Indictment of Adult Protective Services of Alexandria, Virginia

By Valerie Gagnon

This is a formal indictment of Adult Protective Services of Alexandria, Virginia (“APS”), and in particular of the conduct of its assigned agent, Mrs. Cannaday, for their catastrophic failure to protect my mother, an advanced cardiac patient and resident of Bulfinch Square, from deliberate and ongoing medical abuse. What follows is stated calmly, precisely, and under full awareness of the gravity of each allegation.

I. The Vulnerable Patient and the Known Risk

1. My mother was an advanced cardiac patient. She underwent open-heart surgery in 2016. In 2020, while visiting me in Spain, she suffered a cardiac arrest. A stent was placed in a major coronary artery.

2. Spanish physicians warned her, in unambiguous terms, that if she did not take her prescribed cardiac medications exactly as ordered, she would die. This warning was clear, documented, and communicated to our family.

II. The Pattern of Medical Abuse in Bulfinch Square

3. Upon my mother’s return to her home in Bulfinch Square, Alexandria, my father began to systematically deny her cardiac history. He told friends, neighbors, and medical providers that she had never experienced a cardiac arrest. This was a knowing falsehood.

4. My father interfered with my mother’s access to consistent cardiology care, blocked the establishment of a stable treating cardiologist, and insisted that her life-preserving medications were “making her sick.” He withheld those medications.

5. Approximately thirteen months after the cardiac event in Spain, an emergency-room cardiologist telephoned me to say that my mother had at most six months to live and needed to be registered for palliative care. The predicted terminal decline was the foreseeable result of the deliberate deprivation of cardiac medication.

III. January 2021: APS Is Put on Notice

6. In January 2021, I formally contacted Adult Protective Services of Alexandria. I reported in detail my father’s interference with my mother’s medical care, his withholding of essential medications, and the urgent need for a guardian to protect her.

7. I provided APS with the names and contact information of all relevant physicians, along with extensive email correspondence documenting the abuse and the medical risk. APS had direct access to corroborating medical witnesses and written proof.

IV. The First Failure: Willful Blindness and Case Closure

8. APS responded that my mother said she was fine and did not need help. On that basis, and despite the medical record, witness list, and written documentation I had supplied, APS effectively closed the case.

9. This is the classic failure mode in elder abuse: accepting at face value the assurances of a dependent, isolated victim, while disregarding the documented allegations, the pattern of coercive control, and the medical evidence of neglect. APS chose the most convenient narrative over the most credible one.

V. Continued Warnings, Ignored

10. After APS dismissed my concerns, I continued to sound the alarm. I contacted Dr. Scott Leaf, a personal friend of my father and the man who would later falsely accuse me of violence. I explained the situation to him and asked for intervention. He acknowledged the information but claimed he could do nothing.

11. When I informed local actors that I would fly to Alexandria to intervene directly to save my mother, I received a call from Foster Friedman warning me that, if I came to Alexandria, I would be arrested and served with restraining orders. I refused this intimidation and stated plainly that I was coming to save my mother’s life.

VI. January 20, 2021: Direct Intervention and APS Inertia

12. I arrived in Alexandria on January 20, 2021. From that date until I was forced to flee in mid-June 2021, I contacted Mrs. Cannaday, the APS agent assigned to my mother’s case, repeatedly. I reported my observations and renewed my requests for protection and for the appointment of a guardian.

13. Despite months of direct contact, and despite APS’s full knowledge of my mother’s advanced cardiac history and prior medication deprivation, Mrs. Cannaday did not take effective action to secure my mother’s medical safety or legal protection.

VII. Valerie Saves Her Mother — Despite APS

14. With APS inert, I independently registered my mother with VITAS, a palliative care provider. Within hours of their assessment, VITAS nurses confirmed that my mother was taking zero prescribed cardiac medications. This immediately corroborated the precise allegations I had been making to APS for months.

15. Within twenty-four hours of my intervention, my mother was assigned a visiting nurse and provided with morphine and appropriate palliative support. The decisive steps to safeguard her care were taken not by APS, but by a daughter whom APS had sidelined and later helped to criminalize.

VIII. Turning Care Into a Weapon

16. As I continued to monitor my mother’s condition, I repeatedly alerted VITAS that I believed my father was deliberately contributing to her decline. VITAS staff responded that they had no file for my mother.

17. I later learned that VITAS had been instructed to give me no information about my mother’s health and that I had been labeled a danger to my own mother. The very file and care structure I had initiated to save her life were turned into an instrument to exclude me.

IX. The Arrests and the Inversion of Justice

18. While I was fighting to secure my mother’s care, I was arrested twice on the basis of a false report by Dr. Scott Leaf, who claimed to have witnessed me attack my father. I was jailed for ten days. The subsequent judicial saga, including the conduct of Judge Cullen, is documented separately.

19. The timing is not incidental. As my mother began to improve under proper medication, the machinery of false accusation accelerated against me. Instead of moving to protect a vulnerable elder, the local system moved to remove the one person insisting that her medical abuse be stopped.

X. The Secret File and the Silencing of the Complainant

20. After my arrest, I requested access to the APS case file that I had opened to protect my mother. I was informed that I was now under investigation for elder abuse and would not be permitted access.

21. I later learned that the APS file, initiated by my complaint, had grown to 475 pages. I submitted two separate requests for access under the Freedom of Information Act. Both requests were denied. The agency that had failed to act on my warnings now used secrecy to shield its record and to preserve a narrative that cast the whistleblower as the abuser.

XI. The Outcome and the Pattern

22. Once my mother finally received consistent, appropriate medication, her health improved dramatically. This improvement, following years of deprivation, is itself evidence of prior, preventable harm. It confirms that the decline APS treated as natural and inevitable was, in fact, induced and prolonged.

23. I reasonably believe that, as her condition improved and the record of past neglect threatened to surface, my father and his allies feared exposure. In that climate, APS allowed its processes and its secrecy to be aligned not with the vulnerable patient or with the whistleblower daughter, but with the perpetrator and his network in Old Town Alexandria.

XII. The Indictment

I accuse Adult Protective Services of Alexandria of catastrophic failure at every stage of this case. They dismissed documented evidence of medical abuse. They closed an investigation on the untested assurances of a dependent, isolated elder. They ignored months of continued warnings and direct contact. They allowed a vulnerable woman in Bulfinch Square to be deprived of life-preserving cardiac medication for years. And when confronted with the consequences of their inaction, they participated in an inversion of reality that turned the protective complaint of a daughter into a weapon against her.

I hold Mrs. Cannaday, as the APS agent assigned to my mother’s case between January 20 and mid-June 2021, directly responsible for the professional decisions and omissions during that period. I hold APS of Alexandria institutionally responsible for constructing and maintaining a 475-page secret file that rebranded the complainant as the culprit, while obscuring the original, substantiated allegations of elder medical abuse.

This indictment is not a cry of outrage. It is a record. In Old Town Alexandria, in the shadow of Bulfinch Square, a vulnerable cardiac patient was nearly killed not only by a husband who withheld her medications, but by a protection agency that chose convenience, collusion, and secrecy over its duty to protect. The names are recorded here so that this pattern of systemic cruelty cannot be buried in the 475 pages APS refuses to release.