Southern NH teen involuntarily committed at state hospital

[Jacobus]

Aleshanee is a friend, and she has a heart-breaking story of her daughter Daniella being involuntarily committed at the NH State Hospital.  Daniella's guardianship has been claimed by the state, and Aleshanee is struggling in the court system to try to get her daughter's guardianship back and to get her out of the state institution.

You can follow Aleshanee's progress here:

http://daniellawecare.blogspot.com/

Here is the "story in a nutshell":

After two years of mysterious allergic-type reactions, I took my daughter to a Boston hospital to have her evaluated. After 24 hours of separation and waiting, she was restrained and drugged against my consent. Two months later she suffered her first psychotic break, was committed, turned 18 and her guardianship was  temporarily assigned by the state of NH. She is now only being treated exclusively with pharmacological drugs and exclusively for mental illness in a long-term, high-security NH Hospital. Allergic  symptoms continue to be ignored. I want to retain guardianship and get her correctly diagnosed and have her receive a balanced treatment which would include healing  therapies along with any necessary drug treatments. I am seeking help with attorney's fees and with the high cost for an alternative mental health facility. I have started this blog with my daughters  knowledge and consent

Aleshanee has made an appeal for assistance in her court costs.

[Kat Kanning]

How horrible!  How else can we help?

[Jacobus]

Here are some other ways to help:

* Follow Aleshanee's blog to get updates from her and communicate support/sympathy/prayers
* If you are around Wilton, visit The Color Shop and More on Main St. and check out Daniella's Healing Handwork line of scarves.  Proceeds go toward Daniella's fund and it helps her spirit to make products that people buy and use.
* Consider a visit to Daniella at NH State Hospital (you should probably check in with Aleshanee about this first).
* Spread the word.  I'm not sure if Aleshanee is interested in media attention or not, but if TalleyTV is interested I'll ask her if she'd like to have a story done on Daniella. 

[Russell Kanning]

doin it for the children

[KBCraig]

    

The sad truth is that even though NH is a freer state than most, when it comes to "for the children", no state is even remotely free. In the interest of "the children", the state will kidnap said children and hide them from the only people who love them, and drug them against their will.

Doesn't matter if you're an Oathkeeper or a hippydippy holistic practitioner, if you're out of the mainstream (as defined by those who appoint themselves to be in charge of our children), you as a parent have very few "rights" once the child is in their system.

[CJS]

  I have heard the popo use the threat of taking peoples kids into DCFS custody in order to intimidate them into compliance basically do what we want you to do or we ship your kids to a rape factory ..... sick.

This made me think of the Russian lady whose child was severely handicapped and the state was trying to take custody of the daughter... any news on that case? Any one know what went on in the hearings of that " Oath Keeper baby" ?

[Patrick]

I'm admittedly ignorant about commitment law (even more so about NH). Are there any avenues of redress for the mother?

Moreover, have any media outlets reported this? I googled the name and other search terms and found nothing. If they haven't..no wonder mainstream, local media is in such dire straits.

Having worked for a small-town newspaper as an editor, I take the mother's detailed account with a tiny, tiny grain of salt simply because it's been my experience that one-sided accounts are never 100-percent accurate (not because she doesn't sound believable -- she does in the broad strokes --  but because we all suffer from a degree of selective memory and bias).

However, just the very nature of the situation cries out for some kind of redress..a hearing or fair/accurate account in the local press.  Has anyone notified the area's state/congressional representatives?

Granted, govt officials are not usually helpful but this matter may be cleared up with a few phone calls backed by authority (motivated by the chance to appear to "stand up" for their constituents --- White Knight Syndrome).

My thoughts are with this family and hopes that justice will be done.

For an interesting fictional account of such a quandary, check out Cory Doctorow's FREE sci-fi e-book "Eastern Standard Tribe (google it plus free) .Very similar...

[AntonLee]

one of those things I always heard was about how bad the state foster parents and caretakers were.  It was one of those things, like soldiers shooting unarmed children, old people, women, etc. in Vietnam. . . you heard it so much it felt as if people were all just lying about it because it was a punchline.

