 |
| Ryan King |
Ryan King is 33. He has been working at a
Safeway in Washington for 15 years. He pays his bills on time, budgets
saving and spending money every month, uses exact change for his ride to
and from work each day, makes a mean shrimp scampi, and has never been
charged with a crime.
Yet, in the eyes of
the courts, he has fewer rights than most convicted felons. Legally,
Ryan cannot decide where to live, where to work, where to spend his free
time, what medicine to take or with whom to talk.
Why? He has intellectual and developmental
disabilities as well as sickle cell disease. And, as with many people
like him, he is trapped in a legal guardianship that he’s longed to end
for nearly a decade.
“I
love being independent,” King explains. “Everyone needs a little help
sometimes. I don’t know anyone who knows everything. But just because
people need a little bit of help doesn’t mean they can’t be
independent.”
What’s unique in King’s case is that his legal guardians — his parents — also want to terminate their court-ordered stewardship.
Not
because they don’t want to continue living with him or because they
don’t want to be responsible for him. And not because they don’t love
him.
Susie and Herbert King, who are in
their mid-60s, have a great relationship with Ryan. The three of them
obsess about episodes of “Scandal,” they go on vacations together, and
they split the cooking, shopping and cleaning in their immaculately
decorated Northwest D.C. home.
But they
also want to give him what all parents want for their children:
independence, self-determination and control over his fate.
King
has some cognitive limitations and some visual and spatial limitations.
He needs a little help navigating a new place. But once he’s familiar,
he’s got it, he and his parents said.
In
2007, after King had worked at the Georgia Avenue Safeway for seven
years and had proved that he can make sound decisions and care for
himself, his parents tried to have the guardianship removed.
Denied. The D.C. judge filled out an ordinary, mass-produced form. And that ended that bid for independence.
Now
they are preparing to renew their efforts to end the guardianship. And
they are hoping for a different outcome from the court.
“This is planning for the future,” King explains. “And some people don’t plan.”
If
anything happened to his parents, King’s guardianship would revert to
the courts, and he could be forced out of his house and into a group
home, be forced to quit his job, be cut off from his friends and even
have all his computer passwords to his favorite sites (such as eBay)
blocked.
Sound ridiculous? It’s exactly
what happened to Jenny Hatch, who was pitted against her mother and
stepfather in a fight against guardianship that made national headlines a
few years ago.
Jenny
was living on her own in Newport News, Va., working, socializing,
volunteering on political campaigns — having a robust life as a young
woman with Down syndrome.
After she was
struck by a car while riding her bike, a court yanked her independence,
forced her to quit her job, ordered her into a group home and blocked
all her computer passwords. If any of her friends wanted to see her,
they had to fill out a permission slip.
She suddenly became a complete prisoner, all in the alleged name of safety.
“As
far as the law was concerned, Jenny had ceased to exist. She was an
‘unperson’ who suffered a ‘civil death,’ ” said her attorney, Jonathan
Martinis. “Her guardians, for all intents and purposes, became Jenny,
making decisions for her, instead of her, whether she liked it or not.”
This is Ryan King’s nightmare.
After a groundbreaking legal battle, Martinis helped Jenny win back her freedom — and her life.
Full Article & Source:
Why a man with intellectual disabilities has fewer rights than a convicted felon
