First opened its doors in 1925 and after 66 years of service, the doors shut for the last time. The reason – several deaths of aspiration pneumonia, abuse, medical incompetence… the facility was originally named District Training School for the Mentally Retarded when it first opened in 1925. It included 22 beautiful buildings spread over 250 acres in a forested area of Laurel, Maryland.
The list goes on. Forest Haven was a sort of live-in institution for children and adults with some form of mental health disability. The facility was later renamed “Forest Haven” in order to provoke a peaceful setting for the patients living there. Many of the buildings were referred to as “cottages” and most were given names such as Dogwood, Elm, Hawthorne, Hemlock, Holly, Magnolia, Maple, Oak, Pine, Poplar, and Spruce.
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Imagine walking down the halls of a hospital and all you see are depressed, sick, and hopeless faces staring back at you. This is exactly what the Forest Haven Mental Institution consisted of when it was operational T.he facility was originally named District Training School for the Mentally Retarded when it first opened in 1925. It included 22 beautiful buildings spread over 250 acres in a forested area of Laurel, Maryland
Inside this gruesome hospital, over 1000 patients were living their ill faiths. Sometime in 1989, the justice department began to monitor the deaths from aspiration pneumonia a type of condition that can be caused, among other things by improper feeding like feeding the patient while he or she is lying down.
But the horrors were endless. There were also many cases of physical and sexual abuse and many of the so-called doctors were without the proper medical license. To make things even worse all of the dead patients were buried in mass graves without any kind of mark or headstone.Just bodies dropped one on top of the other. After years of weathering and erosion, some of these mass graves were uncovered revealing the truth and the pain through which these patients went.
Just bodies dropped one on top of the other. After years of weathering and erosion, some of these mass graves were uncovered revealing the truth and the pain through which these patients went.
But soon, the facility would become more of a madhouse. By the 1950s, many of the asylum’s “state of the art” amenities were outdated. Financial problems prevented the kind of advancement needed to keep up with newer medical practices. Most of the extracurricular programs and recreational comforts were discontinued. A decade later, Forest Haven was no longer a utopian society, but a place of disposal for the troubled, the unwanted, and the misdiagnosed.
A surge in population forced staff to focus on maintaining order instead of rehabilitation. The problem continued to snowball to such an extent that many people who were not mentally challenged, but suffering other ailments (blindness, deafness, epilepsy, etc.) were thrown into the asylum and classified as slow or underdeveloped. And as Forest Haven became more and more understaffed, abuse began rippling through the system.
Benefits that had once been standard were significantly reduced; unqualified personnel filled the staffing void. This left many patients to wander the rooms and halls aimlessly and usually unattended. Some of the doctors were even declared incompetent by the state of Maryland.
On February 23, 1976, a class action lawsuit was filed by the victims’ families. In the case, Evans, et al. vs. Washington, plaintiff Betty Evans swore before Judge Pratt that her daughter, Joy Evans, had been subjected to inhumane treatment. Some of that treatment had resulted in scratches, chipped teeth, cuts, bruises all over her body, and on one occasion, a raw, painful back, which stemmed from being restrained on urine-soaked bed sheets. Joy Evans died at Forest Haven in July 1976 at the age of 18.
According to the Washington Star newspaper, it was a 9-year-old Joy that brought joy to this whole situation. This mentally ill little girl was found tied naked on a bed inside a cage. Joys story was what started the whole process of uncovering the deepest secrets of this ironically named hospital.
Bertha Lee Brown was 20 days short of her 37th birthday when she died of suffocation at Forest Haven, Washington's trouble-plagued home for the mentally retarded.Brown had been a resident of the institution for 30 years. She was designated "profoundly retarded," meaning that her mental development was lower than that of a 2-year-old child.
Brown was one of 428 such profoundly or severely retarded persons at Forest Haven. With two brothers who never visited her and a mother who is retarded, she was, like many of the 1,025 Forest haven residents, abandoned to the institution.
A number of other institutions for the retarded throughout the country have been closed down or have had their rosters sharply cut back in recent years. The reason, more often than not has been incidents like Bertha. Brown's death or yesterday's shooting of two residents and five employes.
People like Brown, their faces and bodies often cruelly deformed, their speech and motions infantile, banging their heads against a wall, laughing and babbling seemingly without reason, have for centuries been locked away from society's sight and mind in places like Forest Haven.
Their actions, so adorable in small children, become grotesque, frightening in children in adult bodies.
As is not unusual among very young children, Brown attempted to eat almost anything she could put her hands on. Thus, when she was left alone, bound to a toilet, before dawn on April 2, she bit through the socks and knotted sleeves that covered her hands and consumed her own feces - suffocating.
Joy Evans - 1976
When you are going to be operated you are told not to eat some hours before. The reason is that you is going to lie on your back during the operation and you could vomit resulting in your death during the operation.
This vital lesson the employees forgot when they forced fed 17 year old Joy Evans on her back. She choked to death. Officially the local doctor wrote something else.
Joy Evans was sent to Forest Haven Asylum in Maryland when she was 8. There were no other options given to her parents by the local school district. They sent her with their hands tied behind their back.
The hospital morgue