LEST WE FORGET

Tyler West is in a prisoner in the Richard Handlon Correctional Prison in Ionia, Michigan. Mark Rippee, blind and severely disabled, as well as severely mentally ill, is at large on the streets of Vacaville, California, where he has somehow survived for twelve years. He is regularly beaten up and tormented by street punks. His sister Linda Privette told me that in addition to food and clothing, she recently provided him with his eighth walking cane in a twelve-month period–the other seven had been taken from him.

Mark Rippee

You may read about Tyler and Mark, and the grossly inhumane reasons for their medieval persecution, elsewhere on this blog. In brief, each is an unconscionable victim of an American state’s official contempt for the mentally ill, contempt that festers from ignorance, indifference, and a lack of organized public pressure to rescue them and their families from their living hell.

I’m sure that many relatives of the mistreated mentally ill would like to see equal attention devoted to their loved ones. My inadequate response is that there are not enough megabytes in cyberspace to tell the story of every American sufferer of mental illness who has been further victimized by our systems. We need to make mental-health reform a massive civil-rights issue. We need a revolution of conscience.

Tyler West

I am posting below a heartbreaking, eloquent message from Tyler’s adoptive mother, Kimberlee Cooper-West. (She submitted it to the Facebook site Circle of Comfort and Assistance Community, and I reprint it with her permission, and it bears close reading.) You can find comments from Mark Rippee’s sisters, Linda Privette and CJ Hanson, elsewhere on this blog.

KIMBERLEE COOPER-WEST

Wish I had good news to share with ya all’ Love my CCA family! Some have asked, so here it is! Today is our son Tyler’s 20th birthday! We were unable to say Happy Birthday, as he is in lock down for 5 days. We drove a little over an hour, to Richard Handlon Correctional Prison, in Ionia, Michigan. This was last Monday. He is number #113697. We had cake with him. He made a cake from 2 honeybuns, smashed peanut M&Ms(sprinkles) and a melted Snickers bar on top. He is inventive. We sang Happy Birthday to him. He is still our boy! Few mention him. Our heart breaks for what, we have lost. This Will be his 3rd year, away, for his Birthday. Next he will miss Thanksgiving and Christmas. He hasn’t been given counseling, education, training, or the proper medications. He was beat up 4 times, since he was incarceration. Why, couldn’t these mental health professionals, keep him, in an, inpatient psychiatric hospital? For the love of God, there was no good reason, to release our son. His safety compromised. No one responsible. He was nearly shot at for trespassing. He was inpatient, 5 days prior, to his arrest.. He was delusional and hearing voices. What is wrong with this country? Why is there, no long term treatment? This is a brain disease, ya all’ Maybe we should start locking up every Grandma and Grandpa who is violent, or disorderly from Alzheimer’s. Serious mental illness a disease. It is prodromal to Alzheimer’s. Prisons are corporations. Their goal is money. They need prisoners. Caught up in the system, it is a real thingl. We are receiving, a criminal justice system education. Months are now years. One caseworker, Ms. Williams, calls many people names like dumb, retarded, idiots and pedophiles etc. Everyone in Ty’s facility is either mentally ill or autistic. She told Tyler a 19 year old kid, who was only supposed to be there for 2 months, your doing 15 years. It leaves me to wonder, how many, have given up from her words.. He is not even provided an inhaler for asthma, and chronic lung disease. He has autism and a serious mental illness. When he was in school he was never suspended. He was a target for bullies, which was, Our main concern. Incarceration, never crossed our minds. Today on his birthday, I sent his appeal papers, certified to a judge. Hopefully he will give him an apeallate lawyer.

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