sonja farak therapy notes

(Featured Image Credit: Mass Live). State officials rushed to condemn her loudly and publicly. Sonja Farak is at the center of Netflix's new true crime docuseries, How To Fix a Drug Scandal. Netflix released a new docu-series called "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." 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. 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. 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. If Farak found a substance was a true drug, the person it was confiscated from could be convicted of a substance-related crime. Judge Kinder ordered her to produce all potentially privileged documents for his review to determine whether they could be disclosed. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. 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. Thank you! She had unrestricted access to the evidence room. ", Officials rushed to downplay the situation in Amherst. Fortunately, the courts largely ignored this shallow investigation. | Emma Camp Despite clear indications that Farak used a variety of narcoticsher worksheets mentioned phentermine, and that vial of powdered oxycodone-acetaminophen had been found at her benchKaczmarek also proceeded as if crack cocaine were Farak's sole drug. Shortly into her role at Amherst, Farak decided to try liquid methamphetamine to ease her personal struggles. Foster's first stepper ethical obligations and office protocolshould have been to look through the evidence to see what had already been handed over. High Massachusetts Lab Chemist Causes Thousands Of Drug Cases To Be Dismissed. She was struggling to suppress mental health issues, depression in particular, and she tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. Kaczmarek argued the findings are subject to appeal. 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. concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak case. 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. In a 61 ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court in 2017, the defense bar, led by public defenders and the Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), won the dismissal of almost every conviction based on Dookhan's analysismore than 36,000 cases in all. State prosecutors hadnt provided this evidence to other district attorneys offices contending with the Farak fallout, either. Hearings could help decide how many of thousands of convictions tainted by Farak's testing may be overturned. ", But another co-worker was suspicious, particularly since he "never saw Dookhan in front of a microscope.". The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. Farak as a young. 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. Her wrongdoings were exposed when unsealed cocaine and a crack pipe were found under her desk. another filing. In the aftermath, the court felt it necessary to make clear that "no prosecutorhas the authority to decline to disclose exculpatory information.". "If she were suffering from back injurymaybe she took some oxys?" Process Notes/Psychotherapy Notes Process notes are sometimes also referred to as psychotherapy notesthey're the notes you take during or after a session. Kaczmarek has repeatedly testified she did not act intentionally and that she thought the worksheets had been turned over to the district attorneys who prosecuted the cases involved. Between 2005 and 2013, Sonja Farak was performing laboratory tests at a state drug lab in Amherst while under the influence of narcotics. This might not have mattered as much if the investigators had followed the evidence that Farak had been using drugs for at least a year and almost certainly longer. Its no big deal, 14-year-old Farak said to the Panama City News Herald. 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. And when the tests she did run came back negative, Dookhan added controlled substances to the vials. In four 50-minute episodes, Netflix's latest shocker tells the story of Sonia Farak, a chemist who worked at a crime lab in Amherst, Massachusetts. Read More: Where is Sonja Farak Sister Now? The case of Rolando Penate has become a leading example for lawyers calling for further investigation into alleged misconduct by prosecutors who handled documents seized from Sonja Farak, the Amherst crime-lab chemist convicted of stealing and tampering with drug samples. 1. Thus, only defendants whose evidence she tested in the six-month window before her arrest could challenge their cases. "I remember actually sitting on the stand and looking at it," Farak said of her first time swiping from evidence in a trafficking case, "knowing that I had analyzed the sample and that I had then tampered with it.". Would love your thoughts, please comment. Like Hinton, the Amherst lab had no cameras. 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. Penate's lawsuit, which seeks $5.7 million in damages, is believed to be one of the last remaining suits tied to the scandals; the statute of limitations to file such suits has expired. The last contact information provided by her, in response to Penates allegations, placed her residence in Hatfield, Massachusetts. As he leafed through three boxes of evidence, he found the substance abuse worksheets and diaries. