Why I will never, ever want to go to America, ever

[martin_wisse]

Stories like this, of a Devon woman who became ill when on holiday in the US, had to go to hospital and her two daughters who were on holiday with her where sent to an orphanage and strip searched:

The family flew out to New York on 27 December. When Ms Bray began coughing later that day, she initially put it down to her asthma and the air

Comments

[clanwilliam]

Actually, there's a totally different tone in her local paper here.

If you look at the situation, the authorities did the best they could do. The only thing that didn't happen was that they forgot to call the UK Consulate - or never knew that it was an option - and that there seems to have been an element of

Everything else checks out okay.

Sorting out something for unaccompanied minors? Check.
Ensuring their safety? Check.
Ensuring the safety of others? Check.
Protecting the girls' property? Check.
Subsequent follow-up letter from Child Protection Services? Check.

The girls were taken to a supervised place afterwards where they said they were fine and returned to their mother when she checked herself out of hospital.

[martin_wisse]

I disagree, obviously. The girls were treated like criminals and it was only because their mother checked herself out that they were able to leave the orphanage.

[clanwilliam]

And if she hadn't been able to leave the hospital? What then? Do you think it's acceptable that social services would just "let" children with no available family or someone to take charge of them just go

[bluesgirly]

I can understand the justified alarm here since this is obviously a difficult situation but what were hospital folks going to do with 2 minor kids and a mom who has been admitted? Wish they'd thought to call the consulate but the same thing would have happened to a US citizen in the same scenario. Child protective services would appear and take responsibility for minor kids.

You can find example after example of stupid things that go on in every country on earth so you may want to travel the globe regardless. Try and go to Israel. Or, India or Mexico and see if you can land in one of those places with a guarantee nothing will go wrong. Not much chance of that. Anyway, sorry you're sour on the USA and we're totally fun here so that's a shame:)