Texas must finally stop tolerating child abuse

It would seem almost providential that the state Blue Ribbon Task Force held its first meeting last week, just days before police say Elyse Colon stabbed her two little boys to death.

The task force, established by the Legislature last year, extends the child abuse-prevention work of Sen. Carlos Uresti beyond the San Antonio Democrat’s political borders. A group of nine appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker will review how state, local and law enforcement agencies address child abuse. The Legislature will receive the task force’s recommendations next year.

The task force is inspired by countless tragedies. Per capita, Texas has a higher rate of child deaths from abuse or neglect than other states.

Last year was deadly. The state’s unofficial tally for the last fiscal year reported 275 children killed as the result of abuse or neglect. If the trend continues, before the group meets again in two weeks, another 10 or so children will be killed.

Locally, Colon’s name will briefly sear itself into our consciousness the way Otty Sanchez’s did last year and Valerie Lopez’s two years before that. Sanchez is accused of killing and dismembering her 3-week-old son, while Lopez is serving a life sentence in the deaths of her 14-month-old daughter and 4-month-old son, whose bodies were found buried under a Southwest Side home.

Then our attention will wane until another horrific death.

So prevalent is the mortal abuse and neglect of young children that risk is easily discerned. For instance, experts have determined children are especially vulnerable during the first five months of life, when extended periods of crying aren’t uncommon, and at the toddler/pre-school age, when potty-training accidents may be a factor.

With such clear patterns, why can’t more be done to prevent abuse?

The Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities last year analyzed Texas’ child abuse and neglect deaths, and the findings weren’t entirely surprising. Our high rate of child poverty and teen pregnancy are big contributors to the high abuse and death rates, as is lack of access to quality family-support services. Improving outlooks in all three areas, the nonpartisan policy institute’s analysis suggested, would be a good place to start.

James Castro, executive director of St. Peter-St. Joseph Children’s Home, is a governor’s appointee to the task force. The facility he heads has decades of experience dealing with children who have been removed from their homes by Child Protective Services because of abuse or neglect concerns. With capacity for 138 children, on Friday, St. PJ’s had 103.

The solution, Castro suggests, must include the kind of relentless passion that Mothers Against Drunk Driving summoned to tackle and make progress against the problem of drunken driving. MADD blanketed communities with education campaigns and exerted steadfast political pressure to increase penalties and prosecutions.

“We need to create the culture that we’re not going to tolerate it anymore,” Castro said.

My question: Why aren’t we already there?

Source: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/columnists/veronica_flores_paniagua/83694857.html

Ninth Circuit Court Delivers Landmark Taser Ruling

Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo at 6:30 AM on December 30, 2009.

The next stop could be the Supreme Court.

The 9th Circuit issued what may be a landmark ruling on tasers, and not a moment too soon:

A federal appeals court on Monday issued one of the most comprehensive rulings yet limiting police use of Tasers against low-level offenders who seem to pose little threat and may be mentally ill.
In a case out of San Diego County, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals criticized an officer who, without warning, shot an emotionally troubled man with a Taser when he was unarmed, yards away, and neither fleeing nor advancing on the officer.

[...]

As lawsuits have proliferated against police and Taser International, which manufactures the weapons, the nation’s appellate courts have been trying to define what constitutes appropriate Taser use.

The San Diego County case is the latest ruling to address the issue.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit affirmed the trial judge’s ruling on Monday, concluding that the level of force used by the officer was excessive.

McPherson could have waited for backup or tried to talk the man down, the judges said. If Bryan was mentally ill, as the officer contended, then there was even more reason to use “less intrusive means,” the judges said.

“Officer McPherson’s desire to quickly and decisively end an unusual and tense situation is understandable,” Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for the court. “His chosen method for doing so violated Bryan’s constitutional right to be free from excessive force.”

Some lawyers called it a landmark decision.

Eugene Iredale, a San Diego lawyer who argued the case, said it was one of the clearest and most complete statements yet from an appellate court about the limits of Taser use.

He said after Monday’s decision that courts will consider all circumstances, including whether someone poses a threat, has committed a serious crime or is mentally troubled.

“In an era where everybody understands ‘don’t tase me, bro,’ courts are going to look more closely at the use of Tasers, and they’re going to try to deter the promiscuous oversue of that tool,” he said.

