Involuntary Commitment of Rodney Yoder
Update Dec. 2002
As Rodney Yoder’s many supporters are probably aware, the issue of a fair venue has consumed virtually all legal efforts to date. In the last hearing in Circuit Court in Chester, on October 16th, the Honorable William A. Schuwerk, Jr. denied our petition for a chance of venue. This was merely the most recent frustration of our attempts to get this action transferred so that the substantive issues of the case can receive a fair hearing.
Rodney Yoder has been incarcerated by the Executive branch of Illinois’ state government at Chester Mental Health Center (CMHC) for over eleven years without conviction for any crime. During those eleven years, his children have grown up in poverty. During those eleven years, Rodney has never acknowledged or believed that he is “mentally ill,” nor has he ever been treated medically for any “mental illness.” This is because there simply is! no such disease. Rodney is asked, as are Illinois taxpayers who pay for his incarceration, to simply believe that “mental illness” exists, to have faith in the so-called “diagnoses” of Rodney’s psychiatric captors, and to pretend that this is a medical issue, despite the complete non-existence of any blood test, brain imaging technique, or any other objective evidence whatsoever.
Coercive psychiatry and its institutions such
as CMHC effectively constitute a cult. Followers of this cult are not entirely
free to question its premises or to disagree with its policies. To reside in
Chester, IL, a person may not need to be a true cult follower, bu! t he or she
must live with neighbors, friends and perhaps family members, who definitely
are. And as it turns out, there are only two industries of any size in Chester:
locking people up, and making cake mix. Thousands of citizens are employed in
locking people up, while only a couple hundred make cake mix. So this local
economy and the whole society it supports is quite beholden to the cult.
Fearing that this situation might mean residents of Randolph County could be
prejudiced against Rodney Yoder, and that his CMHC captors might have undue
influence over their minds, we commissioned a public opin! ion survey last July.
This demonstrated with scientific reliability and validity that people in
Chester are in fact very likely to be prejudiced against Rodney and very likely
to give extraordinary credence to his psychiatric captors’ opinions. The results
of this survey, along with an independent expert witness who interpreted them,
were presented at the hearing on the change of venue in October. The court
essentially said it just didn’t believe in this science. (The Court presumably
prefers to believe in “mental illness”.) So our petition was denied. A trial
date was set for December 2. Subsequently, we attempted to convince the Court to
facilitate an interlocuto! ry appeal of its order denying a change of venue to
the Fifth District Appellate Court. That effort was also rebuffed.
Rodney and his advisors took some time to consider whether further litigation of
the venue issue was possible and/or desirable. We ultimately decided that
despite the delay this will certainly cause, we are not interested in wasting
the time and contributions of our many supporters and expert witnesses on a sham
trial in a kangaroo court, with little or no promise of coming out any
differently than the previous sham trials in the same court over the last eleven
years.
So we believe our next action will need to be addressed to the Illinois Supreme
Court. If this can be put together quickly enough, we hope the Supreme Court
will stay the scheduled trial on December 2. Otherwise, we will ask the
Honorable William A. Schuwerk, Jr. for a continuance. There does not seem to be
any rational reason that such a request for a continuance would be opposed by
the State or denied, because of course, Rodney remains locked up in maximum
security at CMHC. That, ostensibly, is what the State thinks is necessary to
protect the public and ! to enforce strict adherence to the cult of coercive
psychiatry.
Stay tuned, upcoming legal filings will appear in the Yahoo briefcase as soon as
they have been filed.
Rodney Yoder
gets married!
