Actually, in the doublespeak of conservatorship lingo, the conservator doesn’t
actually “kill” or “murder” the conservatee. What she does is make an “end of
life decision” for her ward.
Such a decision may involve the disallowal
of medicine for a ward who is ill with a treatable disease. When Elizabeth
Fairbanks fell ill with pneumonia,
conservator Melodie Scott made an “end of life
decision” and ordered the withholding of antibiotics and, just to give that
little extra push into the grave, okayed that the elderly woman be dosed with
morphine. Morphine retards respiration and may, in fact, stop a person's
breathing.
Helpless and without legal standing to intervene, Fairbanks’
children watched in horror as their mother struggled to breathe, then stopped
breathing forever.
Fairbanks’
last breath was drawn at a Braswell’s facility. The
Braswell’s
homes are scattered throughout San Bernardino County, and many of Melodie
Scott’s wards have drawn their final breath at one of Braswell’s
facilities.
After her attempt was derailed to anonymously admit
conservatee Charlie Castle into San Gabriel
Valley Medical Center (his whereabouts were discovered and a line of contact
with him was established, thereby overriding the anonymity of the admit),
Melodie Scott appears to have made one of those “special” decisions about where
Charlie’s ride would end, and on August 5 she admitted him into Braswell’s
Desert Manor in Yucca Valley.
Immediately, the first step in the
“Isolate-Medicate-Euthanize” protocol was invoked. Charlie’s legal right to make
and receive phone calls, guaranteed under C.F.R. 483.10 (k) and California
Welfare and Institutions Code 5325 (d), was terminated “on the order of the
conservator,” according to Megan at Braswell’s. In a case such as Charlie
Castle’s, these phone calls may constitute a life-line.
A call was then
made to San Bernardino Adult Protective Services and the screener, Tania,
refused to take the report, stating that APS has no dominion over those in
long-term care facilities.
A call to the San Bernardino County Ombudsman
produced an immediate result. A woman who identified herself as Barbara took the
report and within a couple of hours, someone from the Ombudsman’s office visited
Desert Manor. However, according to the Social Services Director, Megan, the
Ombudsman supported the decision of the facility to deny Charlie’s rights to
make and receive phone calls.
Another effort to lodge a report with APS
was then made and the supervisor, Tatiana Khokhold, stated that the report would
not be investigated because Charlie is under a conservatorship. There is no law
prohibiting APS from investigating these cases, however.
Ron Buttram,
Deputy Director of the San Bernardino County Office on Aging, has declined to
comment on either the behavior of the Ombudsman or the refusal of APS to
investigate this report and has referred all calls to the Public Information
officer, who is out of the office and will return next week.
Calls
to the San Bernardino County Courthouse revealed that no one could reveal
whether Charlie Castle’s writ of habeas corpus, filed last week, was granted or
not. The reason for all this secrecy is that Charlie is under a mental health
conservatorship and all this hush-hush business — it is all to protect his
privacy. You can thank HIPPA for that perversion of rights and
oversight.
In the Administration office of Braswell’s, Chris (who
declined to provide his last name) waxed somewhat philosophical over the plight
of Charlie Castle and others in his situation. “The facility must make difficult
decisions in cases like this,” he said. He admitted awareness of the laws which
guarantee the right to make and receive phone calls for residents at facilities
like Desert Manor, but asked, “What do you do when a judge issues an order
counter to the law?”
You follow the law, I replied.
“But the judge
is the law,” said Chris.
Actually, the judge is a man in a long black
robe who has taken an oath to uphold the law, but Chris would hear nothing
concerning this perception and suddenly reversed his previous
statements.
“We do not block a resident from making or receiving phone
calls,” he announced cheerfully.
At day’s end, I turned on the tube and
listened to Obama’s nomination acceptance speech at the DNC in Charlotte.
Repeatedly, President Obama affirmed that we are a country where “everyone plays
by the same rules,” as the crowd roared its approval.
He must not have
heard about the way they are playing the game out in San
Bernardino.
