Name of Victim: June Lacey
Age of Victim: 89
Sex of Victim: Female
What Is This Testimony About: Other Institutional Betrayal
State: MN
Name of Hospital(s), Nursing Home(s), Hospice, or other facilities victim was admitted to (List all that Apply): Woodwinds Hospital, Minnesota, St Croix hospice
Did the victim survive? No
Date of Death: 01/25/2019
Contact Name: Joyce Lacey
Relationship to Victim: Daughter
Was the victim a military Veteran? No
Was the victim considered special needs, or did they have any kind of disability? No
Was the victim admitted to the hospital? Yes
County Hospital is located in: Washington
Date Admitted: 09/25/2018
Was the victim isolated at any time during hospitalization? No
Does the victim or family feel they were treated differently by hospital staff as a result of disclosing their vaccination status? No
Was the victim or family pressured to sign a Do Not Resuscitate? Yes
Was the victim physically restrained? No
Was the victim deprived of food and water while in the hospital? Yes
Was victim placed on a ventilator? Yes
What medications were administered to the victim by doctors or hospital staff?
Anxiety Medications, Fentanyl, Haldol, Morphine, Pain Killers
What medications did the hospital explicitly refuse to administer to the victim? Potassium
Has this incident been reported to any agency such as VAERS, HHS, JACHO, CMS, Medical Board or others?: APS
Place of Death: Nursing Home
Would you be interested in participating in podcasts or other media? Yes
June Lacey: From Servant of Others to a “Protected Person” Left Unprotected
June Lacey was 89 years old, but Joyce remembers her mother as vibrant, funny, active, and deeply involved in the life of her community. June was not a woman waiting to die. She was a woman still living with purpose.
She volunteered constantly — at church, with the American Legion Auxiliary, the Minnesota State Fair, the Aquatennial, the Salvation Army, Union Gospel Mission, the American Diabetes Association, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the Alzheimer’s Foundation, and the Navy League. She cheered veterans returning from Honor Flights. She received a 50-year volunteer award from the Minnesota State Fair. She had been involved in senior pageants and represented Minnesota at national competitions. Her talent was comedy, and she had even been a finalist in Twin Cities comedy contests. She won Miss Congeniality, called “Miss Sweetheart,” and was supposed to return the following year to crown the next winner.
That day never came.
According to Joyce, everything changed in September 2018 after June had breathing trouble following an Alzheimer’s memory walk. Joyce brought her mother to the emergency room believing the hospital would stabilize her and send her home. June’s breathing improved, but the hospital wanted to keep her “for observation.” Joyce trusted them.
The next day, Joyce says a hospitalist doctor, hospice nurse, chaplain, and social worker came into the room and tried to pressure her, as June’s daughter and power of attorney, to agree to a DNR, place June in a nursing home, and put her on respite care. Joyce refused all of it. She says the doctor, who had never seen her or her mother before, accused her of being a “very, very poor power of attorney,” then asked whether she was June’s legal guardian. Joyce told him no, because her mother was not incompetent and did not need one.
Joyce believes that question was the turning point.
The next day, Joyce says she was handed a paper stating that June had been placed under emergency guardianship. Suddenly, Joyce was told she no longer had control. Her power of attorney and her mother’s wishes were overridden. When Joyce began getting June dressed to leave, security was called. June said she did not want to go to a nursing home. Joyce says June was then given morphine even though she did not need it, and staff told her the guardian had authorized “any and all means necessary” to make her comply.
From that moment, Joyce says her mother was drugged to control her.
June was taken to a nursing home 215 miles away from her family. Joyce says she later learned that her mother was interrogated by a court reporter after being drugged. The woman the system called a “protected person,” Joyce says, was not protected at all. She was isolated, medicated, and stripped of her dignity.
Joyce describes finding June without access to a phone, unable to stand or pivot to use a commode, forced to use a bedpan, and given old pureed food. She says June was continuously drugged and became unrecognizable. The before-and-after photos show the heartbreaking change: the lively beauty queen in her sash replaced by a frail, hollowed, neglected woman on oxygen.
Joyce repeatedly tried to get help. She called Adult Protection four times and says each complaint came back with a decision not to investigate. She called the ombudsman. She called police. She says a police officer told her he wished he could help, but because June was under guardianship, there was nothing he could do. Joyce was left watching her mother suffer inside a system that seemed to have more power over June than June herself did.
After only weeks in the nursing home, June developed pneumonia, a staph infection, septic blood, a UTI, bed sores, bruising, and possible broken bones. Joyce says June became so sick she had to be taken by ambulance to a hospital in Fargo and placed on a ventilator. There, she received IV antibiotics and an enema after weeks of severe constipation from drugs including morphine, fentanyl, oxycodone, and OxyContin. Joyce says June began to recover. She sat up, smiled, ate solid food, and was finally able to use a commode again. Joyce found a nursing home close to the hospital that had a bed ready.
But the guardian refused. June was sent back to the same nursing home where Joyce believes she had nearly been killed. When Joyce protested, security removed her from the hospital. After that, she says she was limited to supervised visits — only two hours, Monday through Friday — despite driving four hours each way.
Then came hospice.
Joyce says June did not have a terminal illness. She believes hospice became the mechanism used to accelerate her mother’s death. The drugging worsened. June again could not eat or drink properly. Joyce later added that her mother had difficulty swallowing and breathing on the hospice drugs, along with extreme constipation, terrible chest and stomach pain, irregular heartbeat, migraine headaches, and seizures — yet the guardian and hospice continued forcing the drugs despite the obvious harm.
Joyce says hospice refused to check June’s INR even though she was on Coumadin/warfarin for blood clot concerns. At one care meeting, Joyce says hospice wanted to remove June from her regular medications while leaving her on drugs like morphine and oxycodone. Joyce warned that if they did that, her mother would die.
On January 25, 2019, June stopped breathing while Joyce was present. Joyce called for help. June was resuscitated, and Joyce says she was fighting to live. But then, according to Joyce, after staff learned June was on hospice, she was not transported for emergency care. Joyce says she was told June’s pulse was “too weak to bring her in.” Police officers stood over Joyce, and she was not allowed to touch her mother. June died in the nursing home.
Joyce ordered an autopsy. She says it showed a blood clot near June’s heart, and she believes that if June had been properly monitored, hydrated, and allowed hospital care, her death could have been prevented.
June Lacey’s story is not only a hospice story. It is a guardianship story. It is a warning about what can happen when a doctor’s declaration, an emergency court order, and a stranger’s control can override family, power of attorney, personal wishes, and basic human dignity. Joyce created the June Lynne Lacey Foundation to continue fighting for victims of abusive guardianships and to warn families before it is too late: https://junelynnelaceyfoundation.com/
Betrayal Project USA is giving victims and families a platform to tell these stories, seek reform and accountability, and build a community of support for those who suffered institutional betrayal. Our organization, board members, and volunteers are victims, widows, widowers, and survivors who know this grief because we have lived it. These egregious crimes against humanity must be exposed, stopped, and never allowed to be buried in silence.
If you or a loved one has been harmed by COVID-related protocols, shots, hospice abuse, guardianship abuse, or other institutional medical betrayal, please document your story at betrayalprojectusa.org.
