Newtown Panel to Deliver Final Report Friday, March 6, 2015

In the immediate weeks after the mass murder and suicide at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that left 20 first graders and seven adults dead, Governor Malloy selected 16 experts to make recommendations, many of whom have ties with the behavioral health industry and Yale Child Study Center, the last place Adam Lanza was treated.

Their task according to the New York Times article, Members of Newtown Shootings Panel Recall Toll Their Work Took, by Kristin Hussey, published on March 3, 2005, was “to examine the event.”

The two years of 29 closed sessions to the public were televised where selective “stakeholders” were invited to participate. The carefully scripted agenda did not focus on any material or physical evidence.

The first guest speaker invited by the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission (SHAC) was Former Colorado Governor Bill Ritter.  Governor Ritter did not discuss the mental health records of 18-year-old Eric Harris and his accomplice, Dylan Klebold who killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 26 others before killing themselves in the Columbine High School massacre, a school shooting that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine.

Harris was on the antidepressant Luvox.  Klebold’s medical records remain sealed.  Both shooters had been in anger-management classes and had undergone counseling.  Harris had been seeing a psychiatrist before the shooting. Source: Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights.

The state police report, toxicology, autopsy, ballistics reports, and educational records were not incorporated within the hearings or incorporated in the recommendations.  The public was denied access to this critical information.

The public only had access to a fragmented 6,700 page police report that is often referred to in pharmaceutical litigation as a “data dump.”

The Sandy Hook Commission at one point criticized the State Police Report in the Connecticut Post.

“But there is one problem: the recently released State Police report the panel must rely on to understand the crime is all but indecipherable, some members of the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission say. Indeed, the report is so disorganized that the commission has sought the help of a Hartford law firm to turn the 6,700 page file — an online collection of hundreds of individual documents, without a table of contents or index — into a searchable database. “I think all of us have gone into the document pages and were just never quite sure whether we missed something or have gotten to the thing that matters most to us,” said Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson, chairman of the commission.”

The 6,700 pages were never indexed or placed in a searchable database as promised by the Commission.  In fact, AbleChild had to pressure the Governor’s office to release the name of the legal firm that offered it’s services pro-bono.

Furthermore, according to the New York Times article, “The Sandy Hook experts were struck by a common denominator in mass shootings:  the killer’s lack of social connectedness.”

It is easy to illustrate the common denominator with the material evidence that has been disclosed for multiple school shootings, which is more likely the mental health “treatment” itself, the mind-altering drugs.

According to the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights who published documents showing between 1988 and January, 2013, there have been at least 31 school-related acts of violence committed by those taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs resulting in 162 wounded and 72 killed.

The Newtown Panel is expected to deliver their final report to the Governor, Friday, March 6, 2015.  We know from the New York Times article, that one panel member took a trip to Japan to deal with producing the long awaited report, while another panel member compared Adam Lanza and all children’s lack of social connectedness and isolation, as serious as taking a lethal dose of heroin in their bedrooms.  Very dramatic! Where are the facts to support such a comparison?  This type of “expert” authoritarian fear tactics erode informed consent protections for parents.

AbleChild has joined forces with 8 other parent right organizations to oppose these bizarre recommendations  given without supporting documentation.

In addition, AbleChild wants to clarify that PA 13-3 was passed before the state police report was released to the lawmakers as well as to the general public.

Within PA 13-3 legislation is a program called  “mental health first aid.” Mental health first aid provides training to teachers to screen and identify children without parental consent or the right to refuse.  This legislation was passed without open public meetings and is funded by a Presidential Executive Order.  In addition within that legislation was a mandate for a “taskforce” that believes the state policy should be just “shy of forced medication.” AbleChild strongly opposes PA 13-3.

AbleChild wants to point out that these screenings are subjective and lack science.  Adam Lanza was identified and screened by Danbury Hospital and released as not a harm to himself or others.  He was also provided “mental health treatment” at Yale Child Study Center. How does one return deadly mental health treatment and get a refund?