I am reiterating what happened to my family over the past several years because it has done great damage to us and because we are being contacted by several people going through the same thing. The major actors aligned against us were the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and many attorneys; the Somerville Cambridge Elder and Protective Services Agency; Massachusetts General Hospital; Mount Auburn Hospital and more.
This group collectively abused the Cambridge Police; attempted to denigrate me; slander my wife; sexually abused me; violated Massachusetts Laws against giving people anti-psychotics against their will; over-medicated me when there was no reason for the medications; and a lot more.
I suffered because of their actions and decisions taken in violation of the Health Care Proxy I asked a well respected local Cambridge attorney draw up for me in 2019, months before this happened in 2020. That Health Care Proxy was negated by the Court in a hearing of which I was not noticed, knew nothing about and in which I was described as indigent, destitute and so much more. I had the 2019 Health Care Proxy drawn up by the attorney because I was made aware of one I did not have drawn up with a Proxy I did not want to make those kind of decisions on my behalf. I wanted my wife of 38 years to make those kind of health decisions on my behalf.
Negating the Health Care Proxy which was properly created and executed happened as an after thought which Attorney O’Sullivan had at the end of the Court Hearing of which I received no notice. Judge Langlois said no to Attorney O’Sullivans request that I not be notified of the hearing. Five minutes later, during that same Court hearing, the Court ignored its own comments and acquiesced to negating my Health Care Proxy – properly executed with my wishes. The Judge ordered it replaced with no reason, without my having been noticed of the hearing and with no reasons given by Attorney O’Sullivan for his request I believe, this HCP was put in place against the one I had created and signed because it was better suited to achieve the goals of the state, which they have made known in how they have treated me and others. As time went on it became clear they were trying to take over my assets putting them under “guardianship” controlled by Attorney O’Sullivan and the state agency.
What we see through this is their need to destroy any African American they deem a threat to the unbelievable racism which exists in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is a way to intimidate minorities and they have done an exceptional job. People are calling us with cases which make what happened to me look mild. In spite of that the people calling are terrified of speaking out about their experiences with the same institutional structure which almost destroyed me; which did destroy the business my wife and I worked over 30 years to build and so much more.
Let me remind you of what happened to Prof Gates at Harvard University. There is a Bettina Network Blog documenting some of that with copy of a picture of Prof. Gates in handcuffs on his own porch.
As I calculate the time frame in which they happened, it totally paralleled the time he was moving into the space of creating the incredible documentaries he has since produced about African American genealogies and other topics. Prof. Gates was picked up by the police on what they claimed was a criminal charge of breaking and entering. The problem with that – he was unlocking the door to his own home. Interesting in this case, Prof Gates was not actually taken to the police station under arrest. The incident went on long enough for the pictures of him on his own porch in handcuffs to make the newspapers and then he was released with no charges filed. Wasn’t that an attempt to shame, embarrass etc. an African American on his way up?
That has now changed. Instead of criminal charges, the state and related agencies and people resort to mental illness charges and claims that your family medically abused you. To pick you up on criminal charges, as they attempted to do with Prof. Gates, you need witnesses, incidents, proof. I was picked up by the police twice. The Court papers they used to do that were quite spurious.
The first time the police came to my home to force me out and into the psych ward of a local hospital, a section 12 was filed. When the police arrived at my home they had no Court papers to back up their claim that they had the legal right to take me by force, if necessary, and had been given the right by the Court to carry me out and whatever damage done to the property in the process would not be their responsibility. The police arrived with eight white policemen, five EMT people and two ambulances. One ambulance in front of my door, the second with its motor running half-way down the street double parked..
The Section 12 was sworn out by a psychiatrist who added to the form that she did not know me, had never met me, had never examined me, yet she was filing this mental health charge against me. What better charge to file against an Episcopal priest to ruin his chances to continue with any work he was doing and to destroy the confidence in him of the people with whom he was working? These are the charges now being promulgated against minorities. African Americans, Jews, Latinx and more. And, we believe they are becoming more widespread.
After being forced into MGH by the police we were there only hours until I was sent home with no reason for having been picked up in the first place. No mental health problems were found. Most of the hours we spent in the hospital were spent waiting for a psychiatrist to be available to examine me. It was an unbelievable time.
