In 2013, Dr. Farid Fata of Michigan was convicted of health care fraud of the worst sort–billing insurance, medicare and medicaid for false diagnoses of cancer treatments and chemo.  But then in an effort to further cover up the crimes, the are hospitals started billing patient families outrageous sums for getting their loved ones medical records.

It’s a system of fraud, corruption and greed.  And it clearly wasn’t just one doctor… many others should have been imprisoned too apparently.

more than 550 patients and $34 million dollars in fraud.

Continuing the saga of Miriam Solo Greenfield Faskowitz’s endeavors in Probate cases, the Illinois State ATG just filed an appearance in the Estate of Ralla Klepak.

I would post this to her timeline, but I’m afraid the powers that be will shut it down.  Shssh, don’t tell them.

From the docket sheet today:

as Ken Ditkowsky has oft said, you can’t even make this stuff up.

Word is on the street, Miriam Solo is telling people Ralla Klepak has $23 million in her estate.

The son is clearly missing from her will.  Where is he?

Jorge Bautista named in the will (at the wrong address) is 71 years old and clearly not her son.  but he was served at the wrong address according to Instandcheckmate.com.  Why was that?  Is he in on it?  Is he going to be excluded?  WTFreak is going on here?

Where is the son?

She told me she had a son she loved.  She told me she adopted him at age 10.

Joanne

123 children died within a year of DCFS involvement, study finds

CHICAGO — The inspector general of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services is out with some startling statistics: 123 children died within a year of becoming involved with the child welfare system over the last fiscal year.

“This is wholly unacceptable and represents a nearly 25% increase from the prior year,” Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert wrote in a statement to reporters.

A deeper dive into the inspector general’s report examining the period between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019, reveals of the 123 deaths, 24 were ruled homicide, 37 were accidental, 34 were deemed “natural,” 7 were suicide and the cause of death in 21 was undetermined.

DCFS’ policies and procedures have faced renewed scrutiny after the death of A.J. Freund in April 2019. DCFS was repeatedly warned of problems in the home but the 5-year-old was allowed to remain in the home. AJ’s mother plead guilty to murder and his father is awaiting trial. Two state workers who were assigned the case have been terminated.

The inspector general’s report found allegations of domestic abuse, substance abuse or mental health problems had been reported in 41 percent of all deaths.

DCFS acting Inspector General Meryl Paniak noted her office investigated all 123 deaths and provided detailed reports to the agency, legislature and governor.

“I am disheartened that many of the problems I identify here have been identified before,” Paniak wrote to the governor and legislators. “We, Illinois, must do better,” she wrote.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Governor J.B. Pritzker noted the period reflected in the study was before the governor’s first budget took effect on July 1, 2019, increasing DCFS’ budget by $128 million. That money went towards hiring 300 additional “frontline” employees, experts to recommend policy overhauls and training programs.

“Neglected and abused children have been badly served in Illinois, and Governor Pritzker believes it’s our duty as a state to invest in the long-term transformation of DCFS to better serve our most vulnerable children,” spokesperson Jordan Abudayyeh said.

A spokesperson for DCFS issued the following statement:

“The death of any child in Illinois is a tragedy and this department is deeply committed to protecting vulnerable children in this state. Over the past several years, that mission became increasingly challenging as funding cuts and staff reductions left the agency under resourced and without the staff needed to give vulnerable children the care they deserve. At the same time, cases increased with an increase of more than 5000 investigations in FY19 and the number of youth brought in to care and families supported by Intact Family Services increasing as well.

On July 1, with leadership from the Governor and the General Assembly, a new budget went into effect that reversed course. The FY20 budget allowed DCFS to hire 300 additional staff and more than 2,800 existing staff across the state have now received new training on child safety. The  entire leadership of DCFS, including child protection and operations, have been completely restructured and in response to the Chapin Hall report intact family services has been restructured as well. Overhauling the department and reversing long-standing problems in the child welfare system won’t happen overnight, but we are making dramatic improvements and we are deeply committed to getting this right.”

40 Basic Rights Women Did Not Have Until The 1970s
By Trista

https://historycollection.co/40-basic-rights-women-did-not-have-until-the-1970s/40/

(warning, original site is filled with ads that will slow down or crash your computer)

Women have come a long way in this world; well, in America, especially. Although ladies can pretty much hop in their car, get a job, have a drink, and do whatever else they please, this was not always the case. Although you might be familiar with the fact that women had to fight for their rights, you probably don’t realize how many basic things females were denied. (White) Men, on the other hand, were not rejected from these same primary benefits. Luckily, times have changed, but some even in the 21st century, ladies still struggle for equal pay — something that has been a fight for decades..
A woman shopping with magnetic stripe technology in the 1970s. IBM

40. Credit Cards Were Not For Women
Financially, there were many things that women couldn’t do without their husbands and taking out a credit card under their name was one of them. Legally, banks could deny women credit cards until 1974 with the passing of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. The applications from women who tried to take a credit card out under their name received the stamp of “denied” or told them to get their husband’s’ signature on the form. If the woman wasn’t married, the bank would still request she bring a male, such as her father or brother, who could co-sign the application.
Gloria Allred with client Norma McCorvey who was Jane Roe in Roe v. Wade) in 1973. Lorie Shaull / Wikimedia Commons.

39. Women Couldn’t Legally Get An Abortion For Any Reason
Legal abortion isn’t only a hot topic today, but it’s been a hot topic for decades. In fact, women’s weren’t able to legally have an abortion for any reason until 1970 when a college student from Texas known as “Jane Roe” decided to challenge the law. She claimed that she had to right to abortion in her own state. Roe went up against Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade in Texas’ Federal Court. While the case started in 1970, it didn’t end until 1973 in Roe’s favor with the Roe Vs. Wade case stating states which ban abortions are unconstitutional.
Women’s Rights Protest. Mic.com

38. They Couldn’t Celebrate International Women’s Day
By the time the 1970s rolled around, women all over the world were tired of being treated as second class citizens. They started to demand equal treatment across the globe and in every aspect of their lives. This call included being able to celebrate themselves. While International Women’s Day history started in the early 1900s, no one acknowledged the date in the United States. It all changed in the mid-1970s and the further improved in 1980 when then President Carter stated that the States would celebrate International Women’s week, including International Women’s Day, which is March 8th.
A woman answering the phone at work. FPG / Getty Images / Vox.

37. Women Could Get Fired For Becoming Pregnant
Before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, women could quickly lose their jobs because of a pregnancy. The passing of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act stated that women could not get fired because they became pregnant as this was an act of discrimination against women. Of course, this didn’t mean that women would receive payment for the time they missed due to their pregnancy. It also didn’t say that they couldn’t be fired for “other reasons” once they became pregnant. The act just meant that the reason for firing a woman could not be because of her pregnancy.
Kathrine Switzer attacked while running in the Boston Marathon in 1967. Getty Images / Jezebel.
36. They Wouldn’t Be Acknowledged For Running In The Boston Marathon
The first woman to try to run in the Boston Marathon was Kathrine Switzer, a student at Syracuse University, in 1967. At the time, the Boston Marathon didn’t acknowledge women, and while Switzer registered, ran, and made history, she was attacked, spit on, and taunted. In fact, it wouldn’t be until five years later, in 1972, when women didn’t receive an acknowledgment as runners in the Boston Marathon. Nina Kuscsik from Huntington, New York, was one of the first women to be acknowledged, coming in first for women at 3 hours, 10 minutes, and 26 seconds in 1972.
A woman demanding equal pay. NY Times / Bentley.edu.
35. Organizations Started Focusing On Enforcing Work Equality For Women
Even though the 1964 Civil Rights Act stated employment places could not discriminate based on gender or race, females continued to face work discrimination and inequality well into the 1970s. It seemed that no matter what act Congress passed, women continued to face discrimination. Therefore, the National Organization of Women started to focus their attention on the issues that women faced in the workplace. This organization worked to make sure employment agencies enforced the new acts. Unfortunately, discrimination is still a struggle in the workplace as women are still underpaid and often harassed.
Andrea Hollen graduating from West Point. Department of the Army / army.mil.

34. Women Couldn’t Receive Admittance Into A Military Academy
While women have always had a part in wars, starting with the Revolutionary War, they didn’t have the choice of combat roles. On top of this, girls were not allowed to attend a military academy simply because men believed that women would not be able to make through the academy. This idea changed when West Point admitted its first female students in 1976. Four years later, Andrea Hollen and 61 other females became the first women to graduate from a military academy on May 28, 1980. However, women couldn’t fight in combat until 2013, per a 1994 ban.
Pilots with flight attendants in the 1970s. Flashbak.

33. Women Couldn’t Protect Themselves From Workplace Sexual Harassment
During the 1970s, courts began ruling that people who sexually harassed women in the workplace violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act and women should be able to protect themselves from sexual advances. This ruling occurred in 1977 when the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia stated women could not get fired if they refused sexual advantages from their boss. In 1980 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission came up with a definition for sexual harassment and stated it created a hostile work environment. Six years later, the United States Supreme Court would agree with their ruling.
Pregnant Workers Demonstration. Fordham news.
32. They Didn’t Receive Any Paid Maternity Leave
The first time anything about paid maternity leave became a news topic was in 1969 when five states agreed that women should be able to take time around the time they gave birth. On top of this, the state courts ruled that the women should be able to receive some sort of compensation while they were out on maternity leave. Therefore, the Temporary Disability Insurance Act was born. However, this act didn’t fix everything required for paid maternity leave. Currently, there are still hundreds of workplaces which do not pay maternity leave.
January Jones as Betty Francis in Mad Men. socialjusticesolutions.org.

31. Women Couldn’t Receive Direct Consultation About Physical and Mental Health
If you’re a “Mad Men” fan, you might remember a scene when Betty’s second husband, Henry Frances, discussed Betty’s cancer diagnosis with the doctor. At the time, Betty was sitting off to the side listening to their conversation. If you’ve ever wondered why it is because women didn’t receive direct consultation about their health from doctors. A wife had to have her husband speak on her behalf for many reasons; one being women couldn’t understand what the doctors were saying.
Women’s Rights Against Violence rally. Circulating Now.

30. She Couldn’t Refuse Sex From Her Husband
Wives finally started to receive some legal protection in the 1970s from their husbands. State courts began to realize that there was something called marital rape. However, very few states would do anything about any type of spousal rape accusations from a woman until the early 1990s with the Violence Against Women Act of 1994. With this act, women became legally protected from any act of violence from their husband, including physical assault and rape. Before the action, many police departments around the United States believed any abuse from a husband towards his wife was a private family matter.
A photo of Sonny and Cher in 1971. CBS Television / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.
29. Divorce Became Quicker And Easier
Many people question the reason that the divorce rate is so much higher today than it was 50 years ago. One of the biggest reasons for this is because women have the right to get divorced without having needing proof. Generally, the evidence pointed to their husband cheating. However, lawmakers started to notice that some women had trouble proving who was at fault. Therefore, they came up with a solution, legalizing the No-Fault Divorce Act in 1969. This act allowed women to obtain a divorce easier as they no longer had to prove their partner’s fault when requesting a divorce.
Esther Morris. WSA Sub Neg 2666 / WYO State Archives.
28. They Couldn’t Serve As A Judge
While some states had selected female judges before the 1970s, women weren’t typically able to sit in the at a regular rate in the United States until the 1970s when the majority of states allowed women to serve as judges. In fact, women as judges is a slowly growing trend historically. From the first female Justice of Peace, Esther Morris, in Wyoming during the 1870s until today, the profession for females is still growing. Fortunately, the rate of female judges is starting to build a bit quicker than in the past.
Sally Ride on Challenger’s mid-deck during STS-7 in 1983. NASA / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.

27. Women Couldn’t Be Astronauts
While NASA didn’t have an actual ban on women becoming astronauts before the 1970s, their guidelines took women out of the process. They just didn’t allow women to interview for the possibility of becoming an astronaut. Part of this was because NASA only accepted military applications and the military didn’t take women. However, this all changed in 1979 when NASA first started hiring women so they could train them as an astronaut. Then, in 1983, Sally Ride became the first female astronaut to go up into space.
Harvard University. Jannis Tobias Werner / Shutterstock / Business Insider.

26. They Wouldn’t Be Admitted Into An Ivy League University
For decades, educating males became more important than females. Because of this, it became harder for women to receive admittance into colleges. Furthermore, it became even harder for women to apply to an ivy league college such as Harvard or Yale. These type of colleges didn’t regularly accept women until close to the 1970s. Yale became the first ivy league college to admit women in 1969. After that, many other ivy league college started to accept women but at a pretty slow rate. For example, Columbia University didn’t allow women until 1983.
Christine Beshar was one of the first females to become a partner of a NY law firm in 1971. wealth365.

25. Ladies Couldn’t Easily Practice Law
For nearly about a century, women had to fight for their right to practice law. While there were previous female judges and lawyers, it was scarce to see a woman in the legal field until the late 1960s and into the early 1970s. In fact, Cornell University ran a study which confirmed that 90% of law firms refused to interview women who applied for placement in their firms. On top of this, most law schools wouldn’t admit women into their programs.
The morning after pill. Bustle.

24. Women Couldn’t Receive The Morning After Pill
Another thing that women struggled receiving before the 1970s was the morning after pill. The morning after pill would not become FDA approved until the late 1990s, even though it became more available for females during the 1970s. Moreover, when the contraceptive became available, women still had almost secretly to find a way to take the morning after pill. Even so, women today still reportedly feel embarrassed or ashamed when they have to take the morning after pill. Many professionals think that the reason behind this is because of the slow acceptance of contraception regarding women.
Birth control pills. Unsplash / Philly Voice.

