Minnesota: Teen thrown into Psych Ward for Creative Writing Assignment_CourtTV

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[sSRI-Research] Minnesota: Teen thrown into Psych Ward for

Creative Writing Assignment_CourtTV

 

 

 

 

Minnesota: Teen thrown into Psych Ward for Creative Writing

Assignment_CourtTV

 

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP)

Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability

www.ahrp.org

 

FYI

Has freedom of _expression become a common casualty in the

post-Columbine era?

 

Colleen and David Riehm filed a civil suit last month against their

son's former teacher, the principal, and other county officials

alleging numerous violations of David's constitutional rights,

including freedom of speech, due process, and protection from

unreasonable seizure, false imprisonment, and negligent confinement.

Court TV reports of similar cases: in Texas where a middle school

student was held in juvenile detention for six days in 1999 for a

Halloween essay for which he received an " A " ; in Kansas, where an

honors student was expelled in 2000 for her poem " Who Killed My Dog? "

about seeking revenge against someone who killed her dog; and in

Louisiana, where a student was punished in 2001 for a two-year-old

drawing he created at home that pictured his school under attack.

 

" Throwing a kid into a mental hospital for what he writes and not for

what he does is unconscionable and unacceptable, " Riehm's attorney

Peter Nickitas told Courttv.com. " I would expect to see something like

this in a book by George Orwell or Franz Kafka or an excerpt from the

'Gulag Archipelago,' but this happened in Minnesota in 2005. "

 

There is evidence of madness in America--and the problem isn't its

children.

 

Mental health professionals have succeeded in brainwashing America's

teachers and school administrators to suspect that undetected mental

illness lurks behind seemingly normal teens. Those charged with

teaching and nurturing students' creative talents are reacting

irrationally out of misplaced fear, fear that has been reinforced by

disinformation promulgated by the mental health screening brigades.

Fear and suspicion have rendered educator incapable of coping, much

less appreciating, creativity in their charges.They have been trained

to suspect mental illness--much as Joe McCarthy suspected communists.

 

 

 

Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav

212-595-8974

veracare

 

 

 

http://www.courttv.com/news/2006/0202/riehm_ctv.html?link%20yhlk#continue

 

Family sues after creative writing assignment lands teen in psych ward

 

By Lisa Sweetingham, Court TV

 

 

(Court TV) - Minnesota high school student David Riehm bristled at his

creative writing teacher's stinging comments at the bottom of his

assignment.

 

" David, I am offended by this piece. If this needs to be your subject

matter, you're going to have to find another teacher, " Ann Mershon's

critiqu e began.

 

The 17-year-old's satirical fable concerned a boy who awoke from a wet

dream, slipped rear-end first onto a toy cone, and then had his head

crushed " in a misty red explosion " under the tires of a school bus.

 

" I'm actually a little concerned about your obsessive focus on sex and

potty language. Make a change - today! " Mershon warned.

 

David did not make a change. The poetry, scripts and songs he loved to

write typically earned him praise from friends and family. Mershon's

rebuke only roused him to rebel against her in two more essays over

the course of the term.

 

" Bowling for Cuntcheson, " a vivid dream-within-a-dream about a boy who

finds a gun under a church pew and shoots his teacher, " Mrs.

Cuntcheson, " so frightened Mershon that she alerted the school

administration.

 

" I felt threatened and violated by this thinly veiled fictional

account of revenge against me, " Mershon wrote in a statement to

authorities. " I immediately had anxieties, which I have struggled with

since reading the story. It scared me, it hurt me, and it also makes

me very concerned for David. "

 

David was suspended on Jan. 24, 2005. The next night, three men - a

Cook County deputy sheriff, a state trooper and a social worker -

showed up at Colleen Riehm's home on the Grand Portage Indian

Reservation with a court order to seize her son and commit him to a

psychiatric ward 150 miles away in Duluth. (David's stepfather is

Native American, but David is not enrolled in any tribe.)

 

With no room at the juvenile facility, David was temporarily placed in

the adult unit.

 

" He was scared to death, " David's attorney told Courttv.com. " He

didn't know what was going to happen from one minute to the next. "

 

A physician later determined David was neither mentally ill nor

dangerous, and more than 100 letters of support, written by

classmates, faculty and parents, were presented at a court hearing,

his attorney said.

 

David was ordered released from the hospital 72 hours after he had

been taken into custody. His mother received $6,000 in medical bills.

 

Colleen and David Riehm filed a civil suit last month against his

former teacher, the principal, and other county officials alleging

numerous violations of David's constitutional rights, including

freedom of speech, due process, and protection from unreasonable

seizure, false imprisonment, and negligent confinement.

