March 3, 2003

Mr. Rusty Hicks
Office of the Governor's Deputy Chief of Staff for Social Services
2-1/2 State House
Springfield, IL 62706

Re: Case of C. Rodney Yoder

Dear Mr. Hicks:

A development this morning may well illustrate the essence of the problem at Chester Mental Health Center, to which I attempted to alert you earlier this month.

C. Rodney Yoder is being moved to the "less secure wing" at CMHC. From my discussions with his "treatment team" and facility administrators, I believe that this action is ostensibly an attempt to follow established "procedures"

and "evaluate" whether Mr. Yoder can "behave well" in a "less structured environment." The CMHC line will probably be that this speaks well for Mr.

Yoder's "progress" and perhaps that some "milieu therapy" provided in Chester is finally "working" to "treat" his "mental illness".

Please excuse my excessive use of quotation marks. My point is that, beyond the unique culture of a maximum-security psychiatric prison, these concepts are utter nonsense. They are demeaning insults, intended to increase the effect of psychological manipulation and control over individuals forced into a cynical patient role by the community's over-generalized fear of violence and its simultaneous refusal to honestly punish real criminals. Heavy drugs and coercion may appear to change behavior, but that fact neither makes any mental illness a real disease nor the guards and psycho-quacks of Chester real doctors.

For his part, Mr. Yoder understands completely that his captors will be under increasing pressure to rationalize their twelve-year massive violation of his liberty. He refuses to participate in any charade, and his continued unjust psychiatric incarceration will be increasingly expensive for CMHC, the Department, and the Executive of Illinois.

I encourage you to stay in touch with this situation via www.rodneyyoder.net.

But in short, the common-sense solution is to let Rodney Yoder go, now.

Sincerely,

S. Randolph Kretchmar

cc: C. Rodney Yoder
John Twiehouse
Patricia Kelly
Tom Helsel

On 17 Mar 2003 18:10:16 GMT, jimdbb@aol.com (JimDBB) wrote:

> C. Rodney Yoder is being moved to the "less secure wing" at CMHC. From my
> discussions with his "treatment team" and facility administrators, I believe
> that this action is ostensibly an attempt to follow established "procedures"
> and "evaluate" whether Mr. Yoder can "behave well" in a "less structured
> environment." The CMHC line will probably be that this speaks well for Mr.
> Yoder's "progress" and perhaps that some "milieu therapy" provided in Chester
> is finally "working" to "treat" his "mental illness".

What do you suppose is wrong with his keyboard? The " key seems to be stuck: something I've only seen occur in the keyboards of Flat Earthers, Flying Saucer Abductees, and Young Earth Creationists.

He appears mental.

> Please excuse my excessive use of quotation marks.

Ah, so it was DELIBERATE? Maybe remedial education could help him with that.

And this person is a lawyer!

---
"Obedience is such a fundamental habit of the contemporary American mind that any kind of disobedience is regarded as a form of insanity." -- Edward Abbey

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