Massachusetts DCF Head And Those Responsible For Justina Pelletier's Imprisonment! This Case Is So Bad That Someone Should Pay!

Scandal-Ridden Massachusetts DCF Agrees To Free Justina

June 5, 2014 by Bob Livingston 

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The Connecticut girl kidnapped by the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families and imprisoned in Boston Children’s Hospital for more than year has been cleared to return home by the courts. But she has not yet been released, as the legal system continues to drag its feet.

Last week, Justina’s family and attorneys with the Liberty Council filed a motion in Juvenile Court requesting she be returned to her parents, Linda and Lou Pelletier. Massachusetts DCF indicated it would not object to the motion.

In mid-May, Justina was transferred from Massachusetts to a Connecticut facility. Since then, she has been receiving treatment from Tufts Medical Center, the same place she received treatment before her kidnapping by the State of Massachusetts in February 2013.

“Today is a significant event for Justina and the Pelletier family,” Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, who is representing the Pelletier family, said May 30. “We believe and hope that the Pelleteir family will soon be reunited.

“After nearly 16 months of separation, Justina requires much healing; physically, emotionally and spiritually,” said Staver. “The completion of the Plan is a very positive development and brings us almost full circle to where this process started, before DCF took custody of Justina: Tufts Medical Center is finally providing Justina’s healthcare once more.”

While under the care of her doctor at Tufts Medical Center, Justina was living a fairly normal life with her parents in West Hartford, Conn., despite suffering from mitochondrial disease, a genetic condition that has required several surgeries and continued medication prescribed by specialists. But when her parents took to her Boston Children’s to have her treated for symptoms of the flu, doctors there changed her diagnosis to somatoform disorder, took her off her medications and contacted DCF. The Pelleteirs were then escorted from the hospital.

Justina was then placed in a psychiatric ward, where she was denied medications that were working and had others forced upon her without her parents’ consent. Her health has since deteriorated to the point that she often needs a wheelchair. Her parents, meanwhile, were cast into an alternate universe for 15 months where the DCF and courts cast aspersions on their character, conspired to keep them separated from their daughter, prevented them from consulting on her care and silenced them with gag orders.

Last month, DCF head Olga Roche was forced to resign under pressure from Massachusetts legislators who expressed concern over various DCF funding misappropriation scandals involving several now dead children under the agency’s supervision, as well as its treatment of Justina.

That agency, as well as the State’s family court system and several other State agencies, are now under the gun, thanks to a trial revealing massive corruption in various State offices.

For more on the history of Justina’ plight, read Hospitals Are The New Prisons and It’s 14 Months Of Torture For Justina Pelletier.

The Justina Pelletier Story--Kidnapped By DCF, Taken Away From Her Parents, She Now Appears To Be Being Abused By The Very Agency Which Is Supposed To Care For Her.

‘Shocking Note’ Apparently Penned by Justina Pelletier to Her Parents

Apr. 15, 2014 1:39pm Liz Klimas

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The Connecticut teen who has been in state custody for more than a year after her parents were accused of medical child abuse after disputing a diagnosis has apparently penned a note, giving a look into how she says she’s being treated.

“They hurt me all the time push me all the time and more,” the purported note from Justina Pelletier says. It also says “[they] do not let me sleep vary [sic] much.

“Hury [sic]!”

Image source: Personhood USA

Keith Mason, president of Personhood USA, a group helping lead the Free Justina Coalition, told TheBlaze that Justina gave the note to her parents a few weeks ago.

“There has been some hesitation to release it because of how tyrannical the DCF has been,” Mason said.

Mason called the note “troubling” and said it’s “part of the reason we’ve put a lot of urgency on this campaign.” He said he thinks Justina is referring to her treatment by DCF employees and staff at Wayside Youth and Family Network, a facility in Framingham, Mass., where Justina has been living for the last few months as a ward of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families.

Lou Pelletier, Justina’s father, told TheBlaze that Justina snuck her parents the note.

“She’s very intelligent and figures out ways to sneak us stuff,” he said. “She’s been risking life and limb to get any bit of information to us.”

In-person visits with Justina, which happen once a week on Fridays, are supervised by DCF staff, he said.

Pressed for more details about the note, including why some of the content was cut off at the top in the image provided, Lou Pelletier became animated, frequently citing his frustration with the case and said published news reports seem to have resulted in DCF crackdowns on allowing Justina to communicate with them.

“She’s being allowed to be tortured in this country, I’ll leave it at that,” he said.

Personhood USA, which originally released the image in its press release, did not immediately return a request from TheBlaze for a complete image of the note.

