Posted on 06/17/2014 2:39:24 PM PDT by Hojczyk
Justina Pelletier is going home.
A Massachusetts judge ordered the 16-year-old Connecticut girl, who was taken from her family by child welfare advocates more than a year ago, to be returned to her mother and father effective Wednesday. The ruling caps a long-running medical custody dispute that began when two highly-respected Boston hospitals clashed over the girl's diagnosis. The case sparked national outrage, and led Lou and Linda Pelletier, of West Hartford, Conn., to wage a bitter legal battle.
“To hear the news is overwhelming," Lou Pelletier told FoxNews.com moments after learning of the ruling. "Now we can certainly begin the healing process.”
The case began when the girl's parents disagreed with a psychiatric diagnosis given by Boston Children's Hospital and said they wanted their daughter returned to her original physician at Tufts Medical Center, who had previously treated Justina for mitochondrial disease, a group of rare genetic disorders affecting cellular energy production. The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families moved in, claiming Justina was the victim of m"medical child abuse."
Mat Staver, of the Liberty Counsel, which battled the Bay State bureaucracy on behalf of the Pelletiers, said the ruling handed down by Massachusetts juvenile court Judge Joseph Johnstonwas well-deserved.
"We are thrilled that Justina will finally be returning home," Staver said in a statement. "The family looks forward to putting this 16-month nightmare behind them. Justina and her family now begins the process of healing both physically, emotionally, and spiritually."
In May, Justina was moved from Massachusetts to a facility in Thompson, Conn., allowing her parents to visit with their daughter, but doing little to dampen their determination to win her back for good. In a 45-second, videotaped plea, first posted on a Facebook support page last week, Justina is seen sitting in a chair and pleading plaintively
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
There remains the question of Justina herself suing, once she turns adult.
If I were on the jury, I would happily bankrupt Boston Children's Hospital and any other "deep pockets" involved. Her case is one of pure liberal fascism!
I'm not knowledgeable about the details of the law in this case. My prediction was based on a general assumption that the institutions involved have thoroughly insulated themselves from criminal and financial consequences for any action. Otherwise, they would not have acted as they did.
As I said, I could be completely wrong, and I hope I am.
Thanks for the more detailed info. All I can say for certain is that Lou Pelletier has promised a “firestorm” of lawsuits once Justina is home. He’s had over a year to collect info on who to sue & how. Lawyers don’t typically work for free. If he has a legal team working on commission, which seems likely, they must sense a big payday in the works. I’m not convinced he would bluff about this, since it would actually work against him. My take is that he has identified at least one excellent target, probably more. Time will tell.
I hope so! I would think there’s a book in this, and not just about Justina. Lou Pelletier (on Kuhner’s morning WRKO show a while back) said that he went to DC and talked to some members of Congress. Michele Bachman told him this was a national problem. Most of the Congressmen who talked to him were GOP, but his own CT rep (a Dem) talked to him and told him his own son had been put in a similar position and only got out because his father was a Congressman.
Here is an interesting article from Fox News, written by Dr. Keith Ablow. The entire piece is worth reading, but from close to the end of it:
“Now, Justina will be free. And, among other things, what she will be free to do is to sue the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Boston Children’s Hospital and those doctors who insisted all her symptoms were “in her head” for violating her rights and for malpractice. That wasn’t possible until now because she has been in the custody of the Department of Children and Families.
Does that sound like a conflict of interest to you — holding a child against her will, and the will of her parents, when you know that the moment she is released you’ll be sued for what you have done? You bet it does.
Think about potentially $25 or $50 or $100 million in damages paid out by the taxpayers of Massachusetts and malpractice insurers by the time this is over. And, although that will be money well-spent to deter power hungry politicians and doctors from “kidnapping” my kids and your kids and essentially experimenting on them, according to whatever medical theory is in vogue at their hospital, it will never compensate Justina Pelletier and her family for the attempt to destroy her and her family’s dignity, liberty and self-determination.”
Presumably Fox has a legal team, & Dr. Ablow would be advised not to project such hefty settlement possibilities if all or even most of the guilty parties were relatively free of legal jeopardy. Or, if he just went blind with these figures, would they not have been ‘corrected’ by now?
And the wealth of all involved reduced to 1/10th of what it currently is.
Thanks for the link! All success to them — and all justice to the offenders!
You’re welcome. We can both hope the judgments in however many cases Lou Pelletier ends up filing are so steep that other families are spared this hellish experience.
Btw, I see you live in MA. I lived there way, way, way too long. I have yet to miss anything about the state since I moved out over six years ago. I know there is some pretty scenery, & the grocery stores carry a much wider array than in my little Southern town. Still, I do not miss it. Not once, not even a little. [Though I did get just so depressed, shortly after I moved here, to discover that nowhere in town could I buy Red Rose Tea. I was abjectly miserable. First, my sisters responded by buying me a ton of the stuff, & more recently Walmart started stocking it, so I’m ok now.]
Thanks—I think I will.
Thanks even more for the update. You are wonderful—our on-the-scene reporterette.
:-)
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