[...]

“Certainly the officer should be able to articulate the reason the force (was used), and a mere resistance to comply may not be enough,” said Sheriff John McGinness.

It’s not. The idea that police can use it to subdue people at their discretion in order to make their difficult jobs easier is just wrong. The police can’t hit people over the head with a baton if they smart mouth them or refuse to immediately comply and they shouldn’t be able to shoot them full of electricity either. Just because it doesn’t leave marks doesn’t mean it isn’t cruel and brutal.

This issue will wend itself through the courts for some time. I would imagine we’ll see a Supreme Court ruling. Considering the current court, I’m sure Taser International hopes so.

Source

Justices debate life sentences for juveniles

Court was asked whether some sentences for juveniles are “cruel and unusual”

One appeal is from man who was convicted of raping woman when he was 13

Only a few states prohibit sentencing minors to life without a chance for parole

By Bill Mears, CNN Supreme Court Producer
November 9, 2009 6:50 p.m. EST

Washington (CNN) — The Supreme Court wrestled in often emotional terms Monday over whether sentencing juvenile criminals to life in prison without parole is “cruel and unusual” punishment, especially when their crime is not murder.

The justices appeared divided over how to treat two separate appeals, one involving a 13-year-old rapist and the other a 17-year-old violent home-invasion robber.

“You can imagine someone who is a month short of his 18th birthday, and you are saying that, no matter what this person does — commits the most horrible series of non-homicide offenses that you can imagine, a whole series of brutal rapes, assaults — that person must at some point be made eligible for parole. That’s your argument?” a skeptical Justice Samuel Alito asked a lawyer for one of the prisoners.

Justice Stephen Breyer offered a different example.

“The confusion and uncertainty about the moral responsibility of a 13-year-old is such that it is a cruel thing to do, to remove from that individual his entire life” with such a sentence, he said. “You see, we are at the extreme” in that example.

The Supreme Court’s rulings are expected by late spring.

One of the appeals is from Joe Sullivan, now 33, serving a life term without the possibility of parole in a Florida prison while confined to a wheelchair. He was sentenced for the rape of an elderly woman, committed when he was 13.

Sullivan’s lawyers say he is one of only two people in the world who was tried as an adult at such a young age and sentenced to “die in prison” for a non-homicide.

The other appeal came from Terrance Graham, who was 17 when he took part in a violent home-invasion robbery while on parole for another felony.

In 2005, the high court outlawed the death penalty for juvenile murderers.

Child legal advocates say many states lack adequate resources to handle young inmates given long sentences, including a lack of proper jailhouse counseling. Few studies have been conducted on the psychological and penological effects of young defendants facing life in prison, said the Equal Justice Institute, which is representing Sullivan.

The justices’ comments during the two-hour session fell along predictable conservative/liberal lines.

“To say to any child of 13 that you are only fit to die in prison is cruel,” said Sullivan’s lawyer, Bryan Stevenson. “It can’t be reconciled with what we know about the nature of children, about the character of children. It cannot be reconciled with our standards of decency.”

“It doesn’t make it any crueler to him,” Justice Antonin Scalia said. “I don’t see why it’s any crueler to an adolescent than it is to — what — where do you want to draw the line? At 21?”

Stevenson also argued that there is a racial component, claiming that the majority of “juvenile lifers” are minorities. Sullivan and Graham are black.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that in the case of Graham, the 17-year-old defendant, even the prosecutor did not recommend life without parole. And the justice said Graham had pursued his education and was compliant with some conditions of his parole before committing his second felony.

“It does suggest some hope for him,” Sotomayor said.

“Why does a juvenile have a constitutional right to hope but an adult does not?” Justice Anthony Kennedy asked. His vote could be crucial in these cases, but he expressed concerns about the views presented by both sides.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg echoed the concerns of many juvenile justice advocates.

“Unlike an adult, because of the immaturity, you can’t really judge a teenager at the point of sentencing,” she said. “It’s only after a period of time has gone by, and you see: Has this person overcome those youthful disabilities?”

A lawyer for Florida argued that states should have the discretion they have long been given to decide how harshly young criminals should be prosecuted. Sexual battery remains a crime punishable by life imprisonment in Florida.

Alito continued to focus on the crimes committed and less on the age of the defendant.