John F. Prior, Rodney Yoder's Legal Defense Manager
Rodney's website: www.RodneyYoder.net
My email: jprior@whoever.com
My Yahoo Briefcase: http://briefcase.yahoo.com/j_prior
My Yahoo Calendar: http://calendar.yahoo.com/j_prior
My Home/Office phone: 773-774-6696, Fax: 781-459-8592
My Cell Phone: 773-230-5825, Bible Question: Matthew 22:36
PRESS RELEASE
June 1, 2002
MENTAL ILLNESS GOES ON TRIAL
The story of C. Rodney Yoder
Contact info: John F. Prior,
Legal Defense Manager,
jprior@whoever.com
Ph. 773/774-6696
Mobile: 773/230-5825
“Mental illness is a real disease just like cancer or diabetes,” proclaims the
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), an organization composed mainly
of the parents of persons alleged to have “mental illness,” many of whom are
institutionalized or accused of criminal offenses. NAMI and similar
organizations advance the psychiatric party line that mental illnesses are real
diseases for which biological interventions are a treatment and that those so
afflicted are no longer responsible moral agents and may be involuntarily
“treated” with “hospitalization,” forced drugging or ECT, and or psychiatric
house arrest in the form of “outpatient involuntary commitment” (OIC). This view
is largely embraced by the APA and most psychiatrists worldwide.
Meet C. Rodney Yoder. Upon satisfaction of a three year prison sentence in
Illinois in 1991 for a battery, state prison officials with whom Yoder was
embroiled in litigation caused Yoder to be involuntarily committed (IVC’ed) to
the prison-adjacent Chester Mental Health Center which was staffed by the
dually-employed prison psychiatrist responsible for certifying Yoder’s IVC.
After nearly 11 years of persistent struggle against the invalidating stigma and
social destruction attending his IVC, he has won over a team of volunteer
lawyers and experts to testify at the next trial of the state’s latest petition
seeking to continue his IVC. There’s just one twist, though.
In a typical IVC trial the petitioner presents the testimony of one or more
psychiatric experts who claim that the person whose commitment/treatment is
sought has a real disease called “mental illness,” and that this “disease”
causes the person to be unable to care for him/herself or to pose a danger of
hurting him/herself or others. The respondent may present his/her own “experts,”
hired for their opinions, who would assert that they “examined” the respondent
via conversation/questioning and failed to detect “mental illness.”
Yoder and his team of lawyers and experts intend to soon stand psychiatric
convention on its head. They will assert that a jury cannot “find” that Yoder
“has a mental illness,” and thus meets the criteria for commitment, because
THERE ARE NO SUCH DISEASES OR ILLNESSES AS “MENTAL ILLNESS.” It is believed that
this will be the first time in American history that the reality of mental
illness will have been challenged in an actual IVC trial.
Among the experts Yoder plans to present are Professor Emeritus Thomas S. Szasz,
MD, and Fred Baughman, Jr., MD. Szasz is a professor of psychiatry, leading
moral philosopher, and author of 26 books, including The Myth of Mental Illness.
Baughman is a leading research neurologist. Numerous other preeminent experts,
academicians, and physicians intend to testify as well.
Yoder and his experts will assert that “mental illness” is nothing more than a
metaphor for problems in living or unwanted behavior and that “it” has nothing
whatsoever to do with brains, biology, science, medicine, or neurotransmitters.
They will expose the strategic uses to which this pernicious mythology has lent
itself.
Yoder’s case has attracted widespread attention in the press and media. Time
magazine is going to press with a story about this case and numerous press and
media items have already been done. Many of these may be examined at:
www.rodneyyoder.net
Insofar as Yoder’s case intends to challenge the scientific and moral
underpinnings of coercive psychiatry--the justificatory rhetoric employed to
deprive millions of their liberty worldwide--many are calling this case the
“Dred Scott of IVC Trials.” It is expected to transpire in an Illinois courtroom
sometime this summer and promises to be the most sensational IVC trial in US
history.
UP FROM PSYCHIATRIC SLAVERY
by Rodney Yoder
By a linguistic legerdemain tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of prisoners in
the U.S.A. are being called "patients," their prisons "hospitals" or "treatment
centers," and their jailers "doctors." I am among those whose incarceration is
veiled behind such Orwellian psychiatric euphemisms.
Birth of a Madman
My story begins in 1982 when I prevailed in a habeas corpus suit against Warden
Stephen Hardy while he imprisoned me for an offense I didn't commit. In that
suit I proved Hardy had conspired with Illinois officials to illegally imprison
me. The court ordered me freed and I resumed my place in society. However, the
disgruntled Hardy and his co-conspirators "flagged" their records to forever
brand me as a hated persona non grata to Illinois' prison bureaucracy.