The case surrounding 15-year-old Justina began last year when her parents, Lou and Linda Pelletier, brought her to Boston Children’s Hospital to see a gastrointestinal specialist while she was suffering from the flu. Justina had previously been diagnosed with mitochondrial disease by a doctor at Tufts Medical Center. She had been receiving treatment for the disorder, which manifests itself in various ways, impacting the function of the energy producing organelles of cells.

When admitted to Boston Children’s, her parents say, another doctor disagreed with the mitochondrial disease diagnosis, saying she had somatoform, a psychiatric disorder, instead. When the Pelletiers disagreed with physicians’ proposed plan to remove Justina from her treatments for mitochondrial disorder in favor of psychiatric treatments, they tried to discharge her to take her to Tufts. At this time, they served with a 51A, a report of alleged physical or emotional abuse.

On Feb. 14, 2013, the state stepped in and took emergency custody of Justina. Over the course of the next year, the Pelletiers appeared in juvenile court several times, fighting to get their daughter back. Most movement in the case occurred in the first months of 2014, when a judge ordered Justina to be moved from Boston Children’s. The most recent decision by Judge Joseph Johnson in late March to allow DCF to retain custody of Justina, making the family’s next opportunity to appeal in juvenile court May 20.

Justina Pelletier with her parents, Linda and Lou. Justina has been in the state’s custody since last year. (Image source: Facebook)

“DCF isn’t listening, the judge sure isn’t listening … where we have left to go?” Mason said, explaining why the family ultimately decided to allow the release of Justina’s note.

“This shocking note reveals for the first time, in Justina’s own words, how she is being abused by Massachusetts DCF. The Pelletiers are devastated to see how their daughter is being mistreated while under the custody of the State of Massachusetts,” Rev. Patrick Mahoney, the Pelletier’s spokesperson, said in a statement.

“Sadly, Justina’s own words paint a picture of mistreatment by DCF that we can see for ourselves,” he continued. “Fourteen months ago, when she was removed from her home, she was taking part in ice-skating competitions and living an active life. Under the care of DCF, she is in now a wheelchair and can barely walk. She has not been allowed to attend church, and has not been given her individualized education program which is required by federal law.”

On Monday, the family’s lawyers filed an appeal to the state’s Supreme Judicial Court. The petition requests for custody of Justina to be removed from DCF and restored to her parents.

“This case comes down to the simple fact that new doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital, who had no experience with Justina, came up with a different diagnosis than her expert treating physicians at Tufts Medical Center,” Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, said in astatement. “The state cannot take children from their parents when the parents make reasonable choices for their medical care. This case is outrageous.”

Mason also said the Free Justina Coalition is focusing its efforts toward reaching out to Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to get involved in the situation.

DCF did not immediately respond to TheBlaze’s request for comment regarding the note.

This story has been updated to include comments from Lou Pelletier.A

Parental Rights Taken Away And Then Ordered Not To Talk. Is This America Or Some Third World Dictatorship?

 ‘You Can’t Gag America’: Protesters Explain Why They’re Organizing in Front of Boston Court Ahead of Today’s Justina Pelletier Hearing

Feb. 24, 2014 10:36am Liz Klimas

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Editor’s Note: For a post-hearing update on this case, please see our follow-up story.

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In the Monday morning chill, about a dozen protesters gathered outside a Boston court to support the family of Justina Pelletier, the teenager at the center of a controversial custody and parents’ rights battle with its roots in a disagreement over two medical diagnoses.

Protest organizer Melissa Kerins told TheBlaze she thinks supporter numbers could rise as high as 100.

“We anticipate this one will be the largest of all of them,” Kerins said, adding that previous protests have seen about 20 people.

Protesters held signs, which were not on sticks because Kerins said police could view them as weapons, that read “You can’t gag America,” “save Justina,” “freedom for Justina” and more. 

Protesters gathered outside Boston’s Edward W. Brooke courthouse to support the Pelletier family in the past. Monday, organizers expect an even larger turnout. (Image source: Facebook)

“I expect that having very strong support for the family will [help] them but also show the world that we’re not going to accept that our children can just be taken away from us without any proof, evidence or conviction. It’s unacceptable and we’re not going to tolerate this,” Kerins said.

Lou and Linda Pelletier, Justina’s parents, have appeared in court several times in the last year after the Massachusetts Department of Children & Families took custody of the 15-year-old from West Hartford, Conn., when Boston Children’s Hospital alleged she had been the victim of medical child abuse.

The Pelletiers had been treating Justina for mitochondrial disease under the diagnosis and direction administered by their Tufts Medical Center physician. When Justina had complications with the flu in February 2013, it was recommended that they take her to Boston Children’s Hospital to see a gastrointestinal specialist.

