Marlena Ray

Defending Jeanine Marlena Ray

This is the story of a determined mother's struggle with a state agency which was established to provide care and oversight for persons who were intellectually or mentally challenged so they can have a life in society. The agency's methods of determining who should receive their attention varied widely and were very subjective rather than being guided by their own rules. It is also about the sixty years her family worried about why the daughter was so different and couldn't make judgments about husbands, friends, or even take care of her own daughters. She had to be rescued so many times, her family turned away from her.

The daughter's mother and father are at the age where they can no longer take care of the daughter. This is why the state agency became so important. The family had only learned in the last ten years of the extent of the daughter's brain damage from the known birth trauma, and are fearful of what will happen to her without the continuous, extensive-oversight care she has always required to live safely.