Sunday, January 23, 2011

Story from an SO's Father - What else did they leave him?


Well, here goes.  I haven't had time or heart enough to write down the entire story, but I can give you a brief synopsis. I have been a single parent for most of my sons' lives.

My 19 year-old son was just out of high school and was secretly meeting with my former girlfriend's daughter (16).  They had known each other for a long time and during the nine or so years the girl's mother and I were together, we traveled as a family and even lived together for a short time. I don't know how many times they met, but it was at least a dozen. My son managed to get another girl pregnant (his own age) and they decided to get married

About this time, the 16 year-old girl’s mother snooped in her diary.  I never saw it, but I guess there was an account of one of the meetings with my son with a description of some sexual activity. The girl's mother sent her to a counselor at church as the girl was having a lot of adjustment problems, teenage problems etc.  The counselor said it was her duty by law to call the police and tell them of any sexual activity.  The girl and her mother were very much against this and would not cooperate at first, however, the police, counselor and victims’ advocates (rape coaches) convinced them.  My son and I were notified that an investigation was being started in March 2005.  The only thing the cops had to go on was the girl's statement.  In Florida, the "storyteller" cannot be compelled to take a polygraph.

The "investigation" resulted in my son's divorce and he could only have limited supervised visitation with his new son.  He came back home to live and after a time decided to go to nursing school which had been one of his big dreams.  We didn't know whether or not he would be allowed to take the board exam at the end with the pending "investigation".  To my son's everlasting honor, he was only one of 14 students out 32 to complete the course and the first to get his state nursing license.  It was January 2007, close to two years since the "investigation" into sexual battery charges had begun.

My son had worked about 2 weeks on his first job when our attorney informed us that the prosecutor was about to file charges. During the two preceding years, the respected law firm I had hired and all but dissolved.  The lead attorney and most experienced had retired and our personal attorney had left the firm leaving the two junior partners with the entire caseload.

We wanted to go to court to be vindicated, but when we learned about the sex offender laws and consequences of losing the case, the best idea at the time was to take the plea bargain and probation--this is when all HELL broke loose. We had the misfortune to draw the most man-hating manipulative prosecutor on earth.  My son was place on probation for aggravated assault with adjudication withheld for 5 years--sounds good so far, right?

WRONG!!!! 

The prosecutor placed sex offender conditions such as a driving log and 8pm curfew on him( a registered sex offender has a 10pm curfew)  Our incompetent attorney assured us that these conditions could be removed in 6 months and not to worry (HA!!!!)

What ensued from Jan 2007 until Mar 2009 was probation violation after probation violation--seven in all. Six were found to be completely false, and one was a lie by the probation officer.  All of this was initiated by his extremely evil ex mother in law and crusading prosecutor. At one point there was a "swat-team" group of nine officers sent to arrest him for a minor violation. Two of the team were on top of my roof stomping and others were beating at the windows. There was one at my front and back door and the doors still carry the dents and marks of their jackboots. Each violation even if false, added on more probation conditions.

I will only recount the first arrest here but it is typical of all of them.  At 2:30 one morning, the probation officer was pounding on my front door.  He came in and went through my home computer and announced he was arresting my son on "suspicion of possession of child pornography".  I could clearly see this wasn't true and so could the accompanying officer. They argued for half an hour in my driveway, and the bastard officer finally won out.  My computer hard drive was sent to the FBI crime lab in Washington.  The FBI found NO ILLEGAL MATERIAL ON MY COMPUTER.  My son was still in jail and had lost his nursing job by then. My attorney had a meeting with the prosecutor in the State Attorney's office and when she saw there was no evidence, she went into a throwing cursing tirade against my attorney and the officer.  My attorney asked for her recusal, but was denied.  The parole officer came up with a new charge-aggravated stalking--in league with the ex mother in law, but it was also found to have no merit.  At this point, the probation officer rewrote the original month-old report with the charge of "lying to a probation officer".  This my attorney could not fight,  So after 31 days in jail, my son was finally released.

I wrote letters and went all the way to the governor and finally got the probation officer off my son's case. All of the legal fees and losses to our family amounted to over $40,000 by this time.

Broke and broken, stripped of the value of his education and unable to get a job in the career he chose, and through the last violation for some stupid rule--lost his withhold and was now a "convicted felon" unable to get even a dishwashing job if there were one in this economy, he became ill.  Plagued by migraines and ulcers and a shoulder injury from a car accident, but unable to get insurance, he sought out a doctor "feel good" who gave him increasing amounts of stronger and stronger narcotics until finally  giving him methadone, a very dangerous drug for the inexperienced physician. Methadone, unlike any other narcotic can accumulate in the body up to 72 hours even though the "buzz" or pain relief wears off in 4-8 hours.  Taking extra just adds to the accumulation, until it reaches a critical point.  Other drugs and alcohol only increase the stored amount of methadone.  Then it kills unlike any other narcotic by interfering with heart conduction and stopping the heart.  Almost 70% of deaths due to methadone in the US (4,700 in 2008) are in patients with a legal prescription taking it as the doctor ordered. Most unintentional deaths occur within the first week after starting methadone. A person on methadone can be awake and lucid one moment and out the next.