When they arrived at the hospital, they were admitted by another doctor, a neurologist, who ended up disagreeing with Justina’s mitochondrial disease diagnosis, saying she instead had somatoform disorder, which is psychological.

Several days later, when the Pelletiers learned that Boston Children’s doctors wanted to take Justina off treatments for mitochondrial disease, they disagreed. They tried to have their daughter discharged and brought back to Tufts, but instead they were met with a DCF form alleging that they were over-medicalizing their daughter for a disease that the second set of doctors believed she didn’t have.

Justina Pelletier with her parents, Linda and Lou. Justina has been in the custody of the state of Massachusetts since last year. (Image source: Facebook)

That was Feb. 14, 2013. Since that date, the Pelletiers have been able to visit their daughter for one hour each week. They say that without treatment for medically diagnosed mitochondrial disease, her health is worsening.

Earlier this month, a judge ruled that Justina be moved from Boston Children’s Hospital to another facility, but the course of her care is still being decided. Last week, Lou Pelletier told TheBlaze Justina wasn’t even at a medical facility anymore, awaiting today’s hearing to decide the course of her care.

“She needs physical therapy. She needs to be back on the vitamin cocktail. She needs to be treated for the goddamn diagnosis she had from the beginning,” Lou told TheBlaze in a face-to-face interview a week ago. “I need to save my daughter. If we don’t do something, she is going to die.”

Justina Pelletier is a teen who her family describes as highly social and a talented artist. (Image source: Facebook)

The family’s hope is that Monday’s hearing will bring Justina back to Connecticut where she could be treated for mitochondrial disease.

The hearing will also address the motion by DCF that Lou Pelletier be held in contempt of courtafter he broke his silence speaking with the media, including TheBlaze last week, an action which DCF says violated a judge-issued gag order.

“The gag order is not in writing,” said Mat Starver, founder and chairman with Liberty Counsel, which is advising the Pelletiers. “It was apparently something that the judge mentioned to the attorneys in a sidebar.”

In addition to opposing the contempt motion, Starver said they hoped to have the gag order overturned completely because, as he sees it, “it’s unconstitutional, prohibiting parents from talking about their daughter’s medical treatment.”

Starver told TheBlaze he can’t see any reason why a gag order should have been imposed in the first place.

“There’s no jury trial, no impending trial, no risk to have a bias,” he said.

As for Justina’s situation, Starver said that the more he evaluated the case “the more I’m in disbelief as to the circumstances.”

Kerins, the protest organizer from Boston, said she is a concerned parent whose son has PANDAS, Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal infections. In 2012, Boston Children’s Hospital and DCF were involved in a similar custody case involving then-16-year-old Elizabeth Wray and her parents. It was at this time that Kerins began organizing similar protests for parents’ rights in defense of Wray.

“Now, I’m looking back and I’m saying, ‘if someone did something … there would not be a Justina Pelleteir issue.’ I think this could have been prevented because we’ve already had a history of this,” Kerins said.

"We Know Better Than You!" Say Doctors To Sick Child. Parents Lose Custody.

‘THIS CONVERSATION NEVER HAPPENED’: LATEST UNDERCOVER OBAMACARE VIDEO MAY CREATE PROBLEMS FOR ‘NONPARTISAN’ ENROLL AMERICA

Nov. 20, 2013 9:02pm Jason Howerton

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The latest video from conservative activist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas accuses the director of Enroll America of conspiring to release private data for political purposes.

(YouTube)

Alleging that Americans’ personal data is being “cross-pollinated” among various left-leaning groups for political purposes, a Project Veritas “investigator” posed as an official a fake progressive group and sat down with the communications director of Enroll America in Texas, Christopher Tarango.

In the video, which is provided in edited and unedited form, the Project Veritas investigator inquires about obtaining a private list of Obamacare enrollee data to use for political purposes.

“So then how do we get the list? I still don’t think we can get a list from Enroll America because of the 501 (c)(3) status. How do you suppose we get around that?” Tarango asks in the video.

However, he later says he will “talk to one person that I think might be open to having this conversation behind closed doors.”

“The person that I’m telling you, I’m to referring you to, is like me in a leadership position,” he later added. “And so he could export the list if he wanted to.”

Tarango also assures the undercover Project Veritas staffer that “if we can do it, we’re going to get the list” and references what he calls rule number 17: “Do whatever it f***ing takes.”

Due to Enroll America’s 501 (c)(3) status, Tarango at one point tells the fake official, “this conversation never happened.”

The latest video again employs deceptive tactics, however, includes what is reportedly the full, unedited video after the produced version.

Watch the whole video below via Project Veritas: