Guardianship Abuse Playbook – Retaliation Against Those Who Dare to Speak Up

By Terri LaPoint

 

Imagine a situation in which someone you love is abducted. You may or may not know where they are, but you are powerless to free them. The captor takes their money by getting into their bank account and investments, changing insurance policies and trusts to the benefit of the captor. The captor drugs the loved one into oblivion and forbids them to contact friends or family members.

If a masked thug did all this, law enforcement would jump into action, and the person reporting such a crime might even be hailed as a hero.

However, if the perpetrator of such actions does so by manipulating the probate or civil court system, it is business as usual. No one bats an eye if the victim is declared by the court to be an “incapacitated person” in need of a guardian, whether the allegation is true or not.

Worse, there is often swift retaliation against anyone speaking up for these hidden victims of guardianship abuse. Such bullying tactics are so common that they are considered part of the standard “playbook” used by the perpetrators of guardianship exploitation through local probate courts.

Occasionally, stories of this abuse of power make it into mainstream media, such as that of Golden Flake heiress Joann Bashinsky and the film from Netflix, “I Care A Lot”. More often, stories appear in alternative media and blogs.

The prevalent thinking is that, indeed, this case is an anomaly. Few realize how commonly it occurs. And few recognize the high cost at which these stories ever see the light of day.

Retaliation – Part of the Script

Talk show host and elder advocate Marti Oakley has been covering stories of the abuse of senior citizens for 14 years. Over half of her 2000+ broadcasts on the TS Radio Network have been on guardian abuse. She has interviewed many hundreds of victims and family members who have spoken out about the horrors experienced in this system.

Though each story is different, the playbook is predictable, almost like a script. In a recent interview, Oakley told Real News Spark:

In virtually every one of the cases, the retaliation is just unthinkable.

Though they have committed no crime, the person’s fundamental human rights under guardianship are stripped from them. Everything they have worked for their whole lives, including their family relationships, businesses, and estates, are at the mercy of strangers known as guardians and conservators, who now control everything. Exploitation and abuse of the “ward,” as they are called in this system, are the standard MO.

Oakley explains that family members who speak up or try to fight for the rights of their loved ones may come under attack by having false charges levied against them. Their reputations are frequently slandered. It is not uncommon for family members or advocates to be attacked in online or media smear campaigns.

Both the wards and their families are often bankrupted by endless legal battles, while the guardians siphon off inflated fees and commissions from the estate of the ward.

Visits with the loved one, whether the ward is mother, father, sibling, grandparent, or even spouse, have been cut off as punishment. The guardian may tell the court that it is not “in the best interest” of their victim to have visits from the family because the ward “becomes agitated” during visits, (perhaps in wanting their life back?).

While they are being told that their loved ones have moved on with their lives, their families are often fighting expensive battles in probate court simply for the privilege of having a visit or trying to free the estate from being milked away by people with no interest in preserving the intentions of the senior citizen. The bullying tactics kick up into full gear against anyone trying to fight for their dignity or freedom.

Even media personalities and advocates have been de-platformed, shadow-banned, or threatened when they provide a place for the victims or their families to tell their stories.

“Insidious Retaliation” against Daughter Fighting to Free Her Father

In the struggle to free her father Marvin Siegel from the isolation and abuse of guardianship, Boston area attorney Lisa Belanger learned how vicious retaliation can be. Court-appointed guardians forced her and her family to move out of her father’s home just before Christmas in 2011.

Lisa Belanger and her father. Photo supplied by family.

Not only did the attorney guardians engage in a smear campaign against her reputation, but they also went after her bar license when she dared speak out against them. She responded in court:

This entire procedure [of the attempt to remove her bar license] has been about a persecution because it’s retaliation against me for lawfully and reasonably fighting for my family’s constitutional rights.

This is a battle she yet fights today. She recently told me:

This intimidation is the rule, not the exception. They are used to intimidating people and they will shut up.

Lisa Belanger refused to bow to the bullying tactics used against her. She says she will always stand up for the truth. After a court hearing, the “insidious retaliation” began, she explains, when she exposed attorney Marsha Kazarozian and the court-appointed guardian for their role in drugging her father. She told their story to the Boston Broadside, naming names and providing documented evidence.

