SC DSS Attorney Asserts Unlimited Powers

By S.C. Hotline Staff

“A claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 can only be brought in cases of race or national origin discrimination.  As Plaintiff has made no such claim, any claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 must be dismissed.”  ~Eugene H. Matthews, SC DSS Lead Counsel

Defendants: Susan Stroman, Princess Hodges, Susan Tillman, Pamela Dantzler, Kathy Beers, Jennifer Brewton, Brenda Hodges, UniHealth Orangeburg, SC, UniHealth Post Acute Care of Columbia, Latoya Buggs-Williams, Sgt. Darin L. Dougherty, Sgt. George A. Drafts, April Merrill, Columbia Police Department, Andre Bauer, Ken Ard, Jayson Bring, Beth Schuler, Crystal Pavlick, Palmetto Health Senior Care, Palmetto Health, UHS-Pruitt Corporation, and Lt. Col. Carl Burke.

SC DSS’s lead counsel claims that agency is exempt from extending civil rights protection to individuals who are white/Caucasian.  The case at hand involves the beating and abuse of an elderly white women who was forcibly taken and put under SC DSS protective custody whereby she died from the abuse she received that would have violated a black person’s civil rights but not hers according to DSS’s attorney.

(Columbia, South Carolina) According to filings dated September 26, 2014, by South Carolina Department of Social Services lead counsel in an ongoing Federal District lawsuit, the agency has the right and authority to detain any individual man, woman or child and place into “protective custody” without due process or family notification.  These assertions were presented as fact by recent filings in Federal District Court, and by attorneys representing the South Carolina Department of Social Services whose employees are defendants in multiple ongoing cases in South Carolina Federal District Court, alleging and not limited to rape, assault, and wrongful death of children and senior citizens under the “protective custody” of SC DSS.

South Carolina, Federal District Court, Columbia Division

Civil Case No. 3:12-3539-MGL

1. SC DSS has the authority to take anyone into custody by force based on unproven allegation(s). Allegations that are not required to be documented by SC DSS.
2. SC DSS has the authority to try that same person in absentia in Family Court and imprison that person against his/her will in a locked-down-facility without familiar notification.
3. SC DSS has the authority to hold that person in virtual isolation, without recourse by the family and/or the individual, for the rest of his/her natural life.
4. SC DSS has the authority to declare that person demented without a court proceeding and access that person’s bank/savings account and take their funds, without going through a court proceeding.
5. SC DSS has assumed the authority to use of physical and chemical constraints on that individual, irrespective of laws against the use of such constraints including, but not limited to, the 1987 Nursing Home Reform Act.
6. SC DSS has the authority to withhold all medical records from the virtually imprisoned individual’s family and the individual (hereinafter “captive”).
7. SC DSS is protected from being sued by virtue of the 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as it is a State Agency exempt from the Federal Court’s jurisdiction under the 11^th Amendment.
8. SC DSS has the right to withhold medical treatment, despite the fact that it will likely lead to the captive’s death.
9. SC DSS has assumed the right to violate rules of humanity established by the Geneva Convention by denying the individual contact with family in any way including mail, withholding the captive’s identity, food, water and medical treatment.
10. SC DSS has the authority to stop the South Carolina Office of Aging and the Ombudsman’s office from conducting an investigation into the abuse and death of an individual while SC DSS’s so called “protective custody.”