Also on today’s menu:
Charlie Slips Up Again
Stabilizer Blamed For Plane Crash
Questions About ‘Gender-Affirming Care’
Judy Anderson of Gilford is not alone in being impatient with the investigation into the unsolved death of 5-year-old Dennis “Boo” Vaughan Jr. in Laconia back in 2019. While she started a GoFundMe page to raise money for a billboard, Anna Cannard of Concord and her friend, Courteney Robison, have been hanging fliers in Laconia to seek answers.
Laconia Police Chief Matthew Canfield said, “My hands are completely tied by the [Attorney General’s] Office being the lead on the homicide investigation in the state. We can’t supersede that.” Laconia Mayor Andrew Hosmer said he share’s Canfield’s frustration.
The Attorney General’s Office has stopped asking for tips from the public, and Governor Chris Sununu, who has drawn attention to the homicide investigations of three other New Hampshire children — Harmony Montgomery and Jaevion Riley, both 7, and Elijah Lewis, 5 — has been silent on “Boo” Vaughan’s death.
The Division of Children, Youth, and Families had received at least 25 reports of suspected physical abuse and neglect of Dennis and his siblings during the 2½ years they lived with their grandmother, Sherry Connor, but they declared the allegations either unfounded or made no findings. Immediately after Dennis’ death, though, DCYF removed the siblings from Connor’s home and told the family division of circuit court that the significant bruising found on Dennis’ body was grounds to terminate Connor’s guardianship.
Although Connor was named as the “primary suspect” in the child’s death, Connor maintains that Dennis died of natural causes, even in the face of his death certificate, which states he died of blunt force trauma to the head and neck. “That is bullshit,” Connor responded. “Do you honestly believe if he was hurt like that, they wouldn’t have arrested me?”
Charlie Slips Up Again
Charlie Arlinghaus, former president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy and former executive director of the state Republican Party who now serves as the commissioner of Administrative Services in Concord, recently came under fire for failing to disclose the history of financial and legal problems by the developer he recommended to handle the redevelopment of the former Laconia State School property in Laconia. (She got the contract, anyway.) Now Republican budget writers are questioning why Arlinghaus had not warned the House Finance Committee, which oversees the budget process, that Governor Chris Sununu would be promoting a 10% pay raise for all state workers.
Arlinghaus oversees the state’s contract negotiations with the 14 bargaining units that represent state employees, but he had not discussed the raise with the legislative committee, according to Chair Ken Weyler, who noted that July’s 10% raise, followed by another 2% raise next year, would total roughly $200 million.
Arlinghaus’ response was that, if the Legislature chose not to appropriate the money to cover the pay raises, it would be back to square one on a new state contract.
Stabilizer Blamed For Plane Crash
The death of 55-year-old Dana Hyde of Cabin John, Maryland, while on a business jet traveling from Keene, New Hampshire, to Leesburg, Virginia, may have been caused by problems with the plane’s stabilizer during severe turbulence, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. The Federal Aviation Administration had previously issued a directive for Bombardier executive jets, calling for expanded pre-flight checks of pitch trim and revised cockpit procedures during certain circumstances.
Three passengers and two crew members were aboard the jet, which was diverted to Bradley International Airport in Connecticut, where Hyde was later pronounced dead.
The FAA had noted several instances in which the horizontal stabilizer on the Bombardier BD-100-1A10 caused the nose of the plane to turn down after the pilot tried to make the aircraft climb.
Questions About ‘Gender-Affirming Care’
New Hampshire medical providers and mental health professionals are opposing proposed legislation aimed at banning “gender-affirming care” for transgender youths, saying the lawmakers’ opposition is not based in science and would be damaging to vulnerable young people.
Jamie Reed, who served as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital, says those medical professionals are wrong. Describing herself as “a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders,” she says most of the young people who came through the center’s door received hormone prescriptions that, although the patients were warned of side effects that could include sterility, “I came to believe that teenagers are simply not capable of fully grasping what it means to make the decision to become infertile while still a minor.”
Reed wrote in The Free Press, “Until 2015 or so, a very small number of these boys comprised the population of pediatric gender dysphoria cases. Then, across the Western world, there began to be a dramatic increase in a new population: Teenage girls, many with no previous history of gender distress, suddenly declared they were transgender and demanded immediate treatment with testosterone.”
Reed said many of those asking for treatment also suffered from depression, anxiety, ADHD, eating disorders, and obesity, and one-third of the patients referred to the center were on the autism spectrum. Many of them later wanted to detransition. “One of the saddest cases of detransition I witnessed was a teenage girl, who, like so many of our patients, came from an unstable family, was in an uncertain living situation, and had a history of drug use. … She was put on hormones at the center when she was around 16. When she was 18, she went in for a double mastectomy, what’s known as ‘top surgery.’ Three months later she called the surgeon’s office to say she was going back to her birth name and that her pronouns were “she” and “her.” Heartbreakingly, she told the nurse, ‘I want my breasts back.’ The surgeon’s office contacted our office because they didn’t know what to say to this girl.”
Last year, England closed the Tavistock’s youth gender clinic, and Sweden and Finland have curbed the practice in those countries, finding there is insufficient evidence of help, and the prospect of great harm to children.
Adults have the capacity to make such decisions for themselves, but science has revealed that teenagers’ brains are still developing, and they are incapable of exhibiting good judgment in a number of areas. This may be one of those areas.
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