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About
On April 29, 2012, a private world of deceit and neglect came crashing down when Guy Mitchell, a 38-year-old man with developmental disabilities, died confused and alone, thrashing in a dark underground tank on the rural property where he lived.
When police arrived, they found a far larger crime scene: a house of horror where Guy had been living with two other vulnerable individuals under the care of a young woman with serious psychological issues. The home had no running water and no heat. Human waste filled the toilets and covered bathtubs, walls, and floors. There was no food in the kitchen, and mounds of dirty laundry and garbage cluttered most rooms. Yet the agency overseeing the home gave it a pass just two days before Guy's death.
Blame: Death, Disability, and the Search for Justice for Guy Mitchell attempts to find meaning and justice in the tragic death of a vulnerable individual whose circle of care failed him. Moving between the coroner's inquest and flashing back to real-time events, author Dustin Galer explores what happened to Guy Mitchell in meticulous detail. As each layer of Guy's support system is peeled back and examined, new facts emerge that reveal yet another missed opportunity to intervene in a rapidly deteriorating situation. Dramatic nonfiction that reads like a legal thriller, Blame resists easy answers, exposing a tangled web of negligence, indifference, and systemic failure and probing the deeper structural forces behind Guy's death. What emerges is a powerful indictment of a broken system and a strong argument that the duty to care for society's most vulnerable ultimately lies with us all. Told through the lens of a dramatic inquest, the story of the life and death of a man with developmental disabilities, unfolding in flashbacks to reveal a web of culpability that grows increasingly complex as the author seeks who is to blame and ultimately implicates us all.
Dustin Galer is an award-winning writer, biographer, and historian known for his writing on disability history and labor. He has his doctorate in history from the University of Toronto and is the author of Beryl: The Making of a Disability Activist and Working Towards Equity: Disability Rights Activism and Employment in Late Twentieth-Century Canada. He lives in Hamilton, ON.
Sales and Market Bullets
• AN INTERNATIONAL ISSUE: In April 2024, the BBC reported on gross neglect in a care home when Marcus Hanlin, a resident with Down syndrome, died in care. In 2019, the Australian government established the Disability Royal Commission to investigate violence and abuse of people with disabilities in institutional care, which has shifted public attention significantly (though implementation of the recommendations remains fraught). While Blame focuses on the tragic Canadian case of Guy Mitchell, it shines a light on failures worldwide.
• INTEREST IN DISABILITY RIGHTS ON THE RISE: For followers of disability Twitter, readers of Disability Visibility (Alice Wong), and Care Work (Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha) and viewers of documentaries such as Crip Camp and Tell Them You Love Me.
• AN AUTHORITY ON THE SUBJECT MATTER: Dustin Galer is deeply entrenched in the disability activism space and has written Beryl: The Making of a Disability Activist and Working Towards Equity: Disability Rights Activism and Employment in Late Twentieth-Century Canada. For Blame, Galer made sure to consult Guy Mitchell's family to humanize Guy and present an empathetic and true story of his circle of care and the many systems and institutions that failed to protect him.
• ADDRESSES A LARGE COMMUNITY THAT IS WIDELY UNDERREPRESENTED: According to the 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability, approximately 1.5% of Canadians (456K) have a developmental disability. Many of these individuals need institutional or government-funded support. As the population globally begins to age, the number of indi
When police arrived, they found a far larger crime scene: a house of horror where Guy had been living with two other vulnerable individuals under the care of a young woman with serious psychological issues. The home had no running water and no heat. Human waste filled the toilets and covered bathtubs, walls, and floors. There was no food in the kitchen, and mounds of dirty laundry and garbage cluttered most rooms. Yet the agency overseeing the home gave it a pass just two days before Guy's death.
Blame: Death, Disability, and the Search for Justice for Guy Mitchell attempts to find meaning and justice in the tragic death of a vulnerable individual whose circle of care failed him. Moving between the coroner's inquest and flashing back to real-time events, author Dustin Galer explores what happened to Guy Mitchell in meticulous detail. As each layer of Guy's support system is peeled back and examined, new facts emerge that reveal yet another missed opportunity to intervene in a rapidly deteriorating situation. Dramatic nonfiction that reads like a legal thriller, Blame resists easy answers, exposing a tangled web of negligence, indifference, and systemic failure and probing the deeper structural forces behind Guy's death. What emerges is a powerful indictment of a broken system and a strong argument that the duty to care for society's most vulnerable ultimately lies with us all. Told through the lens of a dramatic inquest, the story of the life and death of a man with developmental disabilities, unfolding in flashbacks to reveal a web of culpability that grows increasingly complex as the author seeks who is to blame and ultimately implicates us all.
Dustin Galer is an award-winning writer, biographer, and historian known for his writing on disability history and labor. He has his doctorate in history from the University of Toronto and is the author of Beryl: The Making of a Disability Activist and Working Towards Equity: Disability Rights Activism and Employment in Late Twentieth-Century Canada. He lives in Hamilton, ON.
Sales and Market Bullets
• AN INTERNATIONAL ISSUE: In April 2024, the BBC reported on gross neglect in a care home when Marcus Hanlin, a resident with Down syndrome, died in care. In 2019, the Australian government established the Disability Royal Commission to investigate violence and abuse of people with disabilities in institutional care, which has shifted public attention significantly (though implementation of the recommendations remains fraught). While Blame focuses on the tragic Canadian case of Guy Mitchell, it shines a light on failures worldwide.
• INTEREST IN DISABILITY RIGHTS ON THE RISE: For followers of disability Twitter, readers of Disability Visibility (Alice Wong), and Care Work (Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha) and viewers of documentaries such as Crip Camp and Tell Them You Love Me.
• AN AUTHORITY ON THE SUBJECT MATTER: Dustin Galer is deeply entrenched in the disability activism space and has written Beryl: The Making of a Disability Activist and Working Towards Equity: Disability Rights Activism and Employment in Late Twentieth-Century Canada. For Blame, Galer made sure to consult Guy Mitchell's family to humanize Guy and present an empathetic and true story of his circle of care and the many systems and institutions that failed to protect him.
• ADDRESSES A LARGE COMMUNITY THAT IS WIDELY UNDERREPRESENTED: According to the 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability, approximately 1.5% of Canadians (456K) have a developmental disability. Many of these individuals need institutional or government-funded support. As the population globally begins to age, the number of indi