Alabama Senior Citizen Medically Kidnapped and Forced onto Drugs Against Family Wishes

Nancy Scott is very concerned about her mother’s well-being, and now she cannot even talk to her.

Just as Child Protective Services and a judge have almost omnipotent, unchecked power to decide unilaterally that the relationship between a parent and a young child is not worthy of being preserved, Adult Protective Services and a probate judge have the same power to sever the relationship between an adult child and their elderly parent.

Sometimes the relationship has endured for longer than the judge and social worker combined have been alive, yet with the stroke of a pen, a senior citizen can be completely torn away from their own children.

The wishes of the elder can be completely ignored, and documents assigning power of attorney to a trusted adult child can become meaningless. Medical and financial decisions are placed into the hands of a court-appointed guardian who is often a stranger to everyone in the family.

Nancy Scott, a retired English teacher from south Alabama, wrote to Health Impact News describing the medical kidnapping of her 102-year-old mother, who is also a beloved retired schoolteacher known to her former students as “Ms. Gregory.”

St. Vincent’s Hospital and the Alabama Department of Human Resources (DHR) seized custody of Marian (Gregory) Leonard in February 2018. She is being held against her will, forced by a Jefferson County, Alabama, court into Hospice care, even though she has no terminal illness or disease. She is elderly, but her mind is sound.

Nancy has always enjoyed a close relationship with her mother, but she has not seen her since midsummer. At that time, Ms. Gregory begged to go home. She told Nancy:

If you don’t get me out of here, they’re going to kill me, and they’re going to kill you.

She is being drugged against her will and has told her daughter that she doesn’t want the drugs. There have been times that medical staff have said that Ms. Gregory had dementia, but Nancy says that this is because of the unnecessary psychotropic drugs that doctors put her on. When she was under care of doctors who removed the medications, her mental state drastically improved.

Ms. Gregory’s Story as Told by her Daughter

Here is their story in Nancy Scott’s words, written just before her visits were stopped:

My mother, a 102 year- old retired English teacher from south Alabama, wakes up every morning and asks, “When can we go home?”

And I tell her every day, “I’m working on getting us home.”

Home is south Alabama, known as the “Wiregrass.” My mother has been in the custody of the Alabama Department of Human Resources since February 1, 2018. I now have a very good attorney, but the first attorneys I had, did absolutely nothing except take my money and never filed an appearance. I just hope it’s not too late.

Medical kidnapping usually involves a child or children, but in my situation, my elder mother—was kidnapped by the Alabama DHR. She was in St. Vincent’s Hospital for what would have been a 3-4 day stay because of a UTI and a mild case of the flu.

DHR issued a court order for “protective custody” on February 1, 2018, and stated in the order that she could not leave the hospital without a court order. I was not allowed to know what I was accused of because DHR sealed the records. One attorney I hired was also not allowed access to the records. The first GAL leaked some of the information to me along with other “grapevine” news.

I finally learned that I was accused by DHR of taking my mother from a facility against medical advice. However, I provided a report from a physician at a local hospital who had given me full permission—and his blessings—to take her out of the facility on the day she and I left.

[Note: documentation of this has been provided to Health Impact News.]

No allegations of abuse or neglect can be found in the (almost) five years I’ve been taking care of my mother. A couple of phone calls by DHR could have proven that I did not take my mother anywhere against medical advice (and never have). However, DHR jumped into the case. Now after spending several thousand dollars of the tax payers’ money, this organization is still trying to find something to justify the hasty, costly decision to take charge of my mother.

Since she has been in “protective custody,” my mother has gone from getting up every day, eating a regular diet, and sitting in a recliner, to being bedridden. She has asked to get up, but Hospice has said, “No.” She left St. Vincent’s with bedsores.

St. Vincent’s Hospital, Birmingham, Alabama. Photo source.

After the medication overdoses at this hospital, it’s a miracle she is alive. The doctors at St. Vincent’s assured me they were not giving her any medication—-she refused to eat or drink for one month and slept most of the time. After a family friend (another physician) came to the hospital to check on her, I learned what she had been given.

The hospitalists in charge of my mother’s care at St. Vincent’s had been giving her Scopolamine, the “date rape” drug, and then proceeded to label her as “demented.” They also gave her Haldol and Ativan (against my written request not to do so).

These doctors also gave her a cough medicine that she could not metabolize. The guidelines for avoiding such medications were in her hospital records, and I reminded them to check this medication against her medical allergies.

She almost died from the medicine mistake, and one hospitalist, Dr. Wheeler, refused to consult with an anesthesiologist regarding the best treatment for her to help her get over the mistake with the medicine. Dr. Wheeler told me, “No, because of her age.”

Probate Judge Alan King (Jefferson County, AL) appointed a conservator and a guardian (GAL) for my mother even though I provided documentation that I had not done anything against medical advice.

When Judge King issued an order after a March 20, 2018, hearing, neither my attorney nor I were allowed to receive a copy of the order for several weeks. The clerk at the probate judicial office told me that until the court costs were paid, we were not allowed a copy of the judge’s order. DHR was responsible for the bill, so getting a copy of the order was delayed almost a month while everyone waited for DHR to pay the bill.

Judge King also insisted that my mother leave the hospital under hospice care although she has no diagnosis of any terminal illness.

Prior to the hospitalization, she ate a regular diet, got out of bed every day (with the help of regular caregivers), and enjoyed having her hair done.

The Director of Nursing at the current facility told me that she had tried to get Hospice to agree to add a low dose of Zoloft for my mother at bedtime. Hospice told me that they were under strict court orders not to discuss any medication issues with me and refused to add the Zoloft even though she had been taking this medication for over 30 years.

Early on, my brother called the former GAL and told her that no one was able to look after the best interests of my mother any better than I because I knew all of her medical allergies and was extremely careful with her care.

In addition, the court-appointed Jefferson County conservator and St. Vincent’s social workers selected a facility in Jefferson County, a three-star facility, that always seems to be short on staff. The court refused to allow my mother to leave Jefferson County (Birmingham area).

The facility in Troy, Alabama, which I presented to hospital social workers as an option, much closer to her home and friends, has a five-star (Medicare rating) and is almost $2000/month less expensive.

Why all this taxpayer money to hold an old woman in “protective custody” and deny her God given rights to choose where she will spend her last days?

Bottom line—we have been through all this before……could some of the problem possibly be the 300 wooded acres in Henry County, Alabama, that my mother inherited from her grandfather during the depression?

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Alabama Senior Citizen Medically Kidnapped and Forced onto Drugs Against Family Wishes