S. 89 (1984). The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the MH/MR Act required the State to adopt the "least restrictive environment" approach for the care of the mentally retarded, and rejecting petitioners' argument that the Eleventh Amendment barred a federal court from considering this pendent state law claim. The court reasoned that, since that Amendment did not bar a federal court from granting prospective injunctive relief against state officials on the basis of federal claims, citing Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123, the same result obtained with respect to a pendent state law claim. HELD: Eleventh Amendment prohibited the District Court from ordering state officials to conform their conduct to state law. Pp. 465 U. S. 97-124. (a) The principle of sovereign immunity is a constitutional limitation on the federal judicial power established in Art. III of the Constitution. The Eleventh Amendment bars a suit against state officials when the State is the real, substantial party in interest, regardless of whether the suit seeks damages or injunctive relief. The Court in Ex parte Young, supra, recognized an important exception to this general rule: a suit challenging the federal constitutionality of a state official's action is not one against the State. Pp. 465 U. S. 97-103. http://supreme.justia.com/us/465/89/ EX PARTE YOUNG, 209 U.S. 123 (1908), Whether a state statute is unconstitutional because the penalties for its violation are so enormous that persons affected thereby are prevented from resorting to the courts for the purpose of determining the validity of the statute, and are thereby denied the equal protection of the law, and their property rendered liable to be taken without due process of law, is a Federal question and gives the Circuit Court jurisdiction. http://supreme.justia.com/us/209/123/case.html