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Von Hilsheimer insists that he is being persecuted. In response to his critics, he claims that 86% of his students go on to live normal lives in the outside world, though he has done no follow-up studies. He is also proud of the fact that there was "only one" suicide at his school. In 1968 a disturbed boy named Michael Waker, 18, killed himself with a pistol Von Hilsheimer had allowed him to purchase; later the boy's mother was billed for the gun. Another boy, depressed to the point of suicide because his mother had just written telling him how peaceful it was at home without him, was also handed a gun by Von Hilsheimer, but he decided not to use it.
Green Valley is not the only school to be scrutinized by the committee. During the hearings, Senate investigators charged that at the University Center, a residential psychiatric-treatment center in Ann Arbor, Mich, (it has no connection with the University of Michigan), students who continually misbehave are locked for days or even months in a "seclusion room." The school, which has received more than $1 million in CHAMPUS funds since 1969, is also accused of being lax about widespread drug use; students who enter the institution with problems other than drug addiction quickly become hooked.
Such revelations may improve the situation at Green Valley and the University Center. But the real problem spreads much further. Senate investigators feel that there are countless private psychiatric facilities round the country that exploit their charges and even use government funds to do so. State and local agencies, which generally have the responsibility of supervising and licensing these facilities, frequently lack the funds and manpower to do an adequate job. Until something is done to change this, the nation will continue to have what Senate investigators call "commercially operated jails."