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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield
Documentary About Terrorist Brother; Mother and Grandmother Reveals Heroin Addiction; Deadly Fix; V.A. Has Not Contacted Victims' Families; Filmmaker Diagnosed with MS
Aired August 27, 2014 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ASLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: So how does someone go from a middle class westerner to becoming a convicted terrorist?
My next guest is a filmmaker whose stepbrother shocked the family when he converted to radical Islam and then was arrested on terror charges.
It's a long way from his young upbringing. He's documented his brother's journey, and you're going to hear from him next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BANFIELD: The death of American Douglas McCain who was fighting with the Muslim extremist group is, raises a lot of questions, chief among them, how did it happen? How did he get radicalized in the first place?
Imagine the horror of watching your loved one become an Islamic extremist. It's a reality that hits close to home for our next guest. Documentary filmmaker Robb Leech joins me live from London.
Leech's stepbrother Richard Dart turned to Islamic extremism back in 2009 and was convicted in England for plotting to commit terrorist acts in 2012.
Leech documented his story in the film "My Brother the Terrorist." He's kind enough to talk to me a little bit about it.
So, Robb, thanks for joining us. I really appreciate it.
The first question so many people can't wrap their heads around or just fully reject as possible is someone with a western, you know, relatively well off upbringing can go and stray so far.
How did it happen with your brother?
ROBB LEECH, DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER: Well, I think it's -- there's not one single reason. It's a combination of many, many things.
I think that when we're all growing up, we go through a phase of sort of being a bit lost in trying to sort of figure out where, you know, all that kind of stuff, trying to understand who we are.
I think for some that takes them further away from, you know, where they're from. And I think, you know, my stepbrother, he left home and sort of was quite isolated. He traveled around, trying to find his purpose in life. He was at the wrong time in the wrong place, a combination of factors.
BANFIELD: I can only speak to the visual transformation that I'm seeing through the photographs that you've provided.
But as you were living alongside him, could you see what was happening? Did you fear the worst? Or did you just think that was a phase that he was going to come out of?
LEECH: Well, I grew up alongside him. When we became teenagers, we sort of went our separate ways. We saw each other on occasion, holidays and things like that.
Yes, I noticed the change, but, as I said, he was living in London, and he was in a different environment from me, so he'd changed in lots of different ways.
It was about a year before he converted. I last saw him before he converted. He was quite serious about it. So I guess that was a sign that he was looking for something. He was quite serious about it.
But other than that, there was no sign at all. Partly because, you know, he was living far away from home. But it was very, very sudden.
BANFIELD: I only have a few minutes left, but Shirley Sotloff, the mother of the man currently being held, released a heartfelt appeal to her son's captors, to please spare his life.
From your research into this world and where your brother divulged, do you think these people who might be holding Steven, do you think they might be affected at all by this kind of an appeal?
LEECH: I have to be honest, I don't think they will be. The brutality, someone who's capable of murdering an innocent person in cold blood like that, I mean, I don't think they're particularly going to be affected by her plea.
I feel absolutely terrible when I heard that. I felt like crying myself. I really can't see how people like that.
BANFIELD: Well, Robb, you're very kind to join us and share your story, your family's story and that of your brother as well.
I do wish you and your family the best. Thank you, again, Robb Leech joining us live via Skype.
Switching gears to a growing problem in the United States and that is drug addiction. Not just any kind of drug addiction, up next, a woman who was so addicted to heroin that she would meet dealers while her grandchildren were in the car.
Get this, her addiction started with one prescription pill.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BANFIELD: It can happen in a beautiful park instead of a dark alley. Drug dealers meeting with people from all walks of life across America, people you may never expect, like Cynthia, a mother of eight, a grandmother of 18.
Her addiction started with a prescription painkiller, and then it jumped to heroin.
Her story, part of our series, "Deadly Fix," Ana Cabrera reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): This park is where you would pick up?
CYNTHIA SCUDO, HEROIN ADDICT: This is it. One of them.
CABRERA: How often?
SCUDO: Probably twice a week.