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. The next month, Ryan asked again. Velis said he stood by the findings. She started working shortly after for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health in July 2003 until July 2012, and from July 2012 until January 2013 for the Massachusetts State Police when the lab fell under their jurisdiction. Massachusetts prosecutors withheld evidence of corrupt state narcotics testing for months from a defendant facing drug charges, and didnt release it until after his conviction, according to newly surfaced documents and emails. In Farak's car, police found a "works kit"crack cocaine, a spatula, and copper mesh, often used as a pipe filter. "he didn't request a warrant. In a letter filed with the Supreme Court, Julianne Nassif, a lab supervisor, wrote that Hinton had "appropriate quality control" measures. Without access to the diaries, the Springfield judge in 2013 found that Farak had starting stealing from samples in summer 2012. Verner's "marching orders," he later testified, were to prosecute Farak with "what was in front of us, the car, things that were readily apparent. Per her own court testimony, as shown in the docu-series, Farak started working at a state drug lab in Amherst in 2004. Earlier that day, a chemist at the Amherst drug lab had tracked two samples that were missing from the evidence locker to Sonja Farak's bench. Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal tells the story of two women whose actions brought to light the negligence of the system that is supposed to deliver justice to everyone. The Dookhan prosecution was barely underway, a grand jury having returned indictments a few weeks earlier. Instead, Kaczmarek provided copies to Farak's own attorney and asked that all evidence from Farak's car, including the worksheets, be kept away from prying defense attorneys representing the thousands of people convicted of drug crimes based on Farak's work. A year later, in October 2014, prosecutors relented, granting access to the full evidence in Farak's case to attorney Luke Ryan. The defense bar had raised concerns that prosecutors might be "perceived as having a stake" in such an investigation. | Most of the heat for thisincluding formal bar complaintshas fallen on Kaczmarek and another former prosecutor, Kris Foster, who was tasked with responding to subpoenas regarding the Farak evidence. But a crucial issue was not before the court. Still, the state was acquiring evidence. Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. (Netflix) A former state chemist, Sonja Farak, made headlines in 2013 when she was arrested for stealing and using drugs from a laboratory. Ryan then filed a In fall 2013, a Springfield, Massachusetts, judge convened hearings with the explicit aim of establishing "the timing and scope" of Farak's "alleged criminal conduct.". They pulled her aside as she walked back to the courthouse from her car, where she had smoked "a fair amount of crack" during her lunch break. 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. shipped nearly 300 pages of previously undisclosed materials to local prosecutors around the state. ", The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. Where is Sonja now? 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. Sonja Farak (Netflix) An ex-lab chemist Sonja Farak's negligence and misdeeds shocked US when she was arrested in 2013 for stealing and using drugs from the lab where she worked. "Dookhan's consistently high testing volumes should have been a clear indication that a more thorough analysis and review of her work was needed," an internal review found. (Belchertown, MA, 01/22/13) Sonja Farak, 35, of Northampton, is arraigned in Eastern Hampshire District Court in Belchertown on charges that she stole cocaine and heroin while working as a. The state's top court took an even harsher view, ruling in October 2018 that the attorney general's office as an institution was responsible for the prosecutorial misconduct of its former employees. In an August 2013 email, Ryan asked Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster to review evidence taken from Farak. 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. Her notes record on-the-job drug use ranging from small nips of the lab's baseline. Both have since left the attorney general's office for other government positions. Thanks largely to the prosecutors' deception, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in October 2018 was forced to dismiss thousands of cases Farak may never have even touched, including every single conviction based on evidence processed at the Amherst lab from 2009 to the day of Farak's arrest in 2013. The place was closed as soon as Faraks crimes came to light. 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. 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. 3.3.2023 5:45 PM, Jacob Sullum Her medical records included notes from Faraks therapist in Amherst, Anna Kogan. Foster and another assistant attorney general assented to that motion. "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. They wrote that Lee, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, [spent] her hours surfing the Web in a haze.. With the Dookhan case so fresh, reporters immediately labeled Farak "the second chemist. When she got married, it turned out that her wife, too, suffered from her own demons, and their collective anguish made Sonja desperate for a reprieve from this life. Why Won't Maryland Sell Me a Goddamn Beer? "I was totally controlled by my addiction," Farak later testified. According to the notes, Farak thought it gave her energy, helped her to get things done and not procrastinate, feel more positive., Her partner Nikki Lee testified before a grand jury that she herself had tried cocaine, that