1. Please do not be confused about there being a connection between what the state is doing to us and our kids, and the fiscal and economic crises that have been in the news the past few weeks and months. It’s important that you know that the Commonwealth made the key decisions on our matter back in November of 2007, long before the current crisis situation (although they didn't inform us that anything was going on until May '08—a month that also precedes the present crisis).

2. The grouping of our children together with the other 99% of those called "mentally retarded" is objectively absurd. Everyone we speak with—whether it be the care-givers here, the doctors, our family members, our friends, our state senators and representatives, or representatives of the press who have come to see for themselves—everyone who is not working for the plaintiffs’ attorneys and their organizations or holding an official position in the Commonwealth, recognizes this reality immediately. Our children are in a skilled nursing facility because they have ongoing complex medical needs requiring a great deal of medical attention. Our children have cognitive levels and abilities to act on their own behalfs such that every long-term resident in this facility resembles more a newborn than the average individual suffering from even a fairly serious level of mental retardation. The idea that these individuals are being “deprived” of the “right” to “live in the community,” the idea espoused by the plaintiffs’ attorneys, an idea that we guardians see as an excuse for withdrawing critical supports from them, would be a morbid joke were the situation not so deadly serious.

3. The so-called plaintiffs’ attorneys (the Center for Public Representation and the Disability Law Center), who pretend to represent the interests of our children, have displayed a ready willingness to torment families that have already had to endure long years of living with the greatest heartache a family can know. They have refused to compromise or to negotiate with us. Instead, they have fought vigorously against our efforts to remove our children’s names from their suit. (Please see “Plaintiffs’ Opposition to Motion of Groton Plaintiffs to Decertify Class,” Document 488 Filed 6/2/08 on the U.S. District Court, District of MA web site.) The inclusion of our children in this class is an abrogation of our legal rights of guardianship and in my personal opinion rises to the level of a crime against humanity. The only conclusion I can reach is that the plaintiffs’ attorneys are ideologues who would prefer to see an individual die “in the community” than live with proper care in a skilled nursing facility.

4. We cannot prevent the malice perpetrated by the plaintiffs’ attorneys, who are protected by free speech rights, whatever their intentions. We are here today to protest the actions of our state government, which is supposed to protect and represent us and our children. We ask you to notice that the Patrick Administration, in settling this suit, dropped the previous position of the Commonwealth (stated in the Rolland vs. Cellucci Settlement) that no individual would be moved against their wishes. We ask you to notice that the Commonwealth, when entering into an agreement with the plaintiffs in this case without letting any of us know what was happening, and in our opinions, without even attempting to defend the vital interests of our children, did so speedily and saying that their actions are in line with their “philosophy” called “Community First” (or perhaps for our children “Community Last” since this one-size-fits-all bias and their refusal to recognize our children’s current home as a community may spell their end). We ask you to notice that in this Settlement by the Commonwealth with the plaintiffs, the Commonwealth put the key decisions on which individuals are to be moved out of their nursing homes into the hands of an agency without medical qualifications, the Department of Mental Retardation. We ask you to notice that DMR may or may not have the competence to make judgments about that 99% of people considered to suffer from mental retardation, but DMR has no competence whatsoever (DMR is not run by medical doctors) to make life-and-death judgments about severely medically compromised individuals like our children. DMR has proven its lack of qualification to make these decisions by telling Federal Magistrate Judge Kenneth Neiman that it “recommends” that most adult patients at this facility be “transitioned into the community” (including 31 on its otherwise secret transition list). And we ask that when DMR tells you that it has made “no final decisions,” you please go and read for yourselves the Rolland vs. Patrick Settlement Agreement (readily available on our own and on the court monitor’s web sites) and confirm for yourselves that according to that Agreement, the state, through DMR, has made recommendations of community placement with respect to those individuals whose names were put on the Rolland Community Placement List, and that no word “preliminary” or any other word resembling it is used to qualify that status in the Settlement Agreement.

5. We believe that a free press may be our only real hope for defending our children from this decision which, many of us will publicly declare, we view as a death sentence. We ask that you ask DMR Commissioner Elin Howe, Secretary of Health and Human Services JudyAnn Bigby, and Attorney General Martha Coakley why, rather than defend our children against the extremist and life-threatening positions of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, help us to remove our children from the “Rolland plaintiff class,” and keep our children off of the Community Placement List, as we have been desparately attempting to do, they have instead committed themselves to all of these things, handing over their secret “recommended for community placement” list containing the names of most of our children to the federal court. We urge you to ask them to tell you just whose names are on that list, so that you can compare those names to the names of the 43 “Rolland plaintiffs” in this facility who are contesting their inclusion in the case, and so that you can ask those individuals’ doctors and nurses here whether they believe that they will live long if they are moved over the protests of their families.

6. A charitable explanation for the state's placement of most of our children on the Community Placement List in the Rolland Suit is that the people who staff the Department of Mental Retardation had no idea what they were doing and simply blundered. If so, why not correct the blunder? We’ve repeatedly urged DMR to correct its mistake, but DMR and the Office of Health and Human Services that it is supervised by have resolutely refused to change anything and have simply asked us to wait for an indefinite period of time. Could it be that less charitable explanations are called for? Could it be that some of the involved parties desire to reduce spending on profoundly retarded individuals requiring skilled nursing care in order to transfer the money to the higher-functioning retarded and disabled, in line with the stated policies of some supporting organizations? Could it be that they believe that our children's lives are of no value? Could it be that they don’t consider causing the deaths of children like ours to count as murder because of our children’s impaired conditions?

7. We urge you to ask Governor Patrick why he has refused to intervene in this case, has refused to answer our letters, e-mails, and phone calls, has refused to have even an aide from his office meet with us, phone us, or write to us. I urge you to ask the Governor whether this means that he has put his stance as a champion of civil rights behind him, in his past, or does it only mean that he has decided that those with the most profound cognitive limitations, the most medically vulnerable and fragile, are an appropriate exception who don’t deserve civil rights and human protections, because they are few in number and do not vote.

* These remarks were delivered by Pediatric Center parent Louis Putterman at the gathering for a march into the town of Groton. The roughly 100 participants were family members of residents at Seven Hills Pediatric Center, the residents themselves in their wheelchairs, and supporters from the town and around the state. Mr. Putterman lives in Concord Massachusetts and is married with two other children. His daughter, Laura Putterman, has been cared for in the Pediatric Center, formerly Children’s Extended Care Center, since November, 1984. She is 33 years old. She is an involuntary member of the Rolland Plaintiff Class and Mr. Putterman has been told that her name does not appear on the Community Placement List but that it could be added to the list in the future. Mr. Putterman is also a Professor of Economics at Brown University. He can be reached at Louis_Putterman@Brown.Edu

1 That is to say, they have no ability to do anything for themselves, whether it might be related to eating, dressing, bathing, or even forming an idea.