CABRERA: Cynthia was an all-American mom of eight with a deep dark secret.
Did you care who was around?
SCUDO: Nope.
CABRERA: Never worried?
SCUDO: I was thinking about one thing and that was heroin.
CABRERA: Hooked on heroin for nearly a decade.
SCUDO: In the beginning it was a feel good. At the end, it was black.
CABRERA: It started innocently enough. She had pain in her hip, scar tissue perhaps from multiple c-sections. A doctor prescribed Oxycontin, but in just two weeks, Scudo was addicted.
SCUDO: By the time I got to the second doctor, she said you are taking enough for three adult men.
CABRERA: Are doctors too quick to prescribe a painkiller?
DR. PATRICK FEHLING, ADDICTION SPECIALIST: Some of them definitely.
CABRERA: Addiction specialist Dr. Patrick Fehling says what happened to Scudo is not uncommon and neither is the jump from prescription meds to heroin.
FEHLING: They act on the exact same parts of the brain. They cause reinforcement, they cause euphoria.
CABRERA: But heroin is much cheaper. One Oxycontin can cost $80 on a street. $100 worth of heroin could last Scudo up to three days. Scudo crisscrossed Colorado to meet with drug dealers -- at parks, strip malls, sometimes with her grandchildren in the car.
SCUDO: This is a good place to pick up because we've got sides of houses here, fences.
CABRERA: This mom and grandmom, in her mid-40s, at the time didn't shoot heroin like some addicts do; she smoked it.
SCUDO: And I would drive with my knee, hold the foil in one hand, the straw in my mouth, the lighter in the other, and I would be driving down I-70 growing 65 miles an hour smoking heroin.
CABRERA: Driven by the drugs for nine years. Scudo thought she was destined to die a drug addict until a wake-up call one day when she looked in the mirror.
SCUDO: I was a skeleton. I had this lovely green glow going, so I knew my liver was shutting down. The skin was hanging - literally hanging off my body. And something about that moment when I saw myself triggered something in my head.
Oh, home away from home.
CABRERA (on camera): What's going through your mind?
SCUDO: Chaos. Hope. For the first time in a long time.
CABRERA: That's what was happening when you first got here?
SCUDO: Yes. I knew I couldn't do it by myself and I didn't know how to do it.
CABRERA (voice-over): Scudo was in rehab for 33 days. This was her intake picture.
SCUDO: Hell. I threw up every 15 minutes. I would have to live in the shower with the water temperature of 120 degrees to burn the skin to not feel the pain in my back.
CABRERA: The physical withdrawal was just the first hurdle. Scudo has worked through a 12-step recovery. It's been over three years. No relapses. And Scudo, now 55 and a grandmother of 18, has a new appreciation for life.
SCUDO: The only way I'm going to stay clean and sober is to remember where I came from.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BANFIELD: And you can find out much more on the deadly web of addiction. Just go to cnn.com/deadlyfix.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BANFIELD: For a year now we've been telling you about the veterans who died waiting for care at the V.A. hospital in Phoenix and elsewhere across the country too. In the past 24 hours, the Veterans Affairs inspector general released a report saying that the deaths in Phoenix could not be conclusively linked to delays. But keeping them honest, the report was damning and disturbing nonetheless. And to make matters worse, the families of two veterans who died say that no one from the V.A. or the inspector general's office has even been in contact with them during this so-called internal investigation. CNN's senior investigative correspondent Drew Griffin looks into it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Priscella Valdez watched as her father's cough grew stronger and he grew sicker. Over the course of last year, Pedro Valdez waited for an appointment at the Phoenix V.A., only to be told time and time again, she says, to come back. On December 31st, she finally rushed him to a private hospital where he died of acute respiratory failure.
Last September, Sally Barnes rushed her father-in-law, Thomas Breen, to the Phoenix V.A. when this Navy vet began urinating blood. He too was told he would need to wait. He died two months later, still waiting for that appointment.
Barnes has since learned her father-in-law was on the now infamous secret waiting list in Phoenix. Priscilla Valdez has since learned her father wasn't on anyone's list at all. And neither has been contacted by the V.A. in its investigation.