“Some of the actual cases in which this sentence has been imposed in Florida involve factual situations that are so horrible that I couldn’t have imagined them if I hadn’t actually seen them,” he said of some juvenile offenders. “Raping an 8-year-old girl and burying her alive; are you familiar with that case? Raping a woman in front of her 12-year-old son.”

Alito is a former U.S. attorney in New Jersey who prosecuted federal crimes in his home state in the late 1980s.

Escambia County Circuit Judge Nicholas Geeker, who sentenced Sullivan, said at the time, “I am going to try to send him away for as long as I can. He is beyond help. The juvenile system has been utterly incapable of doing anything with Mr. Sullivan.”

Sullivan, who had a lengthy juvenile record, denies that he committed the attack.

A study by the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative found that eight prisoners are currently serving life terms for crimes committed at age 13, all in the United States.

The Justice Department reports that no 13-year-old has been given life without parole for non-homicides in a decade. Although about 1,000 people younger than 15 are arrested on suspicion of rape every year, none has been given life without parole since Sullivan.

Only a few states — including Alaska, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Oregon — prohibit sentencing minors to life without a chance for parole, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

There was a dispute in court Monday over how many juvenile offenders are serving life without parole. Some estimates run at more than 2,500, mostly for murder. Sullivan’s lawyer said 111 committed non-homicides, 77 in Florida alone. Pennsylvania has the highest total number of juvenile lifers.

Alito pointed out that those studies were not peer-reviewed and are disputed by many states, as well as victims’ rights groups, as too high.

Chief Justice John Roberts may have anticipated a divided court on these cases. He repeatedly sought a compromise of sorts to resolve the dispute, using a form of judicial discretion known as “proportional review.”

“Wouldn’t it make sense to incorporate the consideration of the juvenile status into the proportionality review? So that if you do have a case where it’s the 17-year-old who is one week shy of his 18th birthday, and it is the most grievous crime spree you can imagine, you can determine that in that case life without parole may not be disproportionate,” Roberts said. “But you would argue that these are the facts here — if it’s a less grievous crime and there is, for example, a younger defendant involved, then in that case maybe it is disproportionate. Why — why doesn’t that seem more sensitive? It avoids all of the line-drawing problems we have been discussing.”

The thrust of Sullivan and Graham’s argument before the high court is not that they are innocent or that they seek freedom now but that they deserve to someday make a case before the state parole board.

The cases are Sullivan v. Florida (08-7621) and Graham v. Florida (08-7412).

Source:

Should Teens Be Condemned to Die in Jail?

16-Year Old Got Life Without Parole for Killing Her Abusive Pimp — Should Teens Be Condemned to Die in Jail?

Two cases in the Supreme Court could alter the fates of over 2,500 people serving life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers.

This article is the first in a two-part series about juveniles and harsh sentencing.

Sara Kruzan was 11 years old, a middle school student from Riverside, Calif., when she met a man — he called himself GG — who was almost three times her age. GG took her under his wing; he would buy her gifts, take her and her friends rollerskating. “He was like a father figure,” she recalls.

Despite suffering severe bouts of depression as a child, until then, Kruzan was a good student, an “overachiever” in her words. But her mother was abusive and addicted to drugs; as for her father, she had only met him a couple of times. So, more and more, GG filled in.

“GG was there — sometimes,” she said. “He would talk to me and take me out and give me all these lavish gifts and do all these things for me …” Before long, he started talking to her about sex, giving her his expert advice on what men were really like and telling her that she didn’t “need to give it up for free.”

Unbeknownst to her, GG was grooming Kruzan to be a prostitute. When she was 13, he raped her. “He uses his manhood to hurt,” Kruzan recalls, “Like, break you in. I guess.”

Kruzan worked for GG as a prostitute for three years. The hours were 6 p.m. until 5:30 or 6 in the morning. She and “the other girls” would come back and hand over their earnings to him. “He was, like, married to all of us I guess,” she says. ” … Everything was his.”

After years of prostitution and sexual abuse, when she was 16, Kruzan snapped: She killed GG, was arrested and convicted of first-degree murder. Despite attempts by her lawyer to have her sentenced as a juvenile, the judge described her crime as “well thought-out” and sentenced her to life without parole.

“My judge told me that I lacked moral scruples,” she recalls, a term she did not know the meaning of.