In 1990, I did commit a crime during an alcoholic blackout. I was charged with a
battery on my ex-wife during an argument over her continuing acceptance of
baby-sitting offers from a man already once accused of sexually abusing my then
four-year-old son. I pled guilty to the charge and was sentenced to serve
eighteen months in prison, my prior unlawful imprisonment precluding any
consideration of leniency.
Upon commencement of my sentence at Menard Correctional Center, I learned that
those I had humiliated in court in 1982 sought vengeance. I was singled out for
retaliatory treatment, and I was told ten months before my release, by prison
psychiatrist N. Vallabhaneni (Dr. Rao), that I would be committed on my release
date to the prison-adjacent Chester Mental Health Center (CMHC) -- where none
other than Stephen Hardy had been made director in 1986.On my release date of
June 26, 1991, I was handcuffed and shackled and driven by guards the one mile
from Menard to CMHC. Upon arrival there, I was surprised to learn that Dr. Rao
himself was dually appointed by both the prison I had just left and by Hardy --
thus he would be dictating my future "treatment".
My admission "nursing assessment" described me as coherent, oriented, polite,
clean and well-behaved. It further noted that when I was asked why I had been
put in CMHC, I volunteered that I believed I was being punished by prison
litigants. Several uneventful days later I was ordered into a barren room after
I had politely asked for a pencil and paper to write letters. A dozen guards and
other personnel crowded into the room and began telling me that I'd best keep my
mouth shut if I wanted to get along and that I was being incarcerated
indefinitely for "writing up" state officials. One guard named Troy Buskohl
stated: "You are in a nuthouse now. We can make bad reports on you and nobody is
going to believe you." Buskohl's horrifying prognostication proved accurate: my
madhouse incarceration has effectively entombed me in an existential grave of
isolation, segregation, dehumanization, invalidation and alienation.
My Dehumanization
Dr. Rao and his cohorts first ascribed to me the labels of "bipolar disorder"
and "paranoid personality disorder." Three years later, after I won a couple of
lawsuits including one to enjoin my captors from drugging me in any
non-emergency, "bipolar disorder" was replaced with "delusional disorder,
persecutory type."
At my initial and subsequent involuntary commitment (IVC) hearings I had no
lawyer or experts due to my poverty. The hearings were shams. From my arrival to
1995 I fought a losing battle for legal redress. Attempts to negotiate with my
captors were rebuffed with their assertions that they intended to incarcerate me
for life and that I could not do anything to prevent it or ever obtain my
liberty.
Typically, a "mental patient" is expected to shuck and jive by assuming the role
of "sick" person and by recognizing the psychiatrist as a legitimate healer
whose drugs and advice are bona fide "treatment." Such non-complaining
compliance, coupled with token concessions of "recovery," might eventually
placate and persuade the psychiatrist to grant psychiatric parole from
involuntary confinement to a community setting from which one can promptly go
AWOL. In my case this option was expressly precluded, as a succession of
arguably well-meaning "therapists" who'd inchoately intimated such a strategy
quickly learned. By the end of 1995 I was being increasingly threatened with
involuntary drugging in response to my litigation efforts, and I had lost all
hope of any judicial rescue from death at the CMHC. I devised a scheme of
mailing spurious "bomb threat" letters to random public officials and
celebrities in an effort to incur indictment, arrest, and removal to the
relative safety of a jail or prison. My captors interceded and begged the
investigating law enforcement agents not to prosecute, and frankly admitted
their intention to "hospitalize" me forever. By early 1996 I abandoned my scheme
as futile, but my captors began pitching the fake bomb threat letters as
expressive of an actual intent to do violence.
Recovery from Psychiatry
My resurrection from this miasma of desperation and confusion coincided with my
embarkation upon an academic investigation of psychiatry via the omnivorous
perusal of hundreds of psychiatry texts commencing in late 1995.
Not long after I'd abandoned my "bomb threat" letter ploy and begun seriously
studying psychiatry, Dr. Rao petitioned the local court for authorization to
forcibly drug me with neuroleptics to "treat" my supposed symptoms: prosecuting
litigation, complaining to outsiders about my plight, and criticizing Dr. Rao
and my captors. The petition was dismissed after a volunteer lawyer and I
mounted an aggressive defense.
