sonja farak therapy notes

Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. And then the bigger investigation was going to be someone else.". Carr weaves Farak's story into that of another Massachusetts chemist, Annie Dookhan, who worked across the state at the Hinton drug lab in Boston. The scandal led. Sonja Farak is in the grip of a rubbed-raw depression that hasn't responded to medication. Her notes record on-the-job drug use ranging from small nips of the lab's baseline. In her June 17 ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Katherine Robertson dismissed former Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek's claims of qualified immunity a doctrine that gives legal immunity to some public officials accused of misconduct. Netflix's latest true-crime series, How to Fix a Drug Scandal, dives deep into a shocking Massachusetts scandal, one that started in the humble confines of an underfunded drug testing lab and ended with an entire system in question. Such strong claims were too hasty at best, since investigators had not yet finished basic searches; three days later, police executed a warrant for a duffel bag they found stuffed behind Farak's desk. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents, Ryan Investigators found that Sonja Farak tested drug samples and testified in court while under the influence of methamphetamines, ketamine, cocaine, LSD and other drugs between 2005 and 2013. In 2012, she began taking from co-workers' samples, forging intake forms and editing the lab database to cover her tracks. Dookhan's output remained implausibly high even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts (2009) that defendants were entitled to cross-examine forensic chemists about their analysis. After graduating from Portsmouth High School, Farak attended the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she got a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry in 2000. Compromised drug samples often fit the definition. TherapyNotes is a complete practice management system with everything you need to manage patient records, schedule appointments, meet with patients remotely, create rich documentation, and bill insurance, right at your fingertips. Farak was released from prison in 2015 and has kept a low profile since. May 2003 started working in Hinton drug lab p. 14. According to her teammates, She was the best center in the league last year, and they [felt] stronger with her in there than with some guys.. But unlike with Dookhan, no one launched a bigger investigation of Farak. It declined Farak's offer of a detailed confession in exchange for leniency, nixing the offer without even negotiating terms. Foster, now general counsel at the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission, and Kaczmarek, now a clerk magistrate in Suffolk Superior Court, declined to comment for this story. Asked for comment, Foster in January objected through an attorney that the judge never gave her an opportunity to defend herself and that his ruling left an "indelible stain on her reputation.". At the time of her arrest, she had resided in 37 Laurel Park in Northampton. ", The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. Meier put the number at 40,323 defendants, though some have called that an overestimate. Democratic Gov. ", Prosecutors maintained that Faraks rogue behavior spanned just a few months. For years, Sonja Farak was addicted to cocaine, methamphetamine, and amphetamines, the kind of drugs usually bought from street dealers in covert transactions that carry the constant risk of arrest. His report deemed Dookhan the "sole bad actor" at the lab, a finding that remains disputed in some circles. Initially, she had represented herself in answer to the complaints lodged against her, but later, she turned to Susan Sachs, who represented her since, not just on the Penate lawsuit, but also on any other case that emerged as the result of her actions in Amherst. At some point, the attorney general's office stopped chasing leads entirely. Her job consisted of testing drugs that have. At the very least, we expected that we would get everything they collected in their case against Farak. Flannery, now in private practice, said the substance abuse worksheets are clearly relevant to defendants challenging Faraks analysis. "A forensic analyst responding to a request from a law enforcement official may feel pressureor have an incentiveto alter the evidence in a manner favorable to the prosecution.". It included information about the type of drugs she tampered with. It's been like this forever, or at least since girlhood. concluded she was usually high while working in the lab for more than eight years before her arrest in January 2013 and started stealing samples seven years ago. The Attorney Generals Office, Velis and Merrigan and the state police declined to answer questions about the handling of the Farak evidence. Local prosecutors also remained in the dark. A federal judge has rejected claims from an embattled former state prosecutor that she is protected from liability in the fallout over a Massachusetts drug lab scandal. email highlighted in the Velis-Merrigan report. Another worksheet had the month and weekdays for December 2011, which police easily could have determined by cross-referencing holidays or looking up a New England Patriots game mentioned in one entry. "We shouldn't be in the position of having to be saying, 'Don't close your eyes to the duration and scope of misconduct that may affect a whole lot of cases,'" the exasperated Massachusetts chief justice told prosecutors during oral arguments. (Featured Image Credit: Mass Live). Or she just lied about her results altogether: In one of the more ludicrous cases, she testified under oath that a chunk of cashew was crack cocaine. . It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. How to Fix A