Decades ago, it was common for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities to be kept in inhumane conditions inside horrific institutions. With the release of his new book, “Becoming Darlene: The Story of Belchertown Patient #4952,” Northampton author Ed Orzechowski wants to shed light on the trauma that one child, Darlene Rameau, faced at the Belchertown State School, a horrifying facility that operated right here in the Pioneer Valley, and help her regain her voice.

Orzechowski will host a book launch event for “Becoming Darlene” at the Florence Civic Center today (Saturday, Nov. 23) from 1 to 3 p.m.

This isn’t Orzechowski’s first book about Belchertown State School: in 2016, he published “‘You’ll Like It Here’ — The Story of Donald Vitkus, Belchertown Patient #3394,” about a boy who was sent to the school as an infant. As it happens, Orzechowski found Rameau because of Vitkus — albeit by accident. As Orzechowski and Vitkus were chatting one day at the now-closed Cup and Top Café in Florence, a staff member on break overheard them and came over to chat. That woman was Darlene Rameau, who’d been a patient at Belchertown State School as a child.

It took some time for Orzechowski to convince Rameau to let him interview her for a book and to build up the trust for her to disclose so much of her childhood trauma to him. From start to finish, the writing process took six years.

The book also begins with the traumas that led her to the school in the first place: her parents’ neglect, which was so bad that Rameau never considered them her parents, and her aunt’s sexual abuse.

When Rameau was sent to Belchertown State School as a young child (she was admitted in 1963 at age 7), she found that it was a nightmarish place, one where girls her age openly defecated and urinated on the floor, where children who misbehaved were sent to an isolation room known as “the doghouse” or got forcibly sedated with Thorazine. Throughout, Rameau was kept company by a few personalities in her head that she later identified as symptoms of dissociative identity disorder.

Even so, she found some moments of happiness – getting the word “smile” tattooed on her hand as a reminder to be happy, watching “Star Trek,” being sent to the Special Olympics. She recounted “a sweet arithmetic lesson,” when a teacher gave her 30 pennies to buy her entire class Squirrel Nut Zippers, Rameau’s favorite candy, which she called “a highlight of my education.”

Rameau spent nearly 11 years at Belchertown State School. She was admitted in October 1963 at age 7, and was discharged in July 1974 at age 17.

Orzechowski noted that even though abuse and neglect were common at Belchertown State School, not everyone who worked there had bad intentions; Rameau mentioned some adults in her childhood who were kind, like an attendant named Marie who drew Rameau a hot bubble bath after she got whipped with a tree branch (to the point of bleeding) as a punishment.

The facility today no longer exists as it did in Rameau’s childhood; it was shuttered in 1992 after years of lawsuits. Much of the property has been demolished or redeveloped; in the past decade, remaining buildings have become targets of arsonists, ghost hunters, and urbexers (urban explorers of manmade structures). Its administration building may someday become a town archive and museum to shed light on the institution’s past.

Rameau, likewise, said in the book that she was initially so “embarrassed and ashamed” of being labeled “retarded” that she requested that her patient records be burned. When she went back to the school’s E Building, one of her former residences, many years later, she became so anxious and distraught that she nearly passed out.

Why, then, did she agree to let Orzechowski interview her for a book identifying her as a former patient — with copies of the minimal records that were not burned printed in the book itself?

When Orzechowski told Rameau that much of the Belchertown State School property had been demolished or redeveloped, she replied, “At one point, it’ll be like we” — that is, patients — “never existed.” 

With the release of this book, Orzechowski hopes that readers learn “what did happen at Belchertown and what still could happen today if institutions were allowed to relapse into those conditions again.”

Rameau, now in her 60s, may speak at the book launch this afternoon, Orzechowski said. She’s been through lots of therapy to process her experiences, and she has two adult sons, Tony and Darren, whom she raised “to see that the world isn’t an awful place,” she told Orzechowski in the book. “And I hope I accomplished that.”

As Rameau said in the book:

“I’m no longer that bitter self-destructive girl who didn’t want to be seen or touched, a non-existent It who hated her own name. I’m in a better place now, content with who I am. I’ve become Darlene.”

Carolyn Brown can be reached at cbrown@gazettenet.com.