MINNEAPOLIS — The legal saga of Danny Hauser, the
13-year-old boy from Sleepy Eye, Minn., who fled the state with his mother last
May to avoid chemotherapy, is set to end next week when his cancer treatments
are complete.
A judge in New Ulm, Minn., ruled Monday that he will rescind
a child-protection order for the boy when the treatments end, freeing the
Hausers from close county monitoring that has angered the family.
“The family has done what the judge ordered, and what
they promised to do,” Brown County, Minn., Attorney James Olson explained
after the hearing. “We told the judge we don’t need to continue butting in
anymore, and he agreed.”
A family spokesman said Monday that Danny is feeling well
and appears to be recuperating from the cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The county intervened last spring after Danny had one
chemotherapy treatment, then refused more because he and his parents, Colleen
and Anthony Hauser, feared the treatment was poisoning him.
Danny and his mother fled to California the day before they
were to appear in court for a subsequent hearing. When they returned on May 25,
Judge John Rodenberg found that the boy was in need of court protection and
ordered the family to follow treatment recommended by doctors. Without
chemotherapy, the doctors said, the boy would probably die.
In September, the boy completed a course of chemotherapy
that was shorter than expected because he responded well, doctors said.
He began radiation treatments Thursday at Abbott
Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, and on Monday had the third of 12 planned
radiation treatments, due to end Nov. 6.
{::PAGEBREAK::}
Danny is “feeling good and doing very well,”
family spokesman Dan Zwackman said Monday. “All the tests (for cancer) are
negative. The radiation is to make sure.”
Zwackman said the family continues to credit a stringent
diet and supplements with “at the least helping fight off the cancer. It’s
a diet — lots of vegetables and fruits, not much meat — that Danny expects he
will be on for life.”
At Monday’s hearing, the Hausers’ attorney withdrew a
request that the county immediately end supervision of Danny’s cancer treatment
and prohibit county workers from visiting the family home.
Those home visits involved interviewing the Hausers’ other
children, probing their home schooling and investigating the Hausers’
parenting, Colleen Hauser said in an affidavit filed with the court last week.
She argued that Brown County social workers and Danny’s
court-appointed guardian overstepped their medical-oversight authority during
home visits and interfered with the family’s home life.
Before the hearing Monday, the county attorney said the
county’s actions may well have disrupted the Hausers’ lives, “but they
kind of brought that on themselves when they left town.”
Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
