I'm Afraid It's Arline

It was 1933 when 5-year old Arline, braces on her legs, gleefully struggled to the waiting car at her mother's behest. She would never return. Little Arline was given a one-way ticket to an institution for the feeble-minded. Unlike most of the others at the institution, Arline's disability was only physical, but with very limited stimulation, opportunity and expectations, Arline soon fit the criteria for being feeble-minded, a result of institutional developmental disability. Eighty-six years later, a young musician meets Arline who is now living in a group home for the developmentally disabled and knowingly approaching death. This musician is intrigued by the heartbreaking stories Arline shares of her life, followed by outrage as he gleans information from other sources and learns of how many children with special needs were removed from society. Children with dyslexia, seizures, autism and other issues we now know are not barriers to unfettered lives were given the worst life sentence of all: a mind prevented from developing. In the film, "I'm Afraid It's Arline," the musician's outrage at the past turns to activism when he learns what happened to Arline is still happening in other parts of the world. Convinced that all right thinking people would not commit this atrocity if they knew better, he sets out to share Arline's story through song, in which he asks the powerful question, "Who pays the time for the crime against the innocent child?" I'm afraid it's Arline...and so many other children. (Based on the play, "It Might Have Been.")