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The federal trial court in Boston (left) put one of its judges on the board of a foundation which fundraises for the institutions which abducted medical kidnapping victim Justina Pelletier (right). (L to R: uscourts.gov and A Miracle for Justina/Facebook)
Previously uncirculated information has now connected the whole institution of Boston's federal trial court to the controversial medical kidnapping of teenager Justina Pelletier in 2013. For years Justina and the Pelletier family have recounted that she was abducted, tortured, crippled, and nearly killed by Harvard University's primary pediatric teaching facility – Boston Children's Hospital (BCH) – and one of its apparent partners, a residential treatment center called The Wayside Youth and Family Support Network.
Within hours of Justina's release in 2014, she gave one such interview to reporter Beau Berman, describing abuse and neglect at those facilities, which were two of the places where she was held against her and her family's wishes during a 16-month ordeal which began at BCH when she was 14 years old. This interview capped Berman's ongoing coverage of Justina's case, for which he won back-to-back Edward R. Murrow Awards in 2014 then 2015:
Now, a new report which was recently sworn onto the record as part of a filing made by the federal government reveals one of the reasons why the Constitutional rights of Justina and her family may have gone unheeded in Boston's federal trial court despite their repeated demands, including a filing for a federal writ of habeus corpus on Justina's behalf. It turns out that Boston's federal trial court itself, as an institution, had directly appointed one of its own judges on to the board of directors of a separate, non-official, non-governmental organization called The Boston Foundation (TBF) and from there that judge – Marianne B. Bowler – appears to have overseen hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars being sent straight to the 2 facilities where Justina and her family report that she was brutally abused, Boston Children's Hospital (BCH) and Wayside.
Federal Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler was appointed to the board of directors of The Boston Foundation by the city's federal trial court and from there she apparently oversaw donations to institutions which held Justina against her will. (uscourts.gov)
As many will recall, Justina's plight shocked and captivated people from across the nation and around the world. Her story broke the record for the highest number of views on FoxCT's website and on more than one occasion #FreeJustina reached the number 1 trending spot on Twitter.
But for anyone who missed it, a wealth of information about Justina's case can easily be found online, including this Fox news coverage by Governor Mike Huckabee and this PBS coverage by Emily Rooney.
For those who would prefer to read, Michelle Malkin summarized the relevant events in her widely-syndicated article, “The Brutal Battle Against Medical Kidnappers,” excerpted here:
…One fateful winter day in February 2013, Justina traveled with her mom to BCH from her West Hartford, Connecticut, home, seeking relief from a severe case of the flu. Ordinary sickness compounded Justina’s rare medical conditions, including mitochondrial disease and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. But those illnesses hadn’t stopped her from participating in school, competitive ice skating and an active family life.
Instead of receiving top-notch care and attention at BCH, however, Justina was snatched from her parents and recklessly re-diagnosed with a psychological condition, “somatoform disorder.” She was dragged from BCH’s neurology department to its infamous psych ward, where she was reprimanded for being unable to move her bowels or walk unassisted in her weakened state. At Wayside, she was harassed by a staffer while taking a shower. The physical and mental torture lasted 16 months.
The family is now suing the gold medallion-adorned, scandal-plagued Boston Children’s Hospital.
“They tried to break us all,” Justina’s dad, Lou, told me at his West Hartford home, where Justina fights to recover from post-traumatic stress and physical deterioration suffered while she was held hostage.
But the arrogant, tunnel-visioned torturers failed. Thanks to an aggressive awareness-raising campaign by an eclectic coalition including Justina’s family, the Christian Defense Coalition’s Rev. Pat Mahoney, conservative media personalities and left-leaning critics of the Massachusetts child welfare bureaucracy, Justina was eventually freed and reunited with her parents.
Full disclosure: my fight to save Justina's life and my subsequent imprisonment with neither bail nor trial by Judge Bowler and another federal judge in Boston named Nathaniel M. Gorton is relevant for the connections detailed below between Judge Bowler, the federal trial court in Boston, and Justina's tormentors. So anyone who isn't already familiar with that part of the story should read Malkin's full article here and/or this article here at Red State by Jim Jamitis. And for those who wish to vet my story more deeply, the following outlets have also provided coverage: Rolling Stone, The Daily Wire, RT, Infowars, The Huffington Post, WND, The New American, The Daily Caller, Sirius/XM's The Wilkow Majority, as well as Boston's Fox 25 News, WCVB ABC Channel 5 News, and Boston Herald Radio.
