Happy Birthday, My Wonderful Son - "How I Feel and My Son's Injustice"

Today is my friend's son's birthday. Today, his son would have been 28 years old.  Below is a father's story and above that how he feels. 

Happy Birthday!

How I Feel

August 19^th, 2010 at 15:48 made one year since I lost my Son.

I know how you and most of my friends feel, as I have felt myself when someone I knew lost a child. I represent every parent’s most unspeakable fear.  The thought of losing a child is too horrible to put into words and if the thought of it ever crosses our minds we quickly run as fast as we can from it. I remember when a friend lost his little boy. I did my best to avoid him and I know it was wrong, but I could not handle the extreme pain and sorrow that I felt at just the mere thought of what he must be experiencing.

What I have come to believe is that this will be with me always. There is no getting over it or under it or around it.  I don't know how a philosopher or theologian would define what a "person" consists of but the only way I can explain it is that whatever I am inside, I mean the tapestry that is "me" is held together by the strong threads of the bonds with my children. Now that "tapestry" has a huge tear in it and the thread I need to repair it is gone. Nothing else on earth will ever be able to mend my soul. The light of joy and wonder that radiated from my son’s young face was my beacon on some of the dark paths I found myself walking in the past.  Now, I have to make my own way in the dark.  

Although I try very hard, the "shine" is gone from my hopes and dreams and whatever joy I have been able to experience is diminished by the amount I have lost.

Pardon me for waxing philosophical!  It's so very difficult to know how I feel moment to moment. I don’t like to mention these thoughts around people, so I isolate sometimes. I’m not looking for sympathy, even though it seems to rain down on me. I never want to “use” this grief in any way to excuse my behavior, but sometimes I am knocked down and churned up by the incoming waves of sorrow and I can’t get my breath.  I cannot control the tears that seem to come almost daily and without warning. These feelings may seem like insanity or weakness, but I have come to believe that they are manifestations of the most powerful force in the universe—LOVE.

My Son's Injustice 

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?