Cheryl
http://www.npaquebec.net/index.htm
To the Honourable Jean Charest
Premier of Quebec
Re: The Case of Gabriel Lavigueur and the launching of a public investigation into the widespread abuses of parents by schools and other government-funded agencies
Dear Premier Charest,
There is an urgent matter we wish to bring to your attention: Parents across the province are being coerced, often forced to medicate their children by schools and other publicly-funded agencies.
Perhaps you are aware of the case of Anthony Fournelle, which received media attention on February 23, 2005: The 7-year old boy was kicked out of his public elementary school because his mother refused medication, as exposed in the Montreal Gazette. The school in question was under the district of “Commission scolaire Marie-Victorin” and a Ministry of Education spokesperson went on record stating that what had occurred was illegal. The article, Troubled kids’ medication isn’t up to school – Education Department: They have to educate students ‘even when a child is bothering others’, stated that:
No school can force a child to take medication, the Education Department said yesterday as it continued to investigate the case of a child suspended for bad behaviour after failing to take his Ritalin, a drug widely used to treat attention deficit disorder. Schools are mandated to educate children – that’s the law, Johanne Methot, an Education Department spokesperson, said yesterday. “But you can’t oblige a child to take Ritalin or any other medication. That’s up to the parents. Even when a child is bothering others, the school is still obliged to offer him services,” she added. “It’s up to the school to find the means and the solution, but there have to be educational services.”
Yet despite this, the Ministry has done little to stop the illegalities perpetrated against parents. In fact, there is ample evidence to indicate that abuses such as those suffered by the Fournelle family are continuing and widespread. Thus this letter.
The Case Of Gabriel Lavigueur
Gabriel attends a public secondary school under the Commission scolaire Marie-Victorin — which is the same district discussed in the Gazette article. He lives with his mother, Danielle, in Longueuil.
For various reasons he was placed on numerous psychiatric drugs and after he started suffering from adverse reactions, including aggressive behaviour, lack of sleep and lack of diet (he wasn’t eating properly). Danielle decided to stop the medication.
The school—Ecole Secondaire Saint-Jean Baptiste—disagreed with the mother’s legal right to refuse treatment for her son, and started kicking Gabriel out of school for 2-3 days per week. On one day he had to walk home in sub-zero temperatures, a distance of almost five kilometers. In addition to being denied his education – schooling paid for by the taxpayers – there are a number of allegations of abuse by the mother:
1. She has been coerced through various means to agree to her son being medicated;
2. Her son has suffered various forms of intimidation by school employees;
3. She was denied access to her son’s school records despite having requested them.
A letter was sent by the National Parents Association on behalf of the mother to the school — and a copy was sent to the education minister’s office on March 3, 2006. This clearly expressed the mother’s wishes that her son was not, among other things, to be put into any “special” program. Despite this and a follow-up letter sent by us to the school, as of this date he is in a special class with the same social worker who has been on his case about being medicated and has made numerous threats against him (e.g. that he will be taken away from his mother and placed in another home).
Other Cases of Abuse
Father Threatened With Criminal Charges: Jean-Francois, father and businessman, made a decision last year that almost cost him his freedom: He and his wife pulled their daughter out of school, which is their right under law and started home schooling her. Soon afterwards his wife received a call from the police claiming that Jean-Francois was under investigation for sexually abusing the girl. When he and his wife went to the police station, his wife was taken into another room by two child protection social workers — who spent more than an hour telling her how good Ritalin is for children and why their daughter should be on it. Nothing became of the “charges.”
Firefighter Warned by School – “Ritalin Or Else!”: Just before Christmas Stephane, a firefighter from Laval, Quebec, called us frantic for help: He had been sent a letter by his son’s school threatening that if the boy didn’t go on Ritalin, he would be kicked out of school.
Other Cases
These are just some cases—everyday we receive more: For example, there’s the computer engineer from Blainville whose son was kicked out of school weekly because he refused drugs; or the newspaper executive from Montreal who was forced to deal with child protective services because he refused to drug his kid; or the business owner from Longueuil who was actually told by a school that it was illegal for them to provide educational services to three of his children if they didn’t go on Ritalin.
In every case they were coerced or outright threatened by schools, child protection and other agencies, to drug their children.
Legal Violations
The schools and agencies perpetrate and enforce these actions violate numerous legislative and other provisions designed to protect families:
Quebec Informed Consent Act: “Consent to medical care must be given when that care interferes with the integrity of the person. In order to be valid, consent must satisfy certain conditions imposed by legislation. This is meant to ensure that a person’s freedom to consent is respected. To be valid, consent must satisfy two conditions: (1) it must be free; (2) it must be enlightened. Consent is free when it is given willingly. It is not free when it is given due to pressure in the form of violence, or physical and/or mental constraints.”