Prior to 1996 I was unaware of the psychiatric survivors movement or any
concerted criticism of coercive psychiatry. Among others, I discovered the
thought of Drs. Thomas Szasz and Ron Leifer. In their writings I discovered
eloquent articulations of every hard-learned truth I'd managed to grasp through
the fog of my torturous incarceration.
Thus enlightened, I began contacting survivors and critics of forced psychiatry.
Most responded sympathetically and many made modest contributions of money,
stamps, and prepaid phone cards. Cal Grandy donated his old IBM laptop (which
was subsequently stolen and destroyed by a CMHC felon at the probable
instigation of CMHC personnel).
Simultaneously, I began persistently hounding the press and media to report on
my plight specifically and on coercive psychiatry in general. Many consider my
results impressive, and numerous press and media items I have generated can be
examined at
www.geocities.com/shrinkbusters and
www.stopshrinks.org.
Two years ago I succeeded in enlisting volunteer experts from around the USA to
testify at the trial of my captors' most recently filed and pending petition to
prolong my involuntary commitment. Dr. Thomas Szasz is one recent volunteer. My
experts will testify that I vehemently deny ever harboring intentions of
violence toward anyone, and that I am able to care for myself.
Additionally, and most importantly, Dr. Szasz and others will contend for the
first time in U.S. history in an IVC trial that the very basis for involuntary
commitment under Illinois law and under the laws of every other state -- i.e.,
"mental illness" -- is in actual fact no illness or disease at all, that it has
no legitimate connection to medicine, and that it cannot rationalize the
incarceration of innocent people. This action is already being hailed as "The
Dred Scott of IVC Trials," because it promises to expose the moral bankruptcy of
forced psychiatry.
C. Rodney Yoder, March 21, 2002
UP FROM PSYCHIATRIC SLAVERY volume 2
This account chronicles my transformation from college student to psychiatric
prisoner, my desperate struggle against that fate, and my rebirth as a vocal
critic of coercive psychiatry. Although unique, my plight is illustrative and
paradigmatic of the role of conflict as the dynamic animating involuntary
psychiatry.
My brother and I endured a childhood home rife with abuse and violence. We were
taken into the protective wardship of the state during our adolescence and were
both subsequently emancipated before our respective eighteenth birthdays.
At age seventeen, I was on my own in life without any support, family or home. I
had to abandon my last year of high school to work various jobs to support
myself. It had always been my goal to become a doctor and I saved my money and
went to college. While a college freshman in 1979, I punched my live-in
girlfriend one morning during an argument. I was arrested and charged with
battery. Subsequently, the prosecutor claimed (falsely) that the victim suffered
broken facial bones and escalated the charge to felony battery. Pursuant to the
representation of an appointed lawyer that I lacked any defense, I pled guilty
and was sentenced to prison.
Shortly after my arrival in prison, I learned the victim’s injuries were
concocted by the prosecutor. I visited the prison law library, acquainted myself
with the law, and then commenced proceedings to vacate my fraudulently induced
guilty plea. In response, the prosecutor contacted prison officials and accused
me of being a trouble maker. The prison warden began retaliating against me, and
I commenced against him a habeas corpus action. Years of rancorous litigation
ensued, after which a court agreed that I was illegally imprisoned and ordered
me freed.
Upon my 1983 release, I moved to Tacoma, Washington and became an honors college
student and a successful realtor. I bought a home, married and had two children.
In late 1985, my family and I returned to Illinois where from 1986 to 1990, I
was a farmer and mechanic. I divorced my wife in 1989.
In early 1990 I was accused of striking my ex-wife with a chair during an
alcoholic blackout and in the midst of an argument over her continuing
acceptance of baby-sitting offers from a man already once accused of sexually
abusing my then four-year-old son. I pled guilty to the charge and was sentenced
to prison, my prior unlawful imprisonment precluding any consideration of
leniency.
