A New Home for Mark
Tracing a Brother's Journey Out of Institutional Care
Hear Jeff Moyer's commentary about moving his brother Mark from an institution to a home.
Jeff Moyer, who is blind, is married and lives in Cleveland. He has two adult children and is guardian for his brother Mark. His commentary aired on Morning Edition July 5, 2002.
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Jeff and Mark Moyer |
Many human service programs are opening this kind of new living opportunity across the country.
Mark was born in 1954, when there were no preschools nor public schools that would accept him. They just said, "Not him, not here." The neighborhood kids were downright cruel toward Mark. So our parents made a heart-breaking decision: In 1963, when Mark was eight, he was institutionalized in a grim state facility 150 miles away. Picture 5,000 people living in crowded wards of 50 beds in one room, and 50 chairs and a television in another. One or two strict attendants, no privacy, no right of ownership of anything, savage conditions. To control Mark's interest in sex he was subjected to hormonal experiments that forever changed his body. Recently I asked him what Christmas was like in the institution. He said the boys beat him up.
Since then, the federal government has regulated and created change. Many have advocated. Mark lived in his prison until 1981, when family advocacy finally gained his transfer to a smaller and nearer facility. Step by step, I have worked to pull him slowly up the housing food chain.
Now we have reached the top. But the sad truth is that those with the best advocates get the best service -- and there isn't enough to go around. Mark is no longer languishing in a crowded, de-personalizing facility, but many, many people, without advocates, still are. Our social contract is changing, but those changes need to accelerate.
I am relieved and thrilled by Mark's new home. But as Martin Luther King taught us, we are only as free as the least free among us. And for many Americans, like Mark, community living remains a distant dream.