23. They Struggled To Get A Birth Control Pill
The birth control pill went a little faster than the morning after pill. The FDA approved the medicine during the 1960s; however, individual states could create their own laws when it came to the birth control pill. Many states didn’t allow doctors to give their patients the birth control pill for various reasons. One woman from Connecticut, Estelle Griswold, started to sell the contraception, getting herself arrested. Her case went to the Supreme Court, which upheld that married women could receive the birth control pill in 1965. During the 1970s, more states started to allow doctors to prescribe the medication.
Richard and Mildred Loving had three children together. History.
22. Interracial Marriage Was Illegal In Most States
One of the most famous cases of interracial marriage is the Loving Vs. Virginia case. This hearing made it to the United States Supreme Court, which declared states that didn’t allow couples to marry on the base of color was unconstitutional and violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Mildred Loving and her husband, Richard, brought forth the case after their arrest and prison sentence for marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court forced states to allow interracial marriage in 1967, which helped increase interracial marriage during the 1970s.
A group of women trying to register for jury duty in Portland, Oregon in 1912. Gardiner P. Bissel, Oregon Journal / Wikimedia Commons.

21. Women Couldn’t Serve On A Jury
There are many gray areas throughout history, and this is one of these areas. Prior to the 1970s, females serving on a jury was rare but not impossible. It did happen but it hardly ever occurred before the 1970s, especially once the 20th Century rolled around. This notion is because allowing women to serve in a jury became a law for individual states to decide. Many states didn’t allow women to sit on a jury until 1973 when all 50 states made it a requirement that females were allowed to participate.

Supreme Court Justice-nominee Sandra Day O’Connor talks with President Ronald Reagan outside the White House, July 15, 1981.

White House Photographic Office
Then Supreme Court Justice-nominee Sandra Day O’Connor talking with then President Ronald Reagan in 1981. White House Photographic Office / Wikimedia Commons.

20. Likewise, They Couldn’t Serve On The Supreme Court
The 1970s became a groundbreaking decade for women in the legal field. During the 1970s, more law school started accepting women; they could serve of juries and become lawyers. The legal industry began to bloom with women interested in a legal career. However, it wasn’t until right after the 1970s, in 1981, when Sandra Day O’Connor received a seat for the Supreme Court. She held this position until 2006 when she retired. Other than O’Connor, three other women have served on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan.
John Travolta and actress Diana Hyland briefly dated in the 1970s. Julian Wassar / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images
19. Girlfriends Couldn’t Legally Live With Their Boyfriends
Today many dating couples don’t think twice about living together with each other before getting married. In fact, common law marriage, when you live with your significant other for so many years, and your state considers you “married,” is becoming more and more popular. However, this wasn’t the case around 50 years ago. During the 1970s, many states had laws against living with your significant other before marriage. It wasn’t until 2013 when all 50 states adopted the law to allow couples to live together without getting married first.
1970s TRAX tennis shoes. Pinterest.

18. Women Couldn’t Purchase Athletic Shoes
The history of women in sports is different from the history of men in sports. While women usually purchase at least one pair of athletic shoes today, this was something women couldn’t buy until the end of the 1970s and into the early 1980s. The biggest reason for this was that women didn’t have a considerable spot in the sports world until around the 1970s. However, just because women didn’t have athletic shoes designed for them didn’t mean they didn’t buy the shoes. Instead of women’s shoes, they had to purchase athletic shoes designed for men.
A clip from the Mary Tyler Moore show. The 1970s Story.

17. Women Didn’t Really Have A Voice
Of course, females have always been able to talk, but this didn’t mean that the things they said had any impact on what people thought. While countless girls fought for women’s suffrage and other rights marches, most males, especially in professional careers, wouldn’t and didn’t have to listen to what girls had to say. This concept not only included their opinions on civil and household matters but also opinions for their own bodies. Typically, until around the 1970s, most women had to listen to their husband in how he wanted things down in his home.
Women at Radcliff Institute at Harvard. library.hbs.edu.

16. They Couldn’t Obtain A Degree In Women’s Studies
It wasn’t until 1956 when the Women Studies program came into existence in Australia. From there, the program slowly grew into other parts of the world. However, the United States’ colleges didn’t start catching on to women studies until the late 1960s. In 1969, Cornell University became the first college to offer women studies classes. A year later, San Diego State University established the first Women’s Studies Program in the United States. 1972 saw the establishment of Feminist Studies, and then 1977 saw the creation of the National Women’s Studies Association, which focuses on women’s history in education.
Woman in the 1970s. Vintag.es.

15. Women Weren’t Able To Get Any Job
Today, it’s hard to think about all the jobs women couldn’t get before the 1970s. Before women started demanding gender equality for jobs, women could only apply for specific positions, such as secretary or teacher. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 worked to end workplace discrimination; however, it continued in several states and among hundreds of professions. Even though employers couldn’t legally reject women for jobs because of their gender, they could reject women for other reasons. Some employers would skip applications by women while others would come up with a different reason for not hiring them.

It was not until the EEOC was actually enforced in 1982 that women were allowed to obtain professional jobs such as doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, etc. and the courts would begin to enforce anti discrimination laws.
A wedding photo. vintage.es.

14. She Couldn’t Divorce Over Domestic Violence
Before the 1970s, getting divorced was difficult. Females had to prove that their husband had wronged them in order to obtain a divorce. However, proof didn’t mean that women would be able to get a divorce successfully. Some of the reasons, such as adultery, became acceptable. However, other reasons were not seen as acceptable, such as spousal abuse. Wives couldn’t officially protect themselves from domestic violence until the 1990s. However, starting in the 1970s, it became acceptable for a woman to ask for a divorce because of domestic violence.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee running for USA at the Olympics in the 1980s. STAFF / AFP / Getty Images / CBS News.

13. They Couldn’t Be A Part Of All Olympic Games
No matter how far women feel they still have to go for complete equality, no one can deny that they haven’t broken glass barriers throughout history, especially in the past 50 years. One of the obstacles that girls keep breaking is in the Olympic Games. While women started to participate in the Olympics during the early 1900s, their numbers and events began to grow considerably during the 1970s. In 1976, women added ice dancing, basketball, rowing and handball as events in the Olympics. Today, ladies are still adding games to their credits. In 2012, women could finally compete in boxing.
A vintage photo of an early Bank of America. Bank of America.

12. Women Couldn’t Own A Bank
Before the 1970s, career choices for ladies were scarce. However, this slowly started to change before the 1970s but boomed during the 1970s. One of the careers that became more available for women in the 1970s dealt with finances and banks. In 1975 the First Women’s Bank opened in New York City. This place became the first bank owned and operated by a woman for women. Of course, the law didn’t officially accept the bank right away, but it remained opened and is known as a significant milestone during the 1970s women’s rights movement.
A woman using an ATM for the first time. Pinterest.

11. Women Couldn’t Open A Bank Account
One reason women couldn’t legally own a bank before the 1970s is because they couldn’t legally open a bank account. Just like women couldn’t get a credit card without their husband’s signature, they couldn’t open a bank account without their husband’s permission. One of the reasons ladies couldn’t open their own bank account was because people believed they wouldn’t be able to handle the financial part. Men saw females as delicate creatures who couldn’t understand many of the things they could.
The Feminine Mystique. Amazon.

10. Women Couldn’t Discuss Sex Openly
It’s hard to think of this one today, but before the 1970s, women could not discuss their sex lives or anything having to do with sex openly. Of course, many females probably addressed the topic of sex privately to their friends, but it wasn’t acceptable to discuss in public. While it wasn’t illegal, many women often followed the rules of what people considered socially acceptable and what people didn’t. The woman and book that really changed the way women discussed sex is Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.
A mother with her baby in the 1970s. Flashbak.

9. Women Couldn’t Breastfeed In Public
Realistically, breastfeeding in public is a controversial topic today. However, before the 1970s, this topic was not even a controversy because it simply wasn’t allowed. Mothers were not allowed to breastfeed their children in public. In fact, many places discriminated against mothers who breastfed as they worried it would happen in their business. The discrimination against breastfeeding mothers legally ended when Congress passed a law saying that a public place could not discriminate against women who breastfed as they saw it as a violation of their equality rights.
Females at school during the 70s. Reddit.

8. Females Couldn’t Receive An Equal Education
Women dealt with discrimination in education regularly. Not only weren’t they allowed to obtain a law degree or go to ivy league colleges before the late 1960s and into the early 1970s, but they faced discrimination in the educational setting in many other ways. By many men, women just couldn’t handle higher education. Some people actually felt that girls weren’t smart enough to obtain a certain level of education. For decades, some people felt women belonged in the kitchen more than they belonged in school. This idea created much discrimination and unequal treatment in the educational system.
Women walking in Hermosa Beach in the 1970s. Reddit.

7. They Couldn’t Adopt A Baby As A Single Woman
Women couldn’t do tons of things before the 1970s, and one of these things was they couldn’t adopt a baby if they didn’t have a male partner. Even though the majority of women before the 1970s stayed home and raised the children while their husband went to work, the lawmakers believed that they shouldn’t be able to adopt a baby without having a husband. Even if the single woman lived wealthy, remained healthy, and could give the child a great home, no one would allow her to because she was wasn’t married.
Katharine Graham, pictured in 1975, was the publisher of The Washington Post. Wikimedia Commons.

6. She Couldn’t Be The CEO OF A Fortune 500 Company
With all the rules, laws, and regulations surrounding women before the 1970s, it’s probably no shock that it took until the early 1970s for a woman to become the CEO of a Fortune 500 Company. Katharine Graham became the first female CEO in American history of a Fortune 500 Company when she took over The Washington Post in 1972. While what she did had never been illegal, this doesn’t take away the fact that Graham broke barriers for many other ladies.
Angela Davis in 1969. Bettmann / CORBIS.

5. They Couldn’t Have Their Own Mind
Of course, women actually had their own mind before the 1970s, but this didn’t mean that their intention was considered valuable. While women acquired certain tasks, they were tasks that men felt women were capable of doing, such as taking care of the children, cleaning the house, and cooking a meal. An example of this is the fact that wives needed their husbands’ permission to do many things, including getting a job. There are also examples of requiring a husband’s signature to obtain a credit card.
Nurses from the 1970s. Godmanchester County Primary School.

4. They Cared More About Education Than Marriage
Starting in the late 1960s and into early 1970s, women began to focus more on their higher education than getting married and starting a family right out of high school. This idea became a drastic change from a few years before when women often got married young because there wasn’t much for them in higher education. However, with ivy league colleges allowing women and more female professionals, higher education started to become more important than getting married after high school.
Ruth Bager Ginsburg in 1972. Jitter Bugged.

3. They Were Scarce in DC
While a few females found their spot in the political field, locally or nationally, before the 1970s politics and women were not a hot topic until the 1970s. In fact, the late 1960s and into the early 1970s saw an increase in women in the political field. In fact, in 1970, about a dozen women had their seat in Congress. On top of this, women had found their political position in their own neighborhoods and continued to write their names on ballots.
Women protesting the Miss America pageant in 1968. folkways.si.edu.

2. They Did Rally Against The Miss America Pageant
In 1968, many women from around the United States got together to protest the Miss America pageant. During this time, they complained because they wanted to be treated as people and not objects. They stated that the Miss America pageant promoted sexism. This opposition is the same mentality that females carried into the 1970s. Instead of feeling like a sexual object or a piece of property, women fought to be able to feel like they mattered and were human beings just like men.
Women’s Strike for Peace And Equality in 1970. Eugene Gordon / The New York Historical Society / Getty Images.

1. Women Fought For The Right To Protest
Before the late 1960s and into the early 1970s women rarely held marches and protests and if they did, these moments saw hostility from males and other females. It all started to change during the 1970s when men joined in on the women’s protests for their rights and equality matters. On top of this, ladies began protesting beyond the majority of discriminatory practices they faced in the United States. They protested for a variety of reasons throughout the United States. Something that wasn’t often seen in the United States previously.

Where Did We Find This Stuff? Here Are Our Sources:

“Landmark Cases: Roe Vs. Wade (1973).” Alex McBride. Thirteen.org.
“6 Things You Won’t Believe Women Couldn’t Do In 1970.” Suzannah Weiss, Bustle. December 2015.
“Women Officially Acknowledged in BAA Race.” Boston.com.
“10 Things That American Women Could Not Do Before the 1970s.” Natasha Turner, Ms. Magazine. May 2013.
“Things That American Women Couldn’t Do Until the 1970s.” Lisa Waugh, Ranker.
“First female West Point graduate reflects on historic anniversary.” Rachid Haoues, CBS Evening News. May 2015.
“Who’s to Blame for America’s Sexual Harassment Nightmare?” Mark Joseph Stern, Slate. October 2017.
“7 Shocking Things Women Weren’t Allowed to Do Until Pretty Recently.” Beth Dreher, Woman’s Day. August 2016.
“Crazy things women couldn’t do 50 years ago.” Adria Valdes Greenhauff, The List.
“Interracial Relationships that Changed History.” PBS.
“Things You Wouldn’t Believe Women Couldn’t Do Before The 1970s.” Brittany Greco, Rebel Circus. January 2016.
“Women’s Studies” Wikipedia.
“Participation of women in the Olympics.” Wikipedia.

In one of the first decisions of its kind, the 4th circuit has held that when a public official owns a FB page to conduct business, contact constiutents, and perform duties, it cannot block critics from posting on that page.

The decision may be found here:  http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/172002.P.pdf

Some quotes from the case

Phyllis Randall, Chair of the Loudoun County, Virginia, Board of Supervisors (the
“Loudoun Board”), brings this appeal, arguing that the district court erred in concluding
that she violated the First Amendment rights of one of her constituents, Brian Davison,
when she banned Davison from the “Chair Phyllis J. Randall” Facebook page she
administered. In a cross appeal, Davison principally argues that the district court erred
in dismissing his procedural due process claim premised on the ban. For the reasons that
follow, we affirm.

On her campaign page, Randall characterized the Chair’s Facebook Page as her
“county Facebook page” stating:
I really want to hear from ANY Loudoun citizen on ANY issues, request,
criticism, complement or just your thoughts. However, I really try to keep
back and forth conversations (as opposed to one time information items
such as road closures) on my county Facebook page (Chair Phyllis J.
Randall) or County email (Phyllis.randall@loudoun.gov). Having back and
forth constituent conversations are Foiable ([Freedom of Information Act])
so if you could reach out to me on these mediums that would be
appreciated.
J.A. 455 (emphasis added).