Belanger realized that this was happening to many more people besides her father. She got involved with the cases of Alice Julian, Mary Frank, and Beverly Finnegan, all Boston-area seniors who were ultimately euthanized under their court-appointed guardianships.

See article:

Public Warning: Boston is a Cesspool of Adult Medical Kidnappings

Before long, Belanger had uncovered 29 other cases besides her father’s, involving many of the same players. When she filed a federal racketeering lawsuit in 2015 exposing those cases, retaliation against her began in earnest. She was labeled a “misguided crusader,” and guardians stopped her visits with her father.

Citing a restraining order that did not exist, the guardians threatened her with arrest when she tried to see him.

The court removed her as trustee of her father’s estate. The guardians subsequently dismantled the trust and drained the estate – an estate that held over $9 million before guardians entered the picture. Most of the money was gone by the time of his death in 2019.

Wife Threatened and Slandered

Helen Taylor of Missouri fought for, and eventually won, the freedom of her husband of more than 40 years. Under the guise of “protecting” Charley Taylor, guardians sold several properties that the couple owned jointly. She told MedicalKidnap.com about some of the outrageous retaliation against her:

I have never had but a speeding ticket in my life until the county took him from me. Since then, I have been labeled a thief, a person that blows up nursing homes, called in to take a lie detector for abusing animals. The county won’t stop with the things they accuse me of. I was a grandmother of 13. Now, I am a homeless woman that lives in an apartment across the street from my husband in a nursing home. Oh, I forgot, an abuser of my husband. No charges after 719 days in court. No witnesses. I can’t believe what a crooked county can do to people.

After she spoke out about the cruel treatment of her husband under the guardianship, including sexual abuse and starvation in the nursing home, the guardians retaliated by obtaining a court order forbidding her to see the love of her life. 

Helen and Charley Taylor – photo taken by family friend. Shortly after, guardians forbade Helen to take photos of her husband. The day before Valentine’s Day 2017, guardian Amanda Huffman cut off all visits between husband and wife.

 

Though the attacks were merciless, she refused to back down. Because of her courage, Charlie Taylor finally came home. Helen Taylor is now a passionate advocate for families fighting guardianship abuse.

 

Retaliation Is Frighteningly Common to Silence Dissent

During almost 7 years of investigating stories of “medical kidnappings” of seniors and children, virtually every family member I have interviewed whose loved one has been taken reports that the court documents contain false information about them. The predators use the power of motions and false allegations in their filings to seize the ward and keep them under the custody of the court. Often these are wild accusations or outright lies which are easily proven false. However, that part of the story is swept under the rug while the victims’ reputations are smeared.

In many cases, family members and advocates have been threatened. In a pattern that is all too familiar to those who have been following these stories, anonymous bloggers and social media trolls attack the reputations and character of those who fight back. By doing so, attention is deflected away from the very real crimes being committed in the guardianship system against senior citizens.

Courage to Stand

History is full of those with the courage to stand for truth and justice, refusing to back down, no matter the cost. Like Daniel in the lion’s den and the Hebrew boys in the fire, these families do not stand alone. May God give them the strength to stand, even in the fire.

Lisa Belanger told a Massachusetts court why she will never back down in speaking out for people like her father:

This matter is not just about me. It’s not just about my father…. This case is about a nationwide epidemic, and it is shown from the exhibits of the federal action through the Government Accountability Office that what I have been exposing over the past seven years is a nationwide epidemic. This is not an isolated circumstance.

May 20, 2021 Terri LaPoint

 

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Guardianship Abuse Playbook – Retaliation Against Those Who Dare to Speak Up

Financial predators stalk the mentally ill

The “leech,” as he is known to Gloria and Maurice Bowersox, knew just how long he could bleed their daughter dry.

He knew that the kind 33-year-old woman had schizophrenia.

He knew how lonely she was, trying to shape an independent life in the Olathe duplex her parents provided for her.

He could get her to do just about anything he wanted: pawning anything of value, opening store charge accounts in her name that he abused, pilfering the title to her car from her parents’ house so she could borrow money on it for him.

That one got her car repossessed.

For months, against their daughter’s will, they had tried to run him off. Then they finally realized they had the legal leverage to have him evicted.

