HARD CANDY: Nobody Ever Flies Over the Cuckoo's Nest

This is a true story and what happened to the brothers is an American crime. it is Charles Carroll and his brother, Bobby, had the misfortune of being hard-to-place foster children in New Jersey in the 1950s. So the powers that be simply reclassified them from orphan, to retarded, and exiled them to a state mental institution. There they remained for nearly ten years, deprived of their civil liberties, devoid of their right to an education, and denied any semblance of a humane existence.

Beneath the sanitized facade of the institution's administrative offices and visiting rooms were cramped dormitories and dank basement hellholes. Lazy and inept personnel foisted off supervision of these children to ruthless monitors, children themselves, who maintained order through methods so sadistic and horrific, that child abuse seems a chillingly inadequate label. Charles was a victim of an uncaring, ignorant, and underfunded system, one that was kept just out of the view of polite society; hence, this true story is an American tragedy. It is a human portrayal of an uncommon nature, and no one thing contributes more to its value than its authenticity, It gives you a glimpse into the protected world of institutional “bad players, “administrators, monitors, and teachers who stood side by side with idiots and madmen and committed atrocities that caused many children to flee into an unconventional brand of protection because there was no legitimate protection for them. It also shines a light on children forced to remain in darkened basements, drained of their childhood vigor, rocking on sore tailbones alone and afraid, who were later released into the community to carry their emotional wounds for the rest of their lives--and this was the coup de grace of the state's final blow. This story is about human triumph and courage; how two brothers cared for each other when no one else would; how they understood each other when no one else did; and how they desperately clung to the needed components of love and friendship to survive, together, their ultimate victory from systemic governmental and bureaucratic misconduct.