‘It’s all about the money,’ Las Vegas family fights Ohio guardianship

by: Vanessa Murphy

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – A Las Vegas family is pushing for their loved one’s Ohio-based guardianship to be terminated. Theresa Ferguson, 91, is a ward in a guardianship, meaning a court-appointed guardian is in control of her body and estate, in Ohio.

Ferguson, who suffers from dementia, has expressed she wants to remain in Las Vegas with her daughter, Carrie Meyer.
 
“Your family is all you got,” Ferguson told the 8 News Now Investigators. “You got family, you got everything.”
 
The family’s fight received nationwide attention after Meyer posted videos on social media. Ferguson, who was a patient at Summerlin Hospital in January, wanted to leave with Carrie Meyer when she was discharged. The video shows hospital staff refusing to let Ferguson leave, with one individual referring to the guardian.
 
Summerlin Hospital appeared to be caught in the middle while following the Ohio court order.
 
The 8 News Now Investigators reached out to the hospital during the family’s fight.
 
“Due to federal patient privacy laws, we cannot comment on specific patients,” spokesperson Gretchen Papez wrote in an email. “However, it is not our policy to refuse to let patients leave. There are times, though, when we are legally obligated to not allow patients to leave the hospital. They could be incarcerated at the time of their hospitalization; a danger to themselves or others; unable to care for themselves; or be involved in a guardianship issue.”
 
The day after the 8 News Now Investigators reached out, Carrie Meyer said Ferguson was allowed to leave the hospital.
 
“The guardianship has been a very, very challenging thing in our life,” Carrie Meyer told the 8 News Now Investigators, citing a family conflict as the reason why it began.
 
“Disagreement in family members. That’s usually how it stems, a lot of times money,” she said. “My mom wasn’t extremely wealthy but she did have some money so the root of it is money, to be honest.”
 
In addition to Ferguson’s money being controlled, she was placed in an assisted living facility, where according to Carrie Meyer and her daughter, Chloe, communication was limited.
 
“She doesn’t want to be in a home,” Carrie Meyer said.
 
The Meyers said they brought Ferguson to Las Vegas, which they knew was a risk.
 
“We were at the facility with her and she asked to be rescued and that’s what we did. We rescued her,” Chloe Meyer told the 8 News Now Investigators. “We flew her to a safe haven, my mom’s house and she is completely capable of having her voice heard and expressing her wishes, and it’s been a battle, but we’re now to the point where she is here with us and it’s amazing.”
 
The Meyers said they believe the guardianship is draining Ferguson’s funds. Court records refer to social security and two pensions Ferguson receives. In addition to expenses like the facility, the guardian, who is an attorney, bills for fees.

“It’s all about the money, God damn money,” Ferguson said.
 
“She feeds herself. She bathes herself,” Carrie Meyer told the 8 News Now Investigators. “At 91, a little bit of dementia shouldn’t keep your family from living where they want to live. It’s her life.”
 
There are options for individuals like Ferguson that are not as extreme as guardianships, according to Debra Bookout, the directing attorney for the Guardianship Advocacy Project at Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada.
 
“Think about not being able to make your own decisions. That’s a pretty big loss,” Bookout said.
 
Estate planning documents are vital, according to Bookout. A judge can honor an individual’s wishes, which could help prevent a family conflict regarding the individual’s care and finances.
 
“A happy middle ground would be we recognize you are declining, loved one, and you have wishes that should be honored, maybe an estate planning consult with an estate planning attorney is a great idea at this point,” Bookout said.
 
The state of Nevada strengthened its oversight of guardianships after systemic issues were discovered. In some cases, individuals were criminally charged.
 
The state now requires representation for wards. In Clark County, Bookout and her team represent the wards.
 
“We appear in court on behalf of that person and advocate for their wishes,” Bookout said.
 
The Meyers are asking an Ohio court to terminate Ferguson’s guardianship.
 
