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[Editorial] Protecting the weak
Mentally disabled woman wrongfully hospitalized
By Korea HeraldPublished : March 19, 2015 - 19:59
A mentally disabled woman who was found in a mental institution 33 years after she was reported missing has sued the state.
The woman, then 22, left her house in Seoul one day in January 1980, telling her sister that she was going out to look for a job. The next time her family saw her was in December 2013, locked up in a mental institution in Busan.
The heartbreaking story is a reminder of how carelessness and oversight by the authorities can lead to unspeakable pain, in this case for the missing woman and her family. According to reports, the woman was discovered by police in Busan in June 1982 and handed over to the relevant official in the Namgu district office. The office considered her a mentally ill vagrant and sent her to a mental institution. In the process, no one bothered to determine her identity, not the police, not the district office, and not anyone else.
The woman’s identity came to light when the Haeundae district office took her fingerprints as part of its review of unidentified indigents in the district. Clearly it did not have to take 33 years for the woman to be reunited with her family. All it would have taken was a set of her fingerprints to match against a database of missing persons and she could have been spared being locked up for more than three decades.
Her lawyer claims the police failed in its duty to determine the woman’s identity or her next of kin when she was found. The district office also did not attempt to find her family as mandated by the law; instead it forcibly institutionalized her in a mental hospital.
This is a nightmare that families of mentally disabled persons hope never happens to them. Unable to fend for themselves, mentally disabled persons are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation unless the society is vigilant about protecting their rights.
In the case of the woman found in Busan, the authorities clearly neglected to uphold her rights, judging her to be a mentally ill vagrant. But it is precisely such people ― the weak and the vulnerable among us ― that the authorities must strive to protect.
The woman, then 22, left her house in Seoul one day in January 1980, telling her sister that she was going out to look for a job. The next time her family saw her was in December 2013, locked up in a mental institution in Busan.
The heartbreaking story is a reminder of how carelessness and oversight by the authorities can lead to unspeakable pain, in this case for the missing woman and her family. According to reports, the woman was discovered by police in Busan in June 1982 and handed over to the relevant official in the Namgu district office. The office considered her a mentally ill vagrant and sent her to a mental institution. In the process, no one bothered to determine her identity, not the police, not the district office, and not anyone else.
The woman’s identity came to light when the Haeundae district office took her fingerprints as part of its review of unidentified indigents in the district. Clearly it did not have to take 33 years for the woman to be reunited with her family. All it would have taken was a set of her fingerprints to match against a database of missing persons and she could have been spared being locked up for more than three decades.
Her lawyer claims the police failed in its duty to determine the woman’s identity or her next of kin when she was found. The district office also did not attempt to find her family as mandated by the law; instead it forcibly institutionalized her in a mental hospital.
This is a nightmare that families of mentally disabled persons hope never happens to them. Unable to fend for themselves, mentally disabled persons are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation unless the society is vigilant about protecting their rights.
In the case of the woman found in Busan, the authorities clearly neglected to uphold her rights, judging her to be a mentally ill vagrant. But it is precisely such people ― the weak and the vulnerable among us ― that the authorities must strive to protect.
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Articles by Korea Herald
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