But the meaning of her sentence was all too clear. Life without parole, she says, “means I’m gonna die here.”

‘These Children Were Literally Lost In Adult Prison’

A few years ago, Sara Kruzan’s story grabbed the attention of California State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who introduced legislation to abolish the sentence of life without the possibility of parole for youth offenders. The bill was no get-out-of-jail pass; under his legislation, a juvenile who committed a felony before the age of 18 would serve a minimum of 25 years before being eligible to go before a parole board (also not a get-out-of-jail pass).

Yee is also a child psychologist. When it comes to judging the actions of teenagers versus those of adults, he argues, “the neuroscience is clear; brain maturation continues well through adolescence, and thus impulse control, planning and critical-thinking skills are still not yet fully developed.”

Condemning teenagers to die in jail, then, means curtailing the lives of potentially productive members of society. “Children have a greater capacity for rehabilitation than adults,” Yee said. Anyway, didn’t California’s prison system rename itself the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation?

In politics, however, punitive almost always wins out — particularly in California, where “three strikes” laws have led to a prison crisis unparalleled anywhere else in the country. Yee’s bill met intense political resistance and eventually died.

This past February, he introduced a new, watered-down bill that, instead of eliminating life without parole for juveniles would provide a review of a youth offender’s sentence after 10 years.

In 2005, Human Rights Watch published an unprecedented study, “The Rest of Their Lives: Life without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States,” which found “at least 2,225 people incarcerated in the United States who have been sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison for crimes they committed as children.” Today, the number is even higher: 2,574.

It’s only recently that the plight of juveniles serving life in adult prisons came across the national radar. Alison Parker, deputy director of the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch told AlterNet, “these children were literally lost in adult prison. Nobody paid attention to the fact that they were under 18 at the time of their offense.”

But this could soon change. Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a pair of cases — Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida — that will decide whether life sentences for juveniles violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel-and-unusual punishment.

These cases follow the Court’s landmark ruling in Roper v. Simmons four years ago, which struck down the death penalty for juvenile defendants on Eighth Amendment grounds. Echoing the opinion of Yee, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority that juveniles have an “underdeveloped sense of responsibility” that leads to “impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions,” as well as being “more susceptible to negative influences and peer pressure.”

Civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, the lead attorney in Sulliivan, argues that sentencing children to life without parole makes no more sense than sentencing them to death. In court filings for Sullivan, he writes, “The essential feature of a death sentence or a life-without-parole sentence is that it imposes a terminal, unchangeable, once-and-for-all judgment upon the whole life of a human being and declares that human being forever unfit to be a part of civil society.”

Stevenson is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, a nonprofit that provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners, including juveniles. According to EJI, out of the prisoners serving juvenile life without parole, more than half are first-time offenders. At least 74 involve defendants who were 14 years old or younger when they committed their crime.

“Almost all of these kids currently lack legal representation, and in most of these cases the propriety and constitutionality of their extreme sentences has never been reviewed.”

‘Beyond Help’

Among these 74 is Joe Sullivan, the defendant in Sullivan v. Florida. Sullivan, who is reportedly mentally disabled, was 13 years old in 1989 when he was accused of raping an elderly woman after a burglary carried out by an older group of teenagers. The older teenagers confessed to the burglary but pinned the rape on Sullivan, a charge he denied.

The older boys did time in juvenile prison and were then freed. Sullivan became the youngest prisoner to be sentenced to die in prison for a crime other than murder. “I am going to try to send him away for as long as I can,” his trial judge said. “He is beyond help.”

At 14, Sullivan was sent to an adult prison, where he was repeatedly sexually assaulted. Sullivan now is 33 years old. Stricken with multiple sclerosis, he is confined to a wheelchair.

Sullivan’s case is emblematic of a number of problems when it comes to juveniles sentenced as adults, not the least of which is the phenomenon of youths either being coerced or getting caught up in criminal situations orchestrated by older teenagers or adults.

Among juvenile offenders, many have participated in violent crimes as a result of their relationship with a grown-up. Incredibly, this can mean getting a harsher sentence than the adult in question.

“There is this tendency to point the finger towards the younger co-defendant, sometimes because of the perception that the younger person will get a lesser sentence,” says Alison Parker. “There’s still this perception out there that kids will be treated differently, but the reality is that kids are treated like adults.”