To state a claim under Section 1983, a plaintiff must show that the alleged
constitutional deprivation at issue occurred because of action taken by the defendant
“under color of . . . state law.” Philips v. Pitt Cty. Mem’l Hosp., 572 F.3d 176, 180 (4th
Cir. 2009). “The traditional definition of acting under color of state law requires that the
defendant in a § 1983 action have exercised power ‘possessed by virtue of state law and
made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law.’”
West v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42, 49 (1988) (quoting United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299,
18
326 (1941)). Section 1983’s “color-of-law prerequisite is synonymous with the more
familiar state-action requirement” applicable to Fourteenth Amendment claims, “and the
analysis for each is identical.” Pitt Cty. Mem’l Hosp., 572 F.3d at 180. Both inquiries
demand that “the conduct allegedly causing the deprivation of a federal right be fairly
attributable to the State.” Holly v. Scott, 434 F.3d 287, 292 (4th Cir. 2006) (quoting
Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., Inc., 457 U.S. 922, 937 (1982)).

“[T]here is no specific formula for determining whether state action is present.”
Id. at 292 (internal quotation marks omitted). Rather, “[w]hat is fairly attributable [to the
state]”—i.e., what constitutes action under color of state law—“is a matter of normative
judgment, and the criteria lack rigid simplicity.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
Courts must examine the “totality of the circumstances,” id. (internal quotation marks
omitted), to determine if the action at issue “bore a ‘sufficiently close nexus’ with the
State to be ‘fairly treated as that of the State itself,’” Rossignol, 316 F.3d at 525 (quoting
Jackson v. Metro. Edison Co., 419 U.S. 345, 351 (1974)).
Although no one factor is determinative, this Court has held that a defendant’s
purportedly private actions bear a “sufficiently close nexus” with the State to satisfy
Section 1983’s color-of-law requirement when the defendant’s challenged “actions are
linked to events which arose out of his official status.” Id. at 524. When a defendant’s
“status” as a public official “enabled [her] to execute [a challenged action] in a manner
that private citizens never could have,” then the action also is more likely to be treated as
attributable to the state. Id. at 526; see also Martinez v. Colon, 54 F.3d 980, 986 (1st Cir.
1995) (“[S]ection 1983 is . . . implicated . . . [when] the conduct is such that the actor
19
could not have behaved in that way but for the authority of his office.”); Goldstein v.
Chestnut Ridge Volunteer Fire Co., 218 F.3d 337, 343 (4th Cir. 2000) (holding that
challenged conduct is more likely to amount to state action when “the injury caused is
aggravated in a unique way by the incidents of governmental authority” (internal
quotation marks omitted)). Likewise, an official’s conduct is more likely to amount to
state action when it “occurs in the course of performing an actual or apparent duty of his
office.” Martinez, 54 F.3d at 986. And the challenged action of a defendant
governmental official is likely to be treated as taken under color of law when the official
“use[d] the power and prestige of his state office to damage the plaintiff.” Harris v.
Harvey, 605 F.2d 330, 337 (7th Cir. 1979). In the context of an alleged First Amendment
violation, in particular, this Court has found that a challenged action by a governmental
official is fairly attributable to the state when “the sole intention” of the official in taking
the action was “to suppress speech critical of his conduct of official duties or fitness for
public office.” Rossignol, 316 F.3d at 524.

Put simply,
Randall clothed the Chair’s Facebook Page in “the power and prestige of h[er] state
office,” Harris, 605 F.2d at 337, and created and administered the page to “perform[]
actual or apparent dut[ies] of h[er] office,” Martinez, 54 F.3d at 986.

Under long-established First Amendment law, governmental entities are “strictly
limited” in their ability to regulate private speech in public fora. Pleasant Grove City,
Utah v. Summum, 555 U.S. 460, 469 (2009). The Supreme Court has recognized two
categories of public fora: “traditional public forums” and “limited (or designated) public
forums.” Am. Civil Liberties Union v. Mote, 423 F.3d 438, 443 (4th Cir. 2005).
“Traditional” public forums—“such as streets, sidewalks, and parks”—“have the
characteristics of a public thoroughfare, a purpose that is compatible with expressive
conduct, as well as a tradition and history of being used for expressive public conduct.”
22
Id. “Limited” or “designated” forums are forums that are “not traditionally public, but
[that] the government has purposefully opened to the public, or some segment of the
public, for expressive activity.” Id. Accordingly, the hallmark of both types of public
fora—what renders the fora “public”—is that the government has made the space
available—either by designation or long-standing custom—for “expressive public
conduct” or “expressive activity,” and the space is compatible with such activity. Id.
“Conversely, a non-public forum is one that has not traditionally been open to the public,
where opening it to expressive conduct would ‘somehow interfere with the objective use
and purpose to which the property has been dedicated.’” Id. (quoting Warren v. Fairfax
Cty., 196 F.3d 186, 190–91 (4th Cir. 1999)).

The Chair’s Facebook Page also is “compatib[le] with expressive activity.”
Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 802. “Congress [has] recognized the internet and interactive
computer services as offering ‘a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique
opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for intellectual activity.’”
Zeran v. Am. Online, Inc., 129 F.3d 327, 330 (4th Cir. 1997) (quoting 47 U.S.C. §
230(a)(3)); cf. Bland, 730 F.3d at 386 (finding post to campaign Facebook page
“constituted pure speech”). And the Supreme Court recently analogized social media
sites, like the Chair’s Facebook Page, to “traditional” public forums, characterizing the
internet as “the most important place[] (in a spatial sense) for the exchange of views.”
Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730, 1735 (2017). An “exchange of views”
is precisely what Randall sought—and what in fact transpired—when she expressly
invited “ANY Loudoun citizen” to visit the page and comment “on ANY issues,” and
received numerous such posts and comments. J.A. 455.

Even assuming the intangible space at issue is “private property,” as Randall
claims—which is not at all clear from the record before us4
—the Supreme Court never
has circumscribed forum analysis solely to government-owned property. For example, in
Cornelius, the Court recognized that forum analysis applies “to private property
dedicated to public use.” Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 801 (emphasis added); see also
Christian Legal Soc’y Chapter of the Univ. of Cal. v. Martinez, 561 U.S. 661, 679 (2010)
(“[T]his Court has employed forum analysis to determine when a governmental entity, in
regulating property in its charge, may place limitations on speech.” (emphasis added)).

See, e.g.,
Se. Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 420 U.S. 546, 547, 555 (1975) (holding that “a privately
owned Chattanooga theater under long-term lease to the city” was a “public forum[]
designed for and dedicated to expressive activities”); Halleck v. Manhattan Community
Access Corp., 882 F.3d 300, 306–07 (2d Cir. 2018) (holding that public access television
channels operated by a private non-profit corporation constituted public forums), cert.
granted 139 S. Ct. 360 (2018) (mem.); First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City v. Salt
Lake City Corp., 308 F.3d 1114, 1122 (10th Cir. 2002) (“[F]orum analysis does not
require that the government have a possessory interest in or title to the underlying land.
Either government ownership or regulation is sufficient for a First Amendment forum of
some kind to exist.”); Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc. v. City of Marshfield,
Wis., 203 F.3d 487, 494 (7th Cir. 2000) (holding that private property abutted by public
park constituted public forum).

Whereas “[p]ersonal-capacity suits seek to impose
personal liability upon a government official for actions [she] takes under color of state
law,” Kentucky v. Graham, 473 U.S. 159, 165 (1985), “official capacity suits are ‘treated
as suits against the municipality,’” Santos v. Frederick Cty. Bd. of Comm’rs, 725 F.3d
451, 469 (4th Cir. 2013) (quoting Hafer v. Melo, 502 U.S. 21, 25 (1991)). Because
“municipal liability under Section 1983 does not amount to respondeat superior . . . a municipality is subject to Section 1983 liability only when its ‘policy or custom, whether
made by its lawmakers or by those whose edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent
official policy, inflicts the [plaintiff’s] injury.’” Id. at 469–70 (quoting Monell v. Dep’t of
Soc. Servs. of the City of N.Y., 436 U.S. 658, 694 (1978)).

Davison is correct that “municipal liability may be imposed for a single decision
by municipal policymakers under appropriate circumstances.” Hunter v. Town of
Mocksville, N.C., 897 F.3d 538, 554 (4th Cir. 2018) (quoting Pembaur v. City of
Cincinnati, 475 U.S. 469, 480 (1986)). “[I]n assessing whether a municipality may be
held liable for constitutional or statutory violations of their decisionmakers, the
touchstone inquiry is whether ‘the decisionmaker possesses final authority to establish
municipal policy with respect to the action ordered.’” Id. at 554–55 (emphasis added)
(quoting Liverman v. City of Petersburg, 844 F.3d 400, 413 (4th Cir. 2016)).

the district court found that Randall
made a one-off, “unilateral decision to ban [Davison] in the heat of the moment, and
reconsidered soon thereafter,” Davison, 267 F. Supp. 3d at 715—before the Loudoun
Board had a chance to learn of her action. In such circumstances, the district court did
not reversibly err in rejecting Davison’s official capacity claim.

No court appears to have addressed that novel legal theory. And although the First
Amendment constrains only government policies, not policies established by private
41
entities, one can conceive of a colorable legal argument that a governmental actor’s
decision to select a private social media website for use as a public forum—and therefore
select that website’s suite of rules and regulations—could violate the First Amendment, if
the private website included certain types of exclusionary rules. For example, if the
government chose as its electronic public forum a social media site that allowed only
registered members of one political party to post and comment, there would seem to be a
compelling argument that the government’s selection of that social media site violated the
First Amendment rights of members of other political parties, even if the partisan
restriction was imposed by the private company, not the governmental body. Such a
restriction would be seem to be no different than a municipality choosing to hold a town
hall meeting in a venue that refused admission to individuals associated with a disfavored
political party or viewpoint. Cf. DeBoer v. Village of Oak Park, 267 F.3d 558, 571 (7th
Cir. 2001) (“[T]he government engages in viewpoint discrimination when it denies access
to a speaker solely to suppress the point of view he espouses on an otherwise includible
subject.”).

the Supreme Court should consider further the reach of the First
Amendment in the context of social media. I acknowledge that the Supreme Court has
referred to social media as “the modern public square,” Packingham v. North Carolina,
137 S. Ct. 1730, 1737 (2017), implying that First Amendment principles protecting
speech from government intrusion do extend to social media. However, the interplay
between private companies hosting social media sites and government actors managing
those sites necessarily blurs the line regarding which party is responsible for burdens
placed on a participant’s speech.
For example, hate speech is protected under the First Amendment. See Matal, 137
S. Ct. at 1763-64 (holding that the disparagement clause of the Lanham Act violated the
First Amendment free speech clause because it prohibited hate speech). But social media
companies like Facebook and others have policies forbidding hate speech on their
platforms.2
Thus, while a government official, who under color of law has opened a
public forum on a social media platform like Facebook, could not ban a user’s comment
containing hate speech, that official could report the hate speech to Facebook. And
Facebook personnel could ban the user’s comment, arguably circumventing First
Amendment protections.

Just when you thought you heard it all.

In past years, kids would  sit on a bench with a scowling secretary waiting to see the principal, now we have a jail like setting so I guess poor kids can get used to the mass incarceration problem in Illinois.

Unfreaking believable article.  what amazes me is the fact a lot of these kids are autistic or special needs and there is no evaluation before using this “disciplinary technique” if it would harm a special needs child.  Of course, it just looks like crapola for any child, but that’s a whole other issue.

https://graphics.chicagotribune.com/illinois-seclusion/?fbclid=IwAR0-HiIy6b69Rrmzv2VjVGQEosb5tkYfdCEYnqCB487mQZP9nqfAEafWcZQ

next, there will be another study that these don’t help any child at all.  whatever happened to the counselor’s bench or the principal’s bench? isn’t that enough for a child?

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The spaces have gentle names: The reflection room. The cool-down room. The calming room. The quiet room.

But shut inside them, in public schools across the state, children as young as 5 wail for their parents, scream in anger and beg to be let out.

The students, most of them with disabilities, scratch the windows or tear at the padded walls. They throw their bodies against locked doors. They wet their pants. Some children spend hours inside these rooms, missing class time. Through it all, adults stay outside the door, writing down what happens.

In Illinois, it’s legal for school employees to seclude students in a separate space — to put them in “isolated timeout” — if the students pose a safety threat to themselves or others. Yet every school day, workers isolate children for reasons that violate the law, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois has found.

Children were sent to isolation after refusing to do classwork, for swearing, for spilling milk, for throwing Legos. School employees use isolated timeout for convenience, out of frustration or as punishment, sometimes referring to it as “serving time.”

For this investigation, ProPublica Illinois and the Tribune obtained and analyzed thousands of detailed records that state law requires schools to create whenever they use seclusion. The resulting database documents more than 20,000 incidents from the 2017-18 school year and through early December 2018.

Of those, about 12,000 included enough detail to determine what prompted the timeout. In more than a third of these incidents, school workers documented no safety reason for the seclusion.

State education officials are unaware of these repeated violations because they do not monitor schools’ use of the practice. Parents, meanwhile, often are told little about what happens to their children.

The Tribune/ProPublica Illinois investigation, which also included more than 120 interviews with parents, children and school officials, provides the first in-depth examination of this practice in Illinois.

Because school employees observing the students often keep a moment-by-moment log, the records examined by reporters offer a rare view of what happens to children inside these rooms — often in their own words.

11:58 A.M., JAN. 11, 2018

FRESH START TREATMENT AND LEARNING CENTER, EFFINGHAM

“Please someone respond to me. … I’m sorry I ripped the paper. I overreacted. Please just let me out. Is anyone out there?”

