Perspective on Nashville’s real predators

Cece DuBois has been a staunch advocate regarding the questionable conservatorship under which her friend Nashville musician Danny Tate was placed.  She recently wrote this great account on the life-changing impact resulting from her close-up view of our American legal system and its consequences for people like Danny Tate and another probate victim, Ginger Franklin.

The Awakening

September 7, 2010

Life is strange. And the more I learn about life and what happens here, the stranger it gets.I was raised a Christian girl.  I am now a woman of faith. I can tell you, getting here from there was a dicey and a circuitous route.  Yet throughout it all, I always believed in goodness, in a God of mercy and comfort, in people doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do. I believed that most people, if given the chance, would choose kindness over self interest. I believed that the scales of Lady Justice weighed fairly and impartially.  I thought policemen were all like the little old man in the uniform and the captain’s cap who helped me cross the street every morning on my way to first grade.

I believed all of that for a long, long time. In fact, I held to that belief until February, 2010. That’s when I read the Scene article – Court Ordered Hell – How an errant judge and a controlling sibling stripped Nashville rocker Danny Tate of his money, his livelihood and his legal rights.  Initially, I couldn’t digest it; I had to read it two, three, four times. I’m STILL reading it. It tracks like a bad Mickey Spillane novel. It’s a horribly intriguing story, one that still leaves me gobsmacked; come on! How can that really happen? In the perfect and balanced world I’d held in my mind and heart, it couldn’t. But the ugly truth began to dawn: life is not what I thought it was. This kind if thing does happen, is happening, to people all over the country every single day.

I communicated with Kevin Montgomery, the friend who shared the article with me, and expressed my outrage.

“There’s a movement afoot for Danny. You need to be our boots on the ground in TN,” he told me. I was a bit knocked back on my heels. Who, me?! Kevin told me about the efforts to help this guy. He said he’d made me an admin on the Danny Tate FB group site.

“Okay,” I said. What have I gotten into?

“You and Danny need to meet.”

“Okay.” I was willing to meet; I was intensely curious. The concept of what had happened to this man haunted my thoughts, showed up in my dreams. How does this kind of thing happen? Who in their right mind would sanction any of this? The answer is, of course, that no ‘right mind’ would, but the Probate Courts are not about ‘right minds.’ At all.

Danny and I met the next week. He walked into the office, sat down, and began to share his story with me. I was overwhelmed by the things he was telling me. I interrupted often, asking questions. He was very patient with me, saying “That’s a great question, Cece.” He’d answer every question, and return to his story of what had transpired the past two-plus years. We talked for over two hours.

Through the next weeks and months we met and talked often. The more we met, the more the trust built, the more Danny shared with me.

At one point Danny told me, “I’m not the only one.” He shared the story of a woman who was being kept as a slave. She’d had a fall, went into a coma, was sent to rehab, and when she came out she discovered her car, house and belongings were gone, and she had been conserved. She’s now forced to work as a maid, house mother, cook, bookkeeper, and practical nurse … all while the courts have declared her “disabled.” And all without pay.

The woman’s name is Ginger.

I’ve since met and spent some quality time with Ginger. She and Danny have both become good friends of mine. They are so dear to me; I love them each so deeply, I cannot imagine life without them in it. It’s not a love based on pity; it’s a higher love … it’s a joining of tender hearts, and it brings tears to my eyes. It’s hard to believe that their horrific experiences are what brought us together, but I must. Because – on the surface – that in fact is what drew us.  But it is not what will hold us together. Our faith, our values, and the moral imperative before us … these are what bind us. And, in spite of it all, the laughter we share.

The little girl in me … the one who believed in goodness, in a God of mercy and comfort, in people doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do … that little girl is still hopeful. She still believes those things; but her perspective – and her life – is forever altered by what she knows today. How can it not be?

I cannot know what I’ve discovered about the abuse of Danny and Ginger and untold others and not have it change the direction I’m going.  So I will do what I can, as long as I can, to affect positive experiences and ultimate emancipation in the lives of those who have been wrongly conserved. If I am honest with myself, and I am, there is no other calling at this point. It’s as simple, and as complicated, as that.