Drug Scandal takes a one-woman issue in a crumbling police drug lab and follows the way it blew up an entire legal system. Privacy Policy | Because of all that, it's no surprise that Farak was sent to prison in Massachusetts. Joseph . | Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. Over the next four years, Farak consumed nearly all of it. The criminal prosecution wasn't the only investigation of the Dookhan scandal. Despite her status as a free woman (who has seemingly disappeared from the public eye), Farak's wrongdoings continue to make waves in the Massachusetts courts. She even made her own crack in the lab. She married Lee after starting her job, but their marriage was rocky. She was sentenced to 18 months in jail plus five years of probation. She was arrested in 2013 when the supervisor at the Amherst lab was made aware that two samples were missing. Mucha gente que vio el programa se pregunta: dnde est Sonja Farak ahora? Chemist Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to "tampering with evidence" back in 2014 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. "Annie Dookhan's alleged actions corrupted the integrity of the criminal justice system, and there are many victims as a result of this," Coakley said at a press conference. "Forensic evidence is not uniquely immune from the risk of manipulation," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority. A few months before her arrest, Farak's counselor recommended in-patient rehab. This threw every sample she had ever tested into question. The information showed that Farak sought therapy for drug addiction and that her misconduct had been ongoing for years. During the next four years, she would periodically sober up and then relapse. Between the two women, 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas have been dismissed in the last two years, many for misdemeanor possession. Dookhan had seeded public mistrust in the criminal justice system, which "now becomes an issue in every criminal trial for every defendant.". As the state's top court put it, the criminal investigation into Farak was "cursory at best.". But she proceeded on the hunch that Farak only became addicted in the months before her arrest, and her colleagues stonewalled people who were skeptical of that timeline. According to an Attorney General Offices report, Farak attended Temple University in Philadelphia for graduate school, which is where she became a recreational drug user. Release year: 2020. Like Hinton, the Amherst lab had no cameras. READ NEXT: Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts, Sonja Farak: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know, Please review our privacy policy here: https://heavy.com/privacy-policy/, Copyright 2023 Heavy, Inc. All rights reserved. But absent evidence of aggravating misconduct by prosecutors or cops, the majority ruled, Dookhan's tampering alone didn't justify a blanket dismissal of every case she had touched. Our posture is to not delve into the twists and turns of the investigation or the report and to let it stand on its own, Merrigan said. This not only led to people getting a reprieve from prison but also filing their own lawsuits against the injustice they had to suffer. answered that the state considered the evidence irrelevant to any case other than Faraks.. Deborah Becker Twitter Host/ReporterDeborah Becker is a senior correspondent and host at WBUR. With your support, GBH will continue to innovate, inspire and connect through reporting you value that meets todays moments. Please note that if your case has been identified for dismissal, it could take approximately 2-3 months for the relevant court records to be updated. Though. Foster replied that because the investigation against Farak was ongoing, she couldnt let him see it. Sonja Farak, a state forensic chemist in western Massachusetts, was minutes away from testifying in a drug case in early 2013 when attorneys learned she was about to be arrested on charges of. "If she were suffering from back injurymaybe she took some oxys?" "It is critical that all parties have unquestioned faith in that process from the beginning so that they will have full confidence in the conclusions drawn at the end," Coakley said. Accessibility | His is one of what lawyers say could be thousands of convictions questioned in the wake of the Farak scandal. The newest true crime series from Netflix, How to Fix a Drug Scandal, was released on April 1, 2020. "The mental health worksheets constituted admissions by the state lab chemist assigned to analyze the samples seized in Plaintiffs case that she was stealing and using lab samples to feed a drug addiction at the time she was testing and certifying the samples in Plaintiffs case, including, in one instance, on the very day that she certified a sample," Robertson's ruling reads. When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". Coakley assigned the case against Dookhan to Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek and her supervisor, John Verner. "I dont know how the Velis report reached the conclusion it did after reviewing the underlying email documents, said Randy Gioia, deputy chief counsel at the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the states public defender office. This past Tuesday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court filed a report saying that more than 24,000 convictions in 16,449 cases have been dismissed as a result of foul play by a former state drug lab chemist. She first worked at the Hinton State Laboratory in Jamaica Plain for a year as a bacteriologist working on HIV tests before she transferred to the Amherst Lab for drug analysis. a certification of drug samples in Penates case on Dec. 22, 2011. For people with disabilities needing assistance with the Public Files, contact Glenn Heath at 617-300-3268. "All Defendant had to do to