she had observed Farak using cocaine in 2000, and that she had marijuana in her house when police officers arrived to search the premises as part of their investigation of Farak., In Faraks testimony during a grand jury investigation, she said that she became a recreational drug user during graduate school and used cocaine, marihuana, and ecstasy. She also said she used heroin one time and was nervous and sick and hated every minute of it [and had] no desire to use [it] again., Farak met and settled down with Nikki Lee in her 20s. In 2019, she was seen leaving the Springfield Federal Court but declined to comment on the status of the case. In December 2011, after police in Springfield, Mass., had arrested Renaldo Penate for allegedly selling heroin, the drugs from that case were tested at a state drug lab by technician Sonja Farak. According to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Farak graduated with awards and distinctions. Faraks notes also Out of "an abundance of caution," Kaczmarek didn't present them to the grand jury that was convened to determine whether to indict Farak. The attorney general's officeKaczmarek or her supervisorscould have asked a judge to determine whether the worksheets were actually privileged, as Kaczmarek later acknowledged. And yet, due to their actions, they did injure people and they did inflict a lot of pain, not just on a couple of people, but on thousands. The civil lawsuit was one of the last tied to prosecutors' disputedhandling of the case against disgraced ex-chemist Sonja Farak, who was convicted in 2014 of ingesting drug samples she was supposed to test at the Amherst state drug lab. The Amherst Bulletin reported that her medical records indicated that she only became addicted to drugs once she started working at the lab, in 2004. That motion was denied, and the notice letters will explain Farak's tampering without any mention of prosecutorial misconduct. As How to Fix a Drug Scandal explores, Farak had long struggled with her mental . 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. email highlighted in the Velis-Merrigan report. Several defense attorneys who called for the Velis-Merrigan investigation say the former judges and their state police investigators got it wrong. This immediately provoked questions about the thousands of cases in which her findings had contributed to the imprisonment of an individual. 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? The drug lab technician was sent to prison for 18 months, but was released in 2015. Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. She was arrested in 2013 when the supervisor at the Amherst lab was made aware that two samples were missing. Foster protested that portions of the evidentiary file in question might be privileged or not subject to disclosure. The Board of Bar Overseers (BBO) is reviewing the actions of three prosecutors in the investigation of the scandal to determine whether any of them deliberately withheld potentially exculpatory evidence. Soon after Dookhan's arrest, Coakley's office asked the governor to order a broader independent probe of the Hinton lab. Dookhan was sentenced to prison in 2013. And when defense attorneys tried to do it themselves, Coakley's office blocked their efforts. Joseph . Finding that there did not appear to be enough slides in Dookhan's discard pile to match her numbers, the colleague brought his concerns to an outside attorney, who advised he should be careful making "accusations about a young woman's career," he later told state police. ", Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. 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. How to Fix a Drug Scandal: With Shannon O'Neill, Karl Kenzler, Paul Solotaroff, Scott Allen. 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. 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. According to the documents released Tuesday, investigators found that Sonja Farak tested drug samples and testified in court while under the influence of methamphetamines, ketamine, cocaine, LSD . Farak struggled with mental health throughout her life, the documentary series explains. Among the papers they seized were handwritten worksheets Farak completed for drug-abuse therapy. Shawn Musgrave It took another three years for the truth to emerge. After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts. It contained substances often used to make counterfeit cocaine, including soap, baking soda, candle wax, and modeling clay, plus lab dishes, wax paper, and fragments of a crack pipe. The judge ordered prosecutors and defense attorneys to coordinate on identifying undisclosed emails related to documents seized from the disgraced state crime lab chemist. Powered by. After she was caught, Farak pleaded guilty to stealing drugs from the lab and was sentenced to prison time of 18 months. Her access to evidence was not restricted, and she continued testifying in court. In the only quasi-independent probe of the Farak scandal ever ordered, Attorney General Healey and a district attorney appointed two retired judges to investigate in summer 2015. "Forensic evidence is not uniquely immune from the risk of manipulation," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority. As Kaczmarek herself later observed, Farak essentially had "a drugstore at her disposal" from her first day at the Amherst lab. Penate is seeking a new trial, contending the conviction should be reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct and evidence tainted by Farak. When grand