Brooke Shields is livid. According to her, her mother was removed from the nursing facility where she has been placed, by a reporter and photographer from the National Enquirer. According to the police, who were also involved when Kim Shields' absence from the Nursing Home went longer than had been expected, she was found having lunch with a free lance reporter who has done work for the National Enquirer.
The full story is here.
To be fair, something I'm not eager to do, I have to admit it's possible that the facility did nothing illegal. If the facility that Kim Shields is in has similar paperwork requirements to the one my father has been placed with, one of the papers that we had to fill out and sign was a permission slip for who could take the patient from the facility. For my father we chose to leave the permission blank - anyone who came to ask him out would have that permission. It would have been possible to set up the permissions so that it were only a list of specific people who could take my father out - but I figured that I'd rather leave things open for his friends if they were to come by to visit. Of course, my father is not likely to be facing tabloid reporters looking to take him to lunch.
Likewise, the reporter may not have broken any laws, either. Though I'll admit that the story put out by the Enquirer, claiming that the reporter is a friend of long standing who just wanted to go to lunch is pretty fishy. Certainly I'm skeptical of how eager one would be to have a photographer along on a lunch to catch up with an old friend.
Having said all that, I still think that Brooke Shields' reaction, claiming this to have been a vile, manipulative thing to do seems spot on. I can't believe that anyone would countenance such an impromptu lunch date between a minor and a tabloid reporter - no matter how long the tabloid reporter had known the minor. Whatever one wants to admit, when someone is being treated for dementia it is pretty common for their legal status to revert to that of a minor, or anyone else whose judgment cannot be trusted to protect their own interests.
IMNSHO the National Enquirer has found a new low to plumb in pursuit of celebrity dirt.