Criminal Code of Canada, section 265: “A person commits an assault when (a) without the consent of another person, he applies force intentionally to that other person, directly or indirectly…”
United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 33 states that children have the right to protection from the “illicit use of psychotropic substances.”
There’s also the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and other legislation.
A Call for Common Sense
The first question that arises here is why are schools in the mental health “business” anyway? They are not involved in other areas of health so why these cases?
Aside from that and the legal issues, it is a matter of common sense that someone’s “mental health” cannot be improved through coercion – and there is no scientific or medical evidence that this can occur.
Moreover, by undermining parents’ rights, the government is opening the door to the complete eradication of those rights and the eventual disintegration of the family.
From a financial perspective, we are also victimized as taxpayers: Not only are we funding this abuse (through no will of our own), we’ll be expected to foot the bill when it comes time to legally compensate the victims and pay for the medical damage children suffered through these programs.
What We Are Asking Of You:
As concerned citizens, parents, voters and taxpayers we are respectfully requesting the following:
1. We would like to see a public investigation in which victims, witnesses, whistleblowers, experts and others, can provide information and testimony, so that we can accurately assess the scope and severity of this situation, and find solutions to resolve this.
2. As an immediate action, we request that a warning letter be sent from your office to all school boards and other interested parties to stop abusing parents — starting with the case of Gabriel discussed above.
3. We are also asking for a full fiscal review and financial audit of the $1.1 billion we're spending on these programs every 12 months so that we know (a) where our money is going and (b) what we are getting in return.
We thank you for your time and look forward to affirmative action from your office.
Yours truly,
The undersigned:
Click Here to Sign This Letter
This is 12-year old Gabriel Lavigueur who graduated
elementary school last year and who has been kicked out of secondary school because he and his mother refused psychiatric drugs.
Click Here to Sign This Letter
Letter of complaint filed with the school by National Parents Association on behalf of Gabriel and his mother Danielle.
In December 2005 a firefighter was threatened by a Laval school—if his son didn’t go on psychiatric drugs he would be kicked out of school!
We’re spending $1.1 billion per year or $21.2 million per week on these programs. Why? And where is our money going?
Français
2 comments:
there is no such thing as ADD or ADHD. there is no physiological test to prove or diagnose it.
it is true that there are children who demonstrate certain behaviors, such as not paying attention, constantly moving or fidgeting, and memory problems, but the cause can not simply be stated as, "oh, the kid has ADD or ADHD. drug him and give him all A's in class."
when this fake illness or "disorder" was first talked about, it was called attention deficit syndrome. a "syndrome" is a condition that many people show but no cause has been determined. the cause has been known for years, but our society won't say it.
kids who appear to have ADD or ADHD have one very wrong thing in common, and that is the style of parenting that they were given. these are kids who were not raised by parents who sat with them, read books with them, played with them, or talked to them very much. instead, these children were placed in a room with a bunch of toys on the floor and a tv constantly on in order to hopefully keep the kid quiet. these children were never shown how to stick to doing one thing for any length of time. they were just left to do whatever they wanted or whatever they could manage.
so now these kids are in school with no ability to stick to doing any one thing for any length of time. they were raised to do whatever they felt like whenever they felt like it. so it makes sense that they want to keep doing that.
during those early years, we need to sit with kids, talk to them, show them how things are done. when they play with ONE toy at a time, make sure we show them how to put those toys away before moving on to the next thing.
drugs do not solve the problem. they only slow the kid down so he can't jump to the next thing so quickly. kids don't learn how to behave better when on drugs. they are just unable to do what they have been programmed to do. as soon as the drugs wear off, they'll get right back to those other behaviors.
is there such a thing as a chemical imbalance? yes. but those chemicals are produced in those early years when we've been ignoring out children. can the imbalance be fixed? YES, even in teen years. how? by doing the same things with the children that we should have been doing when they were crawling. talk to them. show them how to do things the right way. don't let them get away with giving up. even in teen years, those missing chemicals will be produced. but WE have to take control of the issue in order for it to happen. DRUGS will not take control. even when kids are in their teens, we can still teach them the right behaviors and they can learn to overcome the problem. but nobody will learn anything unless they face the issue, the real issue, honestly and admit what's happening. you can't fix something unless you know what's broken. and you can't fix something if you pretend that something else is broken.
Question: If there's a "chemical imbalabnce" where's the tests to show it? What exact checmicals are out of balance and by what percent?
Hint: There's no psychiatrist (or anyone else) in the world that can answer because there's ZERO scientific/medical evicence that such an imbalance exists. It's all PR.
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