Abuses at Rushville - Gallery

Curated in the Abuses at Rushville exhibition are grievances about harmful sleeping conditions, verbal and physical harassment, transphobia, and homophobia. Conditions at Rushville are harshly punitive. Complaints and appeals for help from higher-ups and therapists go ignored, or else trigger retaliation. “I am being attacked and I fear for my life” as a result of filing a complaint against a staff member, one resident writes to a judge. Another resident writes of constant harassment from staff, with “compliance shakedowns,” homophobic slurs, and being written up for romantic/sexual intimacies with other residents.

For many of the residents who contributed to the archive, Rushville seems like a death sentence. The lists of deaths in Rushville that residents keep and exhibited in Abuses at Rushville attests that for many, it is. Residents write that Rushville’s death rate is twice that of the national average, and that staff are callous in the face of these resident deaths. Materials in this collection paint a picture of Rushville as a psychologically damaging and prison-like place antithetical to therapeutic growth.