This story is out of Baltimore after a 22-year-old woman named Rebecca was 'dumped' from a Baltimore Hospital in the freezing cold. Her mother, Cheryl, is now speaking out and called the treatment of her daughter "callous and heartless" and she also wanted to set the record straight about her daughter condition.
“There are people who are saying that my daughter [Rebecca] is a drug addict, my daughter’s a prostitute, that she’s deaf,” Cheryl, who only wanted to use her first name, recently told CBS News. “She’s not deaf, not a prostitute, not a drug addict. My daughter has mental illness.”
She added, “My daughter was disposed of. She literally was disposed of. It’s disgusting, heartbreaking, horrifying. And if it’s all of those things for me, I want people to know how does Rebecca feel? This was done to her. She was on the street with her body exposed. There was no human dignity at all.”
Cheryl also elaborated on her child’s prior diagnoses, which include
bipolar schizoaffective disorder and a form of autism, Asperger’s
syndrome. Rebecca had been living in a residential youth program since
Christmas Eve, but was discharged for not taking her medication, CBS
News noted.
“She has to be on meds, otherwise she has psychosis,” Cheryl said. “She will have a manic episode.”
She also explained that she has been trying to take control of her
daughter’s health by becoming her legal guardian, but because of HIPPA
privacy laws, Rebecca’s doctors won’t share her medical files with
Cheryl or even speak with her.
“This is a byproduct of what the mental health system is,” she stressed. “I cannot get any help for my daughter.”
Even worse?
When Cheryl was watching the viral video of a woman being tossed from
the University of Maryland Medical Center, she soon realized that it
was her own daughter.
“I didn’t even know that it was my daughter initially,” she said. “As
he got close enough, I saw it was her and I got hysterical because in
that moment, it was sheer fear that my daughter was going to die. I
still haven’t watched all of the video.”
And when she tried to contact the hospital, they treated just as poorly.
“The hospital wasn’t being helpful. I called the security department
(and) they laughed at me. When I told them, ‘That’s my daughter in the
video and I just need to find out if she’s in the hospital,’ they
laughed at me,” Cheryl said.
“Every person that I talked to at the hospital either hung up on me
or told me to email the hospital, and that everyone was going to tell me
the same thing.”
If it wasn't for Imamu Baraka, this story would have never existed, so I personally thank him here at Blackness Uncensored for being an actual human being with a kind heart.
Imamu Baraka was walking past the medical center when he noticed hospital security guards wheel a patient to the bus stop in the freezing cold, wearing nothing more than a flimsy hospital gown and socks. Immediately, Baraka pulled out his camera to document the incident.
“It’s about 30 degrees out here right now,” Baraka says in a recording. “Are you OK, ma’am? Do you need me to call the police?” he asks.
“Come on and sit down,” Baraka repeatedly says to the patient in the recording. “I’m going to call and get you some help.”
In a written statement, the hospital stated that they “share the shock and disappointment of many who have viewed the video. In the end, we clearly failed to fulfill our mission with this patient.”
Sadly, incidents like this one aren’t rare or new. What these security guards did is a trend called “patient dumping.”