On August 19, 2009, we lost our fight and I lost my son to unintentional drug interaction between Ambien and methadone. Although the methadone level was moderate and what is expected with the dose prescribed, it can still kill.  We are going after the doctor through the medical board at this time. My son, xxxx, was never a danger to anyone.  The fear of sex offender consequences, and manipulation by the prosecutor's agenda of hate killed my son as surely as effectively as a firing squad. I complained to everyone including the governor, local State Attorney, DOC head, and state Attorney General all through the 2 year period shouting from the rooftops about the lies and injustice, and was blown off every time. 

I have lost my precious son, his brother has lost a life long companion and his 4 year old son will never hold his father's hand. What a wonderful country I live in where truth, fairness and unbiased treatment are practiced in the courtroom! 

How did it come to this? 

On the unsubstantiated story of a troubled, hormone choked, jealous teenage girl, my son was cheated out of his life. All of the above horrors plus a thousand more heartaches I didn’t include were based solely on her unchallenged story without one witness or one shred of credible evidence.

The State Attorney said "Well, your son made some bad choices".

What else did they leave him?

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"When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect."
~Adlia Stevenson U.S. Vice President (1893–1897) and Congressman (1879–1881)

On a Personal Note

Thanks for the opportunity to express my thoughts regarding the issue of citizens’ rights, particularly addressing certain sex offenders’ crimes that do not fit the devastating, inequitable and endless punishment given.


As you know, many young men and women lives across the nation are being destroyed by incarceration, life-time registry and restrictive laws that do more harm than good. For those individuals, there is no second chance.

Below is a personal letter to President Obama:
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“Dear President Obama,

I truly agree with your sentiments that individuals, such as ex-felons, should be able to receive a second chance at life. Since we all know that one can veer off that path of life and travel along rough, rocky terrain, sometimes running off and ending up in some ditch. We all have made our fill of mistakes and sometimes those held a costly consequence that changed life forever. So we lived through it, trying harder to make things right with family, friends and those around us, but what about those who aren’t able to make things right even if they tried…because they’re labeled as too dirty, a leper, a person who is rejected from society and home.


But what if they’re a seventeen year old and had sex with a fifteen year old, consensual at that? Or they’re a teen that had gotten so enraged after a breakup that he sent out naked pictures of his girlfriend on his cell phone or email? Or an individual urinates where someone just happens to see them?


All are wrong and a travesty but do they deserve the life of no second chance with a registry that ends all. They are labeled, no jobs, no where to live…they have been deemed a menace to society, a plague. These certain circumstances, and many other situations similar to these, I believe still deserve a second change.

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution


Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.


After my son’s early release and two years of prison, I thought I had handled that fact graciously knowing after serving his time he would be able to get that fresh start, that second chance. He was an exemplary inmate, GED, college courses and vocational classes. Little did I know that a second chance on the outside was the farthest from the truth? He now struggles and lives in a trailer park sharing a trailer with another and surrounded by others in the same rocking boat, one to float endlessly in shark infested waters. I see him little because of probation requirements (he couldn’t live with us because we were 800 feet near a school). My family is afraid of what would happen to them if he lived with them…vigilantism. My son has no other place to stay since others condemn him of his crime that is screamed from the highest rooftop. Sex offender, sex offender!

Not all sex offenders are pedophiles or predators but some are simply young kids that make one stupid and rash decision that eventually changes everything, and they have no idea what they’ve done until their life is never their own. Exactly, where is that second chance for those sex-offenders who are lumped together with pedophiles and predators? Now, it makes me sick to think of my son’s future and many like him that are on the registry and many with no second chance…ever. I am asking you as a mother and as another concerned citizen of the United States that these laws are looked at again and taken into serious consideration in what they are doing to the Constitution of the United States, not for sex offenders in general but the future rights of every citizen, before anymore are put into effect. They unjustly strip an offender of their rights and place them in a guillotine that can be easily set off by anyone and at anytime. Where is the second chance for ex-sex offenders in the present, pending and future laws?”
* * * *
What truly saddens me is the weakness and deterioration of what the sex offense issue is doing to our once, great nation. Across Europe, others are seeing the injustice and disregard of rights, but we ignore this problem and it makes me wonder where humanity is heading….

We have become a hysterical society in which our latest witch-hunt is a sex offender--no matter his/her crime.

Below is a email sent from a foreign advocate to a father of a sex offender:
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“The tragic story of your son's death is just so sad that it's difficult to explain how. It was very hard to read your letters. It seems almost unbelievable that this can take place in a democracy! From our point of view, there is no justice in this. Not in any way: not for you, your son, the former girl friend – or even the state.

It is an abusive legal system. It seems barbaric. And we are so very sorry that this takes place. That's why it's so important for us to try to neutralize the debate with this…, hopefully making some changes. ….. to show the every day life of the sex offenders, trying to show how they keep on being punished, even after served prison time…..But we will for sure tell the story of the injustice that your son has been exposed to.”
* * * *
I appreciate everyone's commitment and backing to protect everyone's civil rights, plainly as noted in the Constitution of the United States and is presupposed, giving ALL men are “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”