NewsNovember 17, 2002

CHESTER, Ill. long with 8,400 other residents, two well-known personalities claim the small Southern Illinois community of Chester as home: Popeye and Rodney Yoder. Popeye is a cartoon character created by Chester native Elzie Segar during the Depression, known for his bulging forearms and a penchant for tobacco pipes and spinach. There's a sign with the sailor man's image on the way into town -- Chester, home of Popeye! -- and a squinty-eyed statue in the city park...

CHESTER, Ill.

long with 8,400 other residents, two well-known personalities claim the small Southern Illinois community of Chester as home: Popeye and Rodney Yoder.

Popeye is a cartoon character created by Chester native Elzie Segar during the Depression, known for his bulging forearms and a penchant for tobacco pipes and spinach. There's a sign with the sailor man's image on the way into town -- Chester, home of Popeye! -- and a squinty-eyed statue in the city park.

No statues will probably ever be erected for Rodney Yoder. For the past 12 years, he has lived at the Chester Mental Health Center -- the state's maximum security facility for the criminally insane -- among murderers, rapists and others who have committed heinous acts.

By his own admission he beat two women earlier in his life -- one with his fist, the other with a table leg -- and then later wrote threatening letters to prominent people like Playboy CEO Christine Hefner and M&M magnate Forrest Mars.

Not least of all is the fact that some psychiatrists who have evaluated Yoder say he is extremely mentally ill, both delusional and paranoid, as well as a danger to himself and others.

Despite all that, Yoder has attracted a lot of attention from beyond the mental facility's 14-foot fence. He's had stories appear about him in Time magazine, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, National Public Radio and the Chicago Tribune.

Two filmmakers are working on a lengthy documentary about Yoder, and a TV network producer has contacted Yoder's attorney about coverage on the "CBS Evening News with Dan Rather"that would be broadcast nationwide.

Yoder's situation has drawn the attention of Vancouver resident Millie Strom, who was married to the late blues legend John Lee Hooker. Strom was so taken with Yoder and his cause that the two were briefly engaged before concerns about Yoder caused her to postpone the wedding last week.

Yoder has been noticed by Patch Adams, the doctor and former mental patient who gained fame after a movie starring Robin Williams came out a few years ago. Other groups from as far away as South Africa are also keeping their eyes on what happens to the man being held less than 100 miles from Cape Girardeau.

That's because Yoder has made something of a name for himself, telling anyone who will listen -- and that's an increasing number -- that he is a "psychiatric prisoner."

The 44-year-old Yoder is quickly becoming the poster child for the crusade against forced psychiatry, a belief that mental illness is a myth that allows murderers to avoid prison, lazy people to avoid work and people in general to avoid responsibility.

"I'm against forced financial relations and forced sexual relations too," he said. "Those things are robbery and rape. Forced psychiatry should be equally frowned upon."

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Yoder is staking his freedom on these beliefs. At a jury trial scheduled for Dec. 2 in Chester, instead of arguing that he is not mentally ill, Yoder's Scientologist attorney from Chicago will argue that there is no such thing as mental illness.

His attorney also will say that, because of that, Yoder should be set free after 12 years of incarceration, which is almost twice the length of an average stay at Chester.

Many in the news media have claimed that this event, in which jurors will decide whether Yoder should be released or not, will put psychiatry on trial.

Yoder doesn't know about all that. He just knows how he feels about forced mental illness, an opinion shaped by his incarceration and countless hours in the facility's library reading books by Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler and Otto Kernberg.

He didn't necessarily come to the conclusion that psychiatry is hogwash.

"These writers have something to say about the human condition, I guess," he said. "It's when it's forced upon you that I get upset."

He found writers who shared his opinion like Ron Leifer, Jeffrey Schaler and Bruce Wiseman, who were critical of forced psychiatry.

"Mental illness is a metaphor for behavior we don't like," Yoder said. "Calling someone mentally ill is like saying someone's a witch or a devil. People believe in it because they've been taught to believe in it. It's a myth. And my civil liberties are being robbed of me all based on this myth. It's ridiculous."

While it is dismissed by many, the movement against forced psychiatry -- and Yoder's case specifically -- has captured the interest of a group of doctors from around the country who are speaking out for Yoder's release.

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Dr. Thomas Szasz is one of the most controversial figures in psychiatry today. He has been a psychiatry professor at the State University of New York in Syracuse for nearly 46 years and has become one of Yoder's biggest defenders. Szasz's most famous book is called "The Myth of Mental Illness."

Yoder, who speaks of Szasz in glowing terms, wrote to Szasz and developed a friendship.

"He sounds very angry," Szasz said in his thick Hungarian accent. "But he also sounded to be perfectly OK. He's been locked up for 11 years by psychiatrists. That seems to be particularly outrageous."

Szasz views mental illness as a way some justify disruptive behavior, which he says comes from personality and decisions people make.

"It's a term we apply to people we don't like," he said. "The most famous American mental patient is John Hinckley."

