Here is some poor quality video (and audio—mea culpa) from the meeting with the East Vincent Township supervisors on Wednesday. Chair John Funk is the guy with the white mustache, Christine McNeil is the woman in blue to his left. Speakers are, first to last: Liz, Montgomery County man, Saul Rivkin, Attorney Steven Siana. 

Residents of the township and others had to wait 90 minutes for the public comment portion of the meeting to speak out about the Pennhurst Asylum haunted house. This video begins after Chair John Funk has read the memorandum from Code Enforcement Officer Paul Schmidt (read memo here).

First let me set the record straight on something: Pottstown Mercury Reporter Brandie Kessler is NOT married to an EMT who is working for the Pennhurst Asylum haunted attraction and she DOES NOT have a conflict of interest in covering the stories involving the attraction. Please do not spread rumors that cannot be backed up with fact, as is the case here. Ms. Kessler is not married, not engaged or dating an EMT or anyone else affiliated with the Pennhurst Asylum. 

On a lighter note, last night's East Vincent Township meeting was a disappointment. Although there was a good turnout for public comment on the Pennhurst Asylum, Supervisor John Funk was downright rude on the subject. Funk read a memo by Code Enforcement Officer Paul Schmidt that seems to have chosen to interpret the code rather than enforce it regarding the Pennhurst Asylum. He likened the Pennhurst Asylum event to a corn maze, hay ride, St. Joe's carnival and flower and tree sales. What planet is this guy on? His final assessment reads: "If this event truly grates against the popular opinion of a majority of residents, then the decision of the zoning officer should be challenged before the Zoning Hearing Board." However, he adds: "It is my belief that the ZHB would fail to support the appeal." The zoning board meets Thursday, September 16 at 7:30, eight days before the attraction opens. Call East Vincent Twp. office to find out how to appeal at: 610-933-4424.

Here's a link to the article in the Pottstown Mercury:

The following is a letter from Vision for EQuality, Inc., found on the Pennhurst Memorial & Preservation Alliance's Facebook page.

Throughout history, individuals with disabilities have been subjected to countless acts of abuse and neglect, including forced sterilization, medical experimentation, imprisonment, isolation and euthanasia. During the 1960s and 1970s, the public became aware of the dismal and inhumane treatment occurring in state institutions like Pennhurst. Outraged by the systemic victimization of people with disabilities, their families and advocates fought to close state institutions and demanded civil rights and inclusion in the community.

The court decision to close Pennhurst stated that keeping people with developmental disabilities isolated from society in institutions is a violation of their Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection. Pennhurst closed in 1988. This landmark case led to institutional closures across the nation.

Since then, opportunities for community living and supports have expanded for individuals and their families. People with disabilities have made significant strides toward community living and full participation. However, even today, individuals with disabilities still struggle to overcome the stigma, stereotypes, myths and fears that have persisted and are a legacy of past assumptions and perceptions.

Creating a haunted attraction on the grounds of a former state institution is insulting, offensive, and disrespectful to those that endured imprisonment on those grounds. Abuse, neglect, victimization, and inhumane treatment of a group of people should never be sensationalized to entertain the public. The local government officials, the owners of the property, the promoters, and the individuals involved in its creation should be ashamed. We doubt that any other oppressed group still struggling to gain equality and civil rights would be subjected to such disrespect.

We call on community leaders, government officials, individuals with disabilities and their families to speak out in opposition and close this atrocity. Act now: Sign the petition: http://www.gopetition.com/petition/38326.html. Contact Pennhurst Asylum at info@pennhurstasylum.com or 484-866-8963 to protest this attraction.

Call your State and local government officials and ask them to stop this:

Chester County Commissioners at 610-344-6100
Spring City Borough at 610-948-3660
East Vincent Township Supervisors at 610-933-4424

Call the following radio stations to share your opposition to their promotion of the attraction. Boycott these stations and tell them why. 

Q102 – 610-784-3333
WXTU – 610-667-9000
WMMR – 610-771-0933
Wired 96.5 – 610-667-9000

www.visionforequality.org

Harrisburg Office: 1414 North Cameron Street, Suite B, Harrisburg, PA 17103

NBC 10 Philadelphia did a two-minute piece on the Pennhurst Asylum controversy. Although the piece was pretty much another advertising endorsement for the attraction, at least the word is getting out there. Let people make up their own minds. Here's the link: Haunted House at Pennhurst Causes Outrage. I certainly didn't see much outrage in it. Greg Pirmann, senior vice president of the Pennhurst Memorial & Preservation Alliance, had about three seconds on camera; most of the footage is promotional video from the Pennhurst Asylum's web site. Hard to believe this is the same station that broke story of conditions at Pennhurst back in 1968 with Bill Baldini's Suffer the Little Children. You can watch a segment of the expose at the NBC 10 link above.

