Note: this story originally said that Amelia would likely flunk out of high school because she had not passed her final exams. This was based on information given us by Amelia's high school principal's office. Indiana Guard public affairs tells us that Amelia's recruiter had obtained a waiver so she did not have to take her final exams, though Amelia tells us she did not want this waiver. We regret any error that may have occurred.

Amelia S., a 17-year-old native of East Chicago, Indiana, was taken from her grandmother's house in East Chicago on the morning of June 3rd by Indiana National Guard personnel in the midst of a family crisis and a looming threat of arrest if she did not report for boot camp. She was trying to pass her junior year, she is on psychiatric medication, and she is not old enough to retain a lawyer. But none of this stopped the Indiana National Guard from taking her to Camp Atterbury in the early hours of Tuesday, June 3rd.

Amelia originally signed up for the Indiana Guard with the hopes of earning extra money in East Chicago's struggling economy. However, after attending drills, she decided to stay in school rather than enter the military. She had also been seeing a psychiatrist throughout the spring of 2008 for difficulties she had been having, and was finally diagnosed with clinical depression and prescribed medication in the final weeks of May. But when she told her superiors all this in a letter, she was told her chances of getting out of her military contract were zero.

“This is not unusual, given the massive shortage of manpower that National Guards throughout the country have recently seen,” says Mike Schorsch, a lay advocate with the national G.I. Rights Hotline, and the Catholic Peace Fellowship's main counselor for people trying to leave the military. “What is unusual is that here we are dealing with a minor who has been diagnosed with depression, a disqualifying medical condition, and on top of that has not even been allowed to take her final exams at high school.”

In an unusual twist, Schorsch, working on Amelia's behalf, was able to find a military law attorney willing to work on Amelia's case for free. However, all this came to nothing, as minors cannot legally retain counsel to represent their interests without the permission of a legal guardian. In Amelia's case, her grandmother refused. This has left Amelia with little defense in the face of the aggressive tactics of her recruiters. One Sgt. Harlan of South Bend has been leading the charge, along with Sgt. Ramiro of Hammond, IN, who picked Amelia up on Tuesday morning.

“Normally a threat of arrest, coming from a recruiter, is an empty threat,” says Schorsch, who has assisted over one thousand servicemembers over the past two years. “The situation is different in Indiana, where state regulations give Guard officers the power to have local police arrest Guard members and hold them in jail.” In Amelia's case, this meant that recruiters were able to tell Amelia's family members that she would be facing jail time if they did not deliver her up to them.

If Indiana National Guard finds that they are getting too much negative attention for their immoral and illegal recruiting practices, they might just rein them in--and they might just let Amelia go.