A Nation Betrayed: Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on Our Children and Other Innocent People
all she could do is squeeze my hand and tell me to be a good “Little Girl.” Oh momma, why did you have to say those words? I desperately loved and missed her, but my little girl part hated her for lying there and leaving her unprotected at home. xxvii
     
    When momma was finally allowed to come home from the hospital, daddy had already arranged for Catholic Charities to provide help to take care of all of us kids, the cleaning, and cooking. A parade of women came in and out of our house. My first and favorite was a big black lady, just like the one on the front of the pancake box. She was kind, loving and figured out too much too fast, so daddy had her replaced with another black lady. Sofronia liked daddy’s whiskey that he kept above the cupboard. He would have a drink every morning just to get him started, and it wasn’t long before he figured out that she had been watering the whiskey. At least that’s the story he told Catholic Charities. She was probably totally flawless too. The last lady was Jezel. She was French and spoke with the most wonderful accent I ever heard. When Momma got on her feet, her services became “No Longer Needed.”
     
    It wasn’t long after she got on her feet that Momma ran away from home for the first time. It was to begin a pattern that stayed with her through my high school years and beyond. Daddy told us that if we would only be better children, she wouldn’t run away. I remember the famous speech he gave in front of the aqua couch with the big buttons. We were all gathered around and told it was “All our fault.” I know each of us that were old enough to understand, believed him. xxviii
     
    Guilt was a wonderful control mechanism and daddy used it effectively every chance he got. He had such control over momma that she never had a chance. He tracked momma down at her sister’s home several hundred miles away where she thought she had escaped him. He brought her home and into the mental hospital she went.
     
    Back in those days, a husband, with the cooperation of a doctor could have his wife committed. Our family doctor was also a personal friend with daddy. They spent a lot of time hunting and fishing together. This was useful not only in getting momma locked up, but in having no questions asked when broken bones were to be set, illnesses tended to, or pills to be dispensed.
     
    Peter Breggin in Toxic Psychiatry tells how H. C. Tien, xxix a Michigan psychiatrist would draw attention in the late 1970’s and early 80’s by using electroshock to obliterate and reprogram the mind of a woman to make her a more suitable housewife. 95 He would utilize ECT (electro convulsive therapy) to erase memory and personality, thereby eradicating the woman’s identity; in order to reprogram it according to a “blueprint” worked out with the husband prior to the shock. Tien called his method ELT, explaining that E is for electricity, L is for love, and T is for therapy. I’m quite sure this is what daddy had hoped to accomplish with momma, but it never lasted. It certainly makes me wonder if Dr. Tien wasn’t testing out these theories under cover in the fifties for the CIA.
     
    I’ll never forget the first time I was taken to the State Hospital to visit momma. I was still living at home with daddy and my three older brothers. My four younger siblings had been farmed out to different relatives. I was a physical and emotional wreck from the nightly molestations. My hands shook uncontrollably all of the time, and I was unable to eat or sleep. My brothers took to calling me “Jervous and Nerky.”
     
    Daddy was bound and determined to keep me quiet, so we made a trip to the hospital. I had no realization that my mother was behind locked doors. When we were let in by the nurse and shown to a day room, there were scads of people walking around in a daze. Momma was one of them. She had undergone a series of electric shocks that left her a walking zombie. When she finally came home, so

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