Now, as indicated above, Judge Bowler's appointment by the city's federal trial court to one of Boston Children's Hospital's principle donors isn't her only connection to organizations which abducted Justina. For example, Boston Children's Hospital is the primary pediatric teaching facility for Harvard Medical School and prior to embarking on her legal career, Bowler worked at Harvard Medical School as a research assistant. She's also currently married to one of the school’s professors, Marc Pfeffer, and he is a paid practitioner at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital.
But yet, one would be incorrect in assuming that all these readily apparent conflicts of interest would make Judge Bowler quick to recuse herself from cases involving Boston Children's Hospital. For instance, Judge Bowler didn't recuse herself from hearing the DOJ's application for a search warrant for my home despite its explicit mentions of medical research at Harvard-affiliated BCH as well as of “other Harvard University-affiliated hospitals,” like the one from which Bowler's husband, with whom she is eligible to file a joint income tax return, draws a paycheck. And speaking of tax returns, here is a part of TBF's 2014 tax filings which shows that it gave a grand total of $182,950 to Boston Children's Hospital the same year that Bowler gave the FBI a warrant for my home.
However, Bowler's failure to recuse was eventually exposed by many of the aforementioned publications, some of which wrote whole articles dedicated to the topic of her biases like these at Red State and The Daily Wire. Then, The Boston Foundation started to be mentioned by name in subsequent articles at Red State, The Daily Wire, The New American, and Infowars.
Finally, The Boston Foundation (TBF) apparently got tired of being connected by name to the torture of an innocent, sick child in a wheelchair and when the DOJ asked TBF for a sworn affidavit trying to downplay both Bowler's role at the foundation as well as her connections to Justina's tormentors, TBF obliged but it stuck in this little tidbit in paragraph 2 of the affidavit which it gave the government to file, noting that it was the court itself which had appointed Judge Bowler to the foundation's board of directors:
Boston Foundation records indicate that Marianne B. Bowler was appointed to the Boston Foundation Board of Directors by the United States District Court (one of the appointing authorities at the time when the Boston Foundation was still in trust form before 2001) in 1995 and served until 2005. Since leaving the Board in 2005, Ms. Bowler has not held a position with the Boston Foundation that would allow her to exercise any corporate authority over Boston Foundation matters, including the awarding of grants or other philanthropic activities; nor has her advice or counsel been sought or received on any such matters.
Perhaps TBF was trying to tell the government and the federal trial court that from now on the court itself is going to get dragged into every mention of TBF's role in Justina's suffering. Or, perhaps TBF was hoping that the Boston federal judge who was presiding over that docket, Nathaniel M. Gorton, would move to prevent an evidentiary hearing at which Judge Bowler, her husband, and others from TBF might be called to testify under oath regarding their connection(s) to Justina's ordeal.
If so, TBF definitely got what it wanted from Judge Gorton, who is himself closely associated to an organization called The Home For Little Wanderers, where he sat on the board of advisors and to which he donates financially. In turn, The Home For Little Wanderers has partnered with Boston Children's Hospital to divert its psychiatric inpatients, such as, at one point, Justina, into outpatient settings.
In the months leading up to my arrest for the alleged “crime” of defending Justina's life, The Home For Little Wanderers received a $50,000 gift from BCH, an undisclosed sum from Judge Gorton. And guess what... Judge Bowler's Boston Foundation also solicits donations for The Home. And guess what else... Judge Gorton hasn't recused himself either. Though he has ruled that I will not be allowed to mention the torture which Justina reports that she endured at my trial.
Finally, there was another tidbit mentioned on TBF's affidavit: the foundation to which Boston's federal courthouse appointed Judge Bowler apparently rewarded her within weeks of her issuance of the warrant for my home. It named her one of its emeritus directors.
So, the next time that you want to tell your children that we're a Constitutional Republic built upon the rule of law, please remember all of this and ask Boston's federal courthouse why Justina Pelletier is stuck in a wheelchair.
Marty Gottesfeld defended former figure skater Justina Pelletier when she was maimed at Harvard-affiliated Boston Children’s Hospital. The Obama administration arrested him in February 2016, and he’s being held without bail by judges with apparent conflicts of interest. See FreeMartyG.com, the FreeMartyG Facebook page and the @FreeMartyG Twitter account for more information.
