The ‘Boys’ in the Bunkhouse

[babylonsister]

Kassie Bracken/The New York Times
The ‘Boys’ in the Bunkhouse

Toil, abuse and endurance in the heartland.

THIS LAND By DAN BARRY
MARCH 9, 2014

snip//

Mr. Berg comes from a different place.

For more than 30 years, he and a few dozen other men with intellectual disabilities — affecting their reasoning and learning — lived in a dot of a place called Atalissa, about 100 miles south of here. Every morning before dawn, they were sent to eviscerate turkeys at a processing plant, in return for food, lodging, the occasional diversion and $65 a month. For more than 30 years.

Their supervisors never received specialized training; never tapped into Iowa’s social service system; never gave the men the choices in life granted by decades of advancement in disability civil rights. Increasingly neglected and abused, the men remained in heartland servitude for most of their adult lives.

This Dickensian story — told here through court records, internal documents and extensive first-time interviews with several of the men — is little known beyond Iowa. But five years after their rescue, it continues to resound in halls of power. Last year the case led to the largest jury verdict in the history of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: $240 million in damages — an award later drastically reduced, yet still regarded as a watershed moment for disability rights in the workplace. In both direct and subtle ways, it has also influenced government initiatives, advocates say, including President Obama’s recent executive order to increase the minimum wage for certain workers.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/09/us/the-boys-in-the-bunkhouse.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=US_TBI_20140309&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1388552400000&bicmet=1420088400000&_r=0

[marble falls]

1. A great example of what's so good about DU. I've been to Atalissa and Goldthwaite. Never.....

would have guessed there would be a connection. Thank you so much for putting this up. Once again DU has made me a little less dumb. I wish I could have rec'd this a dozen times. There is no justice available in this story but how hard the social workers fought and how resilient the "boys" were is amazing stuff.

[babylonsister]

2. You're very welcome. I knew nothing about this prior to

yesterday; sad yet riveting. I do wonder how many other "boys" in this situation were or are out there.

[marble falls]

3. I think there is a lot of it and worse. I just read of a young couple in Ohio arrested .....

for enslavement of a mentally disabled mother and her eight or so year old daughter, so there's there's a queezy feeling its happening now just up someone we know's street. I lived in Iowa north of Cedar Rapids and I've had a tenderloin sandwich and a beer in Atalissa at least a several times. I loved Iowa small towns, Nebraska small towns and now Texas small towns. I drive through Goldthwaite on 281 from Marble Falls when I always take the back roads to Dallas. I've had cabrito and beer there a lot.

I think this sort of thing takes a particular sort of profits centered ethic that buggers the mind. And how does one not have some sort of knowledge that this is gong on in his/her small town? At best it was some sort of ethical sort of plausible deniability. "If it was bad or wrong, the authorities would have intervened," mentality.

There's a bunch of money buried somewhere out of the slavery of those unable to protect themselves.

We can compel corporations to guarantee the citizenship of their employees but we can't compel them to guarantee as to employees/contractors having been cared for humanely. We're on the wrong side of it on both issues.

[marble falls]

4. And it has been exposed from up the road. They killed one sister before they were caught....

three people in the next town north enslaved two sisters. EMS reported it when they came to respond to an emergency call on the dead sister who was covered in bruises.

Slavery has been downsized and multiplied.