originally posted 1/3/2010
My children need a voice. I need help navigating this system, to protect my children’s rights and mine. �I cannot afford legal representation. �With the help of friends I am looking for a pro bono attorney…hard to come by.
My children were born in 1996 and 1999. In 2007 charges of sexual battery were brought against me as their father was 16 and 18 at the time of conception. I had been the sole financial provider as a single mother while I watched my children live without so much that they were deserving of. I was told by this other side of my children’s family that I got ‘plenty of help with the children’ and ‘did not deserve childsupport’. During this time not once did I discontinue the children’s contact with them, visits were obtainable at their descretion, and they enjoyed our children with very little responsibility.
This is a very complicated case with many confusing details. I stood up for what wrong is mine to own, sadly the ‘victim’ and others who were heard on this case did not take accountability for their wrong and not surprisingly, were not opposed to being untruthful! I cannot say enough that this relationship should not have occurred and I was wrong. However it should have been questioned as to why charges were brought up more than ten years after the fact when I pursued childsupport. I actually went to the system for help. I was prepared to own my wrong. What I was not prepared for was that my children would be inconsequential details. What I had intended to do was move forward so that my children had both sides of their family supporting them in all manner of responsibilities.
I served the full two years of my sentance, released August 2009 and am on PRC (post release control) for five years. My children were cared for by my parents during those two years. One week before my release I was told by the Adult Parole Authority that I could not live under the same roof as my children. This forced my children out of the school system and community of which my parents have lived and been involved in for thirty years and had my children settled in and thriving. And now as they live with their father, a.k.a. my victim, I am not permitted any contact.
As a condition of my parole I am required to attend sex offender ‘treatment’. This facility recommends that I not even have supervised visits until I receive further treatment. This further treatment includes that I must ‘take further responsibility’ in that my account be more in accord with that of my victim’s.
My children are not my victims, this case originated out of family/domestic court, children’s services has never been involved, I have numerous friends and family in poignant positions of society and their communities that have close intimate knowledge and experience of me