Seguin Explained

setup for the subset of The Nuthouse Stories that took place with the Seguin program

One of the places I've worked over the years was as a Rehab Specialist Coordinator for the Seguin Program. The Seguin Program worked with clients who were too retarded (the PC term at the time was “developmentally delayed”) to be prosecuted or convicted for felony crimes. This, as opposed to my work at NFETC, where they were all too crazy to be prosecuted. Well, going from working at the nuthouse to this program meant some transitions for myself, not the least of which was that this was the beginning of my “professional” career. For the state of Florida, this transition means a tenfold increase in responsibility, a doubling of the workload, and a whopping 10 to 20% increase in pay. Instead of babysitting crazy people, I was now in charge of arranging field trips into the city for retarded people. That's right; working with people who are too retarded to be prosecuted and asking myself the question, “Where in the city of Gainesville, Florida should I load these characters up in a van and take them?”

Now, functionally, there are a number of differences between working with crazy people and working with retarded people. There are good, legitimate reasons why medicine, social work, and the law treat them differently. For one thing, you do not “treat” retardation: there's no pill for it, and talk as you might, you'll never counsel somebody's IQ score up. Instead, you “train” them. At least, that was the term we used then, some PC a******s probably came along and changed it since I was in that line of work. Maybe, “enabling” or some s**t like that.

Anyways, I initially worked with Seguin's “Step Out” program. The “Step Out” part meant that these guys (all men in this program) did not live in the “secure” unit next to the jail, but in several “homes” on the campus of Tacachale. Now, I don't know what your brain just did with that word, but the spellchecker on my computer just served me with a restraining order, so allow me to explain. Back in the day (I was too lazy to do any real research) several facilities were opened up around the state of Florida to put retarded people in, often taking over old TB hospitals. This one, which was called Sunland, was like its own little town. It even had its own farm and a power plant. At some point they changed the name to Tacachale, a Timucua Native word roughly translated to mean, “to start a new fire.” Yeah, because when I think “facility for retarded people” I automatically go to “hey, let's piss off ancient natives AND associate retards with lighting s**t on fire.”

So, Seguin rented several homes on the Tacachale campus for their Step Out program, clustered at the northeast corner of the campus. The campus is pretty big; you can walk from one end to the other, but you wouldn't choose to, typically. All the homes had flower names then. We had Zinnia and Gardenia when I started there, and took over Violet before I left. Our clients were retarded, but usually not by as much as the rest of the folks living on the larger campus. Most of our guys were in the 50-65 IQ range: maybe tying shoes, maybe not. It never ceases to amaze me how much of a difference the top of that range has over the bottom of that range. Its as though God decided that 60 was some kind of cut-off for all kinds of life skills.

Now, as to the crimes these guys got arrested for. At the nuthouse, there was a wide range of offenses, everything from cocaine possession to murder. Not so with Seguin. Apparently, being retarded narrows one's criminal interests to the groin area. About 4 out of 5 of these guys were accused of sex offenses, mostly with kids. Some were the typical creepy, predatory types you'd expect, just more retarded. Some were just groinal opportunists, prone to rubbing their junk around almost at random.

My job was, for the most part, to arrange trips into town for our “clients” each week. As they progressed through our program, they got more trips into town each week. I had to schedule destinations, which clients went, when, with which staff, using which vehicles, so that no trip overlapped or interfered with any of the other trips. It was moderately complicated at first, but it usually settled into a routine. I also “ran” as many of these trips as I could myself to free staff up for other duties. The clients were supposed to choose the destinations, and they did. We just “helped” them decide, that's all. The staff had their most and least favorite destinations, of course, so I ended up kinda playing the role of the favorite / creepy uncle, deciding who ran which trips. They all loved me when they got to go fishing or to dinner, but where the f**k were they when these guys wanted to go to church? Not in the car with me, that's for sure. So, when people asked me what I did for work, I said, “I run field trips for retarded sex offenders.” Nobody ever believed me.

Many of the best stories came from s**t that happened in town, during these trips. As with the other stories, I have limited myself to stories that I was there for.

Author's Note

This is the setup for the Seguin related stories.