Family battling Children’s Hospital to bring teen home for Christmas

Justina’s case is a complicated one. Boston.com reports that Pelletier has spent most of the last ten months locked in a psychiatric ward at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Judge Joseph Johnston recently ruled that the state should maintain custody of the couple’s 15-year-old daughter Justina,

WSFB reports that Justina’s nightmarish journey began in February when the 15 year old was receiving treatments for Mitochondrial Disease. When Justina’s symptoms worsened, she was sent to Boston Children’s Hospital where she was diagnosed with Somatoform Disorder; a mental illness in which doctors can’t trace symptoms back to any physical cause.

When the Pelletiers tried to remove Justina from the hospital, they were reportedly prevented by hospital staff, including security.

Family battling Children’s Hospital to bring teen home for Christmas


WOW, nightmare is an understatement.

So what is this disease so horrible it justifies locking up a 15 year old girl in a mental psych ward?

Here is wiki's report on the illness.

en.wikipedia.org...

A somatoform disorder is a mental disorder characterized by symptoms that suggest physical illness or injury – symptoms that cannot be explained fully by a general medical condition or by the direct effect of a substance, and are not attributable to another mental disorder (e.g., panic disorder).

Talk about a wackadoodle definition of a disease.

Exactly how does a hypochondria case justify locking up a 15 year old girl up in a mental ward??????????????????????????????

There is something really, REALLY strange going on here.

Perhaps her family is the cause of her idiopathic symptoms, and her shrink kindly invented a syndrome so she could spend the holidays on cloud 9.

reply to post by rom12345


I have visited a psycho ward once to help someone, and it is not anywhere near cloud 9.

If there are allegations of abuse, than that is what the courts should be claiming.

When does taking your child to the doctor lead to your child being locked up become acceptable?

Unless the child is a threat to themselves or others, lock up should NOT be one of the possible results.

There is a LOT MORE to this story.

The parents were getting her treated at a different hospital, and she was improving but still had problems.

After she was brought into the hospital in February for an episode, the hospital referred her to Boston as their previous treating gastroenterologist had just transferred there (a reasonable action).

However, the resident physicians declared she had been misdiagnosed, took her off the medications that HAD been working, and went as far as to get a court order to keep her there!

The original treating physician is now not allowed to get involved in the case; and recently a judge has put gag orders so no one is talking to the press.

Over the past 6 months her symptoms have worsened as this new hospital refuses to acknowledge her condition even exists - therefore the new diagnosis of 'hypochondria by proxy".

She is locked up in the psycho ward not for her own protection...but to keep the parents away from her because the parents will remove her and take her for treatment elsewhere.

No release for Conn. teen caught in hospital dispute

The parents were on a Glenn Beck show recently talking about this case. Here is The Blaze take on the story. The original diagnosing physician has repeatedly demanded a medical conference to discuss her case but has been refused; there is another court hearing scheduled for January 6th.

So, is this a case of child abuse by hypochrondriac parents?? OR, is this more a case of state powers run amok

EDIT - just read the rest of the Blaze story, and this one case is not isolated, seems Boston Children's Hospital is doing this to any child that comes in there with this diagnosis! They have an epidemic of taking kids into custody. You gotta read that story before commenting.

I've been following this story since it first hit the news. It is horrible what these parents are going through, and a grave insult to law abiding citizens everywhere. There is no evidence of abuse. This child needs to be released to her parents, the doctors preventing that release should lose their licenses and face jail time for unlawful imprisonment and kidnapping. Every lawyer and judge who has helped those doctors need to be disbarred for ineptitude.

This is a very complicated issue. On the one hand, I believe parents should always trump the state when it comes to decisions concerning their child's welfare. On the other hand, it's obvious that a very small percentage of parents should never have been parents to begin with. They are their children's worst enemy.

Still, I have seen a growing trend among the medical establishment, the state, and of course, the media. A trend that says you have rights, until we take them away from you. You are the legal guardian of your child, until we say you aren't. You are "free" to do as you want, until we say you can't. The underlying message here is, we own you. The only rights and freedom you have is what we allow you to have, and we can take them away at any moment.

Here is yet another example of a broken and corrupt system. A system that runs us, instead of the other way around. A system that has taken on a life of its own, and is no longer under our control. The following video may be about "education", but the attitude is universal...

What's happening at Boston Children's Hospital is merely the entrance to a labyrinth of deep rabbit holes. Yet at the same time, the answer is very simple. We, and our children, are gradually becoming wards of the state. Some would argue, we already are.

The patients are running the asylum folks, and it's up to us to put them back in their padded cells, before it's too late.

While I don't know the whole story to this case, I can only see the way that the courts and hospitals are taking away the rights of parents when it comes to children's well being.

I sounds like the hospital could be using this children with the blessing of the courts as guinea pigs for treatments that would not be approved by the parents.

Sometimes we don't need to go far to find places where nightmares become realities.

When I hear "gag order" I always wonder who is the ones that do not want the truth be heard.

reply to post by poet1b


So basically she just looks ill and displays an illness but it's mental? And not a threat to herself or others? This does not compute, why the heck won't they let her leave if she's just Sort of ill? I mean WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE NUTS?

Having experienced firsthand as a teenager how psychiatric hospitals operate in the US I can vouch for the fact that once you're in you have no rights. They can do whatever they want with a patient including forcing patients to take drugs with horrendous effects. I was put on Triavil and Elavil and it literally made my skin crawl. I could NOT sit still yet it was required of us to do so for many hours a day. That was when I took up smoking cigarettes looking for any kind of distraction as I felt I was going crazy in my own body.

This girl's case is sad and baffling as to why they feel the need to keep her locked away. To me it reeks of failure to help her and they don't want her out talking about what they've done to "treat" her.
This should at least be looked over the by the Justice Department.
Parental rights to their child should trump everything except cases where the patient is a proven danger to themselves or others.

Odd how Boston is ending up in the center of so many controversies over civil liberties and rights.
Also note the teen is from Connecticut which has had many new laws concerning children passed in the last few years.
Is this going to be a precedent-setting case?

The parents should gather their entire community from where they live and swamp the next court hearing. They should very loudly demand that those holding the girl MUST be prosecuted and they should make their own citizens arrest!

IMO, this is where our rights have been taken away from us, more than any other.

I knew a lady who had her child taken away from her because she didn't want him on ritalin. Then they prosecuted her for fighting to get her child back.

People talk about fed gov, but local courts are the worst IMO.

We need a families civil rights amendment that prevents courts from taking away your children for anything less than them being a serious threat to the community or themselves.

reply to post by poet1b


Somatoform disorders have links to child abuse especially incestuous.

I'm not saying that's what's happening here. But it's best to hold judgement until more information is released in regard to the story.

Also for all the conspiracy theorist lovers on this here site, the favorite time of those families participating in group sexual abuse is around Christmas as that's when there are many cars parked in the driveways to mask any suspicion, also gives time for the younger children heal from any injuries sustained.

Of course that's all wild conspiracy but for the less wild conspiracy, these disorders do have link to child/sexual abuse in the past. It hasn't been studied nearly enough actually, but that could just be that it's fairly rare. Small sample sizes but then again this isn't as common as say "depression".

ajp.psychiatryonline.org...

and

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

rom12345
Perhaps her family is the cause of her idiopathic symptoms, and her shrink kindly invented a syndrome so she could spend the holidays on cloud 9.

Then why is she asking to go home all the time?

fibromyalgia was one time listed as a somatoform disorder.
Gulf war syndrome was listed as a somatoform disorder.
In the 1940s diabetes was treated as a somatoform disorder.

somatoform disorder = any disorder the doctor can not find a cause for even if its the doctors not looking hard enough or looking in the wrong places.

reply to post by OrphanApology


I agree, these types of problems do tend to be associated with abuse, but there should be physical evidence to justify taking the girl from her family.

There are also many other possible causes for these problems, including that the young girl actually has a disease.

In this case, she had been diagnosed with a disease by another doctor, was getting treatment, and the treatment was working. On this reason alone, she should never have been locked up, and the doctor behind this should have his license pulled for going to such extremes, unless those extremes can be justified. Sadly, these types of institutional abuses are as common as any other.