Public Hearings & Testimonies

CCHR brings psychiatry’s abuse of children to public notice by testifying before legislative hearings, holding workshops for legislators and holding its own Commission Hearings. Headed by a panel of experts, these Commission Hearings have enabled parents to testify about such abuses as being threatened with their child’s removal from school unless the child is taking some form of psychiatric drug. The information is presented in White Paper reports to legislators, or for further testimony before legislatures.

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1997: CCHR Commission Hearing, Los Angeles. Panelists included attorney Rick Moxon and Star Parker, president and founder of the Coalition on Urban Renewal, a non-profit educational foundation. They heard testimony from parents about children being forced onto mind-altering stimulants for “coloring on the teacher’s crayon box,” for “sticking their tongue out when school photos were being taken,” and being overly active in the classroom.

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1998: Chaired by CCHR International President Jan Eastgate, with panelists, Dr. William Tutman, clinical psychologist; Dr. Fred Baughman, Jr., a pediatric neurologist; and Mrs. Beverly Eakman, educator and author. Parents voiced outrage about children or family members being threatened by a tyrannical network of mental health “experts”—including psychiatrists, psychologists, and school counselors—who ruthlessly pushed the “educational” use of heavy psychiatric drugs on children.

TESTIFYING BEFORE GOVERNMENTS

U.S. HOUSE GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTEE HEARING:

2002: In September, the U.S. House of Representatives Government Reform Committee held a hearing into “ADHD Disorders—Are We Over-Medicating our Children?” The hearing drew enormous media attention, with testimony given by Lisa-Marie Presley, international spokesperson for children’s rights, Bruce Wiseman, President CCHR U.S., Dr. Mary Ann Block, author of No More ADHD, and Patricia Weathers, President of Parents for a Label and Drug Free Education. This hearing acted as a springboard for the introduction of federal legislation to curb the problem, the Child Medication Safety Act of 2003.

“The most important impact CCHR has made was the increased awareness on Capitol Hill that we are forcing medication through schools. Congress is now considering legislation that would prevent school systems from making diagnoses and forcing medication as a condition of school participation.”

SOUTH AFRICA:

1997: CCHR presented oral and written testimony to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission about apartheid crimes committed by both psychiatrists and psychologists. The Psychological Society of South Africa finally admitted that psychological studies had aimed at discrediting blacks as intellectually inferior and, in 1998, called for legislation to scrap all racist psychological tests.

“I congratulate CCHR for having identified the inhumanity inflicted on the mentally ill and their untiring campaigns to bring this to the world’s notice. As a country and government, we will work with organizations such as CCHR seeking to protect all citizens of the world from the type of terror and oppression experienced by the majority of the citizens of South Africa during apartheid...your record in the fight against the apartheid psychiatric establishment, which so blatantly discriminated against Black people, is laudable and exemplary.”

AUSTRALIA: ROYAL COMMISSION INQUIRY INTO DEEP SLEEP TREATMENT

1988 -1990: The New South Wales government held a Royal Commission Inquiry into Deep Sleep Treatment (DST), a lethal psychiatric practice that placed patients into a drug-induced coma for several weeks while ECT was given daily; 48 people died. Due to the work of Barry Hart, a former DST patient, and CCHR, the Royal Commission banned DST and recommended major legislative reforms. Hundreds of patients received compensation.

CCHR “contributed considerably to advance the cause of the Chelmsford patients in their campaign for an open inquiry into the hospital.”

“Had it not been for the persistence of...such groups as the Citizens Commission on Human Rights there may have been no further inquiries into deep sleep therapy.”