A judge’s decision this week to award permanent custody of Justina Pelletier to the state scares me.
This is the teenager who spent nearly a year in a locked ward in Boston Children’s Hospital after doctors there disagreed with the family’s diagnosis that Justina was suffering from mitochondrial disease. The Children’s Hospital doctors claim her illness is psychological, and as a result they got a judge to agree to award temporary custody of her to the state.
According to The Boston Globe, Judge Joseph Johnston has now determined that custody of Justina should never be returned to her parents. But the reason isn’t that the family has ever been abusive toward Justina or neglectful, which I always thought were the only reasons children should be taken away from their parents. The reason the judge cited for awarding permanent custody to the state was that Justina’s parents have apparently been argumentative with the people who kept her locked up for a year.
The parents…get this…called Children’s Hospital personnel Nazis, the judge said, and they went so far as to claim “the hospital was punishing and killing Justina.” Moreover, “efforts by hospital clinicians to work with the parents were futile and never went anywhere,” the judge apparently stated in his ruling.
Well, I guess that’s not all. The parents repeatedly “impeded progress” in resolving the case. “Instead of engaging in quality visits with Justina, the parents use profanity directed at MA DCF (Department of Children and Families) personnel in Justina’s presence,” Johnston stated in his ruling. “There is absolutely no meaningful dialogue by the parents to work towards reunification.”
In addition, the family used “haphazard decision-making that he (Johnston) says has sabotaged plans to move their daughter closer to home,” the Globe reported.
Okay, the parents haven’t rolled over like good little victims in this case. But what is the judge accusing them of? Haphazard decision-making? Use of profanity? Failing to engage in quality visits? Failing to engage in meaningful dialogue?
These are reasons to take a child away from her parents?
According to the Globe, the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, of the Washington, D.C.-based Christian Defense Coalition, who has become the parents’ spokesman, said Lou and Linda Pelletier are “outraged” by the decision.
I’m not a member of the Christian Coalition, and I don’t agree with that organization on many issues. But on this issue, I do agree with the Rev. Mahoney. I’m more than outraged. I’m scared for all families.
Also, just to clarify, the Christian Defense Coalition is a division of Operation Rescue and thus not the same as, though possibly worse than, the Christian Coalition.
It was doctors at Tufts Medical center.
It really seems like the Children’s doctors went overboard, and the State backed them up.
is backing up the state. I don’t think this is an isolated case. The same dynamic is playing out, in my view, in the Duzan case. That family was found to have been argumentative with clinicians and thus lost not only their guardianship of their daughter, but all contact with her has been prohibited indefinitely.
And there’s the McDonald case: Another argumentative family member who consequently has been denied guardianship of his son. And the Feeley case: An argumentative mother, who narrowly survived a challenge to her guardianship.
Seems to me that if I am the state I would not be trying to unnecessarily increase the number of children I have to place in the all too few and far between willing and able foster homes.
The three cases I cited are DDS cases in which the family members have threatened, via their scrutiny and advocacy, to derail lucrative contracts with corporate providers.
in the Pelletier case?
and the circumstances surrounding it to suggest money as the clear motive although I would think Children’s Hospital has made quite a bit of money out of holding Justina Pelletier.
What is clearly similar, though, is the lack of deference in the Pelletier case to the family’s views — the consideration of the family by the so-called professionals as ignorant and meddling. It’s the same we-know-what’s-best-for-your-child attitude that is actually at odds, at least with the federal Developmental Disabilities Bill of Rights Act that says the family should be the primary decision-makers in the care of their loved ones.
In all of these cases (other than the Feeley case, which didn’t get that far), probate or other judges have made remarkably similar statements about the families having been uncooperative with providers and clinicians and having somehow inappropriately questioned their authority. I don’t think these judges understand the federal law here. I think they should re-examine their whole paradigm in deciding these cases.
…then after a year of not being treated for that by Children’s she’d be in pretty bad shape. Is she? If not, I could be convinced, if not, it seems like the family might be in the wrong.
Also, I’m pretty quick to jump on the care providers are just in it for the money bandwagon, but I have a really hard time thinking Children’s is doing this for the money. There’s a huge backlash against them from some pretty prominent folks, hardly a money making scheme.