jury materials were eventually released to defense attorneys, then, they did not mention that these documents existed. Foster said that Kaczmarek told her all relevant evidence had been turned over and that her supervisor told her to write the letter, though both denied these claims. Having barely investigated her, prosecutors indicted Farak only for the samples in her possession the day she was caught. Farak apparently still tested each caseunlike Annie Dookhan, another Massachusetts chemist who was arrested five months prior to Farak for fabricating test results. (Conveniently, they also found a Patriots schedule from 2011 in the car.). Patrick appointed the state inspector general to look into it. When she got married, it turned out that her wife, too, suffered from her own demons, and their collective anguish made Sonja desperate for a reprieve from this life. Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. The scandal led. She later called this dismissive exchange a "plea to God.". The Farak documents indicate she used drugs on the very day she certified samples as heroin in Penates case. Since the takeover, the budget for all forensic labs across the state has been increased, by around twenty-five per cent. I felt euphoric, Kogan wrote of Farak. "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. She's no longer in prison, as Farak has served her sentence. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. The story of the intertwining Farak and Penate evidence began in January 2013, when state police arrested Farak and searched her car. It included information about the type of drugs she tampered with. She had never quashed a subpoena before, but supervisors told her to fend off motions about Farak. This story is an effort to reconstruct what was known about Farak and Dookhan's crimes, and when, based on court filings, diaries, and interviews with the major players. Despite such unequivocal findings of misconduct, the court removed language about Kaczmarek and Foster from notification letters to those whose cases have been dismissed, which will be sent out in early 2019. There is no allegation of misconduct against the local prosecutors who presented the case against Penate in Hampden County Superior Court. On another worksheet chronicling her struggle not to use, she described 12 of the next 13 samples assigned to her for testing as "urge-ful.". He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." "No reasonablejury could conclude that this evidence is not favorable.". answered that the state considered the evidence irrelevant to any case other than Faraks.. For people with disabilities needing assistance with the Public Files, contact Glenn Heath at 617-300-3268. Gioia called for evidentiary hearings so prosecutors can be asked about what they knew, when they knew it, and what they did with their knowledge., Luke Ryan, Penates trial lawyer, said that the state police officers working on the report failed to obtain an appropriate understanding of the events that transpired before they were assigned to this investigation.". 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. "Whether law enforcement officials overlooked these papers or intentionally suppressed them is a question for another day.". Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to stealing samples of drugs from an Amherst drug lab. Sonja Farak had admitted to stealing and using drugs from the drug lab where she worked as a chemist for around 9 years. The Amherst lab had called state police when the two missing samples were noticed in 2013. She was sentenced to 18 months in jail plus five years of probation. She received an email from a detective weeks after Farak's arrest containing detailed notes Farak made in conjunction with her own drug treatment, pointedly identified as "FARAK Admissions" but failed to disclose them for years. Where Is Sonja Farak Now? Looking back, it seems that Massachusetts law enforcement officials, reeling from the Dookhan case, simply felt they couldn't weather another full-fledged forensics scandal. But in a The actions of Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan caused a racket of such a scale that the state had to recompense for it with millions of dollars and had to make a historic move in the dismissal of wrongful convictions. Farak was arrested the next day, and the attorney general's office assigned the case to Anne Kaczmarek. "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. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. ", Prosecutors maintained that Faraks rogue behavior spanned just a few months. . But whether anyone investigated her conduct during a brief stint working at the state's Boston drug lab is at . After weeks of hearings, a "special hearing officer" selected by the board recommended potential sanctions against them all. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the lab. How to Fix a Drug Scandal is an American true crime documentary miniseries that was released on Netflix on April 1, 2020. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. 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. You can try, Suspensions and a reprimand proposed for prosecutors admonished in drug lab scandal. She was trying to suppress mental health issues, depression in specific, and she attempted to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. Patrick said "the most important take-home" was that "no individual's due process rights were compromised.". Sgt. Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak.