RHC PARENT PROTESTS KING-5 - FRAME SERIES DECEPTIONS

For a few days, the comment section of the King-5 series entitled, "The Last of the Institutions," has been down.  It appears to be censorship, but  when one  reader complained, she was told it is due to technical difficulties.  If that is true, we hope they will demonstrate at least enough integrity to fix it and bring all the comments back.

At the author's request, I am posting this letter, which she  sent, today and tried to post on the missing comment section.  Please chime-in in the "comment" section below this post. Click on "Comment" to open a dialogue box.

To: Russ Walker, Executive Producer / KING 5 Investigators  333 Dexter Ave N  Seattle, WA 98109                                  

Dear Mr. Walker:

I am stunned by the uneducated, biased reporting of one of your investigators, Ms. Susannah Frame. She is actually telling lies about the quality of care our residents receive at our Residential Habilitation Centers (RHCs). Her LAST OF THE INSITUTIONS series is beyond insulting to our hardworking, experienced, professional and support staff. Her dialog is preposterous. I am a parent of a son who has lived at Rainier School since he was 14 years old. He is now age 67.  Ms. Frame is not anywhere near telling an accurate story of the wonderful, specialized care he as received there for so many years.

Why isn’t Ms. Frame participating in any of the many ongoing RHC staff training classes and spending time working on the houses along side our staff and residents in order to get accurate first hand information?  ARC’s president, Stacy Gillet’s (and Ms Frame’s choice of others to interview) comments are equally as grossly distorted and untrue. It is unbelievable that Ms. Frame accepts this one sided account of RHC care.

Our RHC’s are miracle facilities and anyone who does not know that, has not spent much time there. My son is a prime example! He was never expected to have lived for so long and had such a productive, meaningful life. Your station would have done a great disservice to our most severely disabled with broadcasting even one Susannah Frame report let alone to send out an endless stream!  Somebody needs to question the motivation of KING TV’s owners and directors and stop this damaging attack on our severely disabled citizens and their RHC caretakers.

Please take the time to read the true accounts of Residential Habilitation Centers in our supportive dialog.

Sincerely,

Jeanie Barrett, member ACTION DD, a non-profit organization that supports any service that is of benefit to our developmentally disabled citizens. We advocate for a full continuum of care that includes RHCs.

Mother of son who has lived at Rainier School for over 53 years.

Former special education teacher for multi-handicapped, medically fragile, severely-profoundly developmentally/intellectually disabled students