Hinckley, many will remember, shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and then was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

"There's not a damn thing wrong with him except that he's a criminal," Szasz asserts. "It's a gigantic lie so that pharmaceutical companies can keep making billions."

Szasz says that until he sees that mental illness is caused by something concrete -- like a lesion in the brain, for example -- he won't change his mind.

"The pope can say he's hearing God's voice and nobody can call him mentally ill," Szasz said. "This is not rocket science. If Rodney is dangerous, I don't care. That's the price of liberty."

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Patch Adams is a medical doctor and a health-care activist who spent a few months in a mental hospital when he was younger.

Adams came to know Yoder after a few phone conversations and letters.

"I feel he's being held against his will," said Adams. "He should be released. He served his time in prison. He's not a threat to anybody. He did his time in prison. It's a horrible thing, but lots of people have beat their wives and are walking the streets."

Adams also believes that mental illness doesn't exist.

"I've been a patient, an orderly and a doctor in a mental hospital," he said. "Very few people can claim those things. My favorite headline is: 'Jeffrey Dahmer is sane to stand trial.' That just goes to show you the meaningless of this myth. He killed and sodomized eight people. If he's sane, what a mockery. They can use those labels any damn way they please."

One of the criticisms against Yoder -- Time labeled him "one of America's most spectacular jerks" -- is his demeanor. He is coarse, impatient, interruptive, crass and often indignant, switching from an angry mood one minute to a joking mood the next.

He has been known to call reporters several times a day for weeks, using a calling card. He also is a prolific e-mail writer, using a service that allows him to dictate and receive electronic mail over the phone.

"Sure, he's not Doris Day," Adams said. "But we also can't know a personality of someone who has been incarcerated for more than 10 years."

His attorney, Randy Kretchmar, agreed.

"As impolite or crass as he is, he is a mental patient at a maximum-security facility," he said. "His manners would not scare anybody if it weren't for this status and this stigma of mental illness. I've had screaming matches on the phone with him, but look at his situation. Anybody would be angry."

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If Yoder says he is not mentally ill, as he and his defenders claim, his commitment records tell a different story. While his most recent treatment-plan review shows that Yoder has above-average intelligence, strong competitive drive and the ability to handle problems, it also says that Yoder sees many things as personal affronts, declaring that he has delusional disorder and paranoid personality disorder.

The report says Yoder has "non bizarre delusion," such as being treated unfairly by the court and staff of the facility and that he considers himself a "political prisoner."

The report says -- and psychiatrists have testified in previous court proceedings -- that Yoder, because of his mental illness, could reasonably be expected to inflict serious harm upon himself or others in the near future.

The report also claims that Yoder, if released, could not provide for his basic physical needs. Yoder has a history of being confrontational and argumentative, even while he was serving four years for the battery of his ex-wife. He also once bit a guard at the Chester center, though Yoder says that was in self-defense.

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Three years ago, state psychologist Dan Cuneo said in court, "I can only think of a handful of individuals that I would consider more dangerous than Yoder at the hospital."

Cuneo, during one of Yoder's commitment proceedings, said that if Yoder is freed, he would "erupt and erupt violently. At one point, he will blow up, and he will hurt people."

Yoder would not sign consent forms for Cuneo to speak to the pressabout his psychiatric treatment, saying that he is a "hired hit man" who lies about him.

Doctors who are treating him now have been instructed by the state not to comment on Yoder, as it may be detrimental to his treatment. It's an ironic statement, Yoder points out, because he has refused all treatment for years. Doctors who treated him in the past didn't return phone calls.

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Dr. Chris Fichtner is chief psychiatrist and medical coordinator for the Illinois Department of Mental Health and an associate professor at the University of Chicago. Fichtner said he would like to comment on Yoder's case specifically, but Yoder wouldn't sign off on it because Fichtner has never met him.

But Fichtner did speak in general terms about mental health.

"People are entitled to believe what they want to," he said, "as long as it doesn't disturb their relationships and they don't break any laws or hurt anybody. I can believe I'm from another planet if I want to. As long as those other things don't happen, it's my own business."

Fichtner also said he has found the anti-psychiatry movement helpful.

"I think it's wonderful to be challenged," he said. "It keeps us honest. But of course I, along with most in the medical community, believe in mental illness. And the most important question is: 'Does treatment help?' and I believe it does."

But Yoder has refused medication and therapy since 1995, saying that the administrators at CMHC wanted to drug him to shut him up.

"When they refuse treatment, of course, that makes it harder," Fichtner said. Fichtner said there are instances where they could force someone to be medicated, but wouldn't say if that is being considered for Yoder.

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Yoder tells his life story to the news media, sometimes omitting things that have to be dug up in court papers and other media accounts. He considers many media reports about him "hatchet jobs" and speaks of the people at the Chester center as "captors" and "psycho-quacks." He also uses worse names.

