Caring for a mentally disabled child — even one free of physical or emotional problems — can be too much for a family to handle.

So, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, parents of about 4,900 mentally retarded Texans placed their children in state schools. They believed these institutions were the safest homes for their fragile children. A damning set of documents shows how wrong these parents were, and how the actions of state government increased their children's vulnerability.

It will take better wages and more staff training if these exceedingly isolated, fragile Texans are to be safe. But basic security — from sexual assault, blows, cruelty and degradation — is the minimum that Texas owes them.

In 2005, the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division swooped down on the Lubbock State School to investigate reports of wrongly drugged and restrained residents. Seventeen residents at the school have died since June 2005.

The school has launched measures to improve care. The Legislature, encouraged by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, pledged $49 million and 1,700 new employees to improve all 12 state schools.

But that was before the Department of Aging and Disability Services released documents from nine more state schools. Since 2005, the state said, about one in every 17 residents each year is abused or neglected.

The stories of cruelty are hard to stomach. There was the Mexia inmate who died when three employees used excess force to restrain him. There was the aide at the Richmond school who let inmates trustingly eat jalapeños and laughed at their pleas for water.

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, a longtime activist for the mentally disabled, said state schools were already underfunded when budget cuts in the last 10 years dramatically slashed the number of employees the schools could afford. Training hours plunged, and entry-level workers replaced experienced caregivers.

Now, although the Legislature has authorized 1,700 new employees, it will struggle to find that number — especially nurses — willing to do this difficult work for salaries that start at just $20,000 a year.

Many of the school workers are devoted to their patients despite the miserable pay. But until Texas funds adequate salaries and training, mentally disabled Texans will still be exposed to subpar, even sadistic caregivers.

The state also must crack down when abusers are caught. Employees who torment their charges psychologically or physically are often doled quick suspensions and sent back to work. But workers with these tendencies have no business being near society's most defenseless members.

It's no coincidence that the worst abuses have taken place in big schools with many patients that are severely impaired — or old enough that family members and other potential defenders are dead. It is time to rework these big institutions into smaller facilities in the heart of Texas communities. The smaller homes would be gentler for patients, more manageable for staffers and more accessible to members of the public, who are the eyes, ears and voices of those who can't fight for themselves.