xxdr_zombiexx's blog
"She didn't deserve to die the way she did"
by xxdr_zombiexx | March 23, 2008 - 7:56am
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/13620"It's disgraceful the way this girl died, as kind and as sweet as this girl was," he said. "She didn't deserve to die the way she did. It's just terrible, senseless. It's just a total shame."
I am a mental health professional with nearly 25 years experience. I have mainly specialized in child and family work and have spent some time, thanks to the war on mental health services, working in the mental retardation/developmental disabilities field.
In the mental retardation field I was a "Support Coordinator". I managed a caseload of about 35-40 people with MR/DD (mental retardation, autism/Asperger's primarily) and a Medicaid Waiver.
Paperwork aside, the job of the Support Coordinator, if nothing else, is to prevent the horror of what happened to this poor lady.
AP via RawStory has the article,
http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/Pregnant_mother_tortured_dies_in_Il_03212008.html which has repeated uses of the words "tragic", "sad", "heartbreaking", and descriptions of abuse, neglect and torture.
Ms. Dixon, from my read of the article, was mentally retarded, 6 months pregnant, and being tortured and abused on a daily basis over a nebulous period of four to eight weeks until being found dead, apparently due to overwhelming infection from multiple untreated injuries.
Hayes watched the autopsy and found her injuries disturbing. X-rays revealed roughly 30 BBs lodged in her. Deep-tissue burns covered about one-third of her body — her face, her chest, her arms and feet — and left her severely dehydrated. Her face and body showed signs of prolonged abuse. Many of her wounds were infected.
None of the injuries, Hayes said, proved singly fatal to Dixon. Her system already was taxed by her unborn baby.
The lady was tortured to death. Plain and simple. The words "hot glue gun" are mentioned in other articles. More of the story here
http://chicagoist.com/2008/03/21/developmentally.phpAbused and injured, the injuries neglected, poorly fed. It's evidence of a special kind of cruelty.
But... there is something worse here.
One might think that there would be people who work to oversee such things, to monitor them.
Ms. Dixon received social security benefit checks, and without further clarification it appears they were either sent directly to her, or she was otherwise not regularly visited by any sort of person who had any sort of function similar to the one I described in the introduction.
She lived with a person named Michelle Riley, who is now one of the people charged with Ms. Dixon's death.
Riley and Dixon, police said, had lived in Quincy, a Mississippi River town about 100 miles north of St. Louis, Mo. Quincy is where Riley worked as a coordinator for a regional center that helps the developmentally disabled with housing and other services. Dixon was a client.
This lady did a job similar to the one I have done, but it appears she used her sway over a person with the mind of a child, and let her get abused and tortured to death. She siphoned off her disability income and let her slowly die.It's just heinous.
The gutting of government-provided social services and the nearly wild-west atmosphere in the privatization of these sorts of services sets a stage for this crap to recur anywhere.
This hasn't saved money, and it has not prevented heinous abuses.
Any one of her injuries described above should have/could have/and likely would have been caught if she had more responsible oversight... like regular monthly visits.
This is a seemingly needless intrusion, but when Medicaid is paying the bills they have papers to fill out, boxes to check and signatures to collect.
In the case of social security checks, this too is just ridiculous. She's getting a check for disability. It's HARD to get that check so she was most probably mentally retarded and documented to be so. People knew.
If she qualified for the check she most likely did not possess the ability to handle the check - it's almost mutually exclusive. Somebody would have had to have been established as a payee.
If that person was Ms. Riley...absolutely dastardly, man.
One often hears the cliché "falling through the cracks": the "cracks" are actually chasms. Chasms excavated by the gutting of government social services.
The treatment of Mental Retardation, Developmental Disabilities and Mental illness and, of course, subsets of the general healthcare debate, as well as a large part of the Medicaid-cutting focus Bush has.
In the scope of spending TRILLIONS on a "war" of specious origins and intents, funding proper social services properly would be a tiny drop in the bucket. Lives would be saved and enhanced. LOTS of jobs would be created.
But no... we have countries to bomb and people to kill. Can't be helping poor retarded Americans. "She didn't deserve to die the way she did"
This could have been prevented.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Links Abovehttp://chicagoist.com/2008/03/21/developmentally.phpMarch 21, 2008
Developmentally Disabled Pregnant Woman Tortured To Death
A developmentally disabled pregnant woman with a one-year-old son was tortured and beaten to death by a social worker and the social worker's children, among others, in Alton, Illinois, about 300 miles south of here. Holy moly, is this story ever sad.
Dorothy Dixon, 29 and six months pregnant, was found dead on January 31 in the house she shared with the people accused of killing her. Michelle Riley (pictured), 35, Judy Woods, 43, Michael Elliott, 18, Benny Lee Wilson, 16, and LeShelle McBride, 15, and a 12-year-old boy have all been charged in her death, and all but Elliott lived in the same residence. Riley worked for the West Central Illinois Center for Independent Living, which helps developmentally disabled people find housing and jobs. That's where she met Dixon, who was a client. McBride and the 12-year-old are Riley's children.
According to police reports, Dixon lived in an unfinished portion of the basement, and the landlord of the property says after everyone moved out, he found a bucket of feces in Dixon's former room, a waist-high door that was nailed shut, and blood on the walls, washer, dryer and in the basement shower.
Terri Brandt, 27, said her next-door neighbors were always making a racket. She said she witnessed Riley punish Dixon by making her run naked, and that Riley would pour boiling water and use a hot glue gun on Dixon. Riley had baby monitors in all the rooms to keep tabs on everyone, Brandt said.
While neighbors and family members identify Riley as the ring-leader, police say it was Woods who hit Dixon in the head with an unidentified object. Dixon died the next day.
An autopsy revealed that Dixon died from a combination of being shot multiple times with a BB gun, scalded with hot liquids and beaten about the head and body at various times over the four-to-eight-week period before her death, Alton police Lt. David Hayes said.
Dixon's son, who weighed only 15 pounds, was taken into protective custody. Riley, Woods, Elliot, Wilson and McBride have all been charged with first-degree murder, aggravated and heinous battery, intentional homicide of an unborn child, and unlawful restraint. Unreal.
http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/Pregnant_mother_tortured_dies_in_Il_03212008.htmlPregnant mother, tortured, dies in Ill.
Investigator Calls Pregnant Mother's Torture, Death in Illinois 'Heartbreaking'
JIM SUHR
AP News
Mar 21, 2008 14:25 EST
Banished to the basement, the 29-year-old mother with a childlike mind and another baby on the way had little more than a thin rug and a mattress to call her own on the chilly concrete floor.
Dorothy Dixon ate what she could forage from the refrigerator upstairs, where housemates used her for target practice with BBs, burned her with a glue gun and doused her with scalding liquid that peeled away her skin.
They torched what few clothes she had, so she walked around naked. They often pummeled her with an aluminum bat or metal handle.
Dixon — six months pregnant — died after weeks of abuse. Police have charged two adults, three teenagers and a 12-year-old boy with murder in the case that has repulsed many in this Mississippi River town.
<<snip>>
Dixon saw little, if any, of the money, Hayes said. For months she weathered the torment to keep a roof over her head and that of her year-old son, who weighed just 15 pounds when taken into state custody after his mom's death.
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