KANSAN
The University Daily
ion at
Monday, April 6, 1981 Vol.91, No.126 USPS 650-640
University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
Handicapped vulnerable to abuse by attendants
Mistreatment frequent,often unreported
By AMY S. COLLINS and FRED MARKHAM Staff Reporters
Ann, a 22-year-old victim of cerebral palsy, hired an attendant who hid the fact that she had just been released from a mental institution. After being hired, the attendant began verbally abusing Ann and her roommate Bettie, a less severe cerebral palsy victim. The attendant called Ann and Betty names and used profane language whenever they asked for assistance.
One day the attendant placed one of the women in a closet and left. Eight hours later she was found by a friend. She had been frightened and had wet her clothes.
Victimized by their vulnerability, handicapped people often are faced with attendants who prefer to look at them.
AREA SOCIAL WORKERS say that these individuals, who may be afraid to report such incidents, must deal with the problems on their own through the same legal channels open to all.
"Most cases of abuse are never reported," Debbie Hinkle, a Lawrence Social Rehabilitation Service social worker, said. "The victim of abuse is afraid to report the abuse either because they are frightened of revenge from the attackers or because the court will do little to punish the attendant."
According to Laura Moore, an Independence Inc. social worker, few options—other than the basic laws against assault—exist for the handicapped.
"Like sexual abuse 10 years ago, there's a lot
Monday Morning
of safeguards against it," Hinkle said. "More often than not, the problem falls into neglect, usually not of ignorance.
"The disabled individual can call a friend or the police for help, if they are victims have been exposed to the position."
SOCIAL REHABILITATION SERVICES is a state and federal funded agency. IN-
Handicapped KU student abuse victim
By FRED MARKHAM Staff Writer
The knock was a long time coming.
"Thank God, I thought. "I am safe now."
She had no idea why I asked her over.
"let's go into my room and do our work," he said. "I would also take the hint that something was wrong."
"What the hell is going on?" she asked,
seeing the dried blood on my nose.
She did. She closed the door behind her.
"need help, Betty." I said, trying to hold back the tears. "Those people are on something—and it is too much."
"How did you get the bloody nose?"
BUT I WAS in no condition to talk and the person I hired was in no condition to take care of me. Betty, a friend, took me over to her house until another attendant could be found.
It was another case of physical abuse of a handicapped individual.
With cerebral palsy and the need for almost all of the care, the government and rely on a live-in attendant to help them.
I came to Lawrence from a Wichita residential facility for people with severe disabilities. Since my move in 1979, I have had six different attendants. All have either failed in their responsibilities, or simply became tired of the job.
ONE ATTENDANT put me to bed at 10 p.m. one day and didn't return for 24 hours. The next morning I struggled for three hours trying to get out of bed, into my wheelchair and dressed enough to go over to my neighbors. They had to assist me to the restroom and to finish dressing and feeding me. The attendant later informed me he had been out with his girlfriend.
It was one more attendant gone. One more search for a new one began.
The last time I had trouble with an attendant,
Independence Tree, arranged holding for me in a
hotil until my father could come and help find another attendant.
The total cost of the last incident was more than $500, including the time it took social workers to advertise and find another attendant.
HANDICAPPED ABUSE is common. Interviews with victims show that there is little protection for disabled people who live in apartments or even their own homes.
Debbie Hinkle, a social worker from the local Social and Rehabilitation Service Office, explained, "by law we cannot enter the home of a person until an abuse problem has been reported.
"Even if we receive information of a potential danger the individual may be in, we cannot enter the household until actual abuse is reported. This does not mean that we can do about it until the law is changed."
And there is little the disabled person can do in an abuse situation.
"The disabled individual who is a victim of abuse has few options," Laura Moore, a social worker at Independence Inc., said. "He or she can take steps to help, help if possible, and this shows that she can handle this situation."
"Most victims have no choice but to stay in the situation."
Members of the KU Rugby Club scramble for the ball during Saturday's match against Nebraska. KU went on to win this match, but lost the tournament to Kansas State University, 3-7. KU hosted seven teams for the weekend-long tournament.
New techniques improve burn healing
Staff Reporter
By BRIAN LEVINSON
KANSAS CITY, Kan.—When Dee, Riddle's parachute malfunctioned Feb. 17, 1980, strong winds took the experienced sky diver through high voltage electric lines and left her hanging upside down with third degree burns over 20 percent of her body.
After her former husband cut her loose from her parachute, he performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the unconscious Kansas City, Kan., woman. When Riddle woke up in the burn unit of the University of Kansas Medical Center, she thighs and hands, her pre-exercises scratched her skin.
The 28-year-old saleswoman for a tobacco company said she considered herself lucky.
"Most people who are burned by electricity lose something," Riddle said.
NOT ONLY DID Riddle not lose a limb but her scars are only visible when she wears a bathing suit, she said.
"As soon as the pain goes away or a patient can tolerate pressure, we now fit them with a pressure garment," Mani M. Mani burn unit said. "The use of pressure on a scar will flatten it."
Advances made in the last 10 years in the care
of children are responsible for recoveries
like kidnapping.
Scarring that results from severe burns can affect many victims' ability to function. Scar tissues grow from the inside out and form raised wounds when draw the skin tighter, which affects mobility.
The pressure garment, called a Jobat suit, is custom made. Mani said patients had wear the suit when the baby was born.
"The hardest thing I had to do when I was in the burn unit was eat," Riddle said. "I would just lie there all day, and I didn't want to gain weight."
RIDDLE WORE HER Jobst suit for 10 months.
she said that was easy compared to all of the
girls in her class.
"The average individual needs 2,000 calories a day," he said. "Someone with major needs needs 6,000."
Mani said nutrition played an important role in healing the burn patient.
Since people who are ill usually lose their appetites, Mani said burn unit patients were
often force-fed three meals a day and supplements between meals.
"A lot of our patients are on liquid diets or are to eat something every day." "We try to get them to eat something every day."
DETICIANS SEE all of the burn unit patients daily.
"Having a better understanding of the nutritional needs of a burn victim is the major reason we are pulling more people through," Mani said.
The burn unit, which opened in July 1973, has a 96 percent survival rate for its 115 annual natural disasters.
"It is not the number of patients that survive its important, but the quality of their survival."
The primary goal initially is to get the patient
"I was shopping and I went to try on some clothes. Someone asked me what happened to me and I told her that I had just been electrocuted. Then I walked away."
—Dee Riddle
"A patient's rehabilitation program starts on the third or fourth day he is in the unit," he said. Therapists work with a patient until he is done and continue to work with him as an outpatient."
back to what he was doing before the accident, Mani said.
The unit provides medical care to victims of second and third-degree burns. A second-degree burn blisters the skin immediately and a third-degree burn destroys the skin tissue and nerve endings.
Air passes through two special filters before it comes into the burn unit. And the unit has its own air filter.
THE BURN UNIT staff treats 200 patients a year on an outpatient basis.
With severe burns, the threat of infection is great. Mani said. To help prevent contamination from skin exposure, wash hands and clean up.
The burn unit's staff must wear isolation clothing in the unit.
WHEN A PATIENT arrives at the burn unit, his skin is washed with water because he is contaminated, Mani said. Then a special medicated cream is anlied to the burns.
Mani said most second-degree burns should heal in about 14 days. If a burn has not healed in that time, the unit's surgeons do skin grafting, so they do on patients with third-degree burns.
"The rest of the first 24 hours a patient is here is spent preventing shock." Manti said.
"Grafting is tough if someone has a map, body burn," Mani said. "If only 20 percent of a victim's body is not burned, you have to use 20 percent to cover 80 percent."
MANI SAID A patient often had to go back into the operating room three or four times for additional care.
Grafting involves stitching thin slices of unburned skin to the burned areas.
Riddle, who had some grafting done, will have a broken spring. She said she was not bothered by it.
"I was shopping and I went to try on some "clothes," Ridley said. "Someone asked me what happened to me and I told her that I had just been electrocuted. Then I walked away."
When they do ask her what happened, her answers are surriximly candid.
"I am not ashaimed," she said. "I find it amusing when people start at me. I wish they do."
RIDDLE SAID a lot of the credit for her recovery should go to the burn unit staff and equipment.
"As I think back now, I thought the staff was torturing me when I was a patient, but they took care of me for a whole month and I can't help but feel close to them."
To thank Mani and the staff for all that they did for Riddle, goes back to the unit to visit obes.
"When I was a patient, former burn patients visited me and that helped me a lot," Riddle said. "They were very supportive."
Riddle's recovery was so successful that she jumped again last October.
