NaturalNews – August 15, 2011
by Christina Luisa
There is a good chance you have heard the story of Maryanne Godboldo and how armed government agents broke down her door and attempted to kidnap her 13-year-old daughter Ariana to turn over to CPS because she refused to medicate her with a potentially dangerous and mind-altering anti-psychotic drug Risperdal (http://www.naturalnews.com/032191_C…). Maryanne had been using holistic remedies for her daughter instead, such as dance therapy.
The Detroit mother is now currently going through a criminal and custody trial because of this incident, and a variety of revealing and disturbing information is starting to come out about the involvement of Big Pharma and other parties in the twisted web of lies the case is wrapped in.
The jury presiding over the hearing was convinced to believe that Maryanne’s refusal to give her daughter the controversial drug, supposedly used to “treat” ADHD, represented a form of parental neglect. Read more here: http://www.naturalnews.com/033295_p…
Thanks to the Voice of Detroit (VOD), it is now coming to light that the New Oakland Child-Adolescent & Family Center – a private facility which reported Maryanne to CPS for taking her daughter off the drug — has paid connections with Big Pharma since at least 2004.
Pharmaceutical companies were involved all along
According to the Center’s website, Kimberly Smith — Director of Pharmaceutical Research for all its facilities since 2004 — provides “clinical support and supervision” for the Clinton Township facility. She is also the head of the Center’s Office of Recipient Rights. The website openly says that Kimberly has been coordinating Adult and Pediatric CNS (Central Nervous System) Clinical Trials for a number of big pharmaceutical companies for the last ten years.
Smith was recently contacted by VOD at her office, and she admitted that not only is she paid by the drug companies she works with, but that trials she is paid to conduct are among those carried out at New Oakland’s facilities. She refused to give further information on specific drug trials, saying the information was “private.” She claimed reports are only published after the FDA approves a drug, and that a confidentiality agreement must be signed with the company.
However, this statement is not nearly the whole truth, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s website at http://ClinicalTrials.gov. The site indicates that the FDA Amendments Act of 2007 “requires mandatory registration and results reporting for certain clinical trials of drugs, biologics, and devices.” A clinical trial of Depakote that New Oakland recruited participants for was listed on the site while it was still ongoing.
Ms. Smith claimed that parents are required to complete a detailed form when their child participates in such a study, but said she did not have a blank copy of the form she could provide for proof.
Follow the money trail
Even beyond the New Oakland Center’s drug connections, those involved in seizing Ariana – from the judge to the DHS and various public and private agencies involved — are connected to each other in a suspiciously twisted web. All are getting big bucks for not only children they barbarically take from their families, but for clinical trials on psychiatric drugs and medical treatment — including pharmaceutical drugs — that are given to the children.
Government officials involved in the case, including Judge Lynne Pierce, Department of Human Services chief Maura Corrigan and others also have their ties to Big Pharma and the undercurrent of money funneling.
Godboldo first took her daughter to The Children’s Center in Detroit when Ariana began having significant adverse reactions to the immunizations she had been receiving. Maryanne didn’t realize at the time that the Children’s Center is one of six partners in Behavioral Health Professionals, Inc (BHPI), a non-profit based in Michigan. BHPI is the parent organization for ConsumerLink and CareLink, which network with insurance companies and refer children to the various partners and other organizations.
Amber Kozlowski — a “social worker” — testified on Aug. 5 that she was responsible for Ariana’s admission to the Hawthorn Center on March 25. There, Ariana’s prosthesis was removed in violation of her disability rights, she was re-medicated with Risperdal and other drugs and was said to become the victim of sexual abuse, as stated in a police report filed by her family.
According to the Voice of Detroit, Kozlowski said she works for Neighborhood Services Organization (NSO) — one of the partners of BHPI — directly while contracting with ConsumerLink for the hospital liaison part of her job. NSO’s board of directors includes executives from various health and insurance agencies, including the Detroit Medical Center, Pro Care Health Plan and the Health Alliance Plan.
The Children’s Center, which is primarily funded by the Department of Human Services, also has its own foster care division and is funded at the rate of $34 per day for foster care provision, according to state budget documents. These funds originate with the federal government and are also channeled also into various other private foster care agencies in the state.
