The following letter was posted to the East Vincent - State of the Township blog. Please take a minute and read this insightful and well-written example of everything that is wrong with the Pennhurst Asylum haunted attraction. The letter is especially poignant coming a day after the incredibly banal and disrespectful sham of the "Ghost Hunters Live Halloween" show which aired last evening.  

The Final Indignity

The name Pennhurst is infamous in the disability rights movement – not once, but twice.

Pennhurst opened in 1908 as a school for people with physical and mental disabilities. By the time it closed in 1987, it had become an iconic symbol of segregation, overcrowding, abuse, and neglect. In a momentous victory, a Federal Court order mandated Pennhurst’s closure for violating the constitutional rights of the residents, who had done no harm to anyone. The people who left Pennhurst went to small family-like homes with 24-hour support and services, where their lives were enriched in practically every way we know how to measure. (See Temple University’s landmark Pennhurst Longitudinal Study, 1985.)

Emily Smith Beitiks, Ph.D Candidate, University of Minnesota

James W. Conroy, Ph.D, Center for Outcome Analysis, Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance

The following video gives the closing statements from the two attorneys in the East Vincent Township zoning hearing about the Pennhurst Asylum on December 15. The hearing was a continuation from November 18.

The zoning hearing before the East Vincent Township Zoning Hearing Board will take place tonight (Thursday) at 7:30 p.m. in the township building located at 262 Ridge Road, Spring City, PA 19475. The hearing will focus on whether or not the Pennhurst Asylum haunted attraction had the proper permits to operate.

The following is excerpted from the minutes of the October 6, 2010 meeting of the East Vincent Township Board of Supervisors:

EVT homeowner Charles Pavesi: …I’m respectfully requesting a re-examination of the township’s zoning ordinance for low-density residential, that the board determine if all necessary and proper permit requests were made by Pennhurst Acquisition, that the decisions and opinions proffered by the township code enforcement official were within the statutory authority, and, if after this research a change of position is warranted by the board, that the board instruct the township manager to have Pennhurst Acquisition follow the prescribed procedures relative to conducting a non-compliant commercial venture within the l-d zoning area.

Last month, when I voiced my objection to the use of the property as is, the chairman advised me that my sole remedy was to file an appeal with the township Zoning Board, which the vice-chair later concurred. I think that may have been in error because there was no Zoning Board decision for me to have appeal.

In the code compliance officer’s written memorandum dated August 30, 2010, he wrote: “The current understanding is that this is a one-time event.”...[E]vent organizers have publicly stated that their intent is that the event will grow in size and become a world class attraction…What I am asking for very specifically is that the attraction fulfills the code compliance officer’s current understanding that this is a one-time event.

…You guys have been eerily silent on the Pennhurst matter. I don’t see a transparency of thought process, decision making or documentation. I think that’s been absent. Now the voice of the populace really needs to be heard and responded to.

BOS Chair John Funk: Are you aware that Mr. Rivkin and his counsel have filed for a zoning hearing?

Pavesi: No, I’m not.

Funk: They have.

Pavesi: Good!

BOS Solicitor (?): Attend the zoning hearing…The board is not silent; the board said that the zoning officer made the decision and that he was going to have jurisdiction over that issue…It’s now been appealed to the Zoning Hearing Board. The zoning Hearing Board will decide whether he [Paul Schmidt] made a decision [and] whether that decision was correct or not.

Supervisor Mark Dunphy (?): Charles, my only comment is, nothing has formally come before the Board of Supervisors.

Funk: I’d like to make a comment, too, if I may. [goes off on a long spiel about First Amendment rights and free speech, comparing residents’ dissatisfaction with Pennhurst to a case in Kansas where a fundamentalist church picketed the funeral of an alleged gay Marine and the uproar over photographer Robert Mapplethorpe receiving grant money from the National Endowment for the Arts to produce the controversial photo “Piss Christ.”]

Funk added: This is all about free speech…When I first heard about this and when Chris protested about it and so forth,—you want us, the three of us, to decide whether something is a First Amendment case? I’m not going to do that. On the face of it, I’m not going to do that. You might think it’s despicable and I might think it’s despicable but that ain’t anything for this township to decide. That’s what I think.

Supervisor Christine McNeil: Well, John, I don’t think anybody has been protesting the First Amendment rights or whether taste is not the issue. The issue really comes down to abiding by the zoning ordinance procedures.

Funk: That’s a smoke screen and you know it. [He is interrupted by several people.]

EVT resident Al Brodie: No. No, it’s not. You go down Brown Drive right now to see beer cans, Wawa cups, wrappers…If I have to go out on my own time and clean it up, someone’s going to pay for it. There’s a lot of trash, a lot.