Another major factor is race. During Sullivan’s trial, “the prosecutor and witnesses made repeated, unnecessary reference to the fact that Joe is African American and the victim (was) white,” according to EJI. “One witness repeatedly said the perpetrator of the assault was a ‘colored boy’ or ‘a dark colored boy.’ ”

It is not news that the American criminal justice system disproportionately targets people of color. But when it comes to juvenile offenders, Alison Parker calls the disparities “absolutely shocking.” On a national level, “African American youth are serving the sentence at a rate of about 10 times that of white youth,” Parker told AlterNet. “In some states, the rate is even higher.”

In both cases before the Supreme Court, the defendants were sentenced to life for crimes that fell short of murder, a phenomenon that is especially prevalent In Florida, where the number of prisoners who will die in jail for non-homicide crimes hovers at 77.

Terrance Jamar Graham, the defendant in Graham v. Florida, was 17 years old and on probation for a crime he committed when he was 16, when he took part in an armed burglary. His co-defendants got minor sentences. He was slapped with life without parole.

“Mr. Graham, as I look back on your case, yours is really candidly a sad situation,” the judge told him. “The only thing that I can rationalize is that you decided that this is how you were going to lead your life and there is nothing that we can do for you.”

This is classic “three strikes” logic, which, along with the conspiracy and felony murder statutes have led teens to be sentenced to life for crimes in which they played only a minor role.

Take Christine Lockhart, the first female juvenile to be sentenced to life without parole in Iowa. She was 17 years old and sitting in a car when her boyfriend killed someone during an armed robbery. Today, she has been in prison for more than half her life.

Lockhart, along with Sara Kruzan are a relative minority, two out of some 175 women serving life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers. But their stories reveal how young people can get caught up in dangerous, harmful, and ultimately deadly, situations often simply by being with the wrong people at the wrong time.

“Sara’s story is compelling,” says Parker. “But it is really one that is shared across the country. There are many, many people with similar circumstances who are serving life sentences without any possibility of parole.”

Kruzan, in fact, is one of the lucky ones. She now has attorneys who are working on appealing her sentence, pro bono. Most other prisoners serving life without parole for crimes committed as juveniles have no post-conviction representation at all.

Today, Kruzan is 32 years old and described as a “model inmate,” despite any real lack of incentive. (“Who wants to excel in prison?” she says.) Asked what she would say if she had a chance to appear before a a parole board, she says that she believes she can now be of some value to society, perhaps even a “positive example.”

Also, she says, “I’ve learned what moral scruples are.”

Source:
http://www.alternet.org/rights/143635/16-year_old_got_life_without_parole_for_killing_her_abusive_pimp_–_should_teens_be_condemned_to_die_in_jail/?page=entire

SLS Health

Repost…

THESE ARE THE FACTS REGARDING THE STATUS OF SLS HEALTH VS OMH AS OF MARCH 23, 2009:

1.) On or around December 3rd Justice O’Rourke from the Putnam County
Supreme Court ordered that all fines and also ordered OMH would be barred
from taking further regulatory action against SLS, including the revocation
of SLS licenses. This was after him supposedly reviewing the over 3,498
pages of evidence in ONE NIGHT.

2.) On December 10 the NY State Attorney General filed a motion with the
Appellate Division barring enforcement of Justice O’Rourke’s order until the
Appellate Division has had an opportunity to review and decide the appeal.
This permitted the OMH Revocation hearing to move forward (and it did start
on Jan 5, 2009). Also, the Appellate Division only grants orders of this
type when it has serious concerns about the order issued by the lower court.
In this case the fact that all of the evidence could not have been humanly
possible to be reviewed in under 24 hours made Justice O’Rourke’s order
appear to be a “favor” to SLS.

3.) On December 23 the Appellate Division acted swiftly and issued an
Emergency Stay of Justice O’Rourke’s order. Justice O’Rourke’s order was
stayed, meaning not in effect, on the condition the NY Attorney General
files its appellate brief on or before Jan. 22, 2009. This means the
Appellate Division is fast-tracking the appeal.