One day after I was sent home by MGH because they had no reason to keep me attorney O’Sullivan went to Probate Court with the description of this indigent, destitute, and more. The out of control man with “mental charges” which supposedly met the criteria of swearing out the Section 12 there started the “Guardianship” attempts. Attorney O’Sullivan went back to Court, without my having been notified of the hearing and swore out papers to have me picked up again. This time claiming my wife was medically abusive to me and I was alone in the house with her not able to have access to any medications, proper clothing, etc. The fact that my wife was not medically abusive to me and my adult children and their spouses were in the house with us was irrelevant. The fact that so many lies were told was also irrelevant. Lies told by this attorney and the state agency were overlooked. The woman head of the Protective Services purgered herself claiming I signed the Health Care Proxy I had created in 2019 when I was just out of surgery and did not know what I was doing and this was in March, 2020. That was only one of the many lies told in her sworn statement to the court. The Health Care Proxy she was describing was drawn up by Massachusetts General Hospital the day before she arrived for her “interview”.
With this second action this would mean the state or other institutions or groups would take over and dispose of, in any way they decided, the assets of this minority – the man they claimed was destitute.
What has this been about? We believe and in our researched have discovered proof that this is a part of actions today being taken against minorities to rid them of intergenerational wealth – as much and as completely as possible. This would make it difficult for their children, grandchildren and whoever else they decide to leave their accumulated wealth to unable to use those assets to help them achieve to the highest level possible using assets/wealth left to them by their ancestors and making it necessary for them to have to make it on their own.
There is nothing wrong with making it on your own. There is something very wrong when your parents, having sacrificed much in their lives so you can have a better life and then from those sacrifices the children, grandchildren and others in the family receive nothing because the state, attorneys, individual groups created for such purposes and more are set up to take all of that away from you.
Racism in Massachusetts and particularly in the Greater Boston/Cambridge area has been vile and wide spread for decades. It is institutionally structured into the area and has been unchallenged by many and defended and kept in place by many more.
If an African American or other minority seems to be moving too far in a direction our rulers don’t like or approve they are swatted down and treated in such a way as to attempt to bring shame onto the person. We believe that is what happened to me and my family. We also believe that is what happened to Prof. Gates and many more who have contacted us with incidents they heretofore kept quiet about because of the shame they felt after they were so viciously treated by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, amongst others.
The initial Court action against me was done under cover. It was done undercover so the Court genesis of this would not be showing with people confused as to exactly what was happening. We came to that conclusion after reading several briefs filed by others, realizing what they had in common was no understanding of what caused all of the problems they were experiencing and why the Courts, the state Agency and others were so involved. They could not discover what happened to cause all the mess.
Judge Langlois was the judge who presided over that initial hearing. He appointed an attorney to represent me in a hearing at which I was not noticed. It was also a hearing he said could not be held without notice to me. After that comment, Judge Langlois went on and appointed an attorney without my knowledge or consent. Attorney Cheri Myette was appointed. We did not hear from Attorney Myette at all. No calls, no notes, no copies of papers filed with the Probate Court – nothing. That covered the initial hearing of which I received no notice and right after that hearing Attorney Myette filed papers making claims about which I knew nothing and which were not true. How many people have suffered because of such actions? I did not know about nor receive the papers she filed and even though she claimed I was swearing to what she put in those papers, I did not and had no idea what was happening.
We are writing this and publicizing what happened because we are finding more people who have experienced the same thing and clearly under the same circumstances.
A hearing was held without notice to me. The judge Langlois said Robert Bennett would have to be notified of the hearing and he then went ahead within 5 minutes of his comments in that same hearing to make the ruling requested. I was not notified and without my knowledge or consent Judge Langlois appointed an attorney to represent me. From that point on I was treated as a person with no rights of any kind. Whatever served the goal of those doing this is and who would benefit financially from this is what happened within the Probate Court System and without.
In that same hearing I was declared “indigent”, I was characterized as “old”, “destitute” and “incapacitated.” the Court was told I could not appear at hearings because my health would not allow it and asked the Court’s indulgence to hear all of this without me present. That was not true. I was able to appear in Court, but they probably would not have liked anything I had to say so best to keep me out. The judge accepted and agreed that I did not have to appear and Attorney Myette gave no objections. She didn’t know if I was well, sick, mobile, etc. She played her role. It was unbelievable as we recovered the history of what happened.
The judge did not appoint a particular attorney to represent me that was left to Attorney O’Sullivan to do. Normally in cases where the defendant is claimed to be indigent, he or she is represented by an attorney selected by CSPS and it is the next attorney on the list to be called. That did not happen. Attorney O’Sullivan appointed an attorney who had been involved in other such cases with the same result. In my case, as seems to have been her usual method of operating, I never met her, never talked to her, knew nothing about her and yet she claimed – in papers filed with the Court – that I swore to things she put into those papers without telling the Court I could not swear to anything because I knew nothing about what she was writing and submitting to the Court and that, in fact, I knew nothing about her.