The guardian, attorney Justine Winger, filed a motion to withdraw as the guardian of Ferguson as a person, stating Ferguson’s family is making it difficult for her to do her job.
 
Winger also agrees to remain guardian of Ferguson’s estate “until another suitable person applies and is appointed as such in either Ohio (where the ward’s assets lie) or Nevada (where the ward is currently being housed),” according to the motion.
 
The 8 News Now Investigators’ attempts to reach Winger were unsuccessful. 
 
A hearing on the matter is scheduled for March 20.

Full Article & Source:
‘It’s all about the money,’ Las Vegas family fights Ohio guardianship

Florida guardianship laws weakened by elder law attorneys’ lobbying. For some courts, exceptions have become the rule | Special report

By Jason Garcia and Monivette Cordeiro

It’s known as “trolling.”

That’s the practice in which a professional guardian identifies a vulnerable elderly person by visiting a nursing home, sponsoring an “informational” breakfast or getting a call from a hospital. Then the guardian, or their attorney, gets a court to appoint them that person’s guardian, by talking the elderly person into asking for it themselves or persuading a judge to intervene

Five years ago, when Florida lawmakers set out to reform the state’s guardianship laws, they were so concerned about trolling scams that they proposed two major restrictions meant to put a stop to them.

One would have forced judges to follow a rotation when appointing a professional guardian for an elderly or disabled person who had just been declared incapacitated. The other would have forbidden a professional guardian who was appointed to oversee a ward on a temporary or emergency basis from later being appointed that person’s permanent ward, too.

But by the time Republican-controlled Florida Legislature passed the 2015 law, both restrictions had been substantially eased. The reason: Opposition from the elder-law industry.

Elder, estate and probate attorneys who work on guardianship cases -- many of whom earn fees paid with the assets of the person who the court has decided is incapacitated -- threw up a thicket of objections. They persuaded Florida lawmakers to include exceptions to both.

Rebecca Fierle

Those exceptions have, in many parts of Florida, rendered the two anti-trolling changes almost toothless. They have also created loopholes that help explain how Rebecca Fierle, the disgraced Orlando-based professional guardian who is now under criminal investigation, was able to gain control over the estates of so many seniors and other vulnerable people. Fierle resigned in July from 95 active cases in Orange County alone.

The 2015 legislation underscores the influence that the elder-law industry has in shaping in Florida’s guardianship laws.

“It’s the coyotes guarding the henhouse,” said Douglas Franks, a 61-year-old computer technician from Georgia whose late mother was declared incapacitated and put under the care of a professional guardian in Pensacola. Franks has personally lobbied the Florida Legislature for stricter controls over the industry.

“We need to have a third party -- someone that doesn’t have a vested interest -- to look at this and say, ‘This is not fair,’” Franks said.

Industry advocates say it makes sense that they play a central role in these debates. They know this arcane corner of the law better than anybody -- and they can anticipate how well-intentioned reforms could cause more unintentional problems.

Changes can also impact their livelihoods. Attorney fees are often a major cost in guardianship cases, where assets from the estate of the person who has been declared incapacitated can be spent to pay for lawyers to represent both the wards themselves and the guardian appointed to manage their affairs.

In one case out of Palm Beach County, for instance, the attorneys representing a guardian were paid close to $200,000 in fees and costs over a roughly two-year period -- from an estate worth about $400,000, according to court records. The same attorneys and guardians often work together on multiple cases.

Still, Shannon Miller, who runs the Miller Elder Law Firm in Gainesville, said the attorneys who help write guardian laws prioritize the protection of seniors and other vulnerable people over their own self interests. Miller, who also co-chairs the legislative committee for the Elder Law Section of the Florida Bar, the professional association for attorneys, pointed out that elder-law attorneys have also lobbied for laws making it easier for some people to obtain emergency injunctions or file wills without hiring a lawyer.

“We do advocate for ourselves. But at the same time, our primary goal when we’re legislating is to advocate for the rights of seniors,” she said.

