A great overview of codependency can be found in Judy Shepps Battle’s 2011 article, “Gregory House, M.D.: A Lesson in Codependency | Lawrenceville, NJ Patch“.
Codependency in the d/Deaf/hard-of-hearing Community
Dr. VanGilder, I wish to address you specifically for a moment. We both remember my iatrogenic boundary violation when I was institutionalized at St. Elizabeths Hospital. In an e-mail a week later, you mentioned that you assumed I’d heard you’d talked to the social work team (attached). In fact, I had inconsistent access to team meetings because the hospital did not always provide me with ASL interpreters for groups as an accommodation for my deafness because I could speak. It really concerns me if your view of me is permanently tarnished because of conduct that I engaged in in an abusive, negligent environment after being violently sexually assaulted and threatened with chemical castration. Nevertheless, I can prove that I was a straight-A student of yours, including finishing an incomplete whilst recovering blindness, and taking a summer school class in order to stay on campus. I accidentally included you rather than a clinician on 14 November 2011 after Dr. Myers’s power-trip/temper tantrum led me to check myself into the Washington Hospital Center for an anxiety attack. The next semester, I started telling you during one of our last walks together. You said you didn’t need to know the details; I beg you to read the analysis and supporting threads (“GU 2012 analysis and events thread.pdf’). What happened to me was undeniably homophobic mobbing and abuse by your predecessors. I know your temperament and training in seminary preclude you from bullying students; that notwithstanding, do think your decision to completely dissociate from me (if that is truly your decision) is rash and motivated by the attitudes of homophobic social-workers at St. Elizabeths Hospital.
There seems to be a problem endemic and specific to Gallaudet University of an inability to differentiate between personal and professional relationships. Whether it be through Dr. Myers’ creating Dr. Whitebread’s first position in 2004, Dr. Eugene Mirus’s decision to get drunk with my fellow undergraduate students at an on-campus bar in 2011, or Dr. Myers’ decision to force me to share about my private life after flirting with another student in 2012 in a thread in which I admit to academic dishonesty after walking on eggshells for months, these problems cause dysfunction in the University’s primary mission of higher education of d/Deaf/hard-of-hearing students. Previous Hillel director Ms. Paula Tucker saying that Mr. Sammons was a postgraduate student, but Dr. Mirus saying he was actually undergraduate may be a FERPA violation. The stonewalling by the Office of Student Conduct and Dean Travis Imel’s dishonesty around disciplinary issues-including missing a statutory FERPA deadline is unprofessional and possibly unlawful. This failure to maintain appropriate boundaries led me to being hospitalized for acute anxiety or panic, eventually becoming homeless and being institutionalized at St. Elizabeths Hospital for almost the entirety of 2012, a group home for part of 2013. During this time, I was subject to negligence, abuse, and medical malpractice. I allege an actual crime happened: My father committed Social Security Fraud by siphoning all of my Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Insurance monies, telling the hospital I’d been expelled from Gallaudet, yet telling the bank was still a student at Gallaudet. I reported this in 2017 to the Social Security Fraud Hotline after recovering from cataract surgeries. On advice of counsel, I contacted my Member of Congress about this. This crime would likely not have happened had your predecessors maintained appropriate teacher/student boundaries.
Source: Muething, Thomas A. “Gallaudet University Honors Program/Retreat/Courses Concerns”. Message to Dr. Jennifer L. Nelson and The Rev. Dr. Kirk A. VanGilder. June 11, 2024. E-mail.
Last Updated: 19. August 2024.