As dozens of self-described survivors of the Rosewood Hospital Center urged state lawmakers to close the embattled facility for the disabled, others called their tales of abuse, neglect and isolation “lies and half-truths.”
Supporters of the bill before a House committee said they were beaten, kept alone in bedrooms for days and paid cigarettes for doing laundry at Rosewood, one of four remaining state-run centers for people with developmental disabilities.
“I was just there, stuck,” said Missy Perrott, a former resident of the now-closed Great Oaks facility in southern Maryland. “They used to say I was too sick to live anywhere but a state institution. That statement makes no sense.”
Advocates of Rosewood?s closure said residents are better off in community-based group homes, where they can engage in society. Perrott, who testified with the assistance of an augmentative communicative device, later married and moved into her own home ? with a hot tub, she boasted.
Lawmakers who want to close the 200-bed Rosewood cite the $190,000-per-year price tag for each resident and recent reports of abuse, including a Maryland Disability Law Center study released in January that said deaf residents weren?t provided with an interpreter and residents were restrained with straitjackets for minor offenses.
But family members of many residents said they feel Rosewood is safer and more tightly regulated than group homes. Elizabeth Hess said her niece, Susan, has the skills of an infant and couldn?t survive in the community.
“The community support they swear is out there is not,” Hess said. “They aren?t getting to the doctors, they aren?t getting specialty treatment.”
Harry Yost, whose son has lived at the center for the past 40 years, blamed an oft-cited stabbing at the facility on the Maryland Disability Law Center, which recommended a less restrictive plan for the culprit just before he stole the knife from a store.
Baltimore County lawmakers have vocally opposed the bill that would require the Owings Mills facility to close by June 2010.
They said Thursday they worry community homes aren?t adequately prepared to accept the severely disabled and court-ordered patients currently housed at Rosewood.
