Spain, August 12, 2011
A judge orders a 12-year old girl with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome /Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS) to be locked up in a psyquiatric 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 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 there 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 go to see a psychologist, although the physical effort to go to these appointments made them sicker. Also the homecare that they were entitled to also made them sicker as the home-care workers did not want to respect their need for Enviromental Control and they went to their home wearing perfume and smelling of tobacco.
When the mother complained about this, Social Services, instead of taking into account their special needs, they saw it as "the last straw" and they decided to cancel their home service and they proceeded to accuse the mother of "isolating" her daughter which led to having the girl being 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 so, like alteration in their immunological parameters, high RnaseL and viral reactivations, is being ignored by the Social Services of 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 psyquiatric 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 Müchhausen Syndrome and that the mother is 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 at 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 what 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
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
Jose Luis Rivas
President
ASSSEM
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
