A judge orders a 12-year old girl with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome /Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) to be locked up in a psychiatric ward of a hospital and forbids her mother to see her. We are calling on everyone to support this family and to help us with the legal costs.

THE FACTS

Last Saturday August 5, 2011, two plain-clothes policemen went to the home of V.R., a 46 year-old woman who has severe CFS/ME, MCS and Fibromyalgia, and took her 12 year-old daughter (who also has CFS/ME and MCS) with a judge’s order which stated that the girl had to be hospitalized in the psychiatric ward of the local hospital in central Spain and to keep the mother from seeing her.

THE BACKGROUND

The mother, V.R., who is very ill herself, has been fighting for years against the local Social Services. She had been denounced by the School Board for her daughter missing a lot of school, although a judge pronounced himself in favour of the mother and forced the school board to send a teacher to the girl’s home for schooling due to her severe CFS/ME and MCS.

Both the mother and the daughter were forced by Social Services to go once a week to a psychologist, although the physical effort of going to the appointments made them even more ill. The homecare that they were entitled to also made them sicker, as the home-care workers did not respect their needs for environmental control and they entered their home wearing perfume and smelling of tobacco.

When the mother complained about this, Social Services, instead of taking into account their special needs, saw it as “the last straw” and they decided to cancel their home service and proceeded to accuse the mother of “isolating” her daughter, which led to having the girl taken away.

MEDICAL REPORTS

The fact that V.R. and her daughter have been diagnosed by three of Spain’s leading CFS/ME specialists (and one of them also is an MCS specialist), Dr Jose Alegre, Dr Joaquín Fernandez-Sola and Dr Ana Garcia Quintana, as having severe CFS/ME and MCS with lab tests to prove it, (like alteration in their immunological parameters, high RnaseL and viral reactivations), is being ignored by the Social Services in that region of Spain. They say that the medical evaluation is going to be done by the local psychiatrists.

THE SITUATION RIGHT NOW

Yesterday, the judge ordered an “indefinite hospitalization of the girl in the psychiatric ward of the local hospital and forbid the mother to go see her, alleging that any contact with the mother would be bad for the girl’s health”.

Now the girl is in the hands of psychiatrists who are trying to prove that mother and daughter have a joint delirious alteration and are suffering from Munchhausen Syndrome, leaving the mother unfit to look after her daughter.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Faced with this situation, we, three Spanish CFS/ME and MCS associations, have joined efforts from day one to support this girl and her mother on all levels: legal, logistic, medical, etc. But we need financial support. The mother gets a 400 Euro-a-month pension (equivalent to 350 British Pounds or 569 US Dollars) on which her and her daughter try to live on. They don’t have the funds to pay for the lawyers who are now working on their case to try to get the girl out of the hospital, reunite her with her mother and assure that she does not lose her custody battle with the Social Services. We have been footing the bills up to know but our associations don’t have funding.

Right now, because of the delicate work being done by lawyers, we do not want to put direct pressure on the Social Services ourselves and the lawyers say that right now, any public or press pressure on this case might back-fire. But as soon as the lawyers give us the go-ahead, we will start a massive public pressure campaign and we will let you know how you can join in that effort.

For now, we just want to let you know of this unfolding situation and to ask for any possible financial support you can give.

We are just starting this battle

and

WE WILL NOT ALLOW THEM TAKE OUR CHILDREN WITH CFS/ME OR MCS AWAY SAYING THAT THEY HAVE MENTAL PROBLEMS.

Thank you from all of us.

Clara Valverde

President

Liga SFC, Spain, August 12, 2011

www.ligasfc.org

formacionsalud@hotmail.com (any messages for mother and daughter in English can be sent to this e-address for translation before passing it on to them)

 

Francisca Gutierrez

President

ASQUIFYDE, Spain

www.asquifyde.es

 

Jose Luis Rivas

President

ASSSEM

www.asssem.org

 

For international donations, the bank account number is:

(if you are making a donation from Europe):

ES80 1465 0100 91 1700515969

 

(if you are making a donation from a country outside Europe):

INGDESMMXXX 1465 0100 91 1700515969

 

(if you are making a donation from Spain):

1465 0100 91 1700515969

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 16th, 2011 and is filed under Chemical Sensitivity, MCS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Environmental Illnesses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.