But basically, the story, based on an interview with Yoder, other media reports and court papers, goes something like this:

Yoder was born in 1958 in central Illinoisinto a violent family.

"My mother and father physically fought," he said. "There was bloodshed, broken bones, missing teeth. It was a hellhole."

Eventually, he and his brother, Phil, were made wards of the state and were separated. Both were released prior to their 18th birthdays.

His relationships with women were also violent. In 1979, he hit his girlfriend. He told Time magazine that he gave her "a garden-variety black eye," but prosecutors said he broke her orbital bone. He was given probation, but confronted her with a knife while on probation. That's when Yoder got four years in prison.

Soon after, the letters began, promising glaring violence, including extortion and bomb threats. "I'll pump about three boxes of shells into her from a 12-gauge," says one.

His warden, Stephen Hardy, who didn't return calls to the Southeast Missourian, told Time that he heard about at least nine alarming letters and initiated an investigation that led to Yoder's losing two years of credit for good behavior.

Yoder then sued Hardy and won. Yoder said that several state officials had disregarded rules on revoking good-time credit in order to keep him incarcerated. An appellate court said they had trampled his due-process rights.

Hardy then tried to keep Yoder incarcerated another way: He asked the court to commit Yoder to a mental hospital. According to a Post-Dispatch article, the court was provided with a copy of another letter signed with Yoder's name in which he threatened to rape a state judge.

But Hardy's petition left out a few details. It failed to mention the lost-credit incident, and Yoder says that is what made him hostile, not mental illness. Hardy also checked off a box that said he was not in litigation with Yoder, when he actually had appealed Yoder's victory, according to court records.

Yoder was held in prison three months, until federal authorities tried to prosecute him for threatening President Ronald Reagan. That prosecution didn't hold up and Yoder was released in 1983.

Yoder had the semblance of a normal life when married a woman, moved to Tacoma, Wash., and had two children, Loren and Jennifer. Yoder said he attended college there and got straight A's in political science. He also sold real estate.

"It was a living," he said. "I worked seven days a week and I was always tired, but it was a life."

A few years later, however, the couple moved back to Illinois so his wife could be near her family. Back in Illinois, life turned bad.

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Once he got out of prison, Yoder said he had drank heavily. That may have been a factor in his divorce in 1989, he said. He said he drank whatever was around and a lot of it.

Yoder turned violent again on Jan. 12, 1990, and got into an argument with his ex-wife while he was drunk. He was arguing with her about whether or not the man who was baby-sitting the children was molesting them. Yoder hit her in the head with a table leg, causing her to need seven stitches.

"I don't remember any of it," Yoder said. "It was in an alcoholic blackout. But I don't know what transpired."

Yoder again pleaded guilty. A psychiatrist examined him and said he didn't meet the standard for involuntary hospitalization.

While in prison this time, Yoder sued various administrators for "mistreatment" and tried to reverse his guilty plea, all to no avail. In 1991, one of the administrators Yoder was suing sought to have him involuntarily committed a second time.

This time, a psychiatrist did say Yoder was having paranoid delusions. The report by that psychiatrist -- Dr. Nageswararao Vallabhaneni -- said Yoder believed people to be his political enemies, including Hardy. On the day Yoder was to be released from prison, he was handcuffed and taken to the Chester center.

Yoder's first commitment hearing was before Judge William Schuwerk, the same man who, as a state's attorney, had prosecuted Yoder during his first commitment proceeding in 1982. Schuwerk ruled from the bench that Yoder should go to the asylum.

That's where he has been ever since. The assistant state's attorney, Michael Burke, is the prosecutor who will act on the state's behalf at the December trial. He said Schuwerk has been impartial in the Yoder matter. Besides, Burke pointed out, it's not Schuwerk who has been committing Yoder each of the past 10 times.

"He's been asking for jury trials, and it's been a jury that's decided on whether or not he's committed," he said. "It's six jurors from the community who don't know anything about him. Of course he's been treated fairly, of course he has."

As far as the disagreement as to whether Yoder is mentally ill, Burke has his opinions.

"He's been diagnosed by people there who know him, probably better than anyone," Burke said. "Others say he's not mentally ill based on telephone calls? I wouldn't think that would be the best way to know."

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It's a fall afternoon in October and Yoder walks down the long, colorless hallway at Chester Mental Health Center. He turns to the orange-shirted guard, following close behind, and asks a question he has been incessantly seeking an answer to for the past 12 years.

"I'm not getting out of here, am I?" Yoder asks angrily. "Isn't that what you say when you taunt me? That I'm never getting out of here?"

The guard -- technically called a security therapy aid -- says nothing and attempts to avoid eye contact.

Yoder shrugs and turns his head to the front, on his long walkback to the visiting room.

"He tells me that a lot," Yoder almost whispers. "They all do."

Before saying good-bye, Yoder said he doesn't know if he will ever be free.

"I hope so, I have to believe I will," he said. "I'm not a monster. I want to live. I don't want to die here. Not here."

smoyers@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137

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