Patients in captivity

Opening ceremonies at the Interstate Fair Rodeo included a tribute to America as we listened to our national anthem and the words “land of the free and home of the brave.” There were tears and sighs as we remembered Sept. 11, 2001.

Flashback: One year ago at the Spokane Interstate Fair, staff from Eastern State Hospital allowed a criminally committed patient to escape.

I am the mother of a patient who was not criminally committed. However, I am not allowed to take him to a restaurant or have him join family on holidays. He isn’t allowed home for overnight visits. He is paraded out to the park-like yard three times a day.

But the 20-foot-high chain link fence topped by vicious-looking barbed wire says something different. When my son was admitted to ESH prior to 2009 he came home for visits, ate with family at restaurants and walked the grounds of the hospital.

We never want to forget Sept. 11, 2001, but we have no interest in remembering the noncriminal patients or knowing that a government bureaucracy and local law enforcement agency changed the patients’ “land of the free and home of the brave” to a prison, not a hospital.

Kay Sharp

Liberty Lake