From the outset I was subjected to retaliatory treatment in prison and was told
by my captors that this was due to my prior habeas corpus suit. Ten months
before my release date, prison officials and a prison psychiatrist began telling
me that on my release date I would be committed to the prison-adjacent Chester
Mental Health Center (CMHC), whose superintendent was the prison warden from
whom a court had ordered me freed in 1983.
On the date I had fully served my sentence, June 26, 1991, my guards, instead of
releasing me, handcuffed and shackled me and transported me the one mile to the
CMHC.
Upon my CMHC arrival, I learned the prison psychiatrist who had threatened my
involuntary commitment (IVC) was additionally employed at the CMHC and would be
certifying my IVC and directing my “treatment.” My new captors frankly told me
that I would be incarcerated in the CMHC for the balance of my life and that
they would lie about me to effect that result. They “diagnosed” me as profoundly
“mentally ill.”
The initial and every subsequent IVC trial were sham proceedings devoid of even
the semblance of due process. I could not afford a lawyer or my own experts and
the judge would not permit me to conduct my own defense.
From my arrival to 1995 I unsuccessfully sought escape from my plight via resort
to litigation. The courts refused to help. I tried to negotiate with my captors
but they rejected my efforts and reasserted their intent to incarcerate me until
my death. Usually, a “mental patient” is permitted the option to “shuck and
jive” his way to freedom by assuming the role of “patient” and conceding that
the psychiatrist is a legitimate doctor whose drugs and advice are bona fide
“treatment.” Such “compliance,” coupled with token concessions of “recovery,”
often is sufficient to placate a psychiatrist and persuade him to grant
psychiatric parole to a community setting from which one might graduate -- or
abscond -- to liberty. That option was expressly denied to me, as was learned by
a succession of arguably well-meaning “therapists” who inchoately intimated such
a strategy.
In late 1995 my captors announced their intention to drug me into oblivion with
neuroleptics and thus silence my protests and end my litigation. Terrified of
the prospect of being rendered a vegetable, I searched desperately for an
escape. I formulated the scheme of incurring indictment, arrest, and removal to
the relative safety of a jail or prison by mailing spurious “bomb threat”
letters to random public officials and celebrities. I frequently sent carbon
copies of these letters to the FBI and prosecutors, and I pleaded with them,
including during several face-to-face meetings, to arrest me and take me to
jail. My captors successfully pleaded with these officials to not remove me from
the CMHC. By early 1996 I abandoned my scheme as futile. I have never harbored
or genuinely expressed any plan of violence against anyone, but my captors began
pitching my ersatz “bomb threat” letters ploy as expressive of a genuine intent
to harm others with violence. Even an animal will gnaw off its own leg to escape
a trap and certain doom.
As threatened, my captors filed in the local court a petition for authorization
to involuntarily drug me with high potency neuroleptics to “treat” my “symptoms”
of seeking judicial remedy and complaining about my incarceration. A volunteer
lawyer and I aggressively defended against this petition and it was dismissed
amid condemnation of the utter crudity and repressiveness of my captors’ efforts
to silence me via chemical lobotomization.
My climb out of this morass of desperation, fear and confusion coincided with my
undertaking a systematic investigation of psychiatry and criticisms of
psychiatry. In the writings of Drs. Thomas Szasz, Ron Liefer and others, I found
eloquent articulations of the truths I had learned in the crucible of my
psychiatric imprisonment. I additionally learned of psychiatric survivors and
abolitionist movements
In about 1997 I began contacting survivors, abolitionists, academicians and the
press about my plight. Many responded sympathetically and continue lending me
assistance. Numerous press and media stories have since been published, and many
of these can be examined at
www.geocities.com/shrinkbusters and
www.stopshrinks.org.
Experts from around the USA, including Professor Emeritus Thomas Szasz have
volunteered to testify at my next IVC trial that the premise for incarcerating
me and untold thousands of others, “mental illness,” is not an illness at all,
or properly subject to “treatment.” It is believed that this will be the first
time the reality of “mental illness” has been contested in an actual proceeding,
and the action is being hailed as “The Dred Scott of IVC Trials” for promising
to expose the moral bankruptcy of forced psychiatry.
C. Rodney Yoder, March 29, 2002