Healthy 17 Year Old Dies Shortly After South Dakota Takes Custody Away from Mother

A 17 year old boy is dead, and his mother wants answers. The answers that Dawn Van Ballegooyen has been given by the state of South Dakota don't make sense to her, and her mother's intuition tells her that somebody is covering up what really happened to her son, Brady Alan Folkens, while he was in state custody. Most of the stories that we cover at Medical Kidnap have to do with children who were taken by the state via Child Protective Services, but there are other avenues for the state to acquire custody of minors, especially teenagers. As this heartbreaking story shows, the results can be just as devastating, no matter which government agency decides that it can do a better job of raising a child than the parents. Just as with CPS cases, Dawn was not given a choice in her son being taken from her. After failing a drug urine test at school, and being accused of belonging to a gang simply because he wore his hat backwards at school, a healthy 17 year old Brady Folkens was sent away to an "Academy Boot Camp" far away from his home where he could only talk to his mother 10 minutes a week on the phone. Two months later, as his mother made a Christmas trip to visit him, she found him dead in the hospital.