Without doubt, many of the children being secluded are challenging. Records show school employees struggling to deal with disruptive, even violent behavior, such as hitting, kicking and biting. Workers say that they have to use seclusion to keep everyone in the classroom safe and that the practice can help children learn how to calm themselves.

But disability advocates, special-education experts and administrators in school systems that have banned seclusion argue that the practice has no therapeutic or educational value, that it can traumatize children — and that there are better alternatives.

No federal law regulates the use of seclusion, and Congress has debated off and on for years whether that should change. Last fall, a bill was introduced that would prohibit seclusion in public schools that receive federal funding. A U.S. House committee held a hearing on the issue in January, but there’s been no movement since.

Nineteen states prohibit secluding children in locked rooms; four of them ban any type of seclusion. But Illinois continues to rely on the practice. The last time the U.S. Department of Education calculated state-level seclusion totals, in 2013-14, Illinois ranked No. 1.

2:09 P.M., DEC. 11, 2017

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, MATTOON

“Please, please, please open the door. Please, I’ll be good. Open the door and I’ll be quiet.”

Although state law requires schools to file a detailed report each time they use seclusion, no one is required to read these accounts.

Several school district officials said they had not reviewed seclusion reports from their schools until reporters requested them. The Illinois State Board of Education does not collect any data on schools’ use of isolated timeout and has not updated guidelines since issuing them 20 years ago.

“Having a law that allows schools to do something that is so traumatic and dangerous to students without having some sort of meaningful oversight and monitoring is really, really troubling,” said Zena Naiditch, founder and leader of Equip for Equality, a disabilities watchdog group that helped write Illinois’ rules in 1999.

Informed of the investigation’s findings, the Illinois State Board of Education said it would issue guidance clarifying that seclusion should be used only in emergencies. Officials acknowledged they don’t monitor the use of isolated timeout and said they would need legislative action to do so.

DEC. 17, 2018

CENTRAL SCHOOL, SPRINGFIELD

“I’d rather die. You’re torturing me.”

This investigation, based on records from more than 100 districts, found seclusion was used in schools across every part of the state and by a range of employees, from teachers and aides to social workers and security personnel.

Some districts declined to provide records or gave incomplete information. Others wouldn’t answer even basic questions, saying the law did not require them to. Of more than 20 districts reporters asked to visit, only three said yes.

“Is this something that we’re ashamed of? It’s not our finest,” said Christan Schrader, director of the Black Hawk Area Special Education District in East Moline, which documented about 850 seclusions in the time period examined.

Schrader said she thinks her staff generally uses seclusion appropriately but acknowledged room for improvement. She met with reporters at the district’s administration building but wouldn’t let them see the seclusion rooms in the school across the parking lot.

“Nobody wants to talk about those things because it doesn’t reflect well,” she said.

---

‘I’M CRYING ALONE’

About 20 minutes after he was put in one of his school’s Quiet Rooms — a 5-foot-square space made of plywood and cinder block — 9-year-old Jace Gill wet his pants.

An aide, watching from the doorway, wrote that down in a log, noting it was 10:53 a.m. on Feb. 1, 2018.

School aides had already taken away Jace’s shoes and both of his shirts. Jace then stripped off his wet pants, wiped them in the urine on the floor and sat down in the corner.

“I’m naked!” Jace yelled at 10:56 a.m.

Staff did not respond, the log shows, except to close the door “for privacy.”

By 11 a.m., Jace had also defecated and was smearing feces on the wall. No adults intervened, according to the log. They watched and took notes.

“Dancing in feces. Doing the twist,” staff wrote at 11:14 a.m., noting that the boy then started pacing back and forth.

“I need more clothes,” he called out.

“We know,” an aide answered.

Jace banged on the walls and tried to pry open the door. He sat against the wall, crying for his mom.

11:42 a.m.: “Let me out of here. I’m crying alone.”

The incident began that morning when Jace ripped up a math worksheet and went into the hallway, trying to leave school.

Jace was diagnosed with autism when he was 3 and began having epileptic seizures at 5. In first grade, officials at his local school referred him to the Kansas Treatment and Learning Center, a public school in east-central Illinois for children with emotional and behavioral disabilities.

Jace’s mother, Kylee Beaven, had heard about the Quiet Rooms at Kansas and had strong reservations about the concept, even before she took a school tour and stepped inside one. She recalls being told he would never be shut inside alone.

“I remember standing there and thinking, like, if I was a kid, how would I feel if I was in this room by myself?” she said.

In the years Jace spent at the Kansas TLC, he was placed in the Quiet Rooms again and again — at least 28 times in the 2017-18 school year.

Once, he was shut in after he pushed a book off his desk, said “I hate reading,” raised his fist and tried to leave the classroom. Another day, he refused to get out of his grandmother’s car at school drop-off, so a staff member took him straight to a Quiet Room.

After he went into a Quiet Room on Feb. 1, a staff member took notes every one or two minutes. The handwritten incident report stretches nine pages on lined paper.

 HOVER/TAP TO ZOOM

Jace spent more than 80 minutes in the room before someone stepped inside to hand him a change of clothes, wipes to clean his feet and some lunch. A mental-health crisis worker arrived to talk to him, but he wouldn’t answer her questions.

He was not released until his grandmother — his “Gammy” — came to pick him up at 2:07 p.m.

Jace’s mother remembers this incident, in part because she was surprised to learn that he had defecated in the room. Hadn’t she been told he wouldn’t be alone? When reporters showed her the lengthy report, she read and reread it for at least 20 minutes, tears falling onto the pages.

“I didn’t know it was like this. I didn’t know they wrote this all down,” Beaven said. “None of it should have happened.”

In the nearly 50,000 pages of reports reporters reviewed about Illinois students in seclusion, school workers often keep watch over children who are clearly in distress. They dutifully document kids urinating and spitting in fear or anger and then being ordered to wipe the walls clean and mop the floors.

Kansas TLC is operated by the Eastern Illinois Area Special Education district, which serves  students from eight counties and is based in Charleston. Illinois has about 70 regional special-education districts that teach students who can’t be accommodated in their home districts.

Eastern Illinois officials ultimately released roughly 10,000 pages of records chronicling nearly 1,100 isolated timeouts. Analysis of those records shows more than half of seclusions there were prompted by something other than a safety issue.

When students at any of the three schools have been disrespectful or disruptive, they are required to take a “head down” — to lower their heads and remain silent for a set number of minutes. If they refuse, they often are sent to a Quiet Room — sometimes for hours — until they comply.

Zayvion Johnson, 15, remembers how it felt. He used to go to the Kansas school, too, and spent time in the same rooms as Jace.

“They told us it was there to help us, but it just made everybody mad,” said Zayvion, now a sophomore at Charleston High School who plays running back and middle linebacker on the football team. “The Quiet Room, it irritates people. … You’re isolated from everybody else. You can’t talk to anybody else.”

The Eastern Illinois district’s executive director, Tony Reeley, said he had not grasped how often seclusion was being used in his schools until he read some of the documents requested by reporters.

“Looking at a stack of 8,000 pages at one time really did kind of hit home,” Reeley said when he met with reporters in the spring. He has not responded to recent requests for comment, including about specific incidents.

Reeley and assistant director Jeremy Doughty said they were surprised and concerned about how frequently staff used seclusion rooms after students were disobedient but not physically aggressive.

“When we read it, it reads punitive,” Doughty said.

“We have to do something to address this,” said Reeley.

In October 2018, Jace died at home in rural Paris of a seizure in his sleep. He had not returned to Kansas TLC that fall; his family had decided to home-school him, in part to keep him out of the Quiet Rooms.

In the family’s living room, Jace’s mom shared photos of him at a Wiggles concert, in a Spider-Man costume, sitting on Santa’s lap. A favorite image features the family wearing “Team Jace” T-shirts at an autism walk; Jace’s shirt reads “I’m Jace.”

“He loved his dad and loved me and he loved his Gammy,” his mother said. “He had issues, but they weren’t his fault. He couldn’t control it.”

---

A BOY IN A PLYWOOD BOX

The plywood box in the middle of Ted Meckley’s special-education classroom was 3 feet wide, 3 feet deep and 7 feet tall. The schools around Pontiac had been using boxes to seclude students for years, and Ted, a nonverbal 16-year-old with developmental disabilities, was routinely shut inside.

In 1989, Ted’s mother, Judith, started speaking out. Newspapers published stories, people got upset, and the boxes were removed.

Judith Meckley joined a state task force to examine the use of seclusion. After a brief ban on the practice, the state Board of Education issued guidance and then, a few years later, rules that carried the weight of state law.

The Illinois rules accepted the need for seclusion, a practice already used in psychiatric hospitals and other institutional settings.

After Congress enacted a 1975 law guaranteeing a free public education to children with disabilities, the colleges and universities that trained teachers sought guidance from behavioral psychologists on how to manage these potentially challenging students.

At the time, some researchers favored using cattle prods and electric shock to discourage unwanted behavior. Another method was to move the misbehaving patient into an environment with fewer stimuli — someplace calmer.

“It gave a psychological justification for seclusion,” said Scot Danforth, a professor at Chapman University in California who studies the education of children with disabilities and believes seclusion is ineffective.

 HOVER/TAP TO ZOOM

Illinois’ rules, now 20 years old, require that school employees constantly monitor the child and that they be able to see inside the room. Locks on the doors must be active, meaning they have to be continuously held in place. That’s so a child can’t be trapped during a fire or other emergency.

But the rules also cemented the use of seclusion in Illinois’ public schools.

“Essentially the regulations legitimized practices that place students at risk of serious harm and trauma,” said Naiditch, of Equip for Equality.

The Illinois law also lists reasons children can be physically restrained, a practice sometimes used in conjunction with seclusion. But the law is less precise about seclusion than about restraint, leaving room for misinterpretation by school officials.

“It makes it even more dangerous because schools are widely using it as punishment,” Naiditch said after reading some of the incident reports obtained by ProPublica Illinois and the Tribune.

School administrators who use seclusion say they need it to deal with students whose behavior is challenging, disruptive and, at times, dangerous.

“If (students are) committed to hurting someone, that room is a way to keep them safe,” said Alicia Corrigan, director of student services for Community Consolidated School District 15, which operates a therapeutic day program in Rolling Meadows for 40 students with disabilities.

Students there were secluded about 330 times in the time period reporters examined.

But “that’s the smallest part of our day,” Corrigan said. “That is not what we do all day.”

The Belleville Area Special Services Cooperative, near St. Louis, has two timeout rooms. Scratch marks are visible in the blue padding inside and on the windows in the heavy, locking doors.

The Belleville Area Special Services Cooperative, near St. Louis, allowed a photographer to visit two timeout rooms at Pathways school. The padded rooms have fluorescent lights and observation windows, which students have scratched. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune)

“Does it actually teach them anything or develop a skill? Absolutely not,” said Jeff Daugherty, who heads the cooperative. He allowed journalists to tour the Pathways school and see timeout rooms. “It’s never pleasant. I do believe it’s a necessary tool for our line of work with our students.”

The U.S. Department of Education warned in 2012 that secluding students can be dangerous and said that there is no evidence it’s effective in reducing problematic behaviors.

A few school districts in Illinois prohibit seclusion, including Chicago Public Schools, which banned it 11 years ago. But these districts often send students with disabilities to schools that do use it, such as those operated by most of Illinois’ special-education districts.

Danforth said seclusion goes unexamined because it largely affects students with disabilities.

To put children in timeout rooms, “you really have to believe that you’re dealing with people who are deeply defective. And that’s what the staff members tell each other. … You can do it because of who you’re doing it to.”

Ted Meckley, whose experiences in Pontiac’s timeout box as a teenager helped change the practice of seclusion, is now 45 and living in a group home. When a reporter told his mother that seclusion still is widely used, she gasped.

“No!” Meckley said. “My goodness. That is the most discouraging thing. I spent six years of my life fighting on this very issue. It’s so discouraging to think that, 25 years later, here we are. No progress.”

In fact, reporters identified several schools that have added more seclusion rooms in the past year or so. North Shore School District 112 converted two coat closets to isolation rooms. The McLean district in Normal opened two rooms in an elementary school.

And at Dirksen Elementary School in Schaumburg, two new 6-by-6 rooms are in use. They’re called “resolution rooms.”

---

THE REVOLVING DOOR

By 8:35 a.m. on Dec. 19, 2017, all five of the timeout “booths” at Bridges Learning Center near Centralia were already full. School had been in session for five minutes.

Each booth is about 6 by 8 feet, with a steel door. That day, one held a boy who had hung on a basketball rim and swore at staff when they told him to stop. In another, a boy who had used “raised voice tones.”

Two boys were being held because they hadn’t finished classwork. Inside the fifth room was a boy who had tried to “provoke” other students when he got off a bus. Staff told him he’d be back again “to serve 15 minutes every morning due to his irrational behavior.”

None of those reasons for seclusion is permitted under Illinois law.

Yet, over the course of that one day, the rooms stayed busy, with two turning over like tables in a restaurant, emptying and refilling four times. The other three were occupied for longer periods, as long as five hours for the boy who hung off the basketball rim. In all, Bridges staff isolated students 20 times.

Seclusion is supposed to be rare, a last resort. But at Bridges, part of the Kaskaskia Special Education District in southern Illinois, and at many other schools, it is often the default response.

Bridges used seclusion 1,288 times in the 15 months of school that reporters examined. The school has about 65 students.

According to the Tribune/ProPublica Illinois analysis of Bridges records, 72% of the seclusions were not prompted by a safety issue, as the law requires.

“There were kids there every day,” said Brandon Skibinski, who worked as a paraprofessional at Bridges for part of the 2018-19 school year. “I didn’t think that was the best practice. I don’t know what the best practices are, though.”

Cassie Clark, who heads the Kaskaskia Special Education District, did not respond to requests for comment about the district’s practices.

Stuck in seclusion

In Illinois, seclusion is meant to be used for safety purposes, not to punish students. Isolated timeouts also must end no more than 30 minutes after a student’s unsafe behavior stops. But records show some schools did not release children until they apologized or performed a task; others referred to childen “serving time.”