I'm also including a link to an online petition against the attraction: Petition. Take the time to sign up.

The Pottstown Mercury article today was a big disappointment—I guess the editors thought that if they wrote an editorial opposing the attraction than they could let the news article be a ringing endorsement for the "Pennhurst Asylum." The editor, who is not attributed, expresses his dismay that the "only horror in the Pennhurst Asylum is that it is proposed to start business in just a few short weeks, and no one is trying to stop it." Gosh, is that true? No one is trying to stop it? Then why did the Easter Seals make Randy Bates take down their logo from his Web site? You mean no one has been writing about this or issuing public statements against it? No one has made calls to the East Vincent Township authorities to check on building permits and asbestos removal? No one has checked with the Environmental Protection Agency to find out if the asbestos was removed properly? Indeed. One can only wonder where this editor has been. At least the opposition has certainly gotten Randy Bates' daughter Angela Bates Majewski riled up, as you can see from the illustration to the right. Funny choice of word "morons" considering the subject matter...

The good thing about the Mercury story is that it's out on the wire (AP) and other newspapers are picking it up( http://kdka.com/wireapnewsfnpa/Opponents.decry.plan.2.1885291.html and http://www.ldnews.com/news/ci_15933466).

The argument going back and forth seems to be that those who are for the attraction say that the buildings will be preserved, so what's the harm? The opposition says that altering the buildings to fit a commercial for-profit venture is not preservation, it's desecration. Those "for" compare the Pennhurst Asylum to Eastern State Penitentiary's annual haunted house; the differences in the two ventures are glaringly obvious. ESP was a prison where violent criminals were rightly incarcerated away from society; the residents of Pennhurst were the innocent victims of society’s apathy and the state’s many failures. ESP is run by Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, Inc., a nonprofit organization “with the sole purpose of preserving the Penitentiary and opening it for tours.” Pennhurst Asylum is run by a real estate developer willing to alter or raze the site for commercial profit. ESP was rescued by a group of architects, preservationists and historians, with the city of Philadelphia’s blessing. Pennhurst Asylum was…well, you get the idea.

Here's another NEWS FLASH: Pennhurst was NOT an insane asylum; Pennhurst was NOT a mental institution. Any attempt to cash in on the name is exploitation, pure and simple. The bottom line is that an attraction called the “Pennhurst Asylum” located on the Pennhurst campus and utilizing Pennhurst artifacts will naturally be associated with the history of Pennhurst. Anyone would be a fool to think otherwise. Here's a solution: Take Pennhurst out of the name, move the attraction out of the institutional buildings and put it in the superintendent's house or the doctors' residence and I don't think anyone would have a problem with it. If you can't or won't do that, then you are exploiting the name and the memory for your own profit.

Pennhurst has a long and often tragic history but the recent struggle over who will control the memory of the institution that over 10,500 people called home may be its biggest fight yet. Will the winner be the private owners of the Pennhurst campus who want to exploit the current "Urban Exploration" and ghost-hunting popularity of the site? Or will it be the preservation groups who want to make Pennhurst a "National Site of Conscience" to remind us of the battles fought by those with disabilities in the last century?

Opposition to the attraction is rising. A spokesman from Easter Seals Disability Services made Randy Bates remove the group's logo from the "Charity" page of his Web site http://www.pennhurstasylum.com.  Many other mental health professionals and disability groups have come out with statements alleging that the opening of any type of haunted amusement on the site is “offensive, demeaning, and unacceptable.” A statement on the home page of the Pennhurst Memorial & Preservation Alliance puts it this way: “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… Pennhurst stands as a monument not just to the despair of social apathy but more importantly to the bright triumph of an engaged citizenry--and the eternal hope that great change is possible from the cumulative efforts of caring people.  For these reasons it must be preserved.” 

Last week, a film crew directed by actor Michael Rooker shot scenes for “Pennhurst,” a horror movie starring Rooker, Haylie Duff and Beverly Mitchel, on the grounds of the former institution, cashing in on the site’s “haunted” reputation (a segment of The Travel Channel’s “Ghost Adventures” was filmed there in 2009). The film's synopsis reads: "The crew of a reality television show visits an abandoned psychiatric hospital to capture evidences of ghosts, and encounter more than they bargained for when something--or someone--sinister starts picking them off one by one." News flash: Pennhurst was not a psychiatric hospital. It was not an insane asylum. Site owner Richard Chakejian can't understand "why Easter Seals revoked their endorsement." Can it be that these guys just don't get it??

To be clear, I am not against haunted attractions; I just believe that placing one on the grounds of such a place of historic significance is incredibly impudent and exploitive. Pennhurst was a national story many times throughout its 80-year history; it should be a national story again, if only to remind us of what we did wrong in the past to those who were "not like us" and, perhaps, to keep us from making those same mistakes again.

Be sure to check out the Sunday, August 29 edition of the Pottstown Mercury to read more.

Since the "Pennhurst Asylum" haunted attraction is set to open in September, I sent the following letter to the editors of the newspapers in the Spring City area.

To the Editor;

     For the last eight months or so I have been gathering first-person documentation about the Pennhurst State School and Hospital in Spring City, Pa. The institution housed over 10,500 developmentally disabled people in the course of its eighty-year history. The stories and memories of those residents and the workers who cared for them are featured on my Web site, The Pennhurst Project, and will also be included in a video documentary I am producing. Those who lived and worked at Pennhurst have painted a picture for me that is both tragic and incredibly hopeful at the same time. The subject has special meaning to me as my grandfather’s half-sister Dolly Neiman spent seven years in Pennhurst after her family could no longer care for her at home.

     The treatment of the so-called “mentally retarded” during much of the last century was certainly barbaric when viewed through today’s standards of care. The system allowed for the mass warehousing of thousands of those deemed by society as “not like us” and television exposés like Bill Baldini’s 1968 “Suffer the Little Children” showed the viewing public for the first time what conditions were like at the overcrowded, underfunded and understaffed institution.  Despite the state’s many failures to improve conditions at Pennhurst, many of the workers I’ve talked with truly loved and cared for their clients and tried to do the best they could for them with limited resources. Even so, Pennhurst had a long history of negative press which culminated in the landmark Halderman vs. Pennhurst State School and Hospital lawsuit which eventually forced the institution to close in 1987.

     On September 24, 2010 Randy Bates, of the “Bates Motel” haunted attraction, will open a new haunted attraction called the “Pennhurst Asylum” on the site of the former institution. The attraction will attempt to exploit and distort the Pennhurst story to fit with the current “ghost hunter” craze and cash in on the same fears, ignorance and exclusionary mindsets that fueled the institutional movement in the first place. The attraction will feature actors portraying “scary psychos” and ticketholders will be deemed “patients.”

     Not only is this “attraction” in extreme poor taste but it is also a huge affront to the many thousands of Pennhurst residents and their families as well as to all those who fought on the front lines to gain equal rights for those with developmental and physical disabilities. They deserve our deepest respect, not the impudent ridicule that this attraction will foster.

     Bates claims that his venture does “not intend to mock [the] mentally handicapped in any way.” He goes on to state: “Our haunted attraction will not dwell on the sadness that was surrounded by this community, but will be a fictitious rendering that does not equate to a mentally handicapped facility.” One wonders how an attraction called the “Pennhurst Asylum” located on the Pennhurst campus cannot be equated to Pennhurst itself. He also claims the attraction will include a “museum” that will “acknowledge the issues that confronted the State in the late 70’s.” But the history page on the Pennhurst Asylum Web site contains numerous mistakes, historical inaccuracies, misspellings and grammatical errors which will render any such “museum” effort ridiculous.

     Bates has threatened that if there is any opposition to the event, “I assure you that all the buildings will be razed and Pennhurst will be forever forgotten.”

     Members of the Pennhurst Memorial & Preservation Alliance have issued a statement on their Web site taking a stand against the proposed haunted attraction as described. The following is a portion of that statement: “Any entertainment at the expense of people's suffering is repulsive on its face and becomes more so, when there is no credible venue available for people to hear the true story. While we do not believe a haunted attraction is entirely unacceptable, the current available descriptions of the attraction are concerning. At this time, we must agree with the mental health professionals who have stated that the as-described proposed event insults and demonizes our fellow citizens who live with chronic mental illness and trivializes the conditions under which those persons continue to struggle in institutions across the world.” 

     This attraction as planned is wrong on so many levels that it is hard to know the best course of action but the first and most important thing must be to inform the public, which is the primary intent of this letter. The Spring/Ford community has a right to know what is being planned on the Pennhurst campus as the event will open to the public in less than six weeks.

Sincerely,

Betty E. Cauler

I found the following advertisement on Facebook and had to respond. There were rumors that the new owner Richard Chakejian planned to turn the Pennhurst administration building into a "haunted attraction" but now it is official. It seems there is no end to the exploitation of the disabled.

If you want to be a scary psyco at this new haunted house, contact us!!!!

Actor Auditions for the newest haunted attraction in Pennsylvania!!!

Pennhurst Haunted House located in Spring City, PA will hold auditions for new actor positions for its opening 2010 October season. Auditions will take place at Arasapha Farm 1835 Middletown Road Glen Mills, PA 19342 on Sunday, June 27th and Sunday, July 25th. We are looking for actors who are 18 and older with a clean criminal record, reliable transportation, available from 5pm-11pm every weekend in October. No experience necessary. All you need is the energy and determination to scare, good work ethic, and an open mind. If you are available and interested in being a paid actor for this new haunted attraction, please contact Angela Bates Majewski to schedule an audition/interview appointment and visit our website at www.thebatesmotel.com to fill out an application. Any questions please call 302-363-4724 or email pennhursthauntedhouse@gmail.com.

We are going to be your worst nightmare....

There is also an ad on Craigslist. I hope you will all join me in protesting this asinine endeavor. Use the contact info above as well as emailing promoter Randy Bates at: rbateshh@comcast.net or writing to him at the Glen Mills address above. I hope that the voices raised in protest will become Randy Bates' "worst nightmare." Let me offer a disclaimer that I have no objection to "haunted attractions." But this one is incredibly offensive to people with disabilities. This was my response:

After viewing your Facebook audition page for the “Pennhurst Haunted House” I felt compelled to contact you. As the relative of someone who spent years in Pennhurst I find the idea of a “haunted attraction” featuring “scary psycos” [sic] incredibly repugnant, to say the least. You obviously know nothing of the history of Pennhurst or you would not even make such an asinine statement. I invite you to visit my Web site http://pennhurstproject.com to listen and read about some of the people connected to this institution. Their stories are not “scary” nor are any of them “psyco.” The tragic history of Pennhurst is not public fodder for exploitation by you or anyone else. The fact that you are doing so, and with such extreme bad taste, is an affront to the many thousands of Pennhurst residents and their families as well as to all those who fought on the front lines to gain equal rights for people with developmental and physical disabilities. They deserve our deepest respect, not your impudent ridicule. You mirror the ignorance and exclusionary mindset of the mid-20^th century which led to the abuse and forced confinement of so many helpless individuals. Shame on you.

I urge you to rethink this offensive and disrespectful endeavor. As for myself, I will use every platform and social media outlet available to alert others and voice my objections to your plans.

Sincerely,

Betty E. Cauler

Photog/videographer Marc Reed offered his version of the Pennhurst Haunted Attraction poster:

Top 3 contenders for Pennhurst Poster

Happy day has come! The Pennhurst Project Web site is launched at last! There are a couple of bugs to work out yet but the bones of the site are up and running. It's much different than I envisioned—I had to simplify things in order to meet my thesis deadline. Please feel free to check it out and give me your feedback: http://pennhurstproject.com. Let me know what you think of the video snippets as they will form the basis for the longer documentary.

The great news is that now I will graduate on time. My advisor, Rodney Whittenberg, will be showing the trailer at the indie film night at Bryn Mawr Theater on Monday May 3 at 8 p.m. I can't wait to see it on the big screen (and hopefully not be shot down by bad jump cuts or the like!). There's still a lot of work to be done. The sound, especially Roland Johnson's audio interviews, needs work and music has to be added. And we need to shoot way more b-roll. But now the editing is going much faster and things are starting to fall into place.

I am way behind on my postings to this blog as I get ready to upload the new Web site for the Pennhurst Project. But I wanted to post some photos from the Pennhurst historical marker dedication ceremony last Saturday.

Dr. James Conroy speaks at the marker dedication in Spring City.

Jean Searle, co-president of the Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance.

Rep. Jim Gerlach with former Pennhurst residents Margaret Dougherty and Jerry Wheaton.

Musician Karl Williams sings "Close the Door," a song he wrote about leaving an institution.

The new marker on Route 724 in Spring City.