Drugging Of Children By DSS Protested At Statehouse By Ed Oliver April 28, 2003
		The protest outside the State House Friday afternoon, April 25, was organized to protest the unwarranted drugging of children by DSS and to call attention to the damagethey cause to families.

About a dozen people stood outside the statehouse Friday afternoon to protest the unwarranted drugging of children by DSS and to call for cuts in funding to the powerful social service agency to limit the damage they cause to families.

The organizer, Audrey Serrano from Fitchburg, tells MassNews that after she naively sought counseling help from DSS for her daughter Jessica, DSS placed the girl on psychological drugs that caused severe side-effects. When the mother objected and wanted it stopped, DSS seized the child from school and placed her in several foster homes. She says it took two years of battling the agency to get her daughter back home. DSS had placed Jessica on a total of 11 different psychological drugs, she says. Jessica is now drug free and doing wonderfully with her mother.

Jessica 13, tells MassNews that when she was on the drugs from DSS, she was "out of it," had headaches, was bumping into walls and "always thinking about doing something bad to somebody." She also would bang her head on the wall, dig her skin till she bled and would have the shakes.

"I'm trying to reform social services with my mom so this doesn't happen to other kids. I want to help families that were broken apart to get back together again," says Jessica.

After standing outside with signs and handing out flyers, the group went inside the statehouse to educate legislators.

Flyers distributed to passersby read in part:

Do you know that the great majority of children seized by the Department of Social Services (DSS) are diagnosed with one or more stigmatizing mental disorders and then put on psychiatry's brain-damaging drugs, even up to 5-10 drugs at a time?