"I was scared, but I had to show myself that I could do it," she said. "skydiving was what gave me the courage."
Riddle said she now found happiness in reaching goals she sets for herself.
Conference Committee settles Regents budget
"I want to be better than I was before and be healthy, she said. I never thought it would happen, but we love it."
By GENE GEORGE
Staff Reporter
TOPEKA—Disagreements over the Board of Regents 1982 budget were quickly resolved last night by a House-Senate Conference Committee.
Included in the compromise was $1.5 million for the Wichita branch of the KU College of Health Sciences for capital improvements over the next two years, and the deletion of the Senate's rider that mandated university professors teach at least three hours a week.
The Regents budget was one of six appropriations bills handled by the conference committee, made up of three members from the Senate Ways and Means Committee and three members from the House Ways and Means Committee.
THE BILLS handled last night represented
$2.78 billion burden of $19 per year.
Other changes in the Regents bill agreed upon last night were :
- To give Fort Hays State University a total of 9 percent increase for faculty pay. That is 2 percent more than other state institutions would get.
- The House wanted to give Fort Hays 5 percent more than the other schools because it said Fort Hays lagged behind the other universities in faculty pay for several years. The conference committee trimmed 3 percent from the House decision.
- To cut the House amendment giving Kansas State University 17 more maintenance workers.
- To make the 15 percent average increase in apply also the KU Medical Center and the KSU Hospital.
Senate Ways and Means Chairman Paul Hess.
chairman of the conference committee, said debate went smoother last night than in past
"The reason we were able to hammer out agreements on six bills in six hours involving over $1 billion was because of the conservative approach that will reduce expenditures." Hess, R-Wichita, said.
HE SAID HIS goal of trimming $23 million from the governor's proposal was close to being
The conference committee's recom-
mendation, both houses
behind being sent to the governor.
He said the fast action could be expected because of the tight economy.
"It is in fact a year of austerity." Hayden, R. Atwood, said, "It is a year of federal cuts. It is a year of a slowed-down economy. And the truth is that it was not a recession that missed the budget adjustments of the other house."
BESIDES THE REGENTS bill, the committee discussed the Judicial system budget, the Social and Rehabilitation Services Budget, the Fish and Game Budget, and the Fish and Game Commission budget.
Hess said the biggest hack of the night was over the Fish and Game Commission's request for $4.5 million to start a fish hatchery at Milford Reservoir.
The committee, fearing that the state would not have the total $11 million needed to finish the project and that there may not be enough fish to stock the hatchery, agreed to cut the request.
Past must be remembered, well-known Nazi hunter says
Staff Reporter
By PENNI CRABTREE 3staff Reports
The German youth of today, heirs of Goethe and Beethoven, have been left another kind of legacy, an internationally known Nazi hunter said last night.
hunted had resurfaced and are holding government positions in West Germany.
Hilfer's Germany and the responsibility for the deaths of 6 million Jews, is the burden and the birthright of every German citizen, Beate Klarfsfeld, a German-born Christian and Nazi hunter said to an audience of 90 people at Wescoe Hall.
"As the sons and daughters of Germany, it is our moral responsibility not to draw the curtain of oblivion and forgetting," Klarfseld said. "We must prove our moral rehabilitation before we can take our place among the civilized nations of the world."
KLARSFELD, who has worked for 13 years to expose Nazi war criminals living in Western Europe.
"I believe that the victims of the Nazis have the right to expect this from the new German generation. We must fight hard against any one of the new Germany with Hitler's Germany."
"As a daughter of Germany, I felt it was my responsibility to work on the behalf of the Jewish Prison."
Klarsfeld's most famous hunt, which ended in 1968 with a public denouncement of West Germany's former Chancellor Kurt Keisenger, onetime director of Hitler's propaganda apparatus, brought world attention to the woman Nazi hunter.
SINCE HER WORK began in 1968, Klarfseld said, she has helped depot and bring to trial several Nazi war criminals who held responsible positions in post-war Germany.
"These are people who, by their actions and contributions, brought about the deaths of thousands of Jews." Klarsfeld said. "They were
See KLARSFIELD page 5
Weather
It will be clear to partly cloudy today with a high in the low to mid 79s, according to the National Weather Service in Topeka. Winds will be gusty out of the north to northwest at 15-25 mph.
night's low will be around 40. Tomorrow will be cooler with a high in the middle 60s.