Posts tagged sad
“ Last year, one supervisor was accused of four different episodes of physical and psychological abuse of residents within a span of two and a half months; another employee bragged on Facebook about “beating retards.
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That’s from an absolutely devastating New York Times account of abuses taking place within NY state-run institutions for the mentally disabled, from beatings to humiliation to outright killings. And the idea that people in charge would prey upon a defenseless group they were assigned to protect is just… ugh. I wanna go to sleep and not wake up.

-DM

[New York Times]
“ Hickey told Gerry Spence, the notable Jackson attorney who prosecuted Hopkinson in the Vehar and Green murders, that he drunkenly cut the girl’s genitals out intending to make a purse out of them.
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Back in the 1970’s, a man named Mike Hickey went to prison for murdering a 15-year-old girl and participating in a house bombing that killed three more people. Today, thanks to a plea deal with prosecutors, Hickey is a free man, and this wrenching article by William Browning explores whether someone like Hickey can ever be redeemed, and if he even deserves to be.

-DM

[LongReads]
“ The judge even said, if I was paralyzed from the neck down, I would still be responsible for having to earn a million dollars a year. I don’t think I would take to jail well.
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That’s former “Kids in the Hall” star Dave Foley, explaining to comedian Marc Maron that he can’t return to his native Canada because he can no longer afford his child support payments, which were established when he was the star of “News Radio” on NBC back in 1997. Foley asked a Canadian judge to reduce his obligation in 2007, but Foley’s ex-wife’s lawyer told PopEater that, “He stopped paying the agreed upon child support years ago when his income was still very high and when he still had the financial resources to comply with the agreement.” And that’s kind of depressing, to learn that one of your comedic heroes is a bit of a deadbeat. Perhaps the “Daddy Drank” sketch was a bit more accurate than I first realized.

-DM

[NBC New York, PopEater]

Alicia Duerson Will Break Your Heart. Our Chicago affiliate sat down for an interview with Alicia Duerson, ex-wife of Dave Duerson, the former Chicago Bear who shot himself in the chest last week. With remarkable composure, Duerson recalls the text message from her ex-husband that doubled as his suicide note. “The text said that he loved me and he loved the kids and for me to love the kids.” I can barely make it through that sentence without breaking down, so I have no idea how Duerson is able to recite it so capably. Listening to Duerson speak, you get a sense of not only the loss of her ex-husband, but the loss of the life and happy marriage he could have had if football hadn’t ravaged his mind so terribly.

-DM