honor the Plaintiffs Brady rights was to turn over copies of documents that were obviously exculpatory as to the Farak defendants or accede to one of the repeated requests from counsel, including Plaintiffs counsel, that they be permitted to inspect the evidence seized from Faraks car," Robertson wrote in her ruling. Inwardly though, Sonja was struggling. Farak was getting high off the confiscated drugs police sent her way before replacing the evidence with fake drugs. She continued to experience suicidal thoughts, but instead of going through with those thoughts, she started taking the drugs that she would be testing at work. In a March 2013 The prosecutors have been tied to the drug lab scandal involving disgraced former state chemist Sonja Farak, who admitted to stealing and using drugs from an Amherst state lab. Obviously, after a blunder of such scale, no one would want their samples checked from the same lab. "It was Defendant who had the responsibility within the AGO [attorney general's office] to see that the Farak investigation materials were disseminated to the DAOs [district attorneys' offices]," Robertson wrote, adding there is no evidence anyone from the attorney general's office sent the potentially exculpatory evidence to those offices.". motion with Hampden Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Kinder to see the evidence for himself. But she insisted the drugs didn't compromise her worka belief that one judge would aptly declare "belies logic.". Faraks wife had her own mental health problems, and according to Rolling Stone, Farak would have conflict with her wife every night at home. (Netflix) A former state chemist, Sonja Farak, made headlines in 2013 when she was arrested for stealing and using drugs from a laboratory. I felt euphoric, Kogan wrote of Farak. Patrick appointed the state inspector general to look into it. Maybe it's not a matter of checklists or reminders that prosecutors have to keep their eyes open for improprieties. One colleague called her the "super woman of the lab. "No reasonable individual could have failed to appreciate the unlawfulness of [Kaczmarek's] actions in these circumstances," Robertson wrote in her ruling. GBH News brings you the stories, local voices, and big ideas that shape our world. Poetically, that landmark case originated from the Hinton lab, although Dookhan didn't conduct the analysis in question. Prosecutors have an obligation to give the defense exculpatory evidence including anything that could weaken evidence against defendants. Penate is seeking a new trial, contending the conviction should be reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct and evidence tainted by Farak. Exhausted from the ongoing scandal in Boston, state officials were desperate for damage control. Sgt. She had been accused of intentional infliction of emotional distress in addition to the conspiracy to violate [Penates] civil rights.. In June 2017, following hearings in which Kaczmarek, Foster, Verner, and others took the stand, a judge found that Kaczmarek and Foster together "piled misrepresentation upon misrepresentation to shield the mental health worksheets from disclosure.". She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. The defense bar also demanded answers on how such crucial evidence stayed buried for so long. . This was not true, as Nassif's department later conceded. But she worried they might be privileged as health information. And both pose the obvious question about how chemists could behave so badly for years without detection. chemist, Sonja Farak, had been battling drug addiction and had tampered with samples she was assigned to test around the time she tested the samples in Penate's case. On a Friday afternoon in January 2013, a call came in to Coakley's office: "We have another Annie Dookhan out west.". She was sentenced in 2014 to 18 months in prison and 5 years of probation. She stopped the interview when asked about crack pipes found at her bench, and state police towed her car back to barracks while they waited on a warrant. From the April 2023 issue, Billy Binion NORTHAMPTON Sonja J. Farak told a nurse at the Western Massachusetts Regional Women's Correctional Center in Chicopee in December 2013 that she used methamphetamines and other stimulants "whenever she could get her hands on them." And since her job as a chemist was to test drug samples at a state drug lab in Amherst, that opportunity came daily. Support GBH. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. Farak signed The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. Stream GBH's Award-Winning Content For Parents And Children. If they'd kept digging, defendants might still have learned the crucial facts. It didnt matter whether or not she was the one who did the testing or some other chemist. The Amherst lab had called state police when the two missing samples were noticed in 2013. Ryan finally viewed the file in the attorney generals offices in October 2014. He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." Between 2005 and 2013, Sonja Farak was performing laboratory tests at a state drug lab in Amherst while under the influence of narcotics. Yet Dookhan's brazen crimes went undetected for ages. The surveillance of the chemists as well as the standards and the confiscated drugs has also been increased considerably. She started seeing a substance abuse therapist around this time. In worksheet notes dated Thursday, Dec. 22, Farak The story of the intertwining Farak and Penate evidence began in January 2013, when state police arrested Farak and searched her car. She is not active on any social media platform and has kept her distance from the press. After her arrest, she received support from her parents, who showed up to her court appearances, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported. The hotline is open Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The place was closed as soon as Faraks crimes came to light. She received the American Institute of Chemists Award in her final year as well as a Crimson and Gray Award from the school a year before, which recognized her dedication, commitment and unselfishness in the enrichment of student life at WPI. A Rolling Stone piece on Farak also indicated that she graduated with high distinction from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Psychotherapy Progress Notes, as shown above, can be populated using clinical codes before they are linked with a client's appointments for easier admin and use in sessions. The medical records stated that she did not have an existing drug problem that was amplified by her access to more substances. Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. Having barely investigated her, prosecutors indicted Farak only for the samples in her possession the day she was caught. Even before her arrest, the Department of Public Health had launched an internal inquiry into how such misconduct had gone undetected for such a long time. Farak apparently still tested each caseunlike Annie Dookhan, another Massachusetts chemist who was arrested five months prior to Farak for fabricating test results. They were found with their packaging sliced open and their contents apparently altered. Since the takeover, the budget for all forensic labs across the state has been increased, by around twenty-five per cent. Below is an outline of her charges. Since then, she has kept a low profile. If there's ever any uncertainty over "whether exculpatory information should be disclosed," the Supreme Judicial Court later wrote, "the prosecutor must file a motion for a protective order and must present the information for a judge to review.". And when the tests she did run came back negative, Dookhan added controlled substances to the vials. She later called this dismissive exchange a "plea to God.". Still, the state was acquiring evidence. Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. Would love your thoughts, please comment. A second unsealed report into allegations of wrongdoing by police and prosecutors who handled the Farak evidence, overseen by retired state judges Peter Velis and Thomas Merrigan, drew less attention. food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. Instead, Kaczmarek proceeded as if the substance abuse was a recent development. Farak was arrested the next day, and the attorney general's office assigned the case to Anne Kaczmarek. Tens of thousands of criminal drug cases were dismissed as a result of misconduct by Dookhan and Farak. The results of that intake interview and notes from several of Farak's therapists all detailing Farak's drug use going back years were obtained by defense attorneys on behalf of . "The gravity of the present case cannot be overstated," Kaczmarek wrote in her memo recommending a prison sentence of five to seven years. Due to the conviction, prosecutors were forced to dismiss more than . Biden Embraces the Fearmongering, Vows To Squash D.C.'s Mild Criminal Justice Reforms, The Flap Over Biden's Comment About 2 Fentanyl Deaths Obscures Prohibition's Role in Causing Them, Conservatives Turn Further Against WarExcept Maybe With Mexico. Talking Politics: Should a new government agency protect the coastline from climate change? concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak case. And when defense attorneys tried to do it themselves, Coakley's office blocked their efforts. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. This scandal has thrown thousands of drug cases into question, on top of more than 24,000 cases tainted by a scandal involving ex-chemist Annie Dookhan at the state's Hinton Lab in Jamaica Plain. Damning evidence reveals drug lab chemist Sonja Farak's addictions. memo, Kaczmarek told her supervisors that "Farak's admissions on her 'emotional worksheets' recovered from her car detail her struggle with substance abuse. After Faraks arrest in 2013, police found pages of mental health worksheets in her car indicating she'd struggled with drug addiction since at least 2011. GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting. The special hearing officer found Kaczmarek "displayed no remorse" and was "not candid" during the disciplinary proceedings. A year later, in October 2014, prosecutors relented, granting access to the full evidence in Farak's case to attorney Luke Ryan. One thing that How to Fix a Drug Scandal makes clear is that it wasnt all Sonja Faraks fault. The staff in the new lab was also doubled, and the number of trainees was also increased. Her wrongdoings were exposed when unsealed cocaine and a crack pipe were found under her desk. The justices ordered Healey's department to cover all costs of notifying all defendants whose cases were dismissed. They say court records and newly released emails show prosecutors sat on evidence they were familiar with that pointed to Faraks drug use in 2011, when she worked on Penates case. She had unrestricted access to the evidence room. In a separate opinion in October 2018, the Supreme Judicial Court also ordered the state to return most court fines and probation fees to people whose cases were dismissed; one estimate puts that price tag at $10 million. If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. Her ar-rest led to the dismissal of thousands of drug cases in Massachusetts. Kaczmarek had obtained the evidence at issue while she was prosecuting Farak on state charges of tampering with evidence and drug possession. Only a few months after Dookhan's conviction, it was discovered that another Massachusetts crime lab worker, Sonja Farak, who was addicted to drugs, not only stole her supply from the. Farak also had an apparent obsession for her therapists husband, as she was reported to have a folder that shed put together about him, documenting her obsession. Investigators either missed or declined opportunities to dig very deep. Another three days later, state police conducted a full search of Farak's workstation, finding a vial of powder that tested positive for oxycodone, plus 11.7 grams of cocaine in a desk drawer. Kaczmarek wrote back. Faraks therapist, Anna Kogan, wrote in her notes that Farak was worried about Nikki finding out about her addiction as well as the possible legal issues if she were ever caught. Fue arrestada el 19 de enero de 2013. ordered a report on the history of her illicit behavior. In January 2014, she pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and drug possession. With the Dookhan case so fresh, reporters immediately labeled Farak "the second chemist. Per her own court testimony, as shown in the docu-series, Farak started working at a state drug lab in Amherst in 2004. In June 2011, Dookhan secretly took 90 samples out of an evidence locker and then forged a co-worker's initials to check them back in, a clear chain-of-custody breach. In "How to Fix a Drug Scandal," a new four-part Netflix docuseries, documentary filmmaker Erin Lee Carr presents the stories of Massachusetts drug lab chemists Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak, and . shipped nearly 300 pages of previously undisclosed materials to local prosecutors around the state. Penate argued the court should follow those findings. In an August 2013 email, Ryan asked Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster to review evidence taken from Farak. She started doing drugs almost as soon as she took the job at Amherst, but it was after years of negligence on her superiors part that her actions finally came to light. Among the papers they seized were handwritten worksheets Farak completed for drug-abuse therapy. Between Farak and Dookhanwho's also featured in How to Fix a Drug Scandal38,000 wrongfully convicted cases have been dismissed, according to the Washington Post. Farak. A Powerful EHR to Manage a Thriving Practice. State officials rushed to condemn her loudly and publicly. The lead prosecutor on Farak's case knew about the diaries, as did supervisors at the state attorney general's office. She also starting dipping into police-submitted samples, a "whole other level of morality," as Farak called it during a fall 2015 special grand jury session. How to Fix a Drug Scandal is an American true crime documentary miniseries that was released on Netflix on April 1, 2020. Instead, she submitted an intentionally vague letter to the judge claiming defense attorneys already had everything. The show also delves into the issues of the state in discovering and reporting on the extent of the cases that were affected by Faraks actions. Follow us so you don't miss a thing! The civil lawsuit was one of the last tied to prosecutors' disputed handling of the case against disgraced ex-chemist Sonja Farak, who was convicted in 2014 of ingesting drug samples she was. The four years since Ryan discovered Farak's diaries have been a bitter fight over this question of culpabilitywhether Kaczmarek, Foster, and their colleagues were merely careless or whether they deliberately hid crucial evidence. According to a Rolling Stone piece on Farak, she struggled with depression from an early age, one that hasnt responded to medication. They wrote that Farak attempted suicide in high school and was also hospitalized while in college. Lost in the high drama of determining which individual prosecutors hid evidence was a more basic question: In scandals like these, why are decisions about evidence left to prosecutors at all? Sonja Farak had admitted to stealing and using drugs from the drug lab where she worked as a chemist for around 9 years. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015 Contributed by Shawn Musgrave (Musgrave Investigations) p. 1. This very well could have been the end of the investigative trail but for a few stubborn defense lawyers, who appealed the ruling. Kaczmarek quoted the worksheets in a memo to her supervisor, Verner, and others, summarizing that they revealed Farak's "struggle with substance abuse." Her answer: more than eight years before her arrest. Sonja Farak, who worked as a chemist at the Amherst drug lab since 2004, was arrested in January 2013 after one of her co-workers noticed samples were missing from evidence. That motion was denied, and the notice letters will explain Farak's tampering without any mention of prosecutorial misconduct. As Kaczmarek herself later observed, Farak essentially had "a drugstore at her disposal" from her first day at the Amherst lab. Foster "Going to use phentermine," she wrote on another, "but when I went to take it, I saw how little (v. little) there is left = ended up not using. Why did she do that and where has it left her? Foster's first stepper ethical obligations and office protocolshould have been to look through the evidence to see what had already been handed over. The responsibility of the mess that she created should also rest upon the shoulders of her workplace that allowed her the opportunity to indulge so freely in drugs in the first place. ", In 2004, her first full year at the lab, Dookhan reported analyzing approximately 700 samples per month. Sonja Farak stole, ingested or manufactured drugs almost every day for eight years while working as a chemist at a state lab in Amherst, Massachusetts. Terms Of Use, (Annie Dookhan (left) and Sonja Farak, Associated Press). 3.3.2023 4:50 PM, 2022 Reason Foundation | ", Prosecutors nationwide pretty uniformly backed this argument, which the Supreme Court rejected in a 54 opinion. Sonja Farak was a chemist at a state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 2005 to 2013. She started smoking crack cocaine in 2011 and was soon using it 10 to 12 times a day.

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