Guardianship law attorneys have influence

There are, to be sure, multiple interest groups who have played a role in writing Florida’s guardianship laws. The stakeholders include judges who preside over guardianship cases and county court clerks, whose offices audit and investigate guardians. Activist groups, such as AARP and an organization known as Americans Against Abusive Probate Guardianship, also get involved.

Sometimes the hospital and nursing-home industries weigh in. And professional guardians themselves lobby, too, through a trade group known as the Florida State Guardianship Association.

But lawmakers and lobbyists on all sides of the debate say the people who have historically had the most influence on the process are the attorneys who practice guardianship law. They work primarily through a pair of divisions of the Florida Bar -- the Elder Law Section and the Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section (which attorneys often jokingly refer to as “the reptiles” because of the acronym RPPTLS.)

Those attorneys leapt into action in 2015 when lawmakers began thinking about imposing rigid controls on how professional guardians get their cases. The Elder Law Section’s Guardianship Committee, which had been meeting every other week, started conducting weekly meetings to better keep tabs on the various bills in play.

The proposal to make judges follow a rotating order when appointing professional guardians was known at the time as “the wheel,” and the lawmakers who initially suggested it said it would ensure fairness in the process.

“It also assures that judges won’t get complaints in choosing the same guardians over and over,” former state Sen. Nancy Detert, a Republican from Sarasota County, said during a hearing on one early version of the legislation. “Because we do have guardians that are frankly targeting wealthy people and not taking cases where there’s no money available.”

But elder-law attorneys said the concept was flawed and unworkable. They warned that smaller counties might not have enough guardians for a rotation. They said judges should be able to consider if a ward required a guardian with a particular expertise, such as the ability to manage a business. And they stressed the importance of the interpersonal connection between a guardian and a ward.

So lawmakers agreed to add an exception to the wheel. Judges can decide not to follow a rotation when appointing a professional guardian as long as they explain their reasons for doing so.

The same thing happened with another provision lawmakers considered in 2015. It would have strictly prohibited a judge from allowing a professional guardian who had been appointed to oversee a ward on an emergency basis to then become that vulnerable person’s permanent guardian, too. The only exception in an early version of the bill would have been for cases in which the elderly or disabled person had chosen someone to be their guardian in advance -- before a court had determined they were incapacitated.

But attorneys said emergency guardians often develop personal bonds with the person for whom they have been made responsible and spend lots of time learning that person’s familial, financial and medical needs. They said requiring a second guardian to come in and do the same thing all over again could be emotionally traumatic and unnecessarily expensive for the ward -- whose estate pays the bills.

Lawmakers once again agreed to add more exceptions. The final legislation gave judges the discretion to let an emergency guardian become the permanent guardian if the ward’s next of kin requests it -- or if the judge decides that the guardian has “special talent or specific prior experience” that warrants it.

Detert, now a county commissioner in Sarasota, said the compromises were brokered by state Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, a Republican real-estate attorney from Naples who has in recent years become one of the Legislature’s leading experts on guardianship law.

"She came to me and she said, ‘I’ve worked it out with the reptiles,’” Detert said. “She did that part, thank goodness. She could speak their acronyms and I don’t.”

Passidomo, who was in the state House at the time, said she ultimately concluded that judges needed to have flexibility when appointing guardians.

“There are some wards that need certain types of care," she said.

Exceptions become the rules

But those exceptions have become rules in many counties across the state. The Orlando Sentinel surveyed the state’s 20 judicial circuits to find out which ones follow a rotation when appointing professional guardians. Ten responded -- and a half-dozen of those said they do not follow a rotation or they regularly go out of order when no one objects.

In Orange County, records reviewed by the Sentinel showed that Orange County judges chose to ignore a rotation and appointed Fierle in at least two-thirds of her active cases at the time of her resignation. The orders typically include boilerplate explanations for why the judge decided not to follow a rotation, such as that Fierle “has professional and business experience relevant to the nature of the services sought to be provided.” There are at least nine more cases in which it appears the judge appointed Fierle as guardian instead of following a rotation but there is no written explanation in the order.