Whether the doctors at Children’s Hospital are right in their diagnosis or not, I don’t think there was ever a valid justification for taking this child away from her parents and keeping her in a locked ward for a year. Neither, it seems to me, is there a valid justification for removing the parents permanently as her guardian because they became argumentative when their daughter was taken away from them.
In terms of making money, I was referring to the DDS cases I linked to in a previous comment.
then the parents were doctor shopping for someone to say she had a disorder she didn’t have and forcing lots of dangerous and unnecessary procedures on her – that’s child abuse. If that’s the case, then they should have their parental rights taken away. No because they were being argumentative, but because it was very likely that they were harming their child and they refused to work with the state in any way to resolve the issue.
I just read the ruling, your characterization is way overblown – you say the judge has ruled that the parents should never get custody, yet they backdated the order to December so the first six month visit designed to test whether she could go back to her parents could be in June. Your conflating the financial incentives in an unrelated case to this one are at best bad argument, at worst trickery. You might have a point to make about the state overplaying its hand, you might have a point about the profit incentives of private contractors, but I don’t think you’re making them here.
Doesn’t the state have to PAY to place children, whether placement services or the families themselves?
It’s a politically wired process. I suggest you read the posts I linked to for the elaboration you’re seeking.
I’m skeptical of the money angle. These are health care professionals, including doctors. I’m not saying that they’re not (also) motivated by money, but my guess is something less cynical and more human — ego.
Children’s has plenty of easier ways to make money.
Once Childrens and DCF start moving in one direction they just don’t want to admit that they’ve made a mistake- especially when they’ve taken such drastic action as removing this poor girl from her parents.
“The judge’s ruling reinforces his earlier decision that the state child protection agency met its burden, during closed-door juvenile court hearings late last year, of proving the Pelletiers were unfit to handle their child’s complex needs and should not be restored custody of their child.
The legal burden now largely shifts to the parents to prove, with new evidence, that they are fit caregivers and deserve a new chance to regain custody. The parents are allowed to submit new information to the judge at most once every six months.”
That’s hardly a “police state”.
But I’m concerned about the mindset of judges who seem to think it is acceptable to remove a child from her parents, not because the parents are abusive, but because the judge considers the the parents to be uncooperative with authorities. That’s a dangerous judicial point of view IMHO. I’m concerned that that mindset is becoming so pervasive in the judiciary that while the parents have a right to appeal, they are very likely to lose at that level too.
While another set of doctors are not? And what criteria do the judges use for that determination? If it’s the parent’s being impolite, how is that enough?
There are obviously a lot of private details that have not been reported, and rightly so, so I really have no idea what is really going on with this case.
I am really sick of hearing about it all the time and selfishly hoped that the judge would let her go home so that I don’t have to hear any more inane reporting on this case.
The Pelletiers have also been refused a second opinion. I’ve also heard that they’ve now lost all rights to visitation, although I haven’t been able to confirm that yet. I can’t even imagine how I would react if this happened to me. The whole thing is just awful.
I highly recommend reading the judge’s ruling here. There are two sides to this story.
This is scary, and the heavy-handed tactics will have an effect beyond just the Pelletiers. There are parents who will hesitate to bring their sick kid to the hospital because they fear what could happen if they cross the wrong doc- and that that fears is not totally unreasonable, unfortunately. That creates a health risk for those kids and those around them.
Read the judge’s ruling, please — here. If these are “heavy-handed tactics” then surely CT authorities would be eager to intervene in this case on behalf of the citizens of their state. But, as the judge makes clear is his ruling, he wants to return Justina to CT, but CT DCF refuses to take custody of her while strongly recommending that she not be returned to her parents. CT DCF look really bad here — you deal with the headaches caused by the hysterical parents, not us.
It disgusts me. For the judge to claim that the very belief that their child had been unjustly taken away & acts to try to get her back their child as justification to keep them from their child is probably the cruelest incarnation of circular logic in the long history of circular logic.
And any decent parent would be hysterical is their kid was taken away. It may be just a “headache” to you and the CT DCF (I wouldn’t speak for them), but peoples whole lives are in the balance.
The original use of “catch 22”, from the novel, was the rule that Yossarian want to exploit to return home — a pilot who was insane was not fit for duty, and was to be relieved. The catch? Any pilot who said he wanted to return home was, by definition, not insane.
