in the school, residents were divided among different wards corresponding to 'hierarchies of disability'. the more capable children were quickly put to work by the school's superintendent, l. j. le vann. 'high-grade' teenage girls scrubbed floors, prepared meals, and dressed the severely disabled, while the boys tended to farmland and milked cows. a former resident, donald passey, personally recalled the physical disciplining by staff members at the school. he was once slapped and punched while held up against the wall; even severely impaired children sometimes suffered physical abuse. glen sinclair, also an ex-student at the pts, described his role at the school as the subject of constant observation. he and his dorm-mates were denied all privacy and prohibited any outside access without consent - even the windows only opened six inches wide3. any attempts at rebellion such as refusal to eat, sleep, wake or work, or even sexual expression, resulted in brutal punishment. this included corporeal beatings, incarceration in time-out rooms, and even enrolment in drug experiments with potent tranquilizers, such as phenobarbital, chlorpromazine, and haloperidol. l. j. le vann often threatened misbehaviour with sterilization, a procedure which soon became customary at the school's hospital. while children were punished for even slight expression of sexuality, the pts nevertheless accommodated the hetero- and homosexual abuse of its students by its staff members.