But that’s not all – the center also receives substantial grants from Ford Motor Company, and three Ford family members sit on its board.
Corruption, lies and illegal action
After authorities seized Ariana and institutionalized her, they decided she didn’t need the medication after all, but still continued to institutionalize her for seven weeks before releasing her to an aunt. Due to Maryanne’s allegedly firing a shot when authorities tried to take her daughter, this case received special attention – but it is otherwise exactly like thousands of other cases like it in Michigan. In the Godboldo case and many others, orders to remove children are literally rubber-stamped.
Voice of Detroit also recently reported that the Interim Supervisor of Juvenile Intake for Wayne County, Vikki Kapanowski, testified at Godboldo’s juvenile court trial that these orders are actually approved by a probation officer with no law license who merely stamps the judge’s name on the order — the judge never even sees the order.
Voice of Detroit and the Detroit News also reported on testimony in Godboldo’s criminal trial revealing that the whole process of serving the illegal order was, in itself, illegal. The probation officers doing this rubber-stamping in Detroit have not been sworn, do not have law licenses and are not authorized to perform functions such as issuing these orders.
CPS has no intentions of protecting children
Everything about this case seems wrong. To begin with, Ariana was not only prescribed a dangerous drug that is restricted to individuals over the age of 18, she had to witness a standoff with a SWAT team because there was no legal court order to remove her. A caseworker lied and called Maryanne’s actions medical neglect, even though she was working out a treatment plan elsewhere with another medical doctor. Ariana was then forced to return to the same facility that she was said to have been sexually assaulted at.
Not only has CPS – an agency sworn to protect children — shown no concern about this child’s best interests in any regard, its insistence on forcing children on medications is the reason why the Godboldo family has been forced to struggle through this ridiculous and unnecessary trial.
Ariana was taken from her mother (a low-income household), who CPS assumed would not be able to afford to defend herself, and was attempted to be placed in a foster home, group home or institution without due process or any evidence to prove that intervention was even necessary to begin with. All the while, federal matching funds and Medicaid funds were being collected to do so.
This case has exposed a serious problem in the way child protection is handled in not only Detroit or in the entire state of Michigan; the sad truth is that this is how child protection is being handled in every city in the country as well. Far from protecting children, CPS frequently exploits children for private gain.
This all comes back to the disturbing truth about the corruption of the agency, and how it uses private contractors to kidnap children and take them from their homes. The private contractors working for CPS are paid up to millions of dollars in reward money a year (http://www.infowars.com/cps-warrior…). Maryanne Godboldo has now openly accused CPS of being engaged in child trafficking (http://www.naturalnews.com/032501_M…) as well as sexually molesting her daughter (listen to interviews below).
Risperdal was unlawfully marketed to children to start with
What is even more interesting about all this information is the timing of recent news reports that Johnson and Johnson has just settled with the Justice Department and agreed to plead a misdemeanor on the illegal marketing of Risperdal ((http://voiceofdetroit.net/2011/08/0…).
Forty US states are planning lawsuits against J&J for this (http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/08/jj…). Johnson and Johnson has been forced to pay millions in damages – in multiple cases – for misleading safety claims it made about Risperdal while marketing the drug, including to children.
Big Pharma’s habit of paying medical professionals to recommend, market and prescribe their products regardless of the consequences is gathering more attention in recent times, such as in the case of Risperdal.
According to one lawsuit filed against the drug company giant, the FDA told J&J in 1997 that its request to market Risperdal for children was “without any justification.” In the following years, J&J’s arsenal of pharmaceutical sales reps made thousands of sales calls to child and adolescent psychiatrists. The company informed doctors that they qualified for the drug if they had as few as one adult patient displaying minor signs of schizophrenia.
Listen to interviews with Maryanne Godboldo here:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=8B819…
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=97774…
http://www.naturalnews.com/033295_p…
More sources/further reading:
http://voiceofdetroit.net/2011/08/0…
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO…
http://www.nccprblog.org/2011/08/fo…
http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/08/jj…
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