This decision suggests to me that the entire organization is some disgusting cross between the military of Catch 22 and the Vogons from Hitchhiker’s Guide.
As a parent of five, I suggest that this sorry episode is but one of many where the laws and organization of this state casually tramples normal and healthy parental rights and concerns — especially if that parent happens to be male.
The parents are wholly innocent, so anything the judge says just reinforces your opinion about how awfully they’re being treated. It must be strange to live in such a black and white world. I’m seeing lots of grays here.
What are you talking about? Being annoyingly pushy is not a reason to have your kid taken away. You seem to think that because these people might be personally irritating and/or unsophisticated in their dealings with medical and state authorities that it’s a little ok that this happened. That’s nuts.
See all the grays you want, it should be a higher standard to rearrange lives by force.
The state claims the father threatened the life of one of the social workers. Let’s be clear about something. Children’s Hospital felt that the parents were treating her for a condition she didn’t have – that’s medical child abuse. The state agreed with the doctor’s at Children’s and not the doctors at Tufts. This is a case where suspected child abuse PLUS a pattern of refusing to cooperate with authorities (in your words, being pushy) cased the state to take this action.
The state wanted to discharge the girl from the hospital, yet somehow the media was alerted where this was going to happen. Do you think it was the state that told the press or the parents? This caused the girl to have to stay in a locked ward. Even if you don’t blame the parents for that, the parents had reached an agreement where they would take custody of the girl with some state supervision. All of a sudden they change their mind and say that MA DCF and CT DCF can’t be involved at all. This goes beyond just being pushy – these people have been accused of abusing their child – the state thinks there is some strong evidence to support that claim, yet the parents refuse to allow the state to be involved at all. To me, that’s not circular logic, that’s the state doing its job.
he threatened his life. According to the court decision, the parents were threatening to revoke people’s licenses and call the FBI.
Also, the parents did not come up on their own with a diagnosis that differed from the Children’s Hospital diagnosis. This is a case of two sets of doctors disagreeing with each other. How does that translate into the parents being involved in medical child abuse?
That case was called “Adoption of Betsy”. (Amberpaw was the appeals attorney for the mother whose 3 young children were taken away).
DSS had a number of complaints against the mother, but few, if any concerned the treatment of her children. The agency’s main complaint was that the mother tried to overstay her visits with her children and argued with DSS workers who tried to cut short her visits.
I applied to be a foster parent for the children. After a long series of interviews, ostensibly to determine my fitness as a parent, I received a rejection letter. The only reason given was that I had previously written to DSS complaining about their treatment of the mother.
I don’t like our police state status turns on a custody hearing.
But there is this.
Sorry, tired.
It doesn’t sound as though you ever faced former judge Edward Ginsburg in a custody hearing. He may not have aimed any guns, but I assure you had an arsenal of weapons and obviously enjoyed displaying them to the men (never the women) facing him.
meets the eye in this case. I’m willing to accept that our state bureaucracies and judicial system sometimes abuse their power, but this strikes me as a situation with a lot of missing information.
For example, why won’t Connecticut assume jurisdiction? It’s clear from the judge’s report that Massachusetts doesn’t want it. The people are from Connecticut…
There doesn’t seem to be a simple way to diagnose mitochondrial disease. I know of two kids that have it. Their symptoms are severe to the point of life-threatening. What are the ambiguities of diagnosis here? Why not have a third opinion?
And what’s the story with the parents bringing in some wingnut advocate? It makes me wonder what sort of prejudice they might have against a diagnosis of mental illness.
This is Kafka for the 21st Century.
because they never actually substantiated an issue of abuse or neglect on the part of the family. I agree that a third opinion of the diagnosis might have been helpful here.
I hope we don’t continue to blame the parents for everything that’s happened to them. They’ve been blamed for bringing too much media attention to the case and now for bringing in a “wingnut advocate.” My guess is they were approached by this advocate and agreed to take whatever help they could get.
the parents to make any sort of assumptions about them. Just wondering about the whole thing.
This sounds like a situation where some phone calls to some state reps and senators in Connecticut would be in order. This has the making of some bad press here, but these people live in CT. They should be getting some constituent service, even if Connecticut’s DCF doesn’t want to handle it.
