Help Dawn to end abusive guardianship

Please help Dawn Dziuba to pay for an independent psychiatric evaluation so that she can be free from an abusive public guardian who keeps her in a locked-up facility in St. Louis, MO. For the upcoming court hearing on termination of her guardianship, she needs to be evaluated by an independent psychiatrist, and Dawn’s family and friends ask you to help cover the cost.

If guardianship is not terminated, Dawn petitions that her guardian be her caring, loving father Nick Dziuba, who had raised her and who should have been appointed guardian according to the Missouri law. Nick can only pay $2,000, but the total bill is currently estimated to be at least $3,500.

Dawn, who is an attorney and a legal scholar, was institutionalized and put under guardianship without due process after she made allegations about budget misappropriations committed by powerful people with ties to the Missouri Department of Mental Health (MDMH). Many irregularities in Dawn’s case are described in this inquiry by the MO State Representative Sarah Unsiccker, to which the MDMH provided no response. For more information, please see this petition and listen to this secretly made recording.

The photo above was made during a few hours that Dawn was allowed to spend with her family back in 2019. She was supervised and was made to wear the weird black attire issued by the facility where she is held. She is standing on the left, next to her little nephew and her father. Does she look like a dangerous maniac who needs to be kept under lock and key and watched over round the clock? Her public guardian and the MDMH claim, without any evidence, that this is, indeed, the case.

Dawn, who is an attorney and a legal scholar, had been never diagnosed with any mental illness and had never used mental health services until the conflict over the alleged budget misappropriations. She had a successful legal career and published a book and research articles.

Dawn with a copy of her book, 2012.

After she accused powerful people of misconduct, she was arrested on what appears to be trumped-up charges, but never went to trial: she was suddenly found “incompetent” and sent to a forensic psychiatric facility. This was in 2014, and she had been institutionalized ever since, at the taxpayers’ expense.

After she challenged her hospitalization and insisted on going on trial, she was appointed a public guardian. The guardian, without any evidence, claims that Dawn cannot stand trial and “needs” to be continuously locked up.

In July 2023, the facility staff discovered that she had filed several complaints about their inappropriate and unprofessional behaviors. They searched her room, confiscated papers she was writing, and, in apparent retaliation, imposed on her arbitrary, inhumane restrictions.

Currently, Dawn is forbidden to

Her friends cannot visit her. A package with snacks and books sent by a friend was confiscated by the staff. Letters are given to Dawn weeks after they are delivered to the facility.

Worst of all, she is now forcibly injected with the medication Abilify, the side effects of which include muscle and joint pain, headache, insomnia, confusion, and impulse control disorders. Abilify is classified as “antipsychotic,” but Dawn has never had psychosis.

At first, she was given Abilify pills, which were completely unnecessary, but at least she could tolerate them without having terrible side effects. Probably the facility staff and the guardian felt that, with pills, she was not punished enough? Since August 2023, with the guardian’s blessing, she was switched to long-acting injections that deliver a great dose of the medication right into the bloodstream, causing Dawn much physical and mental suffering.

Amazingly, she is still able to hold herself together and to remain her usual lucid, coherent self, but for how long? Liberating her from this abusive “guardianship” is a matter of great urgency. Please help!