After 16 months, Justina Pelletier is finally home and SMILING!

This is the teen who got sent to a locked psychiatric ward in MA for 12 months because the ER doctors at Children's Hospital decided (after treating her complications of the flu) that her regular doctors at Tufts University were wrong; her symptoms of mitochondrial disorder were mostly in her head. Her parents didn't agree with the Harvard psychiatrists' new diagnosis. A few days later they tried to switch Justina back to the care of her doctors at Tufts -- and the Harvard/Boston Children's doctors responded by getting the state to take custody away from the parents, and limiting them to supervised visits of an hour a week.

Choosing to have their child treated by metabolic specialists at Tufts, who had successfully treated both her and her sister for years, instead of psychiatrists at Boston Children's was labeled as "medical child abuse."

Over the course of a year, without the medical treatment she needed her condition continued to deteriorate. A couple months ago the judge finally turned her treatment back over to the Tufts physicians, but it's taken this long for the system to fully let go of Justina.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/justina-pelletier-home-article-1.1834382

The 16-year-old West Hartford girl left Massachusetts's state custody Wednesday when she was released from the Connecticut medical facility the state admitted her to in May.

Massachusetts Juvenile Judge Joseph Johnston filed the order allowing Justina to go home Tuesday, concluding a saga that began in February 2013 when a Boston hospital accused the girl's parents of child neglect.

"I'm so happy. I'm so excited, oh, my gosh," Justina told the Boston Globe. "It's such big news."

Earlier this month the teen posted a heartbreaking video to Facebook begging Johnston to let her return home.

http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-justina-pelletier-coming-home-0618-20140617,0,5384062.story

Pelletier said Justina has "no feeling at all below her hips" and is confined to a wheelchair.

Pelletier said he plans to pursue legal and legislative action against the Massachusetts officials who took custody of Justina.

"This is just the beginning," Pelletier said.

"There's going to be a Justina law," because hospitals are "taking kids, using DCF to be their little wing man," Pelletier said. "I'm going to be the guy that's going to change that."

Asked whether officials from the Connecticut Department of Children and Families had contacted him, Pelletier said the agency is "not in the picture, never wanted to be in the picture, will never be in the picture ... no more government agencies."