“I hope we don’t continue to blame the parents for everything that’s happened to them.”
I’ve seen precious little blaming of the parents in this whole head-scratching conversation. They seem to be their own worst enemies in this whole sorry case, but the people posting here seem to be falling all over themselves to blame everyone except the parents.
about what had been said than what might be said following my comment. Generally, we’re all pretty nice, but things periodically degenerate.
Good job of blaming the parents, there.
I do blame the parents, actually. Everyone is happy to condemn hospitals, judges, and various state agencies (of multiple states!!) because clearly the parents are complete innocents who are only behaving the way any decent parents would after losing custody of their daughter.
But you know what? No. NO. If you are a decent parent, you grasp the situation you’re dealing with and realize that, for the good of your family, you need to chill for a second. Stop threatening to sue everyone in sight. Stop raising hell. Do you actually want your daughter back? Then, you figure out how to control yourselves. On the other hand, you want to condemn your daughter to years of state custody? Just keep doing what you’re doing — it’s working great.
they were told the hospital was taking their child away from them, and we all know you should never panic in those situations. But then again, try to tell that to someone who’s drowning, for instance: “Hey, chill for a second and try to control yourself, you’re only making things worse by flailing around.”
By the way, you said earlier you’ve seen precious little blaming of the parents. How about Judge Johnston, for starters? No, these parents aren’t their own worst enemies. There are many others filling that role for them.
Methinks the DCF and the judge have little interest other than their own. But, don’t they both work for the same state?
And what of the nutmeg state? The victims are from that state.
They both have governors. Can one phone call (OK, maybe a conference call) get this resolved with the involved parties? Is there leadership enough in both state houses for that?
“If you’re a politician, you might want to learn the Buddhist way of negotiation. Restoring communication and bringing back reconciliation is clear and concrete in Buddhism.” –Thich Nhat Hanh
in a case like this. You’re right, it would seem it probably could be solved with one phone call. But then, it would get reported in the media that the governor got personally involved. The governor would then be accused (by the losing side) of overstepping his authority and meddling in the affairs of the judiciary and/or the agencies that are duly constituted to decide these things (even though, in this case, the entire system seems to have failed this young woman, in particular).
Nobody’s happy, and nobody’s calling the parents “complete innocents.” How about addressing the question everyone else is asking: what is there about the parents’ behavior that actually justifies taking their child away? I’m not seeing it, and you’re not showing it to me.
Children’s Hospital thinks they were treating her for a disorder she didn’t have. They felt she was being put in danger and needed to be taken away. The court ruled that she has what Children’s says she has – the parents refuse to believe that and are unwilling to cooperate on coming up with a agreed treatment plan. At the end of the day, this really should be determined by medical professionals – were the parents doctor shopping or were they acting in the best interest of their child? What’s the real diagnosis?
of someone’s illness and believes that person may therefore be in danger, a state agency should be called in to forcibly remove the patient from the first doctor’s care? How does the state determine which doctor is right? Does the patient have any say in it, or do the patient’s parents have any say, if the patient happens to be a child?
And I don’t believe that really think that either.
Obviously this should only be an issue if the parents are demanding unnecessary treatment that could cause harm. I think that sometimes people forget that medical treatments can sometimes cause great harm, permanent damage or even death. The risk of the treatment has to be appropriate to the benefits it would provide. When parents demand treatment whose risk greatly outweighs any benefits, then the State has an interest to step in on behalf of the child; likewise if the parents were to refuse treatment (e.g. for religious reasons perhaps) that is deemed medically necessary.
Having said that. I still don’t feel that we really know the facts of the case, so I have no idea who the heroes or villains are in this story.
as if they are somehow acting completely on their own in this case, when, in fact, they were acting on the advice of doctors. Another team of doctors then happened to disagree with the first team.
In any event, my question still stands: should the parents have a say in the matter when two sets of doctors disagree over the diagnosis of their child? In simply siding with one set of doctors, do the parents give the other set of doctors a reason to take their child away from them?
I very clear said “*if* the parents are demanding unnecessary treatment”.
I think that I have been pretty clear in stating that I don’t feel that I know if enough about the facts of this case to say who is in the right or wrong here. In particular, we don’t really know what the child has to say about any of this.