Whenever someone said 'got raped after taken away by the state' you figured it was a mistake, or overblown, punk kid, exaggeration, or 'few bad apples'.  I remember thinking I'd never meet anyone that even knew of someone close to them that had that sort of thing happen.  Not only have I met dozens of people who had family members raped, molested, sodomized under state supervision or foster care. . . .but a roommate of mine was a young man who was raped by not ONE family he was put with, but also with a second after the state removed him from the first.

His mother's crime to get him taken away?  Too young, and 'drank often'.  That's much worse than rape.  Sure, monday morning quarterbacking right?  They had 'best intentions'.

How could they be SO wrong SO often?  Perhaps one would say the law of averages would show that they do a damn good job taking kids away and putting them in other homes minus the whole raping thing.  Perhaps, one would think that they maybe just take too many kids away.

[Jacobus]

I'm admittedly ignorant about commitment law (even more so about NH). Are there any avenues of redress for the mother?

Moreover, have any media outlets reported this? I googled the name and other search terms and found nothing. If they haven't..no wonder mainstream, local media is in such dire straits.

I've suggested that she might consider pursuing media attention, but I am unsure whether she wants that.  I think there is a tension here between wanting to publicly decry what the state is doing to her daughter versus wanting to acquiesce to the state in hopes that they allow her guardianship.  Even though the guardianship hearings are over, the state still holds the power to prevent her from ever seeing her daughter.   

Having worked for a small-town newspaper as an editor, I take the mother's detailed account with a tiny, tiny grain of salt simply because it's been my experience that one-sided accounts are never 100-percent accurate (not because she doesn't sound believable -- she does in the broad strokes --  but because we all suffer from a degree of selective memory and bias).

This has been a common reaction: "there must be more to the story".  The prospect that the state can essentially kidnap anyone, label them with a mental illness, and the person "disappears" is chilling and hard to accept.  Look at the New Hampshire Hospital website, and buried in the sunshine and lollipops bullshit is this: "Most people are admitted to NHH on an involuntary basis because they have been found to be dangerous to themselves or others."

I'm not sure what missing part of the story people expect to justify involuntary commmitment (i.e. imprisonment with extra experiments performed on you).  I don't know the full back-story.  Maybe she tried to commit suicide, maybe she even attacked someone else.  I guess most people think of stuff like this in terms of law-and-order: surely there are some people who are truly dangerous and must be involuntarily separated from society.  Then we can only judge whether any specific person should or should not be committed if we know all the history. 

[Jacobus]

one of those things I always heard was about how bad the state foster parents and caretakers were.  It was one of those things, like soldiers shooting unarmed children, old people, women, etc. in Vietnam. . . you heard it so much it felt as if people were all just lying about it because it was a punchline.

Whenever someone said 'got raped after taken away by the state' you figured it was a mistake, or overblown, punk kid, exaggeration, or 'few bad apples'.  I remember thinking I'd never meet anyone that even knew of someone close to them that had that sort of thing happen.  Not only have I met dozens of people who had family members raped, molested, sodomized under state supervision or foster care. . . .but a roommate of mine was a young man who was raped by not ONE family he was put with, but also with a second after the state removed him from the first.

His mother's crime to get him taken away?  Too young, and 'drank often'.  That's much worse than rape.  Sure, monday morning quarterbacking right?  They had 'best intentions'.

How could they be SO wrong SO often?  Perhaps one would say the law of averages would show that they do a damn good job taking kids away and putting them in other homes minus the whole raping thing.  Perhaps, one would think that they maybe just take too many kids away.

The root problem is that government institutions are never based on love.  In defending these institutions, people start out imagining worst-possible scenarios where everyone (or nearly everyone, minus a few hard-core pacifists  ) agrees force would be appropriate: stopping a murder or rape or saving a neglected baby from death.  The next thought is that the justification of force can be abstracted from any particular situation and enshrined in law, to be coldly applied by professional judges and enforcers.  We therefore lose the idea that love is a vital component of determining the correct action for a situation. 

[highline]

The sad truth is that even though NH is a freer state than most, when it comes to "for the children", no state is even remotely free.

This is very true.  The legal doctrine behind these types of state actions is called "parens patriae."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parens_patriae

The state can take custody of a child for pretty much any reason, at any time.

[Russell Kanning]

it is too bad that she is not trying this in the court of public opinion

[RobFromSalem]

Is she still in? I'm not far and would visit. Never been inside this place but walked around a few times to view the architecture.