The Boston Globe reported on a young girl, Haleigh Poutre, who was declared to be in a “persistent vegetative state” by the Massachusetts Dept of Social Services in 2005. Haleigh recently gave testimony about the intense physical abuse she endured at the hands of her adoptive mother and step-father. Haleigh is now communicating.
Haleigh Poutre, a 14-year-old girl once diagnosed as being in an “irreversible vegetative state,” has provided police with dramatic testimony about frequent use of corporal punishment during her childhood, but she has not given any specifics about what caused her to suffer a near-fatal head injury more than two years ago, according to two people with direct knowledge of her statements.
Haleigh, who has spent the last two years at a pediatric rehabilitation hospital in Brighton, communicated with simple words and hand gestures in an interview last December. She also spelled out full sentences by pointing to letters of the alphabet on a board, reflecting the remarkable recovery of a girl who nearly was removed from life support by the state after doctors had declared her condition hopeless. She began to breathe on her own just as the state’s highest court ruled that she should be allowed to die.
Read the entire report at The Boston Globe.
Filed under: Euthanasia | Closed