EVT resident Diane Benelli: The issue really is, I live in a residential neighborhood and I’ve got nonstop buses up Pennhurst, all night, as the chief said, some until two in the morning, then turning up Bridge to go to Jones [Motor]. I get a double whammy because I have the Jones buses going down Bridge Street, all night long.

Funk: One at a time, Mr. Brodie. Do you want me to throw you out? We’re trying to run a civil meeting here. If you will come to the Zoning Hearing Board meeting that’s where this is going to be heard and if Paul made a mistake he made a mistake. I’m sure he’s not perfect. None of us is perfect. He’s following the rules that we have, which is that you appeal the zoning at the Zoning Hearing Board.

Brodie: Where does Paul live? It’s not in his backyard; it’s in mine. Yeah, it’s great. It’s great to live here.

Ryan Costello, attorney for Richard Chakejian: People can…voice their opinions about whether the proper procedures were followed or not. The matter’s in litigation so I’m not going to dignify certain comments. I’ll let people say what they want to say whether I agree with them or not. It’s important to note that if a resident is saying that they went to a hearing and the township didn’t bring in a zoning officer and testify to certain things. The reality is that the township wasn’t involved in that litigation and my client was only involved because somebody ran to the courthouse four days before the event started even though they knew about it three months before that and tried to shut it down. And if they wanted to include the township in that litigation, they could have. If they wanted to have Paul Schmidt testify, they could have. They didn’t do those things. That may be their litigation strategy, I don’t know. What’s being perpetrated in the papers by certain individuals regarding the township and regarding the applicant is false. I don’t know if I’m more insulted by the way they insult the applicant or the way they insult the township. [rails off about Saul Rivkin for a while].

So if residents want to simply oppose everything that goes up at Pennhurst, they have the right to do that. But it doesn’t make it right for the landowner or the landowner’s counsel to sit back and just allow the landowner to get beat up and beat up and beat up when out of everyone in this room he’s the one who has created 80-85 part time jobs in the last couple of months. I don’t think anyone else in this room has done it.

And as a result of this, you’re going to have at least one of those buildings preserved and some of the site remediated.

So if people want to be against job creation and against remediation and preservation of the site, they can do that. But you have to choose sides here. If you’re going to demagogue a landowner for what he’s doing at least acknowledge the good that’s being come of that and at least own the fact that you are against preservation and you’re against job creation. At least own it.

Pavesi: Is the zoning board meeting the proper venue to debate Mr. Costello’s diatribe?

Solicitor (?): The zoning board is the place to…I think what everybody is saying here with First Amendment rights, I think ultimately it’s a land use issue that people are complaining about. And the zoning board has jurisdiction over appeals from the zoning officer decisions.

Funk [loudly reneges his previous statement]: This isn’t a First Amendment case; I was just pointing out that that’s what the newspaper and everybody else made it out to be.

Pavesi: You’re absolutely correct. It is not a First Amendment issue. You’re right. No question. Land use. Thank you.

Funk: We’ll find out whether Paul made a mistake with his land use decision.

Pavesi: And for whatever its worth, we understand we have to live with that. That’s what you guys are here for.

Funk: I hope you understand it’s not the township’s decision to make; it’s the zoning officer’s decision to make. We don’t tell him what to do. He’s an employee of ours but that doesn’t mean we tell him what to do. If you knew his history…He’s not some insensitive brute, let me tell you.

You can read more of the story in the Evening Phoenix.

One of the residents who lives on Pennhurst Road in East Vincent Township reports that the "patients" arriving for the Pennhurst Asylum haunted house are now being told to park at the former Jones Motor Company lot at the corner of Bridge Street and Route 724 where they are then carpooled to the attraction by bus. Apparently, the bus drivers have not gotten the word that they are not supposed to use Pennhurst Road. Although the last tour of the attraction is supposed to end at 10:30, the resident reported that buses were still exiting south on Pennhurst Road well past 1 a.m. And apparently the first Pennhurst Asylum traffic accident happened last night when a local resident was stopped by an event staffer while trying to turn onto Pennhurst Road and another car in the line behind him was rear-ended. 

But alas! There's some good news on the opposition front as well. Discount flyers for the Bates Motel and Pennhurst Asylum that were available at Wawa stores have been pulled by the corporate office because, as one Wawa employee put it, "everyone was mad that [the coupons] were there." Wawa has their own double-sided flyer with only their logo printed on the coupon.