I can easily imagine that either or both sides of this could be in the wrong.
a current effort to investigate the doctors that have been performing the risky treatments that can sometimes cause great harm, permanent damage or even death. Prescribing dangerous, harmful medications by a professional without any legitimate purpose is cause for serious concern. When can we expect for those physicians to have their medical licenses revoked for putting their patients at risk?
If this is about medical abuse, why aren’t the abusers being prosecuted?
If the parents complied with the treatment plan of the 2nd set of doctors, the 1st medical team should file charges against the parents for medical child abuse.
Doctors frequently offer different diagnosis. Which is why getting a 2nd opinion is perfectly reasonable. Tufts is hardly filled with quackery any more than Childrens.
What we have here, is the parents judgement being substituted by the state. If we held the state to the same standards that the parents are being held to, the state would likely be deemed unfit.
Lost in all of this, was a happy well cared for child ripped from a loving family and friends. Does the state have the time and resources to give her the love and support she received from her family. Do they care that she loves to skate? that she has friends and a teen life? that a quality education is important for her future?
They put her in a locked psychiatric ward for goodness sakes. Where is the evidence that there has been marked improvement and that she is thriving?
I’m sorry, but I have a hard time getting too worked up over this.
The state has been removing children from divorced fathers for decades on far weaker grounds and with far fewer complaints. In many cases, there are NO grounds — if the mother wants the father out of the picture, he’s gone — no evidence necessary.
Here’s how the process works:
1. The mother tells a court official that she is “in fear” of the father. That official is obligated to issue a 60-day 209-A restraining order.
2. The father is now prohibited from any access to his child at all, as two months pass.
3. At the end of 60 days, the mother tells the court that the children have adjusted to life without the father, and that to reintroduce the father into their lives would be “disruptive” to them. In the interest of protecting the well-being of the children, the father should be excluded from their lives.
This process has been standard operating procedure for divorced fathers for at least the nearly three decades since my first divorce. The mere threat of this procedure allows multitudes of mothers to plunder the homes and other assets of the fathers they are divorcing, because fathers who (like me) love their children give up their houses (like I did mine) rather than lose access to their children.
I don’t know what the truth is about this case. I do know, very well, the sacrifices I had to make (specifically including economic sacrifices) to keep my access to my five children. Learning how to keep my mouth shut, smile, and walk away quietly from OUTRAGEOUS actions and statements by the Court, by other attorneys, and of course by the other side was pretty much lesson number one.
I suggest we find a another goal for us to focus our energies on — this dog won’t hunt.
as I obviously know nothing about it. There may very well be no grounds in yours and many other child custody cases for the removal of children from their fathers. My sense is the court system has come to side with mothers in these types of divorce cases because, when domestic violence and child abuse occurs, it is usually the male parent that is the perpetrator (correct me if I’m wrong). Domestic violence is a pervasive societal problem. That’s not to defend the courts in your case, but to try to offer some possible explanation for the decision-making.
The Pelletiers have had their children taken away by authorities because they have been found to be uncooperative with clinicians. They aren’t the only ones this has happened to, but I don’t see that being argumentative with clinicians has been a pervasive societal problem. I think we have to rethink the state and judicial responses to all of these types of cases.
You are absolutely right that domestic violence is a huge problem. You are also absolutely right that the perpetrator is usually male.
Here’s the rub. The divorce rate is MUCH higher than the domestic violence rate (thankfully). About 50% of marriages end in divorce. The domestic violence rate is surely less than that (I’m interested in that number). If you look at the number of 209a’s issued, I think you’ll find that most of them are done so in the context of divorce actions. Sadly, an all-too-common scenario is that a 209a is filed against a loving and non-abusive father who seeks to retain access to his child. The current system may well be effective at addressing the problem it targets. It does so, however, by forcing large numbers of loving and non-abusive fathers to lose access to their children. In statistical terms, it has very high false-positive rate in order to minimize it’s false-negative rate.
The *standard formula*, in a divorce, is that the mother gets sole physical custody with a “visitation schedule” ordered by the court and the parents receive shared legal custody. The court’s response to the increasing number of fathers who seek greater access has been to interpret that as increasing the likelihood of conflict and to restrict the access of fathers even further.
Again, this standard formula means that any deviation must be explained to the court. While that is straightforward in friendly non-contentious divorce actions, it is nearly impossible when the mother and father disagree.