One of the cases in which the judge chose to appoint Fierle rather than follow a guardian rotation: Steven Stryker, the 75-year-old who died at a Tampa hospital when staff was unable to perform life-saving measures due to a Do Not Resuscitate order that Fierle had filed against his wishes and refused to remove. Fierle was appointed Stryker’s guardian during a hearing that lasted less than three minutes, a recording obtained by the Sentinel shows.

After this story was published online, a spokeswoman for the Ninth Circuit, which includes Orange and Osceola counties, said the circuit does not follow a rotation when appointing any guardians.

The reasons judges gave to appoint Fierle and ignore the rotation system are “an offense,” Detert said.

Guardians "are all qualified and they’re all professional,” Detert said. “That’s not a good enough reason, in my opinion.”

Records reviewed by the Sentinel also show that at the time of her resignations, Fierle was serving as the permanent guardian for nine people in Orange County for whom she’d started out as an emergency guardian. The judicial orders for the appointments often provide only vague explanations whey they decided to let Fierle stay on as permanent guardian. In one example, for instance, the order says only that “Rebecca Fierle has the specific prior experience that this guardianship demands.”

Fierle initially sought to become an emergency guardian for Stryker, whose death sparked the statewide scandal that led to her resignation and multiple investigations.

Ninth Circuit spokeswoman Karen Levey said judges in Orange and Osceola counties decide whether to let emergency guardians become permanent guardians on a case-by-case basis.

“Rebecca Fierle appeared that she had tremendous experience and knowledge of promptly qualifying the elderly for their entitled benefits (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid),” Levey said.

Judges in other counties are also using their discretion. In a recent case out of Pinellas County, the friend of a ward challenged a judge’s decision to let an emergency guardian stay on as the permanent guardian because, in part, she had been a case manager for 25 years in the areas of grief, bereavement and crisis intervention; she held a master’s degree and was a licensed clinical social worker, hospice end-of-life counselor and practicing therapist. An appellate court ruled that those reasons satisfied the law.

Detert said there should be consequences for judges who are ignoring the rotation system or waiving the rules constantly for certain guardians.

“We should also have a penalty for judges who are abusing the system or just being lazy,” she said. “If they do it a lot, that should be a red flag.”

Attorneys cultivate influence

There have been other examples of guardianship-law attorneys and professional guardians shaping the state’s guardianship laws. In 2016, the Florida Legislature passed a law creating a new oversight agency, the Office of Public and Professional Guardians, and ordered it to develop standards of practice for professional guardians.

When the agency initially unveiled its proposed standards, the Elder Law section of the Florida Bar sent a seven-page letter raising various objections and concerns. The RPPTL section sent a full red-lined rewrite. And RPPTL lawyers helped orchestrate a lawsuit brought by a professional guardian against the state’s Office of Public and Professional Guardian challenging the proposed standards. The lawsuit was settled.

“A litigant who has standing to contest the rules was required in order to file the court action,” a RPPTL attorney wrote in the summer 2017 issue of the section’s “ActionLine” magazine. The story noted that the attorney who led the RPPTL section’s legislative committee “has worked diligently to submit and manage the court action.”

Sharon Bock, the elected clerk and comptroller in Palm Beach County, said Florida’s guardianship laws have historically favored the industry. Bock has lobbied Florida lawmakers in recent years to give clerks more authority to audit and investigate guardians.

“What we’re doing is interfering with their business model,” said Bock, whose office has been among the most aggressive in investigating abuses by professional guardians.

The elder-law industry builds influence in the political process in a number of ways.

The RPPTL section, for instance, has a pair of political committees that together donate about $180,000 per election cycle to state politicians. While it’s a relatively small amount compared to giant contributors like utilities, personal-injury attorneys and gambling interests, they spread the money widely: 33 of the 40 members of the Florida Senate have received contributions from the RPPTL committees.