Ha!, the con man laughed at Maurice Bowersox when the father confronted him. I won’t have to leave for 90 days.

“He knew the drill,” Bowersox said. “He’d been down this road before.”

Nearly three months later, in November, he was gone, finally. But the experience left the Bowersoxes freshly shaken by a pestilence that strikes people with mental illness and their families.

The mentally ill are vulnerable. They are often repeatedly exploited by predators, by strangers, by friends and sometimes even by their guardians or family members.

“A larger problem exists than we know,” said Kiersten Adkins, the executive director of Pathway to Hope in Olathe. “So much of it is hidden.”

She hears hard tales seemingly every week, she said, and not just of mistakes in bad relationships, but of bad decisions with payday loans, casino gambling and lottery tickets.

Such incidents expose the gaps in community support that leave so many people poorly protected and often lead to homelessness.

“Imagine if we weren’t here to help her,” Gloria Bowersox said of her daughter. “She’d be on the street.”

Lack of support

Predators are hard to catch and even harder to prosecute when the victim is a willing — and often collaborating — adult.

Social service agencies and case managers struggle to manage heavy loads while confronted with too few housing and treatment options to keep their clients protected. Guardianships help, as well as payee services that give a third-party agency control of getting bills paid, but they’re imperfect.

“Folks are trying to live in the community, but there are not enough supports to keep them from being taken advantage of,” said Wyandotte County District Judge Kate Lynch, who runs a special court docket for people with mental illness.

“Some will go into (a nursing home for mental illness), but when they come out they will go into an apartment, and we don’t know where they are,” she said. “We don’t know if they’re alive.”

By the time abuse complaints reach the Kansas Department for Children and Families, said Leslie Hale, the director of adult protective services, “things have gotten pretty bad.”

Many abuses go unreported because victims feel shame or they do not see themselves as abused. They may even aid in their exploitation.

“People strive toward independence,” Hale said. “You want the most minimal intervention as possible.”

Case managers can counsel a client and ask courts to help weigh their mental capacity to make decisions, “but if they are just making bad decisions, there’s not a whole lot we can do.”

It also can be difficult to pursue criminal or even civil cases against someone who is exploiting an adult with mental illness.

“It can be hard to sort out,” said Guyla Stidmon, the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Greater Kansas City.

“Family members and guardians take advantage of them on occasion,” she said. “Many (of the victims) suffer from paranoia, and there are not many pro bono attorneys around to help them.”

“Imagine being an arresting officer,” said Adkins of Pathway to Hope. “It’s a he-said, she-said thing, and one of them has mental illness. One is not making a lick of sense, and the other is telling a good story.”

Frustration

The police usually tried hard to help, often sharing the Bowersoxes’ frustration.

Gloria Bowersox remembers the Olathe officer who was left sorting out the scene after one of their daughter’s previous roommates was arrested for crimes unrelated to their daughter.

It became clear why the arrested man had been living there. The officer obviously had seen it before.
“He said, ‘I hate it when people take advantage of people like this.’ ”

As someone with schizophrenia, their daughter can become confused by intrusive voices or hallucinations. She can grow incoherent.

Medication will control it at times, but then fail and need adjustments.

She started showing symptoms at 17, was diagnosed at 18 and was at one point a freshman at Kansas State University studying early childhood education when they had to bring her home.

The torment for the parents is that they never know how long her better, more lucid times will last or when the illness will overcome her once more.

There have been times when she participated in a panel of people speaking to students in schools, when she was reflective and able to discuss her symptoms.

She’d been in a good stretch, Gloria Bowersox said, before the latest predator crept in.

“He got her believing that he was her protector and that we were her enemies,” she said.

The daughter willingly gave in to his control. She was constantly without a phone, believing his warnings that electronics were dangerous.

The parents cut off funds to their daughter, regretful for the hardship it might bring her but seeing it as a way to root him out.

“Stop the money,” Maurice Bowersox said, quoting their daughter’s case manager, “and the leech will let go.”

But the leech hung on hard. Their daughter began hocking most anything of value for him. She took out store charge cards in her name.

One day the Bowersoxes came home and found their house had been searched. They would learn that the title to their daughter’s car was gone.

Their daughter took out a loan on her car, and it was soon repossessed.  (Continue Reading)

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Financial predators stalk the mentally ill