If the Justice for Justina website is legit I would love to have the Pelletier family’s webmaster contact me for some free website advice. Some easy wording and coding changes would go a long way towards generating more help for the family’s cause. As it is, I can only donate my advice and the publicity this post gives them to help their cause. Read why all website owners should take their fine print seriously and avoid copying legal terms from other sites…
I read a Facebook post today about a case in Boston, MA dubbed “Justice for Justina”. It is a very heartbreaking case that involves a 15 year old teen, Justina Pelletier, that has been taken away from her parents and held against her will in Boston Children’s Hospital’s psychiatric ward. The Facebook post was from a woman that said it was her birthday and she just wanted people to support the freedom of this 15 year old. She asked that readers go to a support website to donate and sign a petition to get her back into her parents custody for treatment elsewhere.
I went to the website link that that the woman posted (www.freejustina.com) and was redirected twice to finally end up at www.justiceforjustina.com. This blog post is about the importance of what you use as Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policies on a website. It can greatly influence what people think of your website. I read the “fine print” and this is why:
The justiceforjustina.com webpage looks simple and like family member or friend may have written it. It has a story about what is going on and a video from the father’s press conference. It has a signup for a petition to free the girl but it only requires your first name and email address. I’m not sure that is enough information to be a legitimate petition signature. The box to input the information on a mobile device is tiny and obviously not created by a professional website developer. They post the Governor’s phone number and have a link to a news story and events coming up but there is no contact information.
Right below the “signup” for the petition is a PayPal Donate button. All in all, a simple site. The story on the site is so compelling that I nearly gave them my name and email address and a donation. But before I give money to help someone I click on the Terms & Conditions link to find out why they even need a Terms & Conditions link. The Justice for Justina link led to the longest set of terms and conditions I have read in a long time and it made me reconsider donating money or “signing” a petition. It was way to complex and full of legal terms to match the simplicity of the site.
[icon style=”icon-caution” url=”” target=”_self” lightbox_content=”” lightbox_description=””]Read the Fine Print![/icon]At the beginning of the terms it is pointed out that they are for the “JusticeForJustina.com” website. This sounded legit, but the terms went on and on and on. Scroll down far enough and you get to paragraph 20 about Arbitration and 21 about Governing Law. Both paragraphs refer to Texas. Here is a sentence from the Terms and Conditions: “Terms and Conditions of Use and Your access to and use of the Site and the Content shall be a court of competent jurisdiction in and for Collin County, Texas.” This made me suspicious, since the whole sad story is taking place in Boston.
Then I read the Privacy Policy. Again it was incredibly long and basically said they could do whatever they want with my information. Both links may have simply been a modified copy and paste from some other website. But after reading both the Privacy Policy and the Terms & Conditions pages I decided not to give this site my name or money until I could verify that it was legit. I looked everywhere for contact information but couldn’t find any. Hopefully, someone in the Justina Pelletier family will see this and have the website corrected, if in fact, it is really theirs. I hope the family wins their cause and this post helps them gain even more publicity. If they contact me, I will consult with their webmaster for free.
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Here is a link to sign a petition to release Justina Pelletier that doesn’t ask for money: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/564/737/188/get-some-justice-for-justina/
The Facebook page is: “A Miracle for Justina”
Website information: www.freejustina.com was created on 2/15/14 and information about the owner of the domain is site protected by Name Guard out of Panama, www.justiceforjustina.com was created 2/22/14 and its website owner information is also protected from public viewing by Name Guard out of Panama.