As a result of this abuse of the Court system – of me – of my wife and more I was picked up by the police and shoved into Massachusetts General Hospital where I was kept in a locked ward with guards and police with guns guarding the doors. I was kept, against my will in a very small part of a hospital room for two people. My section of the room had curtains drawn around me at all times; hospital equipment stored -which was not relevant to me – at the head and side of my bed and the space was only large enough for a hospital bed and a chair. When put side by side the chair touched the wall on one side, the hospital bed on the other with no room in between them and the curtain touched my bed. I was forced to take anti-psychotic pills against my will and not told what they were or why I had to take some 10 to 12 pills a day. Besides the anti-psychotic pills I was also forced to take hallucinatory drugs and more. The reason seems to have been to put a diagnosis of “incapacitated” on my hospital record so I could be forced into a nursing home with the state taking over the assets they claimed I did not have. they also kept me on many pills to keep me still since I was not allowed out of my bed. If I moved I was on an “alarm blanket”. The alarm would run and a nurse would appear to insist I go back onto the blanket and not move. For 5 weeks that is how I was kept. How I lived through all of this is amazing to me and everyone else.
How do I now know what I was being forced to take without my consent or my knowledge of what they were demanding I take – I know that because they sent a bag of the pills home with me when I was finally let go out of the hospital and I was told as was my family that if I didn’t take the pills sent home with me I would be forcibly picked up again put back into the hospital. The pills in the bag included the above all with my name on them and MGH’s name.
The pills made me sick everytime I was forced to take them. My family called constantly to the doctor involved – Dr. Kehlman – and the hospital because they were not going to give me pills that made me sick on a daily basis. After a couple days of this back and forth the threat was dropped. We fired the doctor at the first moment we could and hired someone who was actually into fulfilling her doctor’s oath – especially the part about “do no harm.”
Months before any of this happened I asked an attorney – a substantial, well thought of attorney with an excellent reputation in this area to draw up a Health Proxy because I wanted my wife as my Health Proxy and he did that. This happened in 2019. Attorney O’Sullivan, in a hearing about which I was not notified, was not represented by an attorney, asked the Court to negate that Health Proxy and establish one I specifically did not want as he knew or should have known from Dr. Kehlmann – amongst others – who very specifically knew that. In spite of that and the supposed sacredness of Health Proxy’s what was clear from what happened to me is that your health proxy – along with other such supposedly sacred legal documents – can be negated, eliminated, changed according to the needs of those opposing you in Court without your knowledge and/or consent. That can happen even though those documents are not supposed to be allowed to be treated in such a cavalier manner.
Attorney Cheri Myette’s role seems to have been to block my being able to have the attorney of my choice represent me. We hired an attorney who was not allowed to replace Ms. Myette. That way, whatever the state wanted it could get because it controlled the attorneys. As we have talked to others experiencing similar problems, that has been repeated many times.
As to the charge that my wife medically abuse me? It was the state that did that bit of abuse. That was the first time I have ever been in a hospital. I did not want a doctor since that is not how I live my life. I do not take medicines and do not want to. Under extreme circumstances, if given a choice and my Health Proxy and myself agrees that is a very different circumstance. That is not what happened. The state of Massachusetts took over and medically abused me and attempted to destroy my family. We had a business we worked hard to develop over some 30 plus years. What the state did was to destroy that business and our livelihood which we now have to attempt to rebuild and at our ages that will be quite difficult. We hope it is still possible.
The amount of money this has cost us amounts to about $300,000.00 and of that Massachusetts General Hospital pocketed some $125,000.00 from working with the state to incarcerate me in their hospital. It was never for medical reasons. They were “protecting” me from a wife who I love and who loves me and with whom I have had a 39 year marriage I would not trade for anything. What they were working from was the model of a negative black image – my wife was characterized as a typical negative black woman and I was the negative black male image. A marriage between two African Americans could not be anything but awful and so the Court went along with that characterization. The racism throughout all of this reeked and was all over everything with people almost rejoicing that they could feel relieved to be able to view us in the light we were being portrayed by the state.
The initial Court papers were demanding that I be shoved into Mount Auburn Hospital where this was more known that it was at MGH. However, MGH got into the spirit of this quickly. When I said they were not to charge my health insurance for this, I was ignored and they made the charges anyway. When I saw what they charged, it became clear where this was headed and why.
We are going to attempt to put out all of the stories as people contact us. Some we won’t be able to put out because our current experience is that the people involved are too afraid of the police and the courts and they don’t have the amounts of money needed to hire private attorneys to protect them from this kind of rape. In other words, the intimidation against them worked.
If you have experienced any of the above, please feel free to contact us. Bettina Network Foundation, inc. has taken this on as one of its projects to attempt to help protect others from going through what I was subjected to by MGH and the state of Massachusetts. We believe what happened amounts to a criminal conspiracy operating within the state.