 HOVER/TAP TO ZOOM

 HOVER/TAP TO ZOOM

 HOVER/TAP TO ZOOM

In nearly 6,000 of the incidents reporters analyzed from schools across the state, students were secluded only because they were disruptive, disrespectful, not following directions, not participating in class or a combination of those reasons.

“That is clearly not good practice,” said Kevin Rubenstein, president of the Illinois Alliance of Administrators of Special Education, which represents 1,200 public and private special-education administrators in the state. “To the extent there is bad practice going on across the state, we need to fix that.”

The Kaskaskia district’s revolving-door use of the timeout booths stands out, but some other districts seclude children nearly as frequently.

The Special Education District of Lake County used isolated timeout about 1,200 times over the 15-month period reporters examined. Northern Suburban Special Education District in Highland Park put children in seclusion more than 900 times.

Some traditional school districts also relied on seclusion. For example, Valley View School District 365U in Romeoville and Schaumburg District 54 each secluded students more than 160 times in the time period examined. Wilmette District 39 put students in isolated timeout 361 times in 2017-18 alone.

Illinois’ seclusion rules are more permissive than federal guidelines, which say seclusion should be used only in cases of “imminent danger of serious physical harm.” In Illinois, children can be secluded for physical safety concerns regardless of the threat level.

The state law also doesn’t encourage staff to try other interventions first. And while federal officials suggest that seclusion should end as soon as the problematic behavior stops, Illinois law allows a child to be secluded for up to 30 minutes more.

Even with these looser rules, the ProPublica Illinois/Tribune investigation found that Illinois schools regularly flout and misinterpret state law.

Some schools use seclusion — or the threat of it —  as punishment. At the Braun Educational Center in south suburban Oak Forest, a classroom door features a sign saying: “If you walk to the door or open it you WILL earn” a visit to the “isolation and reflection” space. The school’s director said the sign is not a threat but a visual reminder that leaving is a violation of school rules.

Others won’t release children from seclusion until they apologize or sit against a wall or put their heads down. The Tri-County Special Education district in Carbondale routinely made children write sentences as a condition of release, records show. Students there often were kept in isolation long after the safety threat was over, sometimes even starting their next school day in a timeout room. Tri-County Director Jan Pearcy told reporters those practices ended this year.

Seclusion rooms: Four examples

Some Illinois schools provided images of their timeout rooms in response to public-records requests. The red buttons are commonly used to engage magnetic locks; to protect a child from being trapped, the buttons must be held down for the locks to work. Staffers also must be able to see inside the room.

Administrators in some districts have decided that putting a child in a room is not an isolated timeout if there is no door or the door is left open — even though the student is being blocked from leaving. State law does not say an isolated timeout requires a closed door.

“We only consider something isolated timeout if a student is in the room with the door shut and magnet (lock) held,” said Kristin Dunker, who heads the Vermilion Association for Special Education in Danville. “I understand this isn’t going to look good for us.”

At Bridges, records show how staff violated the state’s rules. Schools aren’t supposed to put students in seclusion for talking back or swearing, but Bridges did repeatedly. Workers also shut many students in booths for hours after the child’s challenging behavior ended.

One boy argued with Bridges workers as they tried to force him into isolation in March 2018 for being uncooperative. “I don’t want to go in a booth,” he said. “You’ll lock me in there all day.”

He was kept in the booth for nearly five hours.

Laura Myers saw Bridges’ timeout booths during school meetings and told administrators they should never be used on her 6-year-old son, Gabriel. A tiny, giggly boy with bright red hair, Gabriel has autism and is nonverbal, though he can sign a few words, including “blue,” “green” and “truck.”

“There’s a metal bench, the lock and key, the whole nine,” Myers said. “The sad part is there are parents there who don’t know it’s wrong and don’t know how their children are being treated.”

She was assured Gabriel would not be secluded. But she started to worry when he came home signing “timeout.” Now, she’s fighting for a different school placement.

---

HARM TO CHILDREN

Darla Knipe could hear it when she walked toward the timeout room in her son’s school: a  thudding sound, over and over.

She turned to a school aide and asked: “‘What is that noise?’”

It was her 7-year-old son, Isaiah. The first grader was banging his head against the concrete and plywood walls of the timeout room at Middlefork School in Danville. Knipe was shocked. He didn’t do that at home, she said.

Documents from Isaiah’s school, part of the Vermilion Association for Special Education, show that he was put in the timeout room regularly beginning in kindergarten. He started banging his head in first grade and continued through third, doing it nearly every time he was secluded.

“Isaiah states he has headache and ringing in his ears,” according to a report from Dec. 8, 2017. “Nurse filling out concussion form.”

Then, a month later: “Nurse is concerned he has been head banging several times, even slower to answer than usual, he was dizzy when he stood up, almost fell over.”

Sitting in his home last spring, Isaiah, now 10, looked down when asked why he hits his head.

“I tell the teachers why,” he said. “The timeout room … I don’t like it.”

 HOVER/TAP TO ZOOM

Records and interviews show how seclusion can harm children. Students ripped their fingernails or bruised their knuckles hitting the door. Their hands swelled and bled from beating the walls. In some cases, children were hurt so badly that ambulances were called.

Several parents said their children became afraid of school. Some said their children didn’t want to sleep alone. Other families said the rooms were so distressing that their children would not talk about them.

Angie Martin said her 9-year-old son now sees himself as such a bad child that he believes he belongs in seclusion. In less than three weeks at the start of this school year, he spent 731 minutes — more than 12 hours — in isolated timeout, records show.

“My concern is the damage that has been done, socially, emotionally and physically,” said Martin, whose son went to school in the Lincoln-Way Area Special Education district program in Chicago’s southwest suburbs. He now attends a private school.

The Tribune/ProPublica Illinois analysis found that the median duration of a seclusion was 22 minutes; in at least 1,300 cases the student spent more than an hour in isolated timeout.

One incident lasted 10 hours, with the student kept inside from breakfast into the evening.

Ross Greene, a clinical child psychologist and author of the book “The Explosive Child,” said repeated seclusion fuels a harmful cycle. Children who are frustrated and falling behind academically are taken out of the classroom, which makes them more frustrated and puts them even further behind.

“You end up with an alienated, disenfranchised kid who is being over-punished and lacks faith in adults,” Greene said.

Amber Patz, whose 11-year-old son Dalton was repeatedly secluded at The Center, an elementary school in East Moline for children with disabilities, said spending so much time in isolation put him behind academically and did not help him regulate his behavior.

“Putting you in this little room while you get red-faced does not work for him,” she said. “You have to think outside the box, but instead we are literally putting them in a box.”

Parents often do not know the details of what happens in seclusion. Though state law requires schools to notify families in writing within 24 hours each day a child is secluded, that doesn’t always happen.

While some notices describe the incident, others are form letters with just a checked box to indicate that a child was secluded. The law requires only that parents be notified of the date of the incident, whether restraint or seclusion was used, and the name and phone number of someone to call for more information.

Some parents said they got such abbreviated notices they didn’t know what seclusion meant or how long their child had been in a room. Others said staff used euphemistic language to describe seclusion, making it hard to understand what really happened.

Crystal Lake school employees have suggested to Kayla Siegmeier that her son, Carson, who has autism, might benefit from time in a “Blue Room,” she said.

“It turns out the Blue Room is a locked, padded room,” she said.

She read Illinois’ isolated timeout law and got a doctor’s note last year that prevented the school from secluding Carson, now a second grader. “Hard stop,” she said she told the school.

Crystal Lake school officials acknowledged they could be more transparent with parents and said they use the rooms only in emergencies.

In Danville, Darla Knipe knew that her son Isaiah was frequently in seclusion, but she didn’t know the school kept detailed incident reports each time it happened until reporters showed them to her.

“I never got anything like this,” Knipe said.

When she requested the reports from the district, she said, officials told her she could have asked for them any time. “Why would I ask for an incident report I didn’t know about to begin with?” she said.

The district gave her 212 reports, and she didn’t tackle the huge pile of paper right away. Then one night she woke up at 2 a.m. and stayed up for hours reading them. She learned what set Isaiah off and how he reacted.

“If we had talked after three, five, six of these, was there something I should have been doing?” she wondered.

She said she would have shared the reports with doctors who were working to diagnose the cause of his behavioral challenges. “I think about how different that boy could have been.”

Dunker, the district director, said that although parents don’t get minute-by-minute reports, they are notified by phone and then in writing after a seclusion. “I feel like that is just fine in terms of what a parent needs,” she said.

---

A BETTER WAY

There are school districts in Illinois — and all across the country — where seclusion isn’t the response to defiant or even aggressive behavior. In fact, it’s never an option.

Jim Nelson, who took over the North DuPage Special Education Cooperative in July 2016, said he put in a maintenance request on his first day to take the door off the seclusion room at Lincoln Academy, a therapeutic day school for students with emotional and behavioral difficulties.

The year before, the school in suburban Roselle, which has an enrollment of about 30, had placed students in the room 181 times, federal data shows. The space now has a lava lamp, fuzzy pillows, a beanbag and puzzles, and students go there on their own when they need a break, Nelson said.

He said he thinks all schools could get rid of seclusion and still be able to educate students. Since ending the practice, the North DuPage district has not seen an increase in the number of students transferred to more restrictive schools, he said.

“We have outbursts every day,” Nelson said, but “you are now trying to figure out what is the root of this outburst: Is it a home issue, a bus issue, a peer issue, a relationship issue, environment or fluorescent lights? We have to problem solve.”

Through the eyes of a child

Very few Illinois public schools allowed reporters or photographers to view the spaces they use for isolated timeout. So reporters who met with the families of secluded students invited children to draw their impressions of the rooms.

Administrators at schools that have closed their rooms say the cultural shift takes a lot of effort and training.

Eliminating seclusion generally requires two steps: first, embracing the philosophy that isolating children is unacceptable; second, teaching staff members how to identify and address the causes of challenging behavior before it reaches a crisis point.

Zac Barry, who teaches a system based at Cornell University called Therapeutic Crisis Intervention, said staff often get into a power struggle when students don’t obey, even over trivial matters.

“Don’t argue with them,” Barry said at a recent training session in Peoria for people who work with children. “If they don’t want to sit down, don’t try to make them sit down!”

Among other strategies, TCI teaches that it’s more effective to back away from an upset student, giving him space, than to move in closer. Teachers are trained how to stand in a nonthreatening way.

In Naperville School District 203, the rooms formerly used for isolated timeout are now sensory areas stocked with weighted stuffed animals and sound-blocking headphones.

Christine Igoe, who oversees special education in the 16,000-student district, said eliminating seclusion helps teachers and other staffers build relationships with students. Without seclusion as an option, she said, students and staff are less likely to be on high alert and anxious that situations will escalate.

“When you change your lens from ‘the student is making a choice’ to ‘the student is lacking a skill,’ everything changes,” Igoe said.

How do you feel?

The Kansas Treatment and Learning Center is among the schools that require secluded students to participate in a debriefing with staff members. Sometimes students cannot leave until they complete a “think sheet” describing how they feel and how they will behave better next time.

 HOVER/TAP TO ZOOM

 HOVER/TAP TO ZOOM

Kim Sanders, executive vice president of the Grafton behavioral health network in Virginia, which includes private therapeutic day schools, said schools there overhauled their approach after employees were injured in confrontations with students so frequently that the district lost its workers’ compensation insurance.

“Our outcomes were not great,” she said. “It was horrible for our staff morale.”

Since then, Grafton has developed a behavior model called Ukeru that it now sells to other schools. It’s based on the idea that staff should attempt to comfort, not control, children. When a child becomes violent, the system suggests staff use cushioned shields to protect themselves.

“If seclusion or restraint worked,” Sanders said, “wouldn’t you have to do it once or twice and you’d never have to do it again? It’s not working.”

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LITTLE KIDS, LOCKED AWAY

Illinois schools secluded an 8-year-old boy who got upset when he couldn’t ride the green bike during recess, a first grade boy who didn’t want to stop playing tag and a third grader who didn’t get the prize he wanted.

Even preschool children spent time in isolated timeout, records show.

The majority of incident reports reviewed for this investigation did not specify the grade of the child. But ProPublica Illinois and the Tribune identified more than 1,700 incidents when the student being secluded was in fifth grade or younger. Hundreds of seclusions involved kids in preschool, kindergarten or first grade.

One 7-year-old boy named Eli spent 1,652 minutes — 27½ hours — in the “reflection rooms” as a first grader at a school called The Center in East Moline, school records show.

Still learning to say some of his letters, Eli calls the spaces the “flection” rooms. When his mom, Elisha, gently corrects him, he snuggles into her side. “It’s hard to really say,” he explained.

Eli was referred to The Center, which offers a program for children with behavioral and emotional disabilities, when he was in kindergarten. Records show he sometimes had trouble coping with the frustrations of elementary school — not unlike many other Illinois children who were secluded after outbursts common for their age.

When staff told him he couldn’t play with toys, he started to tip desks and chairs. Because he didn’t want to come inside from recess, he began “flopping,” refused to walk and was “being unsafe.” He “could not continue to play nice” with blocks and started to hit and tried to run out of class. Sometimes, he would kick staff or throw objects around the room.

According to records from the school district and his family, Eli was secluded more than a dozen times in kindergarten, beginning when he was 5. In first grade, it happened 49 times. His longest timeout was 115 minutes.

“There is no reason my child should be in a timeout room for two hours,” said his mother, who asked that the family’s last name not be published.

Elisha pulled her son out of The Center at the end of last school year after noticing bruises on his arm and a fingernail indentation that broke the skin. Records show Eli was physically restrained by three staff members and put in isolated timeout that day. He now attends a private school.

 HOVER/TAP TO ZOOM

Schrader, director of the Black Hawk Area Special Education District, which operates The Center in northwestern Illinois, said staff at the school use the seclusion room “on a case-by-case basis, incident by incident” to help students learn strategies to calm themselves. She declined to comment on Eli’s case or that of any specific child.