4.) On Jan 19, 2009 the OMH Revocation Hearing started. SLS made a motion
prior to the OMH Revocation Hearing on Jan 5,2009 to have the administrative
judge recues himself since he oversaw the hearings regarding the fines and
investigations. The motion was denied. SLS appealed this decision on Jan
14, 2009 to the OMH Commissioner. He rejected the appeal.

5.) On Jan 20, 2009 SLS commenced another lawsuit in front of Justice
O’Rourke of Putnam County requesting to overrule the OMH Commissioners
decision to allow the Administrative Judge to not recues himself from the
Revocation Hearing. Justice O’Rourke DENIED SLS’ request. The NY Attorney
General also filed motion to dismiss SLS lawsuit as well as fil the Appeal
Brief and the parties were due in court on Feb 10, 2009. The NY State
Attorney General filed the following to the Appellate Court:

“. Justice O’Rourke signed the order finding that Prof. Hutter’s decision
was not supported by the evidence one day after he received the 3, 498 page
hearing transcript.

. Although SLS complains that OMH relied on hearsay (which is allowed in
administrative hearings) it failed to mention that its expert, Dr. Samenow,
relied on statements made by 14 unidentified SLS patients to him.

. SLS policy allowed restraints, euphemistically called Brief Safety
Interventions, to last up to 45 minutes even though SLS’ own expert
testified that they should last no longer than 20 minutes due to the risks
to the patient.

. In 2006, SLS restrained one-fourth of its residents.

. Santoro admitted that SLS would only call a physician “sometimes” after a
patient was restrained; Dr. Stumacher, the in-house physician, testified
that he was not summoned when restraints were used.

. SLS Clinical Director, Shawn Prichard admitted that he would monitor
patients’ phone calls to their families when in his opinion, they were lying
about conditions at SLS.

. Among the many incidents that SLS was required to report to OMH- but did
not-were the following: 1. A patient received 12 stitches at the community
hospital after cutting her arm with glass. The hospital concluded she was
suicidal and transferred her to a psych hospital. Betsey Bergman testified
that SLS did not report this to OMH because they did not think the patient
was suicidal. 2. A patient got violent, went to store, called 911 and said
she was going to kill herself. SLS did not report this to OMH because they
felt she was not suicidal.

. Betsey Bergman, who was in charge of Incident Reporting, had never heard
of the regulations on incident reporting and had never conducted a special
investigation into any incident.

. Matt Sena, SLS’ Residential Director, did not know what constituted a
reportable incident and was not familiar with the OMH regulations.

. Despite regulations requiring staff to be fingerprinted, 21 employees were
not fingerprinted until months after they were hired. SLS admitted that
these employees had regular and substantial contact with patients. ”

6.) Feb 19, 2009 Justice O’Rourke to SLS “The Revocation Hearing will
proceed” and granted OMH’ motion to dismiss SLS’ lawsuit regarding the
recusal of the OMH Administrative Judge which was simply a delay tactic to
begin with and never had merit.

7.) On Feb 23 it was discovered by Justice O’Rourke (the Judge SLS
continuously lies to people that he supposedly granted them the big
“Victory” of OMH) that SLS no longer had a medical doctor on staff which is
an extremely serious regulatory violation. He also held that SLS improperly
brought the case in Putnam County and ordered the venue changed to Albany
County. He also stated that SLS is not entitled to any restraining orders
or any injunctions. After SLS received the order changing venue
and denying their request for an injunction, SLS filed a stipulation
discontinuing the action. Oddly, they filed it in Putnam and specifically
limited the discontinuance of action in Putnam, even though the case has
been moved to Albany.

8.) On March 25 SLS and Roman/Morgan start Mediation in result of the
Federal Judge ordering them to do so.

Summary: SLS lost it’s appeal that it has been touting about since Jan.
on two different websites with the sole purpose of misleading former
and current members and the people who pay for treatment.

They have not had any “victory” and in fact are in a worsening situation.
SLS is currently still participating in the OMH Revocation Hearing.

SLS employees including Joseph Santoro and Shawn Prichard were
CAUGHT lying under oath. Al Bergman was caught trying to
convince other programs to sign opt-out notices on behalf of
former members, so as to ensure they never even knew the lawsuit
existed.

Once the class action trial starts the REAL story will come out and
everything discussed so far will be reinforced, proven and finally
the former members can have the closure they deserve.

Source: fornits.com/phpbb