Mother Put in Cuffs by Massachusetts Court

Opinion
Mother Put in Cuffs by Massachusetts Court

Does Feminist Margaret Marshall Approve?

By Atty. J. Edward Pawlick
February 14, 2001

How can Chief Justice Margaret Marshall approve putting a mother in handcuffs and ankle cuffs when her only crime was not wanting to relinquish her newborn to strangers?

We reported the story about Heidi Howard and her baby girl yesterday.

Was it not bad enough to put this grieving mother in jail? Did they also have to treat her like a dangerous criminal?

Were they trying to torture this mother into revealing who was caring for her baby?

Has Margaret Marshall ever tried to climb a flight of stairs with handcuffs and ankle cuffs attached? Heidi Howard says it is very difficult and painful.

Are there any guidelines from Chief Justice Marshall on the imposition of shackles by court officers?

How have we arrived at such a state?

We used to think that when women were put in charge, things would change and all we would have everywhere is love. Why is it that just the opposite is happening? Is it because we now have female guards who say they are tough enough to handle any desperate criminal, even though the truth is that they can do so only if the prisoner has chains draped all over him? Is that the reason that everyone, including a mother, must be treated this way?

When I was the solicitor for a sheriff in Pennsylvania, no one was subjected to such painful indignities. We used to see pictures of extremely dangerous criminals in foreign countries who got this treatment. But now everyone receives it throughout Massachusetts as a matter of course.

There is no question that the guards must be protected, but why are all these shackles required all of a sudden? One must also wonder why the prisoners appear to be so much more dangerous than they were in the 1960s. Is it because of the use of drugs, both illegal and psychiatric drugs?

Is it because no criminal receives swift punishment anymore and they all know they will not be punished no matter what they do?

Whatever the reason, we are all suffering from this terrible blight of violence by our governments that has descended upon our society.

We’ve seen the same violence happening to children who are put into the “care” of DSS. We’ve reported how the Harvard-affiliated Walker Home in Medfield bruised, drugged and used physical restraints on nine-year-old Tara Garivan because she wanted to go home to her family. (She finally did go home after we reported the story.)

When it was revealed this month that DSS workers were having sex with girls at a DSS facility in Marlboro, many remembered a 16-year-old boy who was killed in that facility by the use of restraint only three years ago.

Maybe the lawyers at the Boston bar Association would do well to tell their members to get out of their walnut offices and go see what a courthouse looks like instead of telling them to go to the Statehouse and lobby for more state money for their favorite poverty lawyers. Most of those lawyers in the big Boston firms have never seen a courtroom in their entire lives. They have no idea what is happening there. Yet they’re telling the legislators that “lawyers are in the best position to know how important legal representation is” for poor people.

Most of us have lost touch with the realities of life.

Perhaps Justice Marshall doesn’t have time for this because she is doing so much speaking around the state to feminist groups. Or perhaps this incident occurred because feminists believe that mothers who stay home with their children are the ultimate parasites in our society and deserve to be treated in that manner.

Whatever the reason for the increased violence that everyone must endure in our society, there is absolutely no excuse for what was done to Heidi Howard (and her husband) on Monday.