by Shannon Willitts Falk
Call me a December 2010 Failure, that was when my lifeless body was retrieved from a muddy river bank and a California “good Samaritan” saved my life; but as fate would have it, the hospital had a therapist for me who upon our first meeting not only held out the cover of Time Magazine’s cover depicting soldiers with shelter dogs for trauma, Jillian Wilbur had Enzo and Charlie sitting on the two wings of her chair when I entered therapy for my “failure” and statistics on trauma, dogs, survival, and my rights to an APA certified service animal, and that’s how I lived the last thirteen odd years.
Sadly even if you’re lucky enough to get a great therapist and diagnosed with the disability of PTSD (Complex-PTSD isn’t yet recognized in the DSM, so our disability is simply PTSD) I suspect it will be many years before the NIH (National Institute of Health) links narcissistic abuse to causation.
Personally? Was I shocked May 6, 2018 when I learned in California my twenty one year old nephew “succeeded” at suicide in Boulder Colorado and became another statistic?
No.
Life experience as the eldest daughter of a narcissist, and twenty years of therapy helps me make connections to certain personality disorders and suicide rates. For now the NIH stats use the word epidemic data shows suicide is the second leading cause of death among individuals 10-14, and 25-34 third leading between ages 15-34.
Six years later in Seneca Falls New York, was I aghast, amazed, appalled, astonished and dismayed.
Yes.
Where but Seneca Falls New York would someone try to make a life statement after the suicide of a nephew. It’s lore that Frank Capra based the movie on the town, and whether that’s fact or fiction? I don’t know, but there really is a sign which reads “The Real Bedford Falls” and there’s an annual “It’s a Wonderful Life” festival, so I thought I found a place I belonged in November 2018, that I had left the ignorance of the West behind.
Try to walk into your first and only political meeting November 5, 2024, not to bring up any big political matter, just a small matter of the little station house dog that disappeared because board members don’t read nor follow the American with Disabilities Act, nor apparently statistics about the positive power of dogs in police stations.
I had prepared with my statistics, firstly that law enforcement is 54% more likely than the general public to die by suicide, that of officers who do report their disability? Between 7-19% already suffer from PTSD, some stats report as high as 66%.
I had wanted to point out that personally I was sexually assaulted 169X between ages 3-12 and that the connection to suicidal ideation and sex abuse is high, and if police stations are treating victims (particularly children) of sex abuse then what can make them feel safer than a small dog?
Like a dog a I was ordered to sit, in New York, but I know my rights aren’t state wide they are Federal and that under the ADA Title II 1993, I will do something that everyone with a disability should do if they feel they are being discriminated against and the ADA and file a complaint.
Sadly, little dogs have no voices, and town supervisors who abuse power, they will start with the things they believe to be weak, and seeing as little dogs can’t speak, then as those who have been serviced by these little magic creatures of life, and are being deprived of the comfort they deserve at a police station with a dedicated trauma dog whom is entitled to be there, we owe it to those who have no voice to be the voice, and we owe it to ourselves, and to educate public officials who feel entitled to violate our Federal rights to remind them that people with disabilities are not weak. We are “differently abled” and as one of “those people” I am going to be the person who makes the report to the Federal Government Department of Justice on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. that the State of New York and a town that has branded itself on It’s a Wonderful Life that when you violate our rights that’s not wonderful, and for anyone else that feels the same use your disability to educate those towns, states, and villages that our wheel chairs are invisible but we are not, and that dogs in Police stations? They are a service and citizens with disabilities shouldn’t have to remind the Supervisor of a town who worked in law enforcement that the chief of Police shouldn’t be punished, nor should his dog be banned for their ignorance.