Flyers featuring other sponsors of the event, including Fred Beans, The American Cancer Society/Relay for Life, Atari/Haunted House (the video game), FEARnet, Rite Aid, Duffers Tavern and Restaurant, Metro PCS, Halloween Adventure, and Amoroso's Baking Company are available at these locations. One local sponsor, Hatfield Quality Meats, told Zachary J. Palmer that "they are supporters only of Bates Motel, NOT of Pennhurst, and the decision to include their logo on the same side of the coupon as the Pennurst Asylum was done either without their consent or was a grave, grave error, and I was well assured that they will do what they can to take care of it." You can read more about it at "The 'Horror' of the Pennhurst Asylum." Zachary says that the "two sided Bates Motel/Pennhurst Asylum coupon from any of these locations other than Wawa" has their logos "proudly displayed at the bottom of the Pennhurst Asylum side." I've even done the legwork for you and included the links to their contact pages. Just click on the company name.

Keep up the pressure. Let these companies know that you object to their support of the Pennhurst Asylum. Believe it or not, they really are listening.

For those of you who have asked, here is the final summation of Judge Shenkin from the Pennhurst Asylum injunction hearing on September 24: 

Judge Shenkin: To have this summation for why the township issued a certificate of occupancy...based on the evidence before me, the township did issue a use of occupancy permit, correct?

Attorney Andrew Bellwoar: Correct.

Judge Shenkin: And there's been no testimony from any township official to say that now they believe that was in error, that they intend to change their position that they believe that they should have done something differently. One of the problems is the likelihood, not the possibility, but the likelihood that you’re going to proceed on the merits which requires me to find that Mr. Naugle's interpretation of the township ordinances is superior to that of the township in question. It may be but that's a hard presumption to accept. If in fact these are zoning matters then your right to relief is under Section 617 of [indiscernible] planning code, which it's unquestionable, some of it is governed by that section.

Then as Mr. Costello pointed out, you lack standing until you have first given the township advance notice. The other, probably the most important deficit in the presentation today is that when you talk about harm it's a balancing test and I'm not at all persuaded that the harm that will be suffered, which is, there's no question that you're going to have, or are highly likely to have anyway,...exactly the kind of impact that your witness Mr. Rivkin testified to. Whether they are actionable is a much more difficult question or whether they should be acted upon in such emergency fashion is questionable.

This issue didn't just arise three days ago and to be required to shut down the operation which, based on the evidence before me, was authorized by all of the municipalities and other entities that had jurisdiction, based on even a very substantial increase in noise and traffic, is simply not warranted.

It doesn't mean that you're not entitled to injunctive relief, that's not the issue before me. And it may be that a fuller development of the record may lead to that conclusion but not on the emergency basis that brings us here today. It may be that you're not at all entitled to proceed in court; you may have to go to the zoning hearing board. You may have to go back to the township.

But even if I were to find that there was action that could be enjoined after a full hearing, I can't find that the evidence today would support  overturning the actions of those agencies that granted the necessary permits. A lot of your argument is that they were granted in error, that they required other permits, they required other plans and that may be so, but this is not the forum to hear that, number one, and then secondly the result of not granting the injunction on a preliminary emergency basis, is, as best as I can tell, that this facility will operate for at least the next three days.

How long it's going to take council to prepare this case for a final hearing, I don't know, but I'm certainly willing to expedite that, particularly if evidence of actual operation demonstrates a level of harm well beyond that which was testified to as being feared. Since this is such a  limited operation, I'm certainly not saying that it's at all possible that it will be heard prior to the expiration of the existing permit. That may be  faster than the court system is prepared to act. But if there is a tangible demonstration of the adverse effect of the operation of the facility, you're not precluded from requesting a further hearing on the issuance of an emergency injunction.

I'm not suggesting that just because there's an increase in traffic or noise but rather there's some much more substantial adverse effect on the plaintiffs and/or on the community in general than it can reasonably be anticipated based on what's before me, nothing prevents you from coming back on a further emergency basis. I'm not suggesting that that necessarily would be something that you should entertain. It's something that is possible. On the evidence before me, I see no basis for any issuance of a special and preliminary injunction and accordingly [your request is denied].

The following is a review of Saturday night's Pennhurst Asylum show with some interesting observations.

The event starts with a one mile drive through dark woods to the parking area then a half-mile walk to the back of the Admin building where you join the people waiting to enter.

First stop is the Ticket booth to purchase your “patient pass.”  I asked the ticket lady how many people had come tonight.  She said they had 600 by 8 pm!  Next is the long walk to the admin building, past two huge heaps of manure, a rusting children’s play set with a soundtrack of little children’s voices talking and screaming as they play.  Then waiting in line.  I waited 90 minutes to get to the front door of the admin building.  While we were waiting a man in bloody overalls with a cloth bag over his head and large “hunchback” shuffled along carrying a large bloody club with nails protruding from the end.  His job was to scare (entertain) people in line as they waited.  The vast majority of the people in line were white, able-bodied teenagers.

