The adults are still under the purview of Adult Protective Services, though, right? So my hope is that there will still be people outside of the Assisted Living monitoring the situation. The worst abuses at places like this come when unscrupulous or apathetic staff knows that no one is looking out for residents.
I'm also hoping that separation of the children was done by design and in consideration of their respective needs rather than simply because of not having an adequate way of keeping them together. Beyond concerns about independence, amount of attention devoted to individual needs, etc., it has also occurred to me that, while it is very sweet to think of all of these siblings having unambiguously close and loving relationships with one another, that may well not be the case. When you read testimony of Holocaust survivors, one of the terribly dehumanizing elements of the camps that people don't always think of is the way desperation could override someone's normally compassionate and giving nature. Yes, in any situation, there may be heroes who share their crust of bread with someone even weaker, but there are also going to be starving people fighting each other for that final bit of food. In fact, the latter is going to be a lot more common than the former. So I always want to take a step back when I see posts speculating about Survivor 1 giving her food to the others or Survivor 8 finding the strength to escape primarily for her siblings' sake. Because that may be true, but it may not be -- and these children are blameless survivors even if their response to their captivity wasn't always as heroic as we'd like it to be.