Elder-law attorneys and their firms sometimes deliver checks in a bundle. On a single September day last year, for instance, state Rep. Colleen Burton, a Republican from Lakeland, received $3,750 worth of campaign contributions from half a dozen donors tied to the guardianship industry. One day a month later, Passidomo, the Naples Republican who has worked on a number of guardianship bills over the years, got $2,500 from half a dozen elder-law firms. Burton and Passidomo have both received “Legislator of the Year” awards from the Elder Law Section in the past.

The groups also spend on lobbyists. Records show the RPPTL section spent approximately $60,000 on legislative lobbying last year -- with a list of contract lobbyists that included former Senate President Mike Hardiopolos, a Republican from Brevard County. A trade group known as the Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, which works closely with the Elder Law section, spent about $30,000 on a lobbyist.

And they make themselves available as subject-matter experts and go-to resources for the professional legislative staffers who have the job of turning ideas and concepts into actual legislation, said Sam Sugar, an activist with the organization Americans Against Abusive Probate Guardianship.

“They have access to the people who actually scribble the words down or type them out in Tallahassee,” Sugar said. “Contrast to that, if you’re an advocate or you are a citizen and you want to see changes placed into potential legislation, you don’t have a clue how that happens.”

The elected lawmakers who are ultimately responsible for passing the laws say they try to ensure that no one person or interest group has more influence than another.

“My philosophy when I file legislation is to open my doors and let anybody who has an opinion weigh in,” Passidomo said. “I take all suggestions, if they make sense.”

Full Article & Source:
Florida guardianship laws weakened by elder law attorneys’ lobbying. For some courts, exceptions have become the rule | Special report

Leaving Journalism: Why I Can No Longer Trust the Integrity of My Profession.

by Gretch R Hammond

Being an award-winning, investigative journalist has been one of the most rewarding and unforgettable experiences in my life.

Very soon, I will be publishing a five-part, freelance series detailing an alleged massive abuse and exploitation operating out of a Detroit-area probate court. The alleged victims number in the tens of thousands of Michigan's most vulnerable senior and developmentally disabled citizens placed under court-appointed by the guardianship and conservatorship of county public administrators by the court's four judges.

With no due process, or medical evidence presented as to their incapacity, they have been stripped of each of their constitutional, statutory, civil and human rights and forced from their homes into long-term care facilities or unlicensed group facilities with subhuman living conditions where they are isolated from family and friends. Meanwhile, their homes and everything they owned including cars, personal possessions, heirlooms, jewelry and even clothes are sold off or trashed.

Within a maximum of three years, they have been rendered completely indigent and totally reliant upon social services such as Medicaid. They are billed as much as $240,000 in a single year in attorneys fees, patient pay and other expenses many of which cannot be explained.

This activity has continued unchecked for at least three decades, with probate court audits covered up by the Michigan Supreme Court and State Court Administrator's Office. Despite receiving complaints from both wards and their families, successive state Attorneys General have neither concluded an investigation of or prosecuted a public administrator. Probate judges have not been subject to any disciplinary action. Instead,they have been moved to a different county.

This year-long investigation will be my last as a journalist.

Understand that what I am about to relate is not an attempt to shame anyone in journalism industry, nor is it sour grapes as, in my situation, I was able to to find a form of resolution. However, we deal in whole truths and, for that reason, I cannot let this truth just vanish, There are lessons within it, for me most of all, but I hope also for those journalists who forge ahead.

I have never taken for granted the honor of telling someone’s story and elevating a voice; especially if they have suffered from injustice or been discarded by society. When my stories have resulted in positive changes, to even a single life, then my conundrum of contentment is solved.

On the other hand, what happened this year with the Detroit Free Press, who appeared to bow to outside pressure and set aside principles for politics was a gut-punch to what had been my rose-tinted, contented view of the profession.

Even after I received their 2018 Letter of Intent to publish my investigation into the Oakland County Probate Court, I was cautious.

