Free at Last

Misunderstood for 31 years

When David Tom, a frail young Chinese immigrant in his early 20s, was first admitted to an Illinois mental institution in 1952, all he was able to say in English was "Me no crazy. This nuthouse."

No one listened. Worse, he was never examined by anyone who could speak Chinese. Nearly three decades went by before anyone even tried to understand. In 1978, a social worker at a mental hospital in Manteno, Ill., took Tom to a Chinese restaurant, where he had a conversation in Cantonese dialect with the cook. There was nothing wrong with Tom, the cook told the hospital staff, setting in motion a four-year battle in the state courts to win his release. Tom's long nightmare had begun when, suffering from tuberculosis, he was admitted to a sanatorium. Because what he said seemed incomprehensible, he was later diagnosed as a retarded schizophrenic.

Last week David Tom, now 54, was finally released from the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute in Chicago. His court-appointed public guardian, Patrick Murphy, said, "He's got his freedom now, and if he gets a little happiness on top of that, he'll be lucky." An engaged couple, Peter Porr and San O, who run a center in Chicago for Indochinese immigrants, answered Murphy's appeal for a home for Tom after his release. In the mornings Tom will attend literacy classes, and in the afternoons he will try to learn his way around the outside world.

"He does pretty well, considering the stress he's been under for the past 31 years," says Porr.

Tom and his brother Richard entered the U.S. in 1951 as illegal aliens. Richard testified in court that he knew his brother was not insane, but he did not step forward to help David because he feared deportation. A jury award of $205,000 to David as compensation may "cover the costs of caring for him for the rest of his life," says Murphy. "But it in no way compensates for what he has had to go through. You don't learn anything from a case like Tom's. It's just a tragedy, pure and simple."