Justina Pelletier: Judge Awards 'Permanent Custody' To Mass. DFC

Judge Joseph Johnston has ruled that The Massachusetts Department of Families And Children (DFC) will have 'permanent custody' of 15-year-old Justina Pelletier, taking her away from her parents in spite of her own wishes and her rapidly declining health in state custody.

This case is a textbook example of child abuse promulgated by the legal system and an embedded bureaucracy, and it is worth looking at to see how far out of hand our ruling class has gotten.

Fourteen months ago, Justina, a Connecticut teen was being treated for mitochondrial disease, a group of rare genetic disorders affecting cellular energy production.Her physician who had been treating her, Dr. Mark Korson at Tufts, wanted the girl to visit gastroenterologist Dr. Alejandro Flores at Boston Children's Hospital, who had treated Justina at Tufts in the past. Being loving and concerned parents, the Pelletiers made the appointment with Dr. Flores and duly went to Boston Children's Hospital to have Justina seen.

When they got there, instead of seeing Dr. Flores, Justina was essentially kidnapped. She was taken to emergency where a resident refused to let her see Dr. Flores. Instead, he decided that this was a psychiatric case and sent Justina to a psychologist who diagnosed her with somatoform disorder -- a mental condition in which a patient experiences symptoms that are real but are psychosomatic.

When the Pelletiers rejected the new psychiatric diagnosis and wanted to bring Justina back to Tufts, the hospital first tried to force the girl's parents to sign papers admitting her as a psychiatric patient and when they refused and understandably became insistent at taking their daughter out of Boston Children's, the hospital got the state Department of Family and Children involved and accused the parents of medical child abuse.

They were not permitted to bring Justina home or to another facility. Instead, the teen was kept at Boston Children’s psychiatric ward for nearly a year where her physical condition deteriorated while the parents unsuccessfully fought the system to get Justina released.The DCF has allowed the parents only one hour per week to visit their daughter, but always with DCF personnel present. DCF would not allow the parents to photograph their daughter, and even filed a motion to hold Lou Pelletier in contempt of court for speaking to national media.

"Tufts was working fine with her, diagnosed medically, going to school, ice skating and doing all those things," Lou Pelletier said. "Look at her then and look at her now."

The DCF also has refused to provide the medical care Justina's condition requires, will not allow her access to a priest or to communion (she's Catholic) has refused to make any accommodations for her education, with the result that she is now almost two years behind her classmates in school.

Three weeks ago, Judge Johnston approved a written agreement transferring care back to Tufts Medical Center from Boston Children’s Hospital. That still hasn't been done, as Boston Children's has refused to make any appointments with the doctors there in spite of Justina's condition.

This decision by Judge Johnston was in response to a motion presented by the 15-year-old’s court-appointed lawyer and the lawyers for her parents, Linda and Lou Pelletier. It called for the girl's parents to be awarded “conditional custody” of their daughter.

Instead, the judge has granted permanent custody of Justina Pellatier to the DFC...who have done absolutely nothing to help her.

In his order, Johnston noted that the court considered granting conditional custody to the Pelletiers but “very concerning conduct … does not give this court any confidence they will comply with the conditions of custody.” The evidence? That Lou Pelletier once threatened a DFC social worker, who was afterward removed from the case, and oh yes..the media presence.

“Instead of engaging in quality visits with Justina, the parents use profanity directed at MA DCF personnel in Justina’s presence,” Johnston’s ruling said.

Johnston also included that he thinks Lou and Linda Pelletier should be “psychologically and clinically evaluated,” but refused to have the state of Massachusetts do it, insisiting that it must be coordinated through the State of Connecticut’s own DCF.

You bring your daughter in for medical treatment, she gets kidnapped, you see her dying in front of your eyes and you lose it with some heartless bureaucrat drone who's keeping her prisoner? And when you finally get fed up with doing the dance for months and go to the media to try to shed some sunlight on what's happening to your child, you need to be “psychologically and clinically evaluated?”

To tell you the truth, if the Pellatiers hadn't done that, I'd think they needed to be psychologically evaluated.

This is one of those canary in the coalmine moments. It is the State shoving our noses in the fact that they own our children and they know what's best, and we're just the sperm and egg donors.