 

" Throwing a kid into a mental hospital for what he writes and not for

what he does is unconscionable and unacceptable, " Riehm's attorney

Peter Nickitas told Courttv.com. " I would expect to see something like

this in a book by George Orwell or Franz Kafka or an excerpt from the

'Gulag Archipelago,' but this happened in Minnesota in 2005. "

 

It has also happened in Texas, Kansas, Louisiana and public schools

across the nation.

 

" I wish I could say that this is an isolated incident. I wish I could

say this shocks me, " said David Hudson, a professor and First

Amendment Center research attorney. " But the sad thing is, there have

been similar incidents where students have been punished for creative

writing. "

 

Hudson is the author of several books including " The Silencing of

Student Voices: Preserving Free Speech in America's Schools " and a

September 2005 First Amendment Center report on " Student _Expression

in the Age of Columbine. "

 

" To me, " Hudson said, " it sounds like a classic Columbine overreaction. "

 

Security vs. free speech

 

Colorado seniors Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris expressed their revenge

fantasies in class assignments, videos and online journals as a

prelude to their shooting rampage, killing 13 people before committing

suicide at Columbine High School in 1999.

 

In response, many schools have adopted a zero tolerance policy on

drugs, weapons and, in some cases, speech.

 

Has freedom of _expression become a common casualty in the

post-Columbine era?

 

Hudson's report points to cases in Texas where a middle school student

was held in juvenile detention for six days in 1999 for a Halloween

essay for which he received an " A " ; in Kansas, where an honors student

was expelled in 2000 for her poem " Who Killed My Dog? " about seeking

revenge against someone who killed her dog; and in Louisiana, where a

student was punished in 2001 for a two-year-old drawing he created at

home that pictured his school under attack.

 

" Certainly you have to keep students safe, " Hudson says. " You cannot

sacrifice student safety, but there's got to be a way to protect

student speech in addition to protecting safety. I don't think you

should brand them as the next Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris. "

 

In David's case, he had " no juvenile delinquency record, no history of

mental illness, nor any history of mental health counseling, "

according to his complaint. But in other cases, that information alone

may not mean much to concerned school officials.

 

" There is no accurate or useful profile of 'the school shooter,' " says

a 2002 U.S. Secret Service report on " Preventing School Shootings. "

 

The report cites a study of 37 school shootings involving 41 attackers

in which rich, poor, failing and excelling students were among those

who took arms against their classmates. All were boys, and few had

been diagnosed with any mental disorder before the incident.

 

Riehm's case, however, is also aided by the fact that the authorities

allegedly made no effort to determine whether he needed counseling

before he was seized in front of his mother.

 

Cook County High School principal John Engelking did not return calls

for comment.

 

Mershon, who is reportedly teaching abroad and was unreachable, told

the Duluth News-Tribune last year that she could not legally discuss

her side of the story.

 

" All I can say is that it's been really painful, " Mershon was quoted

as saying in the article. " I know I did what I needed to do, and the

district did what it needed to do. Mandatory reporting is a pretty

serious issue. It's not something that is taken lightly. "

 

Cook County City Attorney William Hennessy stands by the county's actions.

 

" We don't feel that we've done anything significantly wrong, " Hennessy

told Courttv.com. " Look at what happened at Red Lake. That's the kind

of thing we're trying to prevent. "

 

Hennessy was referring to the massacre on an Indian reservation in

northern Minnesota in March 2005, when 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed

nine people before he shot himself at Red Lake High School.

 

Nickitas says such comparisons are unmerited in David's case.

 

He also points out that three months lapsed between the time David

turned in " Bowling for Cuntcheson " in October 2004 and the time his

teacher read it in late January. During that period, David had not

acted on any of his fictional revenge tales, nor was he ever in

trouble at school.

 

An effort should have been made to sit down with David, to get him

counseling, or at least talk to his mother, Nickitas argues.

 

Hennessy agrees that conferring with David's mother may have been a

prudent choice.

 

" But I don't know in this case if it would have made a difference. She

wasn't very cooperative, " he said.

 

Colleen Riehm declined to be interviewed.

 

After graduating with a 2.98 GPA from Cook County High, David Riehm

has started a new life at college, his attorney says.

 

As a teen, David surmised in one of his essays that he wrote about

" violence, language, sexual content " because it was ever present in

the news, movies, and cartoons he watched. Now, as a freshman at the

University of Wisconsin, majoring in film development, he may have the

opportunity to broaden his world perspective while learning to express

himself through film.

 

" Usually I am thinking about life in general, " David wrote, " and you

know, life is not G-rated. "

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