12/22/20

Guest post: seven long years

[Editor's note: Brady Folkens of Brookings died in state custody after a botched diagnosis at the former State Treatment and Rehabilitation (STAR) Academy in a county named for a war criminal on December 21, 2013 then the State of South Dakota’s Office of Risk Management helped to bury the evidence of negligent homicide. 

After a public outcry the death camp was shuttered and the sprawling property put up for auction. Now the stigmatized site is being offered for a fourth time at a substantially reduced price. 

The state has a history of poor choices made by state employees.  Fourteen year old Gina Score died after a forced run in 1999 then the state settled with Score's family for an undisclosed amount of money without accepting guilt for her death.

No doubt Republican Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg is enjoying similar cover.]

Seven Long Years Ago…. 

When 17-year old Brady Folkens died unexpectedly while incarcerated at STAR Academy for having smoked marijuana, Nancy J. Turbak of Watertown SD referred his mother to her husband lawyer David Berry, who practiced in Hilton Head, South Carolina… 

We believe Berry, who at one hearing was admonished by South Dakota judge Pfeifle for not knowing South Dakota law, conspired with Gary Thimsen of Woods, Fuller, Schultz, and Smith LLC, hired to protect the state of South Dakota, to make Dawn van Ballegooyen’s case go south. An Avera McKennan Hospital pathologist, Raed A. Sulaiman MD, had falsely blamed a common virus for Brady’s death when, in fact, he died from medical negligence: being prescribed an antibiotic to which he was allergic… 

I was stunned as Craig Ambach of SD Risk Management, present at a hearing I also attended, submitted false evidence that no drug reaction was found when Sulaiman performed Brady’s autopsy. As corroborated by five outside medical experts, Brady died from a fatal reaction to a wrongly prescribed antibiotic. Five medical experts also had told Dawn Van Ballegooyen that Brady’s death could not have been due to a virus – a fact corroborated by a second autopsy at the University of Nebraska Medical Center… 

Ms. Ballegooyen, her husband, and I spent over an hour outlining the multiple criminal behaviors by these and other cover-up perpetrators to [then] Attorney General Marty Jackley with absolutely no action or anything from his office. 

We pleaded with [Avera’s] CEO John Porter to allow Sulaiman to update his autopsy report to be consistent with common medical knowledge, but Porter merely forwarded our request and accompanying analysis to the [Avera] lawyers… 

We submitted an extensive researched study on Sulaiman’s autopsy to William H. Golding, lawyer for the South Dakota Board of medical and osteopathic Examiners (a medical board). But the SDBMOE did nothing – except to plant two false letters in Brady’s file at Thimsen’s office inferring that an outside review agreed with Sulaiman… 

Then governor of South Dakota, Dennis [Daugaard] appointed Nancy J. Turbak to SDBMOE but, even before her term was over, the new governor, [Kristi] Noem, kicked Turbak off the medical board and appointed her own candidate… 

Seven long years and no one has ‘fessed up. But we believe the mills of God, that grind ever so slow, will eventually expose this cover-up and its perpetrators…

1 comment:

larry kurtz said...

"The auction will be Feb. 12 at 11 a.m. at the Custer County Courthouse, with the minimum bid of $1 million to attempt to find a buyer for the remaining property. If it fails to sell again, it’s likely the buildings on the site will simply be razed." source.