What's next? On May 25th, Judge Johnston is expected revisit the decision to award permanent custody in a follow-up court hearing on May 25. His ruling leaves it up to the state DCF to decide whether or when Justina should be returned to her family, which means she could end up in state care until she turns 18. If she survives.

Meanwhile, the Pelltiers haven't given up. They're appealing the decision and have filed a writ of habeus corpus against Massachusetts for wrongful imprisonment. Hopefully this will get Justina freed by order of the Appellate courts, although it might just be that the attention this is generating could get Justina Pellatier freed sooner..perhaps at the review hearing in May.

How Mellisa Harris-Perry Won My Respect

It's all over the internet by now how Mellisa Harris-Perry and her cohorts over at MSNBC made a racist attack on the Romney family, mocking Mitt and Anne's adopted black grandchild.Standard operating procedure for MSNBC.

 

But then something rather marvelous happened.

Deep inside of her,there's still a core of decency, and it was sickened at what she had done.

The very next day,first thing in the morning, she went on Twitter (and on the air, for all that I know)and issued a heart felt apology, as she put it 'without reservation.' She said there were no excuses for her behavior , and made a point in a subsequent tweet that "I work by guiding principle that those who offend do not have the right to tell those they hurt that they r wrong for hurting. Therefore, while I meant no offense, I want to immediately apologize to the Romney family for hurting them"

She also tweeted, "I apologize to all families built on loving transracial adoptions who feel I degraded their lives or choices."

In other words, a real apology, not a Barack Obama-style 'sorry if you were inconvenienced or something because I lied' apology.

I know for a fact that she wasn't ordered to do so by the suits at MSNBC, who've let far worse stuff go.And it's not like the Romneys had any ratings clout like Sarah Palin does. She simply did it because it was the right thing to do.

And I respect that.It would have been far easier for her to just wallow in the 'attagirls' from her Leftist cohorts and say nothing.

The apology, hopefully, is just a first step for her.Real teshuvah, repentance involves not only recognizing what you've done and doing your best to fix it,but to learn something from it so you don't repeat your misdeed, to spend some soul time thinking 'Why did I do that? How can I avoid doing it again'?

Whatever else we might disagree with, I have a feeling I and Ms. Harris-Perry would agree on that. So I wish Melissa Harris-Perry the very best in that endeavor of self-examination.

France Seeks To Ban 'Sexualized' Child Beauty Pageants

 

The French Senate passed an interesting bill today, one that would ban beauty pageants for children under 16 and impose stiff penalties on adults who try to enter children into such a contest.

This provision is an amendment that's part of a broader bill on women’s rights, It now heads to the National Assembly, the French Parliament’s lower house, for debate and another vote.

Proponents of the measure say that it will protect children from being prematurely “sexualised” through the use of heavy make-up and sexually provocative attire.

Or as we call it here on this side of the pond, the 'Jon Benet Ramsey look'.

The amendment came after a parliamentary report was released entitled “Against Hyper-Sexualisation: A New Fight For Equality”, which, in addition to calling for an end to the pageants, encouraged a ban on adult-style clothing for children, including padded bras and high-heeled shoes.

The clothing ban apparently didn't fly, but the ban on the Lolita oriented pageants which feature this type of attire did.

Adults who try to enter a child into such a contest can be hit with up to two years in prison and a heavy 30,000-euro fine.

This is a lot more important than it seems at first glance. It's a push back, however limited, against the rising decadence in western culture. And I think the French are on to something here.

When you put twelve-year-old girls in adult style makeup and sexually enticing clothing, it not only sends a message to the girls, but to those watching them. In the case of certain males, that message is 'up for grabs' and 'permitted'. To a lot of young girls, that message is 'this is how you have to dress and behave to be cool, desired and worthy of attention'. The end result in too many instances is sexual exploitation, teen pregnancies, and heartache.

I'm not surprised this became an issue in France. Contrary to popular belief, French sexual and dating culture is fairly conservative, due to its strong Catholic heritage. The usual 'date' in France consists of a group of like minded friends of both sexes who go out together and may or may not gradually pair off.An individual American style one on one date is usually a sign of serious involvement.

And France's unpopular Socialist government only recently imposed legalized gay marriage over a storm of widespread protest.

If this passes in the Assembly, it will be a small step, but an important one. We should definitely emulate it on this side of the pond.

Bush 41 Shaves His Head In Support Of 2-Year-Old Cancer Patient

 

Former President George HW Bush remains a class act.

The child he's holding, Patrick is a 2 year old leukemia patient and the son of one of the men on his Secret Service detail. So what did Bush '41 do? He shaved his head in solidarity with the toddler.

Oh, and so did a lot of the other sides and members of the president's security detail, as they followed the president's example both in shaving their heads and in raising money for the child's treatment.

The Bushes lost their second child, Robin, to leukemia 60 years ago at the age of 4.

 

Very sweet, and indicative of what kind of men our presidents used to be.

Who Really Is Really Savagely Destroying Palestinian Children?

The Arabs whom refer to themselves as Palestinians have made an entire industry of trotting out dead children for the media and wailing about how the Israelis are murdering them. These two items should give you a good idea of the truth.

We've already discussed how Palestinian children are being educated to hate  Jews from the cradle. But they're also being indoctrinated to be cannon fodder.

Exhibit A...this tweet form the Palestinian al-Qassam Brigades.




 


Just lovely, isn't it?

They also come in handy as human shields for cowardly Palestinian 'fighters' who seem to  only be effective targeting unarmed civilians.

 





And then, there's little Mohammed al-Farra.



This is a story you won't see on your nightly news.

Mohammed hails from Gaza, but the only home he's ever known is the yellow-painted children’s ward in Israel’s Tel Hashomer Hospital in Ramat Gan, Israel, where he lives with his grandfather.

He was brought there because he was born with a genetic disease, likely attributable to the frequency of marriage between first cousins. His little hands and feet had to be amputated because his genetic disorder weakened his immune system and crippled his bowels, and the resulting infection destroyed his hands and feet.

He gets along now with a small wheelchair. His parents abandoned him - his mother left him at the hospital in the middle of his treatment because his father threatened to take another wife if she didn't leave the child and return home to Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian government refused to pay for his care, so he lives at the hospital with his grandfather, who continues to care for him.

Mohammed spends his days undergoing treatment and learning how to use prosthetic limbs.

Mohammed’s Israeli doctors fund-raise to cover his bills, allowing him and his grandfather to live in the pediatric ward:

But it’s not clear how long he’ll stay in the hospital, or where he’ll go when his treatment is complete. As a Palestinian, Mohammed is not eligible for permanent Israeli residency. Yet his family will not take the child back, the grandfather said. His parents, contacted by The Associated Press, refused to comment.

As his grandfather spoke, Mohammed used his knees and elbows to scamper up and down a nearby stairwell, his knees and elbows blackened and scarred from constant pressure. He used his arms to hold a green bottle he found in a stroller. His prosthetic legs with painted-on shoes were strewn nearby.

He crawled toward his grandfather’s lap. “Baba!” he shouted, Arabic for “daddy.” ”Ana ayef,” he said — a mix of Arabic and Hebrew for “I’m tired.”

Dr. Raz Somech, the senior physician in the Tel Hashomer pediatric immunology department, attributes Mohammed’s genetic disorder to the several generations of cousin marriages in his family — including his parents.

So much for those savage, brutal Israelis.They're paying for this disabled child's care out of their own pockets when his own government refuses to and his parents have abandoned him. If Mohammed was a few years older and healthy, the Palestinians would be schooling him in the joys of murdering his Jewish benefactors.

So, in the last analysis, who cares more about Palestinian children? The Jewish culture that values life,or the Arab one that exalts death?

(H/t, Carl)

Hang On, Abigail, The Election's Almost Over

I think Abigail speaks for a lot of us. We want this thing over and done with. Actually, NPR actually apologized after someone (mom, probably) let them know that one of their reports made the little girl cry.

Don't worry sweetie. G-d willing, not just the election but 'bronco bamma' will be over soon too and NPR will have to start paying its own way instead of adding to the $180,000 worth of debt you were saddled with that you had nothing to say about.