You state that “The Pelletiers have had their children taken away by authorities because they have been found to be uncooperative with clinicians”, but I graciously remind you that that has not been established as fact. That is, in fact, your characterization of what’s happened.
We agree that we must rethink the extent to which state and judicial responses inappropriately block access of loving parents to their children. In my view, a good starting point is to identify the reforms most likely to address the highest number of improper interventions.
Sadly, by that yardstick, the terrible things done to fathers in and after divorce actions is far and away the better starting point. In a state where the *presumption* is still that the mother is the appropriate custodial parent (meaning that the burden of proof is on the father to show otherwise), the number of divorced fathers is hundreds or thousands of times higher than the number of parents hurt by the situation you bring up here.
Most tragically, the number of Massachusetts children scarred for life by being torn away from loving and caring fathers is ENORMOUS — far higher than the number of children suffering from the dysfunction we agree is happening in this case.
against fathers in child custody cases. But I’m not sure that strictly going by the apparent number of cases is the best standard in judging the seriousness of these situations. It might appear that the Pelletier case is unique, but Ithink it is a sign of a much larger problem. That problem has to do with is the dismissal by authorities of the rights, wishes, and even the expertise of families in general — not only fathers.
In the world of developmental disabilities, it is becoming more and more the case that the “experts” know better about what is good for people than their closest family members, who may have cared for them their whole lives. You may think your son is benefiting from his sheltered workshop, but we know better that it’s too institutional for him, and we’re closing it down.
You may think your daughter needs 24-hour nursing care, but we know better than you. If you argue with us about that, we will tell a probate court judge that you are unfit as a parent, and the judge will believe us and not you. This kind of thing happens all the time. Maybe the judicial bias against fathers is part of this same overall problem.
We are only talking about this because the media is so rabidly focused on this story. How often do cases like this really come up?
Shouldn’t we be more concerned with the *much* more common issues involving custody of children of families that are splitting up? I guess that is too boring and mundane to talk about here…
Are you seriously saying the father has no standing to challenge the restraining order? Seems like there needs to be at least probable cause before issuing an order based essentially on hearsay. If so who came up with that messed up logic? At step three why don’t more judges push back on the mother’s assertion? It seems to me that if the father were not abusive most children would love to see their father again after two months of forced separation. What would happen if the father played the fear card instead of the mother?
All the mother has to do is say “I’m in fear”. That’s it, an automatic 60 days. This was because too many women were getting killed and beaten by abusive husbands who were informed of an upcoming court hearing.
Anyone who wants to can visit a probate court and witness what I’ve described for themselves. The “logic” of step 3 is well-established in precedent. It’s a formula, a formula used by attorneys for mothers and known of by attorneys for fathers. The 209a law is written to protect women, not men. That, too, is just the way it is.
I understand the motivations for this law and agree that something was needed. I’m just saying that we’ve had plenty of time to address the unintended consequences of the current law and we haven’t done so.
So, to come back to your first point, that is exactly what I’m saying. The father can challenge an extension, and the father can show evidence that the order wasn’t necessary, and that is irrelevant to the first 60-day order.
At the end of those sixty days, the deed is done. Welcome to the world of divorced fathers in Massachusetts.
When you say that a mother just has to say she’s in fear the imagery that pops into my head is the Robespierre Reign of Terror where someone simply had to say you were a royalist and it was off to the guillotine with you. Somewhere along the line a father with a stellar record and reputation needs to appeal this as far up as possible and maybe even invoke the Constitution. It seems he is not being afforded the equal protection of the laws as states are required to do per the 14th amendment.
Divorcing spouses of both genders often become irrationally vindictive. When they do, any tactic that hurts their ex is seen as fair, because the target has ruined their life, or whatever. Also unfortunately, a stellar record and reputation is not much of a shield when an accusation of child or sex abuse is used. That kind of thing trumps a lifetime of righteous behavior, because it’s so hard to disprove, and because so many people tend to believe it. This situation is absolutely not helped by the many such crimes committed by people like priests, coaches, and scout leaders, who are generally held up as role models.
We, as a society, really need to find a way to protect abuse victims and the rights of the accused at the same time. So far, we haven’t.