“We use it more as a way to help the student learn to deescalate themselves and constant supervision to maintain their safety,” she said.

When a reporter asked Eli whether the calm down rooms helped him calm down, he shook his head no.

How did he feel when in the room?

“Mad,” he said quietly.

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MOVIE DAY

The seclusion rooms inside Braun Educational Center in Oak Forest look like so many others across Illinois: blue padding along the walls, a small window where staff can look in. The red button outside that locks the door. A mirror in the upper corner to give a fuller view.

In one room, three long tear marks were visible in the padding of the door — left there, the principal said, by a student with autism.

About 150 elementary through high school students with disabilities attend programs at Braun, which is operated by the Southwest Cook County Cooperative Association for Special Education. Gineen O’Neil, the co-op’s executive director, described many as troubled and challenging; some are homeless, abuse drugs, get pregnant or struggle with mental illness, she said. Some, she said, “run the streets” at night.

“People have to realize they get educated somewhere, and this is where it is,” O’Neil said.

Over 1½ school years, staffers isolated students nearly 500 times. O’Neil said students are not secluded as punishment.

But the Tribune/ProPublica Illinois analysis found that in 46% of seclusions at Braun, staff documented no safety reason that preceded the isolation. O’Neil said some of these incidents could have involved a safety issue despite the lack of documentation, but she also described the findings as “disturbing” and ordered a review of practices.

“You are making 1,000 judgment calls a day, you know what I mean?” O’Neil said. “You don’t always call them right.”

On a recent Friday afternoon, it was quiet in the halls. Most of the children had gathered to watch a movie and eat popcorn. They had earned the reward for good behavior.

But one boy didn’t qualify — and he was mad. The principal, Kristine Jones, said that after the rest of his class left for the movie, he shouted: “This place sucks. I’m leaving.”

He didn’t actually leave. But the boy was a “runner” when upset, Jones said, and they wanted to “pre-correct” his behavior.

So they took him to an isolation room.

Jennifer Smith Richards has been a reporter at the Chicago Tribune since 2015. Jennifer has a specialty in data analysis and previously covered schools and education for more than a decade at newspapers in Huntington, West Virginia; Utica, New York; Savannah, Georgia, and Columbus, Ohio. Her work has touched on everything from sexual abuse in schools to police accountability to school choice. Contact Jennifer by email and on Twitter.

Jodi S. Cohen is a reporter for ProPublica Illinois, where she has revealed misconduct in a psychiatric research study at the University of Illinois at Chicago, exposed a college financial aid scam and uncovered flaws in the Chicago Police Department’s disciplinary system. Previously, Jodi worked at the Chicago Tribune for 14 years, where she covered higher education and helped expose a secret admissions system at the University of Illinois, among other investigations. Contact Jodi by email and on Twitter.

Lakeidra Chavis is the reporting fellow for ProPublica Illinois. Previously, Lakeidra was a producer for WBEZ’s News Desk (Chicago Public Media), where she reported an in-depth piece on how Chicago’s black communities have been impacted by the opioid crisis. Contact Lakeidra by email and on Twitter.

Zbigniew Bzdak joined the Chicago Tribune as a staff photographer in 2002. His assignments included the war in Iraq, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the 2008 campaign of President Barack Obama and the first 100 days his first term. He left his native Poland to photograph kayaking expeditions exploring white-water rivers in Mexico and Peru. Contact Zbigniew by email or on Instagram.

Additional data analysis by Haru Coryne and data reporting by Kaarin Tisue, Nicole Stock, Brenda Medina and David Eads; additional research by Doris Burke; visual presentation by Agnes Chang, Jonathon Berlin, Chad Yoder, Vignesh Ramachandran, Sisi Wei, Jemal R. Brinson and Andrew Johnston.

https://kywnewsradio.radio.com/articles/news/exclusive-mother-arrested-while-having-seizure-in-court?fbclid=IwAR38cVAChxzyNE56wWTI5ufYOtyMlsEXImA5SLLk6QecuZDcJ_oqlQz1qgA

You just can’t make this stuff up.  Mother has seizure and collapses in her seat, she is pulled up by bailiffs and she falls to ground and hits her head.

Who the freak is running this courtroom?

CAROL MACKENZIE

NOVEMBER 22, 2019 – 4:28 PM

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/11/14/teen-shackled-by-dcfs-speaks/?fbclid=IwAR3p4_PSnYla5G3o8IAfcMLru3kES17yI1QpgJfQuO8igoCU8CPXbEGFT7Q#.XdYqCYXU7Ps.facebook

By Chris TyeNovember 14, 2019 at 10:11 pm

Filed Under:Chris Tye, DCFS, Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, Jawan Cross, Shackles

CHICAGO (CBS) — Jawan Cross is not a prisoner – he’s a teen in foster care – and yet, he was shackled by workers from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

Cross wants to show his face and tell his story about a problem that we first exposed. CBS 2’s Chris Tye spoke exclusively with the young man as the DCFS had their day in court Thursday.

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Cross said the DCFS first entered his world about 30 days ago. But that month has felt like a year – and one specific night felt like an eternity.

“Seven o’clock, the people come,” he said.

The people in question are two DCFS contracted drivers in a large van, who pulled up in the back of a youth home on the South Side. The date was Oct. 1, and Cross was being moved.

“They put me in handcuffs. I was wondering why. I was asking, like, why do I got to get in handcuffs?” Cross said. “And they didn’t say nothing. They just said they got to do it.”

Handcuffs, though, were just the half of it. Cross said he was locked in the shackles with his wrists crossed in front of him, and then a chain going down to his feet – forcing him to walk in lock-step.

“It was messed up,” Cross said.

When youth home staff called DCFS headquarters to ask if such treatment was really necessary, headquarters said yes.

“They just said it’s over their powers – that’s all they told the lady,” Cross said.

So Cross was locked down and moved to the suburbs.

“I kind of knew I wasn’t getting locked up because these are regular people,” Cross said. “They weren’t even the police.”

Until CBS 2 stepped in, DCFS made no comment on the shackling. In the days since our report, the organization has acknowledged it was “totally unacceptable” and “against policy.”

That in turn led to a court hearing Thursday, and a rule change preventing the practice from ever happening again.

”One thing is that they have affirmatively put out there that they’re not going to be using shackles or mechanical restraints,” said Alpa Patel, Chief Deputy for the Cook County Public Guardian’s Office.

But Cross has his doubts.

“They’re just talking. They’re just talking,” he said.

A judge on Thursday did rule that the process of shackling must stop for good. So-called soft restraints – which are made of cloth – can only be used when a judge or a psychiatrist orders it, and two senior staffers from the DCFS green-light it.

Jawan, who just turned 18, said he can’t wait for the DCFS to be out of his life for good.

CHRIS TYE

Many 911 calls are for overdoses, severe drunkeness, mental health crises, family disputes, and other emergencies that should not involve police.  Thank heavens that some communities recognize this and are assembling mental health teams to de escalate heated situations which do not involve real crimes, just families and people out of control in a safe secure manner that helps people and families.

Ida drives the poor and homeless to court and she also drives attorneys without cars to court to help the poor and homeless.  You can paypal her at http://www.paypal.me/ida2002.

Thanks for whatever you can spare.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidholmberg/2019/10/18/the-scourge-of-elder-abuse-dont-be-afraid-to-speak-up/?fbclid=IwAR19ielzMUonyN95XDnR4UsCR1qt_Tsuq0USn97d0k6Hm2CHyxCJSnp3jOY#46df8027637e

David HolmbergContributor 

Retirement

David Holmberg is a journalist and playwright.

If you or a member of your family have experienced elder abuse in a highly flawed guardianship system, you should be aware that you’re not an isolated case or a helpless victim.

Elder abuse by opportunistic court guardians is one of those issues in American society that has reached critical mass in recent years, and some statistics indicate that it might soon achieve a dubious parity with child abuse.

In 2016, the General Accountability Office in Washington examined the state-based guardianship system and found hundreds of cases of physical and financial abuse, and negligence throughout the country. According to The New York Times, the GAO reported that “in eight cases examined in six states, guardians were found to have stolen more than $600, from their elderly wards.” And from 1990 to 2010, the GAO reported, guardians in 20 cases stole $5.4 million.

But it took a New Yorker piece in 2017 to define the scourge of elder abuse in a way that got the public attention it deserved. How did the magazine accomplish that? By focusing on a Las Vegas, Nevada guardian named April Parks who’s attained a sad distinction: she’s become a poster child for elder abuse in this country, and last January she drew a long and deserved prison sentence for her systematic criminality.

Parks’ predatory strategy was exemplified in the case of a Las Vegas couple in their late 70’s named Rudy and Rennie North. The Norths had some health problems, but were comfortable in their home in an adult community. They’d been married 57 years. But Parks learned of their apparent vulnerability and got herself appointed as their guardian. She had the Norths declared incompetent, moved them into an assisted living facility not nearly as nice as their home, and took over management of their assets as a profit-making legal maneuver. She spent all their money (an unknown amount) and the Norths became totally dependent on their daughter, who had fought hard against Parks’ machinations.

Parks’ conviction brought her the maximum sentence possible: 16-40 years. Victims testified at her trial about losing their life savings and feeling like victims under Parks’ care. Said one victim: “April Parks is a predator of the worst kind.”

Parks claimed in her own testimony that she always had a passion for guardianship and cared about her clients. But, said Judge Tierra Jones, “you told us you never meant any harm. But after hearing stories of people Scotch-taping their shoes, people being charged for Christmas gifts, how is that no harm?”

A good question. And if you find yourself or someone you know in a guardianship situation that leads you to ask the same question, don’t hesitate to go to the authorities and/or seek legal counsel immediately. The Department of Justice has an elder justice coordinator in each of its 94 U.S. Attorney’s Offices, in accordance with the Elder Abuse Prevention and Prosecution Act—enacted in October 2017. The guardianship system is now on trial and you need to take advantage of that.

Just when you thought the stories could not get any worse (and apparently this includes prisons too)  another topic comes up:  providing inadequate sanitary products to women and girls.

You would think that just about everyone, even men would understand these basic needs.

Apparently not.

FORCING IMMIGRANT GIRLS TO BLEED THROUGH THEIR UNDERWEAR IS CRUEL, DEGRADING AND DANGEROUS | OPINION

JENNIFER WEISS-WOLF
ON 8/30/19 AT 3:13 PM EDT

CONTINUE

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OPINIONIMMIGRATION

It was only a matter of time before President Donald Trump made headlines again over periods.

Just four years ago, in August 2015, he accused then–Fox News correspondent Megyn Kelly after the first presidential debate of having “blood coming out of her wherever.” The charge landed the once-taboo topic of menstruation smack in the middle of election coverage—and on the front page of nearly every major national and small-town newspaper in between. It even generated its own viral hashtag, #PeriodsAreNotAnInsult.

Now, 19 states filed a lawsuit in California this week against the Trump administration for the indefinite detention of and conditions endured by migrant children and their families. Among the charges of hygiene deprivation for children detained at the border—including the alleged lack of basics like toothpaste and bars of soap—is insufficient access to menstrual products and care. Testimony in the lawsuit included that: “Girl(s) at the facility…were each given one sanitary pad per day. Although the guards knew they had their periods, they were not offered showers or a change of clothes, even when the other girl visibly bled through her pants.”

For over a year now, the news of babies torn from parents has been devastating to absorb. And the detailed accounts of children’s days and nights in detention—of stench and filth, teens tending to toddlers, preschoolers appearing solo in court—have revealed the situation to be even worse.

But this week’s blaring headline “Trump Administration Leaves Menstruating Migrant Girls ‘Bleeding Through’ Underwear at Detention Centres, Lawsuit Claims” was an unexpected gut punch. Such cruelty and degradation are simply unfathomable.

Period shame is real, it is harmful, and it exists in every corner of the world. A global cohort of activists is working to counter that stigma and the damage it does. Here in the U.S., it has been dubbed the fight for menstrual equity. Access to products—as well as toilets, education and safe and accurate care—is an essential part of that agenda.

And, encouragingly, considerable progress has been made. For example, in an effort to ensure that menstruation doesn’t hinder students’ ability to succeed in school, four U.S. states recently passed laws requiring that pads and tampons be freely provided in school restrooms. Fourteen states now require a similar provision for incarcerated women—in county jails, state prisons and juvenile detention centers. Even Congress voted to do the same in 2018, passing a bipartisan prison reform package, the FIRST STEP Act that mandates menstrual access in federal correction facilities. (And, yes, Trump signed it into law.) Since 2016, another six states have passed laws exempting menstrual products from sales tax—eliminating the notorious “tampon tax” and making the case that menstrual products should be affordable for all.

But at the border right now, there’s no solace for young teens who might know little about what’s happening to their bodies—yet have to summon the courage to tell a male guard and ask for pads, only to be denied or given too few to matter. Or have to manage their periods in over-crowded rooms where privacy is scant. And aren’t even able to shower or wash hands or scrub clean stained underwear.

The harm extends beyond all surface cruelty too. There are serious potential health risks, some fatal, that come from using a pad or tampon for too long, ranging from infection to toxic shock.

As a matter of policy, compassion and common sense, menstrual equity should be a no-brainer. But we are far from a nationwide mandate.

Which is where the courts come in. And why it is heartening to see this testimony—horrifying as it is—featured as part of the formal court record. For as a matter of law, there are viable, though still untested, arguments to support the case for menstrual equity: namely, that deprivation of basic needs like safe, affordable tampons and pads may amount to a violation of due process, sex-based discrimination under the equal protection clause, or both.