My concerns about a possible catch and kill situation didn’t come out of nowhere. In my national research, I spoke to families in Washington state and Oklahoma who said that reporters who had been committed to investigating guardianship issues, in those states, were suddenly told to stop.

But I was assured, by Free Press leadership, that in no way has the publication ever allowed outside pressure to interfere with an investigation. They had a history of superlative reporting which substantiated that.

So, I continued my work with the security that its results, pending rigorous fact-checking, had a home.

Still, I threw caution to the wind and kept the name of the publisher out of requests for interviews.
That held true in my February 2018 request for a face-to-face with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.

I was quite surprised when I heard back, almost immediately, from her Communications Director Kelly Rossman-McKinney asking if my team and I would be willing to meet with a long list of Nessel’s staff in order to overview our findings.

I checked with my editor at the Free Press who gave an enthusiastic green light. The meeting was set for March 12.

However, when I saw that the list of attendees included State Public Administrator Michael Moody, I pushed back and alerted Rossman-McKinney that he was a focus of the investigation.

My team and I reached a decision that, if he was going to get involved, our best course of action was to provide the proof of our findings but protect the alleged victims and their families by:

A) Redacting the names and case numbers from documents.
B ) Allow the AG’s staff to review, during the meeting, but not keep the documents.

My goal was to present an overview of our findings, seek comment and let the AG’s office do what an AG’s office is supposed to do.

Shortly before the meeting, Rossman-McKinney emailed and said she wanted the name of my publisher and editor. When I asked why, she replied that she simply wanted to reach out to them “As a courtesy.”

It made no sense but I feared that, if I didn’t supply the name, the meeting would be called off and I had a lot of questions to which I wanted answers.

March 12 was a bizarre four hours during which we were received with a combination of receptive and downright defensive. An alleged victim family member I invited to join us recorded the conversation and intends to release it. I do not know when.

We left around 5 pm.

By 8 pm, I received an email from Assistant Attorney General Scott Teter.

“I shared the information with the AG and she would like us to get involved more deeply in a couple of cases immediately,” he wrote. “You shared the chart of the home sales information with me and it included one sale that was over $100,000 below the market value. Can you give me more information on that file so we can pull the probate file?”

“Also, we are looking for the most egregious case that involved either the guardian ad litum ignoring the ward (who isn’t incapacitated),” he added. “Or one of the cases that had the DPOA that was ignored to see if we could file a motion to terminate. Can you supply one?”

I was taken aback. We had supplied his staff with multiple cases demonstrating pattern and practice. I replied to him, channeling Oscar Wilde, that one case can be dismissed as a misfortune. Multiple cases seems like more than carelessness. Besides, the last time I checked, I wasn’t under his employment.

“It would, therefore, not serve our goals for publication at all to provide you with the requested documents at this time,” I concluded.

On the morning of March 21, I interviewed Senator Pete Lucido. An outspoken, genuine bloke, he pushed back on the notion that nothing had been done about alleged probate corruption.
“The Attorney General has created a Taskforce,” he told me. “She invited me to be a part of it on...”
He paused to check his dates.

“March 13,” he continued.

I was shocked. I told him that I had heard no mention of a Taskforce at all. Teter had certainly not brought it up either at our meeting or any time afterwards. When I told this to Lucido, he seemed equally surprised and told me there was supposed to be a press conference about it on March 25.

After we hung up, I immediately sent an email to Rossman-McKinney with no response. Throughout the day, I tried to call the AG’s office and was repeatedly told that the entire communications team was “In a meeting.”

I called my editor at the Free Press. He said he’d received no announcement but would check with his local journalists.

That night, one of the family members forwarded an email she had received from a journalist at a local paper in South Michigan.

It included the AG’s press conference announcement which noted that only credentialed members of the press who had RSVPd to a Nessel’s communications team member would be included.

I did so immediately.

By Friday March 22, I was getting nervous. The press conference was Monday morning.

