To Bear Witness after Institutional Betrayal
To Bear Witness after Institutional Betrayal
by Trish Dennis at Brownstone Institute
In 2020, the world I thought I knew fell away. Nothing in my life prepared me for what unfolded from March 2020 onwards. It was a rupture that left me reeling, stunned, and disoriented. I felt reborn into a world I barely recognised, one where governments and trusted institutions turned on their own people.
I had always believed that, for the most part, the medical profession and public health agencies acted in good faith. But over the course of the pandemic years, that belief and trust were eroded as I saw malign patterns and policies emerge, policies that stripped patients of autonomy and dignity, and even in many cases, their lives. And these policies were not just misguided but deliberately systemic.
Last month, I was contacted by Teresa Cichewicz. As a regular reader of Brownstone Institute, Teresa had come across some of my articles, and she invited me to join her and her co-founder, Gail Seiler, on the podcast to discuss their work and to compare notes with me on the similarities and differences in the approach taken by the UK and Ireland during the pandemic. It was a deeply engaging conversation that left me feeling heartened and inspired.
This arose from Teresa and Gail’s determination to confront the systemic failures that claimed so many lives during the pandemic. The organisation’s stated mission is to document and expose the ethical and procedural breaches that occurred under government-mandated protocols, to support witnesses in sharing their experiences, and to pursue meaningful accountability and reform. By compiling detailed medical records, sworn testimonies, and survivor accounts, the aim is to create a factual record that can challenge official narratives and guide future policy change. Teresa and Gail have worked on this with quiet determination, grounded in the belief that truth and justice belong together, and that remembering and bearing witness is the first step toward repair.
The work of the Project began not in boardrooms or laboratories, but in hospital corridors and grief-stricken living rooms, speaking with families desperate to make sense of the suffering they had witnessed. From that personal crucible, the project emerges as both testimony and indictment, clearly and painfully illustrating that what unfolded in those years was not a series of tragic mistakes but a pattern of institutional betrayal demanding exposure.
Teresa’s personal story speaks to the human cost of these failures. Her father, Robert Anthony Michanowicz, entered a Pennsylvania hospital in 2021 needing only oxygen support, but was rapidly placed on the Covid protocol without informed consent. Staff isolated him from family, discouraged communication, and ignored repeated requests for alternative treatments such as ivermectin. He was instead given Remdesivir and later morphine, despite warnings about his kidney condition. He became dehydrated, confused, and increasingly weak while nurses failed to provide even basic care. Within days, his organs failed, and he died alone. Teresa and her family maintain that rigid adherence to federal protocols replaced medical judgment and basic compassion, a cruelty disguised as care.
Only days later, Teresa witnessed another tragedy within her own community. Jessica Halgren, a young mother of six, twenty-eight weeks pregnant with her seventh child, fell ill with Covid-19 that quickly developed into pneumonia. When her oxygen levels dropped to 85, she went to the emergency department, terrified for her baby’s safety. Jessica’s husband, Matt, was turned away at the door as she was transferred by ambulance to another hospital. For several days, Jessica communicated with her family only by text. Doctors then informed Matt that they needed to perform an emergency caesarean to save the baby.
On December 4, the hospital said Jessica had to be ventilated, which she resisted, telling her husband, “If they vent me, I won’t make it out.” Sedated and restrained, Jessica was intubated, and her baby, Margaret, was delivered and taken to the NICU. In the days that followed, Jessica’s health collapsed. Her kidneys failed, her lungs deteriorated, and she suffered strokes before bleeding into her brain. After ten days in an induced coma, she was declared brain dead. Surrounded by her husband, daughter, and parents, Jessica drew her final breath, another young mother lost to a system that sacrificed care for compliance.
Gail Seiler lived through her own experience of this nightmare. When Gail became seriously ill, her oxygen levels dropped to 77, and she was admitted to the emergency department. There, the attending physician asked Gail if she had been vaccinated. When she replied that she had not, he patted her hand and said, “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Seiler, but you’re going to die.”
That single exchange set the tone for all that followed. Gail was isolated, denied food and water, and refused access to treatments that had previously worked for her, including budesonide. Her first request to see a priest for the Last Rites was rejected outright. Later, she was told she could receive the sacrament only if she agreed to take Remdesivir, a coercive condition that epitomised the moral inversion of hospital protocol at the time.
As her condition deteriorated, Gail’s husband, Bradley Seiler, was forced to intervene. A former military biological-weapons officer and emergency-room nurse, he recognised the danger his wife was in. When official appeals failed, he took matters into his own hands, facing down medical staff and even police as he fought to remove her from the hospital. After six hours of obstruction, he succeeded, taking Gail home, assuming her care himself, and likely saving her life.
Across the Atlantic, Ireland and the United Kingdom faced their own systemic failures. Nursing homes became overwhelmed with needless and preventable deaths as governments ordered the mass discharge of elderly patients from hospitals in anticipation of a Covid surge that never materialised. In a reckless bid to “free up beds,” thousands of vulnerable people who should have remained under hospital care were transferred back into care homes that already housed the most at-risk residents. Many were moved without even being tested.
The result was catastrophic: a wave of deaths swept through nursing homes in April and May 2020, a direct and foreseeable consequence of policy decisions that prioritised bureaucratic readiness over human life. Although the scale differed between Ireland, the UK, and the United States, the similarities were unmistakable: the same cavalier disregard for human life, the same reckless cruelty toward the vulnerable, and the same policies that could only ever lead to suffering and death, which is exactly what they did.
Building on the testimonies of survivors and bereaved families, the Betrayal Project has assembled a body of evidence that reveals not a collection of tragic errors but a pattern of institutionalised harm. Hospitals enforced rigid protocols that disregarded patient consent, families were excluded from decision-making, and healthcare professionals were pressured to violate ethical standards. Outpatient care was withdrawn, communication severed, and the human dimension of medicine replaced by bureaucratic procedure. What emerges from these testimonies is a portrait of industrialised cruelty, medicine stripped of compassion, and protocol elevated above life and dignity.
This kind of institutional betrayal is not abstract; it is deeply human, and its societal impact is incalculable. Countless patients, vulnerable people, young and old, were isolated from family advocates. Lives were lost through senseless protocols. Medical professionals endured coercion, risking career and conscience to preserve life. Families suffered unimaginable trauma, the effects of which will ripple through the generations for years to come. The stories that the Betrayal Project has gathered demonstrate that these were not isolated errors; they were systemic, ethical failings. Society has been scarred by this, and trust in the healthcare system has been broken, perhaps beyond repair.
Yet even amid this bleak testimony, hope persists. Grassroots movements, advocacy networks, and initiatives like the Betrayal Project offer both a record and a response. They prove that authority is not self-regulating and that accountability is not optional; it must be demanded. By documenting harm, exposing systemic patterns, and connecting citizens across borders, these movements create mechanisms for oversight and moral engagement. The lesson is urgent and personal: change begins with individuals. Each of us must ask what we can do, one by one, to hold those in power accountable. We must question, observe, document, and act. Out of the shameful ashes of eroded trust, there remains the possibility and the hope to build something better.
The work of Gail Seiler and Teresa Cichewicz reminds us that even in the face of systemic failure, truth, conscience, and human dignity can still be defended. It feels fitting that the Betrayal Project’s emblem is a lighthouse, a symbol that can be seen from far out in the darkness, a steady light guiding those lost at sea back toward safe waters. That image captures what the project has become: a beacon of truth, transforming grief into purpose and building hope, one story at a time.
To Bear Witness after Institutional Betrayal
by Trish Dennis at Brownstone Institute – Daily Economics, Policy, Public Health, Society