RELATED STORIES

• The Public Charge Rule Threatens the Health of Every Person in America
• Trump’s Public Charge Rule Is a Cover-Up for Racism—With Disturbing Origins

Last year, California criminal defense attorney Paula Canny filed a class-action lawsuit in Sacramento arguing that denying free tampons to people held in county jails is unconstitutional. Her action prompted numerous counties to ensure the provision of menstrual products. And a new legal campaign launched this summer—Tax Free. Period.—to mobilize lawyers to challenge the tampon tax in court. Constitutional law scholar and Dean of U.C. Berkeley Law Erwin Chemerinsky made the case for the illegality of the tampon tax in a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed. And the director of Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, Katherine Franke, told The New York Times that these legal claims, overall, “highlight a day-to-day way in which women experience discrimination in one of their most basic bodily functions.”

Fighting to have menstrual equity enshrined into our jurisprudence is a key step toward permanent, meaningful change. And a way to ensure that no one—especially a child in crisis—is shamed or harmed simply because they menstruate.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is vice president and women and democracy fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, and author of Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.​​​​​​​​​

Here is a very interesting documentary about Forgotten Children, the disabled ones, their lack of resources, how few are adopted, and how some women (journalists and a Russian socialite) are attempting to give them a better life–the life they deserve of caring and kindness.

Note the sections on the Ukrainian Court system and how it rubber stamps the words “incapacitated” upon them and how only one managed to reverse the designation.

How many similarities to the US court system for guardianship are there?

This child was put in foster care, ignored and ended up dead.

The mother wanted the child to be placed with the grandmother, that never happened.

Sad story.

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2019/09/26/texas-judge-bribe-money-beer-boxes-prison/?fbclid=IwAR12YoUnA8khp2_mjkvmwpfevCcAyV5AAentjegxDyhNUQbCUxEeijHqRUc

If you are able to help with an emergency eviction, North side of Chicago, please call me immediately.  Funds are needed to rent U Haul trailer.  Son will get off work at 7 pm and then we can move belongings to a safe place.

If you can lift a box, we need your help.  call me 773 255 7608.

We should all help one another out.

The man invovled (a court corruption victim, fake foreclosure) is very nice.

Joanne

but this can also apply to the lawyers and judges and 3rd party vendors

It would be nice if the Act required all GALs to be recorded when they have contact with the disabled person, but maybe next time.

https://emarquettebank.com/financial-management/trust-investment-management/todays-estate-analyst/what-are-the-2016-changes-to-the-illinois-probate/

A number of new laws took effect in Illinois at the beginning of 2016. Among them were a few that involved the Illinois Probate Act of 1975 (755 ILCS 5/) and other laws that affect estate planning, trusts and disabled individuals. Some of these modifications brought dramatic changes to these areas of law that are essential for practitioners to understand. Here are the citations and short summaries about the 2016 changes:

What Illinois Laws Affecting Estate Planning Were Updated for 2016?
​

• • Probate Disabled Persons Wills [755 ILCS 5/4-1] – This legislation amends the definition of the capacity of a testator who has been adjudicated as disabled. Under this amendment, there is now a rebuttable presumption that voids a codicil or will if its testator was found to be disabled at the time it was created or amended. However, the rebuttable presumption would not be valid if the court authorized the creation of the codicil or will. In addition, if the rebuttable presumption does apply, it takes clear and convincing evidence that the testator had the capacity to create or amend the will or codicil to overcome it.

• • Probate Temp Adult Guardians [755 ILCS 5/11a-4] – This amends the Illinois Probate Act to expand the powers of temporary guardians of disabled adults, providing them with a limited version of the duties and powers of a permanent guardian.

• • Probate Rights of Posthumous Children [755 ILCS 5/2-3] – This new law involves a change to the Illinois Probate Act due to a complete rewrite of a portion of the Illinois Parentage Act of 2015. This amendment clarifies when posthumous children (children who are born or conceived after the death of one parent) are considered to legally be children of a decedent as it pertains to inheritance. Under this new law, in Illinois, posthumous children are only considered children of a decedent if the child was in utero at the time the decedent passed away. As such, a child that is born via implantation after a decedent’s death through the use of frozen sperm or frozen embryos would not be considered the decedent’s child as it pertains to inheritance purposes.

• • Illinois ABLE Accounts for Disabled Individuals [15 ILCS 505/16.6] – This will allow disabled individuals in Illinois to create Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) accounts, which are savings accounts that enable the disabled to save up to $100,000 in a tax-free fund. The fund can be used to pay for certain disability expenses without risk of disqualifying disabled individuals from receiving SSI, SSDI and Medicaid.

• • Probate Citations Recover [755 ILCS 5/16-1] – This new law increases the court’s ability to issue citations for the appearance of those who have or may have had assets in their possession that belong to the estate of a ward or who may otherwise be liable to the ward’s estate pursuant to a civil action.

• Certification of Trust Form [760 ILCS 5/8.5] – This paves the way for the creation of a Certification of Trust Form that can be given to third parties instead of a complete copy of the trust instrument. Certification of Trust Forms are basically a couple of pages long and only include dispositive information as opposed to full copies of trust instruments. The full copies typically are over 25 pages and include both information a third party needs as well as information that might be better left private.
• Foreclosure Special Representative [735 ILCS 5/15-1501(h)] – This amendment eliminated the requirement for a special representative to be appointed for a mortgagor who has passed away in certain situations involving foreclosure. Under this new law, as part of the procedure to foreclose on a mortgagor who has died, a special representative will not have to be appointed for the deceased mortgagor if: (1) the mortgage property title was conveyed to a trust before the mortgagor died, (2) a beneficiary is designated in a transfer on death instrument, (3) the title of the mortgage property has already gone through the probate estate transfer process or (4) the property’s title was conveyed to an entity or person(s) prior to death.

https://citywatchla.com/index.php/2016-01-01-13-17-00/los-angeles/15903-how-corrupt-judges-are-destroying-our-society?fbclid=IwAR0_cBP4JVDhxmAiaArxdIMs0k7p3gjaskxzVcXYXwtj-FkZxhnOrC4r9HY

https://www.macombdaily.com/news/copscourts/nessel-macomb-county-probate-judge-s-guardianship-appointment-violated-law/article_540c67ea-d31b-11e9-899b-27900eb17fc1.html

NB:  This happens all the time in Cook County Probate.  There is no oversight as to the companies and 3rd party vendors the judges appoint, and no one cares that a family member would do the same job cheaper and better (Gloria Sykes and the Mary Sykes case)

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A Macomb County judge violated state law when she appointed a guardian-and-conservator company that reaped financial benefits from the appointment, according to Attorney General Dana Nessel.

State Public Administrator Michael Moody, on Nessel’s behalf, argues in a legal document Friday that Probate Judge Kathryn George created a law violation by appointing Clinton township-based Caring Hearts of Michigan Inc. as guardian and conservator for Robert Mitchell and Barbara Delbridge last November, over a daughter and stepdaughter of the couple.

Caring Hearts hired Executive Care to perform the care for the couple, according to the state. Both companies are owned by Cathy Kirk. In addition, Caring Hearts employed the firm of her husband Robert Kirk — Kirk, Huth, Lange and Badalamenti — for legal services. The trio of companies share the same address on Hall Road, east of Romeo Plank Road.

Caring Hearts charged more than $250,000 for about six months of care.

George through a spokeswoman declined to comment Monday, referring the matter to court officials.

The Attorney General in the filing Friday seeks to intervene in the Probate case, saying that all prior transactions are “voidable” due to the arrangement.

The law in question says, the “Court shall not appoint as guard an agency, public or private, that financially benefits from directly providing housing, medical, mental health or social services to the legally incapacitated individual.”

Moody comments in the brief, “The intention behind this provision is to prevent conflicts of interest.”

“All of these financial transactions set forth in Caring Hearts’ Final Account are presume to be affected by a conflict between personal and fiduciary interests, and therefore voidable,” Moody adds.

Caring Hearts attorney Edward Nahat disputed Nessel’s claims Monday, saying state attorneys misapplied the law and should not have sought to enter the case.

“The Attorney General’s petition … misapplied the statute to these circumstances and is over-reaching by trying to intervene in a case she shouldn’t be involved in,” Nahat said.

He said the law quoted by state lawyers applies to investments and housing transactions, neither of which Caring Hearts and Executive Services were involved.

He said George knew of the arrangement.

Nahat called Nessel’s involvement “heavy handed,” noting that it has drawn publicity.

He said Caring Hearts supports a review of the accounting and charges in the case.

“A remedy is already available to the family,” he said. “They can get their own day in court. They don’t need the Attorney General’s help.”

Probate Court in September 2018 instituted a policy that requires a company or fudiciary must reveal whether a person related to the company or fudiciary is performing a service for the fudiciary or company, according to John Brennan, deputy court administrator.

Brennan said he does not believe the relationships were disclosed in the Mitchell and Delbridge cases.

Expenditures will be reviewed over the next several months. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Jan. 10.

Nessel issued a news release on the matter Monday.

“It is absolutely incumbent on the courts to ensure that the state’s guardianship system is providing properly for the vulnerable and that the court-appointed conservators fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities to those in their custody,” she said. “That does not appear to be happening in the case of Caring Hearts, which was appointed by Judge Kathryn George as guardian and conservator for Robert Lee Mitchell and Barbara Delbridge.”

Nessel added that the “Estates and Protected Individuals Code specifically prohibits certain financial self-dealing by the guardian with respect to the ward.”

Nessel announced in May that George was under investigation for her role in the case involving the couple following reports initiated by WXYZ-TV (Channel 7).

State Supreme Court Chief Justice Bridget McCormack and Macomb Chief Judge James Biernat Jr. at that time of the announcement released a joint statement in support of the probe.

Family members of the couple said George should have appointed them as guardians and conservators to watch over the care and finances of the couple, both 70 or older and in declining health.

Mitchell’s daughter, Marcie, and other family members complained their visits were limited and that caregivers installed a 6-foot fence around the property near Hall Road and Van Dyke Avenue that blocked the vision of family members who resided next door. The said the couple were virtual prisoners in their home.

They also raised questions about the guardian and conservator company’s spending from the couple’s more than $2.5 million in assets.

Caring Hearts and Executive Services in early June withdrew from serving as guardian and conservator. Attorney Terry Gilsenan was named temporary guardian, and attorney Martin Brosnan was name temporary conservator.

On June 26, Judge Biernat, who had taken over the case, granted Marcie Mitchell guardianship over her father, Robert, and Anita Little gained guardianship over her sister, Delbridge.

The pair on Friday also were named conservators, although each has to file a bond and paperwork in order to take over.

Attorney Frank Cusumano said Monday he plans to file a legal action on Little’s behalf “to unwind the transactions” involving Caring Hearts, Executive Services and the law firm.

“Anita Little wants to do her part to make sure that this activity does not occur and injure another family,” Cusumano said.

The older couple are currently residing in a facility in Genesee County, closer Marcie Mitchell’s Clarkston home.

The case developed as Nessel has been vowing to crack down on elder abuse. She formed Michigan Elder Abuse Task Force earlier this year shortly after she took office. This summer, she conducted a statewide “listening tour” to hear complaints about elder abuse and complaints about Probate Court, which oversees will and estates of incapacitated and deceased individuals.

Robert Kirk last month was removed as a state Public Administrator for appointment to certain Probate cases.

George has served as a Macomb Probate Judge since 2003. More than a decade ago, George came under the scrutiny of state officials and removed as chief probate judge for her relationship with a now-defunct guardianship company, conflict with the second probate judge and dysfunction at the court.

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Today’s elderly is faced with a ‘brave new world’ that is foreign to them.      At one time it was actually safe to grow old and being elderly ipso facto warranted respect.      Yes, there were predators who preyed on the elderly, but they were not lauded, elected to public office, and protected by the Political elite.

The human trafficking in the elderly (elder cleansing felonies) today are a an epidemic and a cottage industry fostered openly by many in our government.     A lawyer who objects to the predation exhibited by a ‘court appointed’ guardian is considered to be a miscreant whose objections are akin to “yelling fire in a crowded theater” and such a deviant and bad person to warrant long suspensions of his;/her law license.    A family member who objects to the common technique of debilitation of an otherwise healthy (but targeted) elderly person is routinely held up to ridicule, contempt of court punishments, confiscation of assets etc.     Indeed, in cases disclosed by the blog AAAPG, NASGA, probate sharks, MaryGSykes, ****, four GAO reports, the Oct 9, 2017 New Yorker article, a Wall Street Journal, a New York Times Article etc. the Modius Operandi is almost always similar.     Dr. Sugar’s book GUARDIANSHIP details that process (and is a must read).    The net, net, is that a culture of predation has grown up in America (and especially in our Court system) that is designed to surcharge our health care system by more than 700%, confiscate the savings, the liberty, the property, and the human rights of the elderly, and ravage any semblance of honor, honesty, or efficacy in our institutions.

The 1^st Amendment is being trashed by the governmental corruption that has polluted our court system and allows for the Court to appoint a guardian for a fully competent elderly person targeted by Political and Judicial elitists and deprive that individual of his/her liberty, property, associations, life and Constitutional rights without actual due process of law.

As many have pointed out the MO is clear.     A targeted senior is taken into custody by a Court appointed guardian and after the administration of mind deadening drugs literally stripped of his/her assets, dignity, property, rights, humanity etc.      It really does not matter if this senior is competent – i.e. knows the objects of his bounty, extent and nature of his property, and can execute a simple business transaction – the seniors assets, benefits from federal and state health care and other assets are laid out on the table to distribute amongst the established political and judicial elite.

Most States – on paper – have procrustean written procedures to make certain that a n individuals 1^st, 4^th, 5^th and 14^th amendment rights are protected – however, as indicated in the Mary Sykes case 09 P 4585 (Circuit Court of Cook County) a corrupt judge can and will obviate all protections.       The Court regulators, gadflies, court observers, private citizens, media, law enforcement et al either do not care or are disinterested in the assault on America that is being perpetrated.     In Sykes that Statute (755 ILCS 5/11a – 10) sets up criteria that must be followed as to grant JURISDICTION.      A review of the file in Sykes indicates that every safeguard was thwarted.     Even the required summons was not served!     No hearing was held.    No notice of hearing was even attempted.      NB.   Illinois recognizes that judicial fraud is real and that it is tempting to judges many of whom have paid large sums of money to the Cook County Democratic Party to become judges, so 755 ILCS 5/11a – 3 not only sets forth strict rules as to whom may be provided a guardian, but sets a high burden of proof to establish the need and strict limitations on the guardian’s powers.