GRIFFIN (on camera): No one from the V.A. has asked for your father's medical records? Your father's?
PRISCELLA VALDEZ, DAUGHTER OF DECEASED VETERAN: No.
GRIFFIN: No one from the V.A. has asked for any autopsy either one of your families might have done?
VALDEZ: No.
GRIFFIN: No one in the V.A. has asked -- compiled a list of how many times you, Priscilla, drove your dad down there, or your dad went down there and was denied care?
VALDEZ: No.
SALLY BARNES-BREEN, DAUGHTER-IN-LAW OF DECEASED VETERAN: No.
GRIFFIN: So nobody in the V.A. really has bothered to pick up the phone and find out your stories?
VALDEZ: Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
GRIFFIN: So do you think there could --
VALDEZ: There was no sense of acknowledgement whatsoever. Nothing. In spite of all of our attempts to keep this in the front lines of the media so it wouldn't get pushed under the carpet, it is basically what happened anyhow.
GRIFFIN: Do you think the V.A. even wants to know what happened to your loved ones?
VALDEZ: My answer to that question, Drew, is, they have no choice. They couldn't close their eyes and turn their back to it anymore.
BARNES-BREEN: No.
VALDEZ: If my father hadn't died, pops hadn't died and other people hadn't came out and exposed what had happened, they would never have admitted it.
BARNES-BREEN: That's what I believe too, Drew. They were so (INAUDIBLE) because of the wrongdoing of that whole V.A. system.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): For Sally Barnes and Priscella Valdez, they have no confidence in anything the V.A. has done. They have both hired an attorney and say if the V.A. will not look at their cases, they will make sure someone does.
VALDEZ: My dad's death may never get justice.
BARNES-BREEN: Huh-uh.
VALDEZ: But where I find comfort in such a horrible, horrible, horrible situation, is that my dad's life did not go in vain and he laid it down ultimately in the end for his brothers and sisters. So if that's the only peace that I'm given, in my eyes, my dad's a hero.
GRIFFIN: Priscella Valdez believes her father, Pedro Valdez, a Vietnam vet, effectively fought and died now for his comrades, future veterans who, hopefully, will not suffer the way he did, waiting for care.
Drew Griffin, CNN, Phoenix.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BANFIELD: The American Legion is not satisfied with the V.A. inspector general's report. The national commander of the American Legion released a statement this morning and it reads in part, "the American Legion wants a non-V.A. authority to determine whether negligence was involved in the deaths of those veterans. In fact, we want an independent authority to investigate all the V.A. facilities where patients died while waiting for medical care." We'll continue to follow that story.
A young filmmaker diagnosed with MS turns the cameras around on himself. I'll tell you why, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As a child, Jason DeSilva loved making home movies. He was 18 when he made his first film, and 25 when he was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. JASON DESILVA, FILMMAKER WITH MS: All of sudden I was walking slow up
and down the subway steps. And I was kind of walking like I was drunk during the day.
GUPTA: MS is a disease where the body's immune system attacks the central nervous system, damaging for destroying nerve fibers. The independent filmmaker traveled the world, making nine films. And then DeSilva turned the camera on himself, documenting the ravages of his disease and the struggle people with disabilities have living in New York City.
DESILVA: We're not super human, you know. People with disabilities shouldn't be asked to do the impossible.
GUPTA: In the seven years it took to make the movie, "When I Walk," which aired on PBS, DeSilva went from walking, to using a walker, to a wheelchair and now a motorized scooter. His vision has started to deteriorate. His hands curl, making it impossible to hold a camera. He met his wife, Alice Cook (ph), at an MS support group meeting. Together, they finished the film. And another legacy. son, Jase (ph). Passionate about making the city easier to negotiate for people with disabilities, he and his wife created a map of all the places in the city that are wheelchair accessible.
DESILVA: Some of the things that I'm doing is actually making a difference. But that's what keeps me going is that's how I can stay positive.
GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BANFIELD: Hey, thanks for watching, everybody. Nice to have you with us. "WOLF" starts right now.
