Posted on 04/16/2014 6:53:25 AM PDT by No One Special
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]!”
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.
“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 a statement. “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.
From the details I have heard, there is a possibility that Justina is the victim of Munchauser’s syndrome by proxy.
I agree, there is a lot of the story we have not heard.
Justina needs to own BCH once this is over.
I hate seeing “discrete” used for “discreet”. Happens a lot.
So did Shakespeare:
http://www.shakespeareswords.com/Plays.aspx?Ac=3&SC=2&IdPlay=38#254758
Google gives up early on that one:
Did you mean: It shall be very gud, gud feith, gud captains
bath: and I sall quit you with gud leve, as I may pick occasion;
that sall I, marry.
A good mnemonic is "'Loose shoes'; lose job".
If that’s the case then it sure is a funny coinkydink she got worse as soon as she was pulled off her meds and taken away from her parents, when one would expect her to get better, isn’t it?
That mnemonic is a good one and should be helpful to those confused by the two words. My approach to good spelling is different: I simply read published authors and in the process I pay close attention to the spelling of words in context, and then I memorize that spelling.
I don't think about spelling. Either the shapes of words look right, or they don't. If they don't, then I have to change the letters until they do.
Not really. Children who are the victims of abuse, including Munchauser’s syndrome by proxy, learn to behave in the way their parents have conditioned them.
Furthermore, we have only ever heard one side of the story, that of her parents. Something is going on here, but we don’t know the full truth.
Many very intelligent folks are poor spelers.
No one notices if I misspell a word when I am talking...
 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.' |
I KNOW I have trouble with it, and I always try to check the I before E thing.
True dat!
The “I” before “E” thing isn’t correct.
Examples-—”weird” and “seize”.
.
It doesn’t fit the pattern of M.B. P because there are 2 other healthy kids and you usually don’t see both parents with MBP, just the moms.
A father who is unaware of the mother’s MBP and who supports his wife could very well be an unwitting participant in this particular kind of abuse.
Also, I saw some mention of an older sister who supposedly has a mitochondrial disorder—so there is some evidence that another child has been affected.
I would also expect that as the mother’s psychiatric disorder progresses, its manifestation would become more severe and sophisticated. Thus, the older child might have received a diagnosis of mitochondrial disorder after many visits to many doctors, and the mother would have used that experience to refine her technique on the younger child.
Please note that I am only saying that Munchausen’s is a distinct possibility here, not that it is a definitive explanation of what is going on. We do not have the full facts here and have no clear basis on which to determine what is really going on.
In most Munchausens by proxy cases by and large, when the parent is closely watched, the parent is found to be deliberately poisoning or doing things physically that cause the child to be sick. A mitochondrial disease can be shown via lab tests. If the child is shown to be physically worsening under the state’s care, it may be that the state is actually in error.
As I understand it, Justina has never been confirmed through testing to have a mitochondrial disorder. From everything I have read, there are no real definitive tests for mitochondrial disorders.
One of the things that I have read about Munchausen’s is that the affected parent often homes in on a disease whose symptoms are vague, and which cannot be definitively ruled in or out by testing.
The bottom line is that we do not know enough about this case (having only heard one side of the story) to know whether Justina is genuinely ill, or if she has been made ill through the actions of her mother.
No direct definitive tests...but there are tests for anti mitochondrial antibody and the like. The previous treatments seem to have helped her n the past to keep her weight and function before the state took them away. The state seems to be going with a “if we isolate the girl from bad parents, her natural survival instincts will take over and she’ll tire of the whole psych thingy and she get better on her own” strategy. It doesn’t seem to be working. I don’t think she’s faking it.
If the girl has a somatoform illness, it may be specific to the girl and is nothing the parents are doing.
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