The Pennhurst Project continues to be a volatile endeavor—each success brings its own corresponding failure. A wonderful visit with Greg Pirmann on Friday yielded lots of great stories and insights into the ever-unfolding microcosm of this enigmatic institution. I learn more every day, yet much of it is painfully depressing. This is another story of dreadful American failure in the shameful way we treated our disabled brothers and sisters in the 20th century. How do I portray this twisted web of a problem without showing some of the good? After all, there were caring, sympathetic people who worked there just as well as abusive and predatory ones.

I listen to the stories of the people whose lives intersected with Pennhurst and I am humbled. Some truly loved their jobs and found great satisfaction in helping those who needed them. Like Diane, who came as a teenager, a fresh-faced volunteer, and wound up getting a full-time job there in 1980, working on the same ward, C-4, that she'd earlier volunteered on. She was amazed to find that one of the women patients who'd been placed in restraints "24/7" because of her tendencies to hurt herself was now able to sit in a chair and walk about the ward unrestricted. 

Those are the success stories. They'll anger some, I know. I also know that it's important to show the horror so that the sins of institutionalization shall never be revisited, but what about those success stories? What about Roland Johnson, who overcame sexual abuse and psychological degradation to become an independent free man and an outspoken advocate for those who had no voice? Is he any different from a Frederick Douglass or a Harriet Tubman? We so tend to underestimate those we deem inferior from ourselves. Shame on us.

To work there, you had to go in positive. You had to feel you were there for the greater good. That's what separates the workers who loved their jobs and love to talk about it from the ones who now prefer not to revisit that time of their lives. I can respect both opinions. But what I can't do is tell this story as only horror. It just wouldn't be true.