At the entrance to the admin building was a man spitting and swallowing fire (circus theme?) and a radio station Xtu host playing county music and handing our signed Twilight prints (Vampire theme?)  One person in the line up commented that he thought it did not make sense to have country music at a Halloween event because he did not find country music to be scary.

Once inside we were greeted by a nurse who entreated us to come along and get prepared for surgery.

The first room was the room filled with B&W professional PR photos of Pennhurst (e.g., administrators, psychology department, nursing, grounds etc..).  The music was from the 1920s.  As we filed past these photos a woman in the center of the room announced that she had worked at Pennhurst  from the 70’s to its closure in 1987.  I asked her what she thought of the criticism of the event and she said that she was against the criticism.   That “we should let what happened in the past go."  She said she had taken a vacation day the day before (Friday) in order to speak at the court hearing in favor of the event.

The next room was filled with color photos of the ruins of Pennhurst.  A specially made video played.  The video began with Bill Baldini’s expose of Pennhurst and ended with two “executions?” one by electricity of a male and another by a blow to the back of the head of a woman tied to a chair.  In between were images of a person in a wheel chair being wheeled around the grounds, a woman eating a red bleeding round object I took to be a human heart, and the aforementioned “hunchback” escaping from a cage along with very unclear images of what I took to be ECT treatments and lobotomies.  It was standard asylum horror movie imagery.

First room after the so-called “museum” is the Rorschach room.  The man tells us to look at the inkblots projected on the wall because “your responses will determine which unit you will be placed in.”  Subsequent rooms included the cafeteria where body parts were served on plates, the dental suite where a man with a bloody mouth held wide open with a metal jaw clamp lay in the chair, the surgical suite with a woman on the table (I must have missed the point here),  a nursery with a “mad” nurse holding a grey skinned “monster" baby crying out “why won't he stop crying?”, the morgue where there was “always room for one more,” an ECT/Frankenstein room in which a man was electrocuted and then jumps off the table into the crowd.  All the while patients wondered around making bizarre noises, one caressing a large rats in her blouse, and nurses walked like zombies with their knees together and feet wide apart.  The exit was via a long, tiled tunnel with hobo/homeless figures and more mad/zombie nurses.

There was much slamming of doors, people jumping out of the shadows and from around dark corners, half bodies, bodies hanging from the ceiling, blinking lights, and the crackling of electricity.

This was the most bizarre and incoherent event I have ever attended! The room with the color photos was next to the museum and is presented as a continuation of the museum theme, as was the Bill Baldini videos, but the intention (I think) was to devolve the museum into the horror event of the night with the "facts" (e.g., Bill Baldini) giving legitimacy to the Bates' interpretation, viz. this is a "real" asylum, really bad things really did take place here.....  The cannibalism (etc.). are all related to the themes of insanity (criminal and due to inbreeding).

Please take the time to watch "A Call of Conscience." Released yesterday, this video culminates the historic significance of the Pennhurst campus with the need for appropriate preservation and remembrance.

Simulated room at the "asylum" Halloween attraction.  Photo/ABC News

Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Shenkin denied the injunction by East Vincent Township residents Saul and Linda Rivkin to shut down the Pennhurst Asylum. Read the story in the Daily Local News. Here are two of the comments to the article showing the diverse chasm between those for and against the haunted attraction:

westchesterresident wrote on Sep 24, 2010 1:21 PM:
" This is a blemish to the whole county. You should be ashamed of yourselves, Shenkin and Bates. Exploiting the mentally disabled is no more acceptable than exploiting the physcially disabled, but we all agreed that would be wrong. I can't imagine why this seems like a good idea to anyone. $25 for admission? Save your money people, do something positive, don't feed this monster. "

DinoInSouthernChesCo wrote on Sep 24, 2010 1:37 PM:
" westchesterresident - You must be retarded to think and publicly state this sentiment. How in the world you can say it is EXPLOITING your brethren is beyond my wildest comprehension) I honestly think you are a blemish on my back-side.. Buttocks if you will....... (_!_) "

Sure makes you think. Channel 6 Action News posted this update on their Web site and will have the story on tonight's news.

I'll post video from the hearing tomorrow.

from Pennhurst Asylum Web site

Just found out an injunction was filed this afternoon in Chester County court to ban the Pennhurst Asylum from opening by a member of the East Vincent Historical Commission. Read the story in the Philly Inquirer. This just gets deeper and deeper, doesn't it?

The hearing is set for Friday, September 24, to determine whether the haunt will open or not.