…is that the judge do what to me is obviously his/her job and demand SOMETHING resembling actual evidence beyond a spouse’s say so knowing, as you point out, that things can get vindictive fast. It doesn’t even have to be beyond a reasonable doubt, but seems the accuser needs to meet some burden and some presumption of innocense in play. We hear about the role models who betray trust, but they are news because they are the exceptions. For every person who commits such acts in those positions there are scores who do not.
I enthusiastically agree with you.
Nevertheless, the current practice has been in place since the law was passed in 1978. Whatever you or I might ask is NOT how Massachusetts judges have been handling this for more than thirty years.
“Suspicion of child abuse” – based on the parents’ trusting one set of doctors and not another? Please.
“Doctor shopping,” and “demanding unnecessary treatment” – based on nothing, as far as I can tell. My impression is that the Tufts doctors were treating the girl before Children’s got involved. Since I don’t have access to the medical records – and neither do any of you – how about we throttle back the speculation about stuff there’s no evidence of?
From Slate:
From the Globe:
And again, from the Globe:
You can disagree with the facts and the way they’re interpreted, but the family has been accused of medical child abuse, doctor shopping and demanding unnecessary treatment. You’ are wrong.
The reason I say that is that I still have yet to see an answer my questions:
1. How can a family be accused of medical child abuse if they are acting on the advice of a doctor or doctors?
2. How can doctor-shopping, firing multiple providers — in short, anything other than physical abuse or neglect — be a justification for removing a child from her parents?
…my dad was diagnosed with cancer at (fill in the blank) one of the best hospitals in the world. He was put on the “protocol” assembly line of treatment. Within a wek he went from a vibrant, but sick, man to weak, incoherent and asking for a priest. I went in with him for his radiation treatment and what I learned was horrifying. His primary doc was no longer overseeing him–because he had cancer and was transferred to oncology–but his oncologist was going on a two week vacation the day he was assigned my dad.
As I watched my dad sink in and out of dementia I noticed a sign that stated patient’s rights in the hospital. The first right was to know the name of the doctor that was treating them. So I asked a resident the name of the doctor currently overseeing my dad’s case. He replied that my dad was in-between doctors and actually no one was supervising his case. Well, you can imagine my reaction.
I walked up and down the halls of this great hospital for hours, finally planting myself in the office of the head of oncology demanding that my dad be examined and evaluated by an oncologist (which had not happened yet). After the official evaluation, it was determined that the automatic protocol–that was not being supervised by an attending physician–was causing my dad to become woefully dehydrated and explained his weakness and disorientation. They admitted him and got his strength back.
Looking at this situation and the “blame the bad attitude of the parents” and I have to wonder if I could have been accused of “elder abuse” for the hell I raised trying to get by dad treated as a patient and not a specimen that requires a medical protocol?
From my prospective, this is a case of a family being crushed by powerful bureaucratic egos covering their asses. First it as a battle between medical egos: Tufts vs Children’s. Then Children’s teamed up with their bureaucratic allies at DCF to swat away the annoying parents. Like me, I’m sure the parents did not behave in a “cool” way. For me, it worked. For the parents, it was the start of an incredible nightmare.
this one, in which an impersonal, bureaucratic system fails us and may even put our lives or the lives of our loved ones at risk, or worse? Your story brings back my mother’s case just a few years ago. She was living in Columbia, SC, near to my brother and happened to have a heart attack. My brother called an ambulance, which brought her to one of the city’s main hospitals. When they arrived at the ER, they found it was closed for the weekend. It was an inconvenient time for a heart attack.
Like you, my brother ran up and down the halls, yelling for help. None was forthcoming, so the paramedics wheeled her back out of the hospital, back to ambulance, and on to another hospital. This time, they called ahead, and thankfully, that hospital’s ER was open. But the lost time in going to the first hospital contributed to my mother having a stroke while in the second hospital, which turned out to be fatal.
All this by way of saying that we’ve seen the system fail so many times, and yet, there is an impulse to blame the families or parents when these cases happen to make the news. The parents should just learn to control themselves. They’re demanding some unreasonable privilege (I love that one!) They’re just in it for the publicity. They can’t be right because a state agency or a judge has found them to be at fault.
I think some of this stems from an impulse to believe authority figures in these situations, regardless of the evidence.