Community Update

On the same day little Jeremiah Oliver’s dad laid him to rest, the Pelletier family’s hopes of a speedy release by the state of Massachusetts and a direct return home of their daughter Justina, whose sixteenth birthday is less than twenty days away, were once again dashed by Massachusetts Department of Children and Families. Health and Human Services secretary, John Palonowicz, in a meeting Monday with Lou and Linda Pelletier and their two oldest daughters, handed the parents the state’s version of a Reunification Plan, which calls for the transfer next week from one locked down psychiatric facility in Framingham, MA (Wayside Youth and Family Facility) to another in northern Connecticut, over an hour from the Pelletier’s home, while Massachusetts DCF still retains custody of their daughter. MA Superior Court has agreed to hear the Writ of Habeus Corpus (wrongful imprisonment) filed by Lou Pelletier and his attorney back in mid April.


The plan lays out four conditions that the family must meet in order to have a Massachusetts judge at later court date determine if Justina may be reunited with her family, who is only allowed to see her for one hour per week, with a heavily supervised presence of social workers and armed guard. Attending meetings at the new facility, going through “family therapy”, and meeting with Massachusetts DCF officials to review if conditions have been met were three of the four. The other, amazingly, was that the Pelletiers would “follow through on Tufts Medical Center care procedures”.


Ironically, it was the original plaintiff,Boston Children's Hospital, via Dr. Amanda Newton, head of child protective services, with support from Simona Bujoreanu, a psychologist studying somatoform disorder funded by an NIH federal grant along with the young Dr. Peters, a neurologist seven months out of residency, who blocked the Pelletiers from being able to return to their treating team at Tufts, or to have Justina seen by her former GI doctor, Dr. Alejandro Flores, who had treated Justina’s stomach complications at Tufts, and was to see her at BCH on a planned, direct admission, according to the Pelletier family.


Ironically, it is the MA-DCF who was found in contempt of court for dragging its feet on returning Justina’s medical care to Tufts as ordered back in March of 2014, and, who still block Tufts doctors from seeing or treating Justina as often as they deem necessary, according to reports.


How much “slow drip” torture can one family endure?