The Inmates Are Running The Asylum


April 08, 1994|by PAUL CARPENTER, The Morning Call

If you need advice about having a new roof put on your house, whom do you consult? Do you consult people with roofs that leak, or those with roofs that don't leak?

Hold that thought as we examine Hogar Crea, the cult-like drug treatment program being investigated over allegations of physical abuse.

The state probe began after two Hogar Crea clients said they were roughed up by Martin Cotto, a top national official of the organization, during "confrontational therapy" at a Freemansburg treatment center.

The particulars of the abuse allegations are not especially shocking, as reported thus far, and I won't get into them here. I am more concerned about the way this organization operates, and I welcome the abuse investigation mainly because it may shed some light on that.

Hogar Crea was established in Puerto Rico in the late 1960s, and its national program was founded in Bethlehem in 1981. In addition to Bethlehem and Freemansburg, it has facilities in Allentown, Reading, Lancaster, Jersey City, Hartford, Conn., and elsewhere.

It is funded largely by tax money. Hogar Crea's annual state budget is $960,000, about half of which is from public funds.

This is a program that hammers away at its clients with religious indoctrination, including group prayer and incessant Bible reading. The founder of the program is revered and is given absolute power in a way that's reminiscent of the Moonies.

Hogar Crea employs a form of Orwellian newspeak in which "capacitating" means changing your attitude, staff members are called "re-educators," infractions are called "abnormalities," and so forth.

The most disturbing thing about

Hogar Crea, however, is its staff. From counselors to administrators, the people selected to control clients' lives are typically former addicts. Some of them, including its founder, are also former jailbirds.

That approach used to be stated only as a joke -- letting the inmates run the asylum. Now it is regarded as some sort of inspired concept, supported by politicians with names like Paul McHale, Jeanette Reibman, Charlie Dent and T.J. Rooney.

We have the blind leading the blind, despite years of proposals by the state Health Department to establish some basic qualifications for drug treatment staffers. Those proposals have been quashed.

Under this concept, only those who have experienced drug addiction can really understand the travails of these poor hapless dope fiends.

What rot. It is like saying that the only person qualified to set a broken leg is someone who has had a broken leg.

Drug addiction is foremost a medical and psychological problem. Accordingly, training and certification are necessary for anyone to deal with it objectively and competently in an institutional setting. Addicts are not better qualified to be drug counselors; they are not necessarily better qualified for anything. If they were worth spit in the first place, they would not have become addicts.

If you are a former drug addict, let me see you run your own life productively for 10 or 20 years, without being a parasite of public funding, and then I'll consider letting you run other people's lives.

Life is not so complicated that we need addicts to understand other addicts. People need to understand, rather, that abhorrent behavior has consequences. We need to state with clarity that it's not the drugs we blame, nor society, nor anything other than the individual who sticks poison in his veins or lungs or stomach or nose for the fun of it.

We lose that clarity if we elevate junkies to the status of mentors. These are losers and there should be a stigma attached to being a loser.

I don't much care what happens to the Hogar Crea abuse probe, except that I hope it finally awakens the public to an absurd concept. It is a leaky-roof concept that never should have been allowed to flourish, and certainly should not be subsidized with our tax money.

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