I called my editor again and told him I absolutely had to attend because the March 12 meeting had yielded no comment to any of my questions concerning what was allegedly happening in Oakland County and statewide nor had Nessel, herself, been present. This was a rare opportunity to press her on the issue in person.

The entire day went by with radio silence from both the Free Press and Rossman-McKinney.

Finally, late in the evening, too late to call my editor friends in Chicago to have them RSVP on my behalf, I received a text from my editor at the Free Press.

“After speaking with AG [sic] office they assure me the task force has nothing to do with Oakland County issues,” he wrote. “It’s a high-level review of elder care issues. This is producing unnecessary drama and complications so at this point I’m asking you to skip efforts to attend. Monitor the livestream broadcast if you’re worried about integrity of the process, but this isn’t worth the back and forth with AG’s office.”

I was floored.

“You lied to me,” I wrote back. “You strung me along for 8 months. You told me you would never back down to anyone. And then you did. Because it ‘isn’t worth it.’ I don’t imagine any appeals to your conscience or journalist integrity are worth it but I will tell you this: I am going to publish. Not with you and not with a publication that falls under the AGs sphere of influence. They asked you to jump and, instead of backing me, you did.”

There was nothing more to be said and nothing I could do.

On the morning of March 25, I watched the press conference on Facebook. I felt more disappointment than surprise to discover I was right. One of the principle topics of the morning was guardianship in Michigan's probate courts; the very topic of my investigation.

The reforms that Nessel proposed that morning stemmed from issues I had brought up in the meeting with her staff; petitions for guardianship filed with no corroborating medical evidence, the forced removal of innocent Americans under the court's guardianship from their homes and the immediate selling of that property by the guardian for under market value, shocking inconsistencies in guardian accounting that included over-billing and missing money as well as the isolation of family members from their loved ones.

Then there was Michigan Supreme Court Director of Communications John Nevin who told a reporter that, regarding the actions of probate courts "we have no specific instances of wrongdoing."

My blood turned to steam. '

Nessel  claimed that the Taskforce was working in concert with the Supreme Court Justices. Yet she, somehow, forgot to mention to them both the evidence my team and I brought to her staff and years of complaints to her office, and that of her predecessor, by wards and their families?

Not only that, but that court was provided audits of probate courts, in at least six counties, from 2003-2008. All of them showed shocking financial malfeasance. All of them were actively quashed from the public.

As for the morning being a "high level review of elder care issues," either Rossman-McKinney lied to my editor or he lied to me. What is fundamentally clear is that they didn't want me there asking anything specific and that the Free Press had been complicit in that desire.

Meanwhile, I scrambled to find the story a new home. Not a single Michigan publication was interested and those in the national arena to whom I pitched responded that they did not have the editorial resources to cover a story of such weight and that, besides, this was more of a local issue.
One editor was a little more direct. “No one wants to read about the elderly,” he wrote.

Finding a publication which believed otherwise was as much of a surreal odyssey as concluding the investigation itself.

I even tried the AARP where I was bounced back and forth between the digital editor and their publication’s managing editor who eventually deferred to the former. Ultimately she declined saying that they had “Other plans for the topic of guardianship.”

Where this story will shortly land, and how it got there is something known only to myself, my parents and the extremely generous individuals who stepped up with a helping hand.

Regardless, the residual pain from the Free Press gut-punch remains.

In short, I can no longer trust in the integrity of the industry. I know there are incredible journalists out there, people who follow their instincts and take the risks necessary to elevate the truth.

But, as long as there are publishers who would deny them that ability, for whatever reason, this industry will continue to be imperiled just as much from within as by outside attempts to discredit it alongside declining readership.

Its the principle reason I know I can’t be a part of it anymore.

Be that as it may, I do not look upon my years in journalism with regret. They were ones of the highest honor, in which I was trusted with the life stories of those who might otherwise have never been heard. I learned from each of them, and was even able to help change a few for the better. I was so very lucky to have had the opportunity to do that.

Full Article & Source:
Leaving Journalism: Why I Can No Longer Trust the Integrity of My Profession.