http://www.abanet.org/antitrust/programs/annual_2005/pdf/bios/taylor-pamela.pdf
http://www.nypress.com/article-10564-unwelcome-to-the-machine.html
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1199268330396
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/nyregion/18taylor.html
http://www.lawyerintl.com/attorney-206485-Taylor%20Emani%20P%20ESQ/
John Phillips, the former Civil Court judge whose multi-million–dollar estate was looted by his court-appointed guardians, died on Saturday at his senior-housing facility on Prospect Park West. He was 83.
Judge Phillips’ wake will be held on Monday, Feb. 25, from 2 pm to 8 pm at Woodward Funeral Home, One Troy Ave., at Fulton Street. His funeral service will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 26 at Washington Temple Church of God, 1372 Bedford Ave., at Bergen Street.
“It happened after breakfast, in the elevator on his way to his room” at the Prospect Park Residence, a senior housing facility, said his distraught friend, John O’Hara. Phillips was pronounced dead at New York Methodist Hospital in Park Slope. Indeed, in his heyday, Phillips was not only politically ambitious, but also a well-known figure in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where he served on the civil court and earned the nickname “the kung-fu” judge because of his martial arts talents.
He was also prosperous, having owned more than 10 buildings in Bed-Stuy, including the Slave Theater on Fulton Street, a focal point for neighborhood activists such as the Rev. Al Sharpton.
But after Hynes’s office had him declared incompetent, nearly all of the dozens of properties Phillips owned were auctioned off — yet the profits ended up enriching only his guardians, not the judge.
Just before his death, events had finally started to turn back in his favor. In December, a state judicial panel suspended the legal license of Emani Taylor, who served as Phillips’s guardian between 2003 and 2006, for stealing $328,000 from Phillips’s account.
The day before his death, Phillips had taken delivery on a new set of furniture that had been bought for him by fashion magnate Mark Ecko, who’d taken an interest in Phillips’s plight after reading about it in this and other publications.
But hours later, he was dead. He has no surviving relatives.
http://www.judicialaccountability.org/articles/guardianshiptotakeproperty.htm
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/8/31_08_john_phillips.html
http://ourtimepress.com/?p=475
Non-Vodouisant families have fewer options in Haiti. Mental illness especially among the upper class is heavily stigmatized, as are mental retardation and congenital mental defects. Upper class families with a child who has Down's syndrome, for example, frequently put the child in a room in the house where the child then grows up and spends his or her entire life without ever being allowed outside. Down's syndrome and similar conditions are regarded as being a punishment from God or a lwa. Even though most upper class families are not Vodouisant they often pay to work magic against business competitors or for other reasons, and may have some old djab hanging around back since Grandpa made a wanga to kill the guy who had the other car dealership, you see? Or it may be a punishment for something the parents did - since upper class families in Hait are often enough involved in a lot of bad, vicious stuff, drug dealing, political
killings, business killings and so on, they have guilty consciences and are willing to believe that God has reason to punish them.
We treat mental illness in several ways. First, we either call a lwa or do divination to discover the cause - is it a wanga? Is it a "zombi", a dead spirit sent against the person (also called "anvwa mo", a sending of the dead)? Is it an angry lwa which has been insulted by the person? Is it problems related to childbearing or nursing? Is it abuse by the common-law husband? Abuse and trauma cause a condition called "sezisman", literally "seized-up-ness", like a seized up engine. A person with sezisman usually becomes uncommunicative, refuses to speak, falls to the ground, weeps or acts catatonic.
Assuming the illness has a supernatural cause, a wanga or an anvwa mo or an angry lwa, treatment is different. If it is an angry lwa, that lwa must be called to the head of the sick person, so it can make known the reasons why it is angry and what the person can do to pacify it.
If it is an anvwa mo, the same ceremony used to send the dead against the person is repeated to send the dead right back where it came from, either to the cemetery if the sick person is feeling forgiving or to the person who sent it in the first place if the sick person wants revenge! This is a strenuous ceremony, involving some real physical activity. Sometimes more than one dead is sent against the person - I witnessed one case of a woman who actually had seven zombis in her
body. By the time the Houngan was done treating her he was drenched in sweat - and THEN he had to call Baron to make sure everything was ok.
If it is a wanga, the wanga has to be undone. Sometimes a lwa is called into the head of the sick person or the Houngan or Mambo to reveal where malevolent power objects are buried so that they can be dug up and undone. Sometimes the lwa on whose point the wanga is done is identified, called into the head of the Houngan or Mambo, and bribed with a bigger payment than that which was made by the person who did the wanga in the first place - three chickens instead of
one, a pig instead of a goat, something like that. Sometimes another lwa is called to fight against the original lwa and the person who made the wanga! That is where the expressions come from, "Fer koupe fer", iron cuts iron, and "Neg fe, neg defe", what one black man does, another black man undoes.
Generally in these cases the mentally ill person recovers, but they are usually very weak, because their true self has been absent for so long, hasn't been getting the benefit of the food they ate or the social interactions they would normally have had. So the person is often given a "gad" (from the French "garde, a protective spell to prevent the same thing from happening to them again.)
Peace and love,
Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
"Se bon ki ra" - Good is rare
Haitian Proverb
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