"It's great to be free," Cheryl Miller said on Sat­ur­day. "Free­dom at last. I am re­lieved." Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Cheryl Miller is not ex­act­ly free yet. On Fri­day, Jus­tice Vasheist Kokaram grant­ed a writ of habeas cor­pus to re­lease her from St Ann's Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal un­til the mat­ter is heard again on Thurs­day.

Un­til then, Ms Miller is tech­ni­cal­ly on leave from her en­forced stay at the hos­pi­tal, which be­gan 16 days ago af­ter an in­ci­dent at the Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment. The im­age of Ms Miller in the Sun­day Guardian, a young woman shy­ly hud­dled be­hind her sis­ter and flanked sup­por­t­ive­ly by a large male cousin, does not sup­port the no­tions of threat that led to the dra­con­ian ac­tion tak­en af­ter her re­port­ed out­burst.

And for oth­er rea­sons too, what hap­pened that day-and why Ms Miller was kept at the hos­pi­tal-re­mains un­clear.

Con­cerned fam­i­ly mem­bers and cowork­ers first sent a let­ter to the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry out­lin­ing what hap­pened on the day that Ms Miller was com­mit­ted to the psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal. Ms Miller was said to have had an out­burst at her work­place, and claimed to be feel­ing per­se­cut­ed and vic­timised. Gen­der Min­is­ter Ver­na St Rose-Greaves was de­scribed as hav­ing spo­ken with her and in the un­der­stat­ed words of the let­ter writ­ten by her col­leagues, "Some time af­ter that, things took a turn for the worse."

It got pret­ty bad. Some­one in au­thor­i­ty at the Gen­der Min­istry ap­par­ent­ly de­cid­ed that Ms Miller's prob­lem was bet­ter ad­dressed by men­tal-health pro­fes­sion­als than hu­man-re­source per­son­nel. Af­ter an in­ter­view by med­ical of­fi­cers char­ac­terised as "brief," Ms Miller was tak­en from her of­fice at Tow­er D at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex to St Ann's.

It re­mains un­clear whether her fam­i­ly was con­tact­ed in a time­ly man­ner about the de­ci­sion to com­mit her to the men­tal hos­pi­tal. They cer­tain­ly did not give per­mis­sion. The Gen­der Min­is­ter was cir­cum­spect and po­lite in her char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of that day's events when speak­ing with the me­dia, no doubt aware of the quite sharp irony of what had hap­pened in a min­istry ded­i­cat­ed to ad­dress­ing gen­der equal­i­ty and women's is­sues.

Ms St Rose-Greaves told re­porters on Tues­day that she was sor­ry that the in­ci­dent had "hit the pub­lic do­main." What­ev­er Cheryl Miller's ac­tu­al men­tal state, it is use­less now for the Gen­der Min­istry, the Health Min­istry or the med­ical pro­fes­sion­als of St Ann's Med­ical Hos­pi­tal to try to cov­er up the de­tails of this mat­ter un­der a smoke­screen of pa­tient con­fi­den­tial­i­ty or a mis­placed no­tion that si­lence might pre­serve Ms Miller's dig­ni­ty. That ship sailed a fort­night ago.

At this point, the gen­er­al opin­ion is that that pro­fes­sion­al veil is be­ing em­ployed as a shield for doc­tors' ar­ro­gance, po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, in­com­pe­tence or plain hu­man er­ror. Once Ms Miller's col­leagues took to the street to protest her con­tin­ued de­ten­tion at the men­tal hos­pi­tal and her fam­i­ly sought the in­ter­ven­tion of the me­dia, the on­ly op­tion that re­mained for of­fi­cials in the min­istry and at the hos­pi­tal was full dis­clo­sure of the facts.

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan has un­der­stood the grav­i­tas of the mat­ter and has promised se­ri­ous ac­tion when he gets to the bot­tom of it. From his per­spec­tive, some­one ei­ther broke med­ical pro­to­col in ad­mit­ting Cheryl Miller against her will or did so in re­leas­ing her.

Hope­ful­ly, his in­ves­ti­ga­tion will clar­i­fy the laps­es in pol­i­cy or pro­ce­dure that led to this un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion. There is al­so grow­ing pub­lic anx­i­ety that what hap­pened to Miller might hap­pen to any­one who choos­es to speak up for their rights or in de­fi­ance of the Gov­ern­ment. The on­ly way to dis­pel such con­cerns is to re­place them with clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed facts.