By James Wilson
(Author Note: Since this piece
was written Justina has been transferred to a
facility in her home state of Connecticut and her parents given greater
access
to her. She is again being
treated by Tufts’ medical personnel and may soon be
released into her parents’ custody.
Yet she remains a prisoner and her story – as it is written below – must
be told as this author originally wrote it.
She is not the only one.)
Justina Pelletier is a teenaged girl who lives
in Connecticut. She loves her parents,
her church, and competitive figure skating.
She has a rare but treatable disease called Mitochondrial Disease. She was being treated effectively enough at
Boston’s Tufts Medical Center to continue her figure skating career until she
showed flu-like symptoms in February 2013.
Her doctor at Tufts advised her parents to take her to the Boston
Children’s Hospital ER. Doctors there
disagreed with the Tufts diagnosis, claiming her problem was a psycho-somatic
disorder, and forcibly placed her in the custody of the Massachusetts
Department of Children and Families when her parents attempted to return her to
Tufts. (They refused to sign a consent
form in which they had to agree to seek no second opinion.) A Juvenile Court judge delayed a hearing on
the case for two months despite state laws requiring a hearing within three
days in such cases. He then upheld the
DCF finding that she needed to be removed from her parents over what they
described as medical abuse – attempting to return her to her doctors at
Tufts. That same judge made his custody
order permanent early in 2014. She is
permitted one hour of supervised visitation with her parents each week.
The
abuse this girl and her family have suffered is staggering. In her sixteen months in the custody of DCF
she has gone from being an athlete to being wheelchair bound. Denied access to school books and teachers –
even DCF supplied – she is more than a year behind her classmates at her school
back in Connecticut. Her pastor has been
denied access to her and she to him; she has been forbidden the all important –
to a Catholic – rite of Holy Communion these sixteen months. Photos of her in the wheelchair were smuggled
out of the hospital, as was a hand written note in which she says she is being
physically abused by staff. And the
rules and regs of being a ward of the state in Massachusetts state she can be
used as an experimental subject without the consent of Justina or her
parents. Many suspect that is what is
happening to her.
And
for those who will say such things cannot happen in America, recall the forced
sterilization experiments on minorities eighty years ago, the experimental
exposure of American soldiers to atomic radiation in Nevada in the fifties, and
the EPA experiments with carbon monoxide on unwitting test subjects uncovered
just last year.
As
news coverage of her situation expands and public outcry grows members of the
Massachusetts legislature are calling for her release and the cutoff of funds
to DCF until she is released. Her father
defied the gag order imposed by the judge and spoke to the media to get the
exposure rolling. The scandal grows as
it is discovered more than a hundred children in DCF custody are missing and a
number have been found dead. Olga Roche,
the head of DCF, has resigned in the face of the scandal. But Justina remains a prisoner of the state
sponsored gulag in the middle of the birthplace of American freedom. What should American citizens – American parents
– be doing?
I
pray Justina will be free and DCF on hold pending a thorough investigation by
the time this posting sees publication.
That investigation needs to include Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard
University (of whom the hospital is a creature) and the Star Chamber that
passes for the Juvenile Court in Boston.
The hue and cry being raised today may well have achieved that, but in
case this case is still pending and even the writ of Habeas Corpus before the
Massachusetts Supreme Court has been denied…
Americans
need to stand for the freedom we have too long taken for granted. I am not talking about violence, but about
witness. I have written about the Peter Weir film, Witness, in this space
before. In the film corrupt and well
armed police are stopped in their tracks by hundreds of unarmed and pacifist
Amish farmers who gather in silent and prayerful witness. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of Americans
need to surround Boston Children’s Hospital – peacefully – and demonstrate –
peacefully – until Justina Pelletier emerges from her prison and into the arms
of her family. This needs to be the
beginning of a pattern of determined massive resistance against government
running amok or – as my own mother used to say – the inmates running the asylum. It needs to go on until sanity is restored
and the arrogant experimenters cast out.
American
Blacks were freed from Jim Crow, the Philippines from a dictator, and Eastern
Europe from communist/socialist terrorists by millions who rose in peace and
refused to bow any longer to the tyrants.
Jesus Christ set the whole human race free from death in the same way. But here is a tip – turning to Him is the
only way we find the courage and the grace to stay in the game until it is
finished.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living
As Ambassadors of Relationships and The
Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by
e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
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