Of course, statutory protections are meaningless when they are ignored.     And of course, when corruption is rampant citizen protections are meaningless.      It appears that Dr. Sugar has picked up the torch and in his quiet unassuming manner is attempting to organize us – the “great unwashed” out of our complacency and maybe strike a blow for FREEDOM, decency, and honor.

“The Guardians” – Nov 4, 2019

Re-scheduled Date!

Nov 4, 2019, 3 – 7:30 pm

Movie + Town Hall –
FREE to attend!

November 4, 2019
3:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Marriott Orlando Airport Lakeside
7499 Augusta National Drive
Orlando, FL 32822

7499 Augusta National Dr 7499 Augusta National Dr, Orlando, FL 32822

#GuardianshipAwarenessTownhall

Existing tickets will be honored–you do not to get a new ticket or reservation.

If you need a ticket, please pick one up for free by going to this EventBrite link.

NEW DATE : AAAPG Orlando Premier “The Guardians” followed by Town Hall AAAPG Premier “The Guardians” movie and Town Hall meeting for Central Florida to `expose Florida’s horrific gua…

Here are the emails you should send evidence of a crime to:

FBI:

ada.cmplaintsadmin@usdoj.gov

chicago@ic.fbi.gov

fbi@service.govdelivery.com

hrstips@usdoj.gov

NOTE:  I do believe that the current administration may have shut down human rights and ada complaint emails. you might want to call them and demand they reinstate these email addresses.

Cook County States Attorney

statesattorney@cookcountyil.gov

Illinois Attorney General:

aag_consumer@atg.state.il.us

If you can manage to get the first and last name of any attorney there or investigator, you can probably email them evidence of court corruption by following the format first name.last name and then use the rest of the above emails

Please post any emails you might have for the fbi and state attorney generals to help people turn over corruption evidence so we can get rid of corruption in govt.

thanks

One of the grounds was forced placement in nursing homes against the disabled person’s will or into group homes in sub human condition.  Sound familiar?

MICHIGAN ATTORNEY GENERAL DANA NESSEL AND GOVERNOR GRETCHEN WHITMER TIED TO INVESTIGATION OF MASSIVE ELDER ABUSE AND EXPLOITATION RING..

Posted: 28 Aug 2019 06:23 PM PDT

LOS ANGELES , CA, USA, August 26, 2019 /EINPresswire.com/

NESSEL FIRES THREE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATORS EXPOSED IN THE STORY. 

An August 23 investigation detailing a massive alleged elder abuse and exploitation ring operating out of a Michigan probate court was published on the same day that Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel fired three public administrators, exposed in the story as allegedly exploiting thousands of vulnerable Americans under their guardianship.

High-profile cases such as the ongoing dispute concerning the estate of famed musician Aretha Franklin have been affected.

Franklin’s eldest son Clarence is under the guardianship of Michigan attorney Jon Munger who is one of the targets of the probe which uncovered an unsettling number of alleged crimes including abuse, neglect, robbery, and exploitation, often in cases that arguably didn’t merit guardianship in the first place.

In as little as a year, so called “incapacitated wards” are stripped of the entirety of their savings and possessions and rendered completely reliant upon social services and benefits such as Medicaid. 

Hammond states that she and her team revealed their findings to Nessel’s staff at a March 12, 2019 meeting implicating three of the four public administrators Nessel eventually fired.

On March 25, 2019 Nessel announced the creation of a multi-agency Elder Abuse Task Force. The Task Force presented nine reforms to the guardianship system. Nessel claims the firings were due, in part, to Task Force discoveries.

Hammond says she does not buy it.

“Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and her staff knew this story was coming ever since our March meeting,” she says.”Her firing of the public administrators we discussed has been a long time coming but doesn’t have any effect without criminal investigations. They can still take guardianship cases.”

In a forensic review of the Oakland County Probate Court, available to the public for the first time in Michigan history, Mulholland also concludes that criminal investigations into the guardians are warranted.

Hammond’s investigation found campaign donations from Nessel to Oakland County Probate County Chief Judge Kathleen Ryan. It also revealed hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to Whitmer by a public relations company owned by Ryan’s brother James.

Background:
Every US state still uses form of guardianship Rooted in Medieval English law, at its best, it is designed to protect citizens who are no longer able to protect themselves by declaring them wards of the state. However, increasing reports of abuse cropping up nationwide, has prompted Congressional calls for reform.

But the level of controversy over how guardianship cases are handled in the Detroit-area Oakland County Probate Court has reached such heights, the story reads more like Orwellian fiction than it does a model of the American experience.

Discoveries include the forced separation of families and isolation of the vulnerable; fraudulent petitions for guardianship by Adult Protective Services investigators; massive over-billing; the forced removal of individuals from their homes and the placement of them in nursing facilities or unlicensed group homes with subhuman living conditions; real estate fraud; and missing assets that number in the millions of dollars. 

The investigation met with constant challenges, including threats and harassment by Oakland County Sheriff’s officers. A surreal March 12, 2019 four-hour meeting between Hammond’s team and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s staff led to a new line of inquiry and discoveries of campaign ties between Nessel, Whitmer and Oakland County Probate Court Chief Judge Kathleen Ryan and her family.
###
ROGER NEAL
NEAL PR
+1 323-366-2796

Click the links below to read the five part series:

The Fortress Part One of Five: Unacknowledged and Unprotected

The Fortress Part Two of Five: Protected in Hell
The Fortress Part Three of Five: Profiting from Protection
The Fortress Part Five of Five: Protected by Secrecy and Ageism

The Fortress Part Four of Five: Th

Just when you thought it could not get any worse:

Local family says guardianship cost elderly woman $123K for 3 months of care

Posted: 5:45 PM, Aug 13, 2019

Updated: 9:02 PM, Aug 13, 2019

By: Heather Catallo

(WXYZ) — More than $123,000. That’s what a local family says a guardianship cost their elderly mother for three months of care. It was a huge chunk of her life savings.

It’s the same guardianship company that 7 Investigator Heather Catallo exposed back in May when they were accused of cutting off family contact with an elderly couple.

The family in this case originally didn’t want to talk to us on camera, but when they saw the fees that Caring Hearts Michigan is asking a judge to approve – they agreed to speak out.

Piera Franklin is 90 years young and still loves working in her yard.

• ‘I just want my parents back.’ Woman says company imprisoned her parents in their own home

After she had some health issues in February, Macomb County Probate Judge Kathryn George appointed Caring Hearts Michigan Inc. as Piera’s temporary guardian and conservator. That means Caring Hearts had total legal control of Piera. As her conservator, they also had total control of her money.

Caring Hearts Michigan Inc. is owned by Cathy Kirk. Court records show, Kirk used her husband’s law firm to bill the estate. Kirk also used one of her companies, Executive Care, to provide 24/7 in-home care for Piera.

Please note: Caring Hearts Homecare of Southfield is not affiliated in any way with Cathy Kirk’s Caring Hearts Michigan Inc.

Piera said that she didn’t need that. She cooks, cleans, washes her clothes and didn’t want that kind of 24/7 help.

In May, the 7 Investigators were in the courtroom when the judge took Caring Hearts off the case and granted guardianship and conservatorship of Piera to her son , John. But the Franklin family was stunned when they recently got the final accounting from Caring Hearts.

For only 91 days of care, Caring Hearts wants the court to approve:

• $10,5224.37 for guardianship services
• $19,369.90 in legal fees for Cathy Kirk’s husband’s law firm
• $86,304 for home care charged by Executive Car

• Caring Hearts Michigan backs out of disputed guardianship case in wake of 7 Action News report
• Michigan AG opens investigation into Macomb Co. probate case following 7 Action News report

“Is more than $86,000 for 91 days of care reasonable,” asked 7 Investigator Heather Catallo.

“Not in my opinion,” said John Perrin, an attorney hired by Piera’s son, John Franklin. “Based on the invoices themselves, there’s clearly overcharges here.”

“Do you feel like they earned that money?” Catallo asked Piera.

“No! No way no way! Because they didn’t do anything. No help for me, no bath, nothing, nothing,” Piera responded. “I make my own bed. I clean up the house. I did everything! Was nothing done. They sit there with their book and watching TV. That’s it!”

• Why did a Macomb Co. judge put strangers in charge of an elderly couple instead of family?
• Family awarded guardianship of Macomb Co. couple after 7 Action News Investigation

Heather Catallo WXYZ@HeatherCatallo

This is 90-year-old Piera Franklin talking about the caregivers from Caring Hearts MI Inc. On ⁦@wxyzdetroit⁩ at 6, I’ll show you why her family is objecting to $123k in legal, guardianship, & care fees for 91 days. ⁦⁦@MIAttyGen⁩ ⁦@MISupremeCourt⁩ #probate

16

3:36 PM – Aug 13, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Heather Catallo WXYZ’s other Tweets

Piera said she did like some of the home aides, but she says one caregiver had a fight with her boyfriend in the driveway of Piera’s home. She said it made her feel scared, like she did during the war in her childhood in Italy.

“I was raised in the war time, and I remember when the bombs coming, I would get stomach problem, and I felt the same anxiety in my stomach,” said Piera.

In court filings, Perrin argues Caring Hearts Michigan Inc. “engaged in serious conflicts of interest that resulted in waste and dissipation of Ms. Franklin’s savings.”

“There’s one particular occasion where I see 48 hours billed for one caregiver in a single day,” Perrin said. “The cumulative time in that single day wound up being almost $2,500.”

Other fees include:

• Hours of overtime for what Perrin says are non-skilled caregivers charging above-market rates of $45 per hour;
• $1,760.50 to change the locks on Piera’s home (family members say they don’t know why the locks needed to be changed);
• $1,129.81 for correspondence with banks and closing Piera’s accounts so they could be moved to First State Bank where Cathy Kirk’s husband, Robert, is a board member.

Now, Piera has less expensive caregivers for fewer hours in the day. She says now she is worried about how much money she was charged by caring hearts.

“I worked hard to save, 10 hours a day,” said the mother of five.

The 7 Investigators spoke with the Michigan Attorney General’s Office and they say their financial crimes unit is aware of this case, but they can’t confirm or deny if they are investigating.

The Attorney General is investigating a different probate case first exposed by the 7 Investigators that also involves Caring Hearts Michigan Inc.

Lawyers for Caring Hearts Michigan Inc. deny any wrongdoing, and they have told the court they will review some of the billings. They say the relationship between Kirk’s companies while serving Piera did not violate any law or court rule.

Kemp Klein Attorney Ed Nahhat sent the 7 Investigators this statement late Tuesday:

“Caring Hearts disclosed in writing to Court Administrator John Brennan on April 4, 2018, its common ownership of Executive Care. This was many months before the Court’s “related persons” policy was issued. The policy assures disclosure upon the annual account.

In these cases, all interested persons, and the court, had disclosure; they knew that the companies had common ownership as intended by the policy.

Neither Caring Hearts nor Executive Care did anything wrong when doing what the court ordered them to do: care for someone according to their needs and preferences. Mrs. Franklin was very grateful to Caring Hearts, as she wanted her care to be at home, extensive and high quality, and she wanted only certain persons to take care of her. In fact our Executive Care’s service was so valued that her son rehired them at one point, and his mother specifically asked for their employees to continue serving her, even after Caring Hearts was replaced. Simply put, she liked her care at home, and that is always more expensive.

Caring Hearts and Executive Care are ready and willing to be examined for all that they did and the fees they charged. That’s what trials are for.

It’s about money.

While family are entitled to challenge fees, we fear Mrs. Franklin is now being scripted to create an inaccurate public image of Caring Hearts. It’s sad to see a good company get publicly attacked when the family already has a court of law available to them, where both parties have a fair chance to present their case.”

If you have a story for Heather Catallo please email her at hcatallo@wxyz.com or call 248-827-4473.

As evidenced by the numerous attorney employment acts, efiling Illinois is only allowing attorneys to access full court documents filed online.

The public still has to go to the courthouse, search for and pull up documents and then pay 50 cents to $2 per pay for access, despite the fact the taxpayers own the documents, and not attorneys, not judges or court personnel.

Dorothy Brown is still the clerk of court.  She should be fighting for access by taxpayers and not just attorneys or judges.

Read on below.

How to Access Case Documents Online With re:SearchIL

• Aug 1, 2019
• Illinois
• by Marcus Niro

A recent post from the Chicago Bar Association discusses the new re:SearchIL platform, a much-needed solution for attorneys eFiling throughout Illinois. CourtFiling.net happily sponsors this article by Tisha Delgado.

Since the Illinois Supreme Court announced the mandatory switch from traditional paper filing to eFiling, the legal industry has hoped for an efficient way to access those eFiled documents online.

re:SearchIL allows attorneys to search for all filings and activity in their cases, study opposing counsel, and know the other parties in their case. They do this simply by logging into re:SearchIL using their CourtFiling.net credentials. There is an easy to navigate dashboard that contains a “My Cases” section where the attorney can easily see a list of all their pending cases in any of Illinois’ 102 counties, in which their ADRC number appears.

With any new system, re:SearchIL has a few issues to work through. Only attorneys of record and parties to the case are able to access these court records. The system leaves out other legal support staff who are often involved in the eFilings including paralegals, legal secretaries, and law clerks. This lack of access for legal support staff is only temporary, as some rules and policies are still being discussed.

Another hiccup is that two of the biggest counties, Cook and DuPage use Firm/Attorney numbers instead of ADRC numbers so cases in those courts are not yet available via re:SearchIL. However, Tyler Technologies has contacted Cook and DuPage courts to implement a change to include the attorney’s ADRC number in these cases so they are accessible via re:SearchIL.

CourtFiling.net will keep you updated on any changes that occur within the re:SearchIL platform.

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