A Playground for Predators-Diane Dimond on The Abuses of Guardianship

Like to know more about MIA, its mission or rethinking psychiatry more broadly? On our podcast, MIA founder Robert Whitaker will answer your questions. Email questions to [e-mail] by November 10 and we will pick a selection.
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Our guest today is Diane Dimond, a longtime, award-winning investigative journalist specializing in crime and justice issues. As a freelance journalist, syndicated columnist, and former television correspondent, her reporting and commentary have been featured in newspapers, magazines, and TV news outlets across the country.
She’s also the author of several books, including Be Careful Who You Love: Inside the Michael Jackson Case, which she wrote after years of groundbreaking reporting on the topic; and her most recent, We’re Here to Help: When Guardianship Goes Wrong, recently published by Brandeis University Press.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow.
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Mad in America podcasts and reports are made possible, in part, by a grant from the Thomas Jobe Fund.
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[@jennytaylor3324]

Great advice, and an alarming legal loophole. One dreads to imagine.

[@anneburland5306]

Just chilling. I couldn't help but think of the situation years ago whereby people could be committed to mental hospitals by spouses and family members for the flimsiest of reasons. Has anything really changed? It would seem decidedly not, except now "outsiders" can get involved as well. Both chilling and sickening.

[@stevekaylor5606]

The Red Flagging Baker Act in FL - that the CCHR is opposing!

[@wildlightarts]

Hospitals and Doctors in the State and Commonwealth of Massachusetts participate in coersive control and abuse based on the hearsay of abusers who section their victims/survivors to discredit them and their reports of abuse. Personally, I know it happens from coast to coast.

[@leonierosenstiel8300]

Nothing has changed since 1973, when a New York attorney told my father he'd have to "pay extra" to be named my grand aunt's guardian. This isn't new; the problem is simply becoming more public.

[@stevekaylor5606]

Red Flagging, like via the Baker Act in FL, is often the 1st step in bringing someone before a Standard of Care psychiatrist. With his reductionist-Freudian presumptions, he hands out a disease-like label, then neurotoxic drugs or ECT and thus corrals him and many as long term cash cows!

[@stevekaylor5606]

The offer to "help" someone - by becoming his guardian is often something else!

[@protectingyourself4263]

Why isn't this being reported more? You'll see 40 news outlets covering every time some celeb goes out to eat, but so few care about this: the future of their grandparents, parents, AND themselves.

[@AdamJPollockLiveProd]

😢

[@qt2shooz]

How does one find out if they are a ward of the court and under guardianship if they never were even at the hearings and if no one tells them? I have people coming into my home and handling my dissociated body without my knowledge. I am physically, sexually, and psychologically abused, stolen from, gaslighted, manipulated, etcetera. It is a living nightmare, and no one, I mean no one, doctors, counselors, attorneys, police, family members, friends, and neighbors will tell me straightforwardly what is going on or even acknowledge that anything is going on.

[@stevekaylor5606]

A legal, Standard of Care way to out you and take from you, by bloodsuckers. This also violates the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the Federation - except in Canada, with its MAID Act!

[@wildlightarts]

good question.

[@wildlightarts]

I am so sorry you are experiencing this. I hope that you get some advocacy or that someone who will be sent into your life that will witness what is happening to you and blow the whistle so that things change and you regain your rights and have protection to this non consensual behavior and abuse. It's heartbreaking this is happening to you and others. I can't believe MIA has not answered or responded to your question. It makes me feel uneasy.

[@DominionMovementDotOrg]

great content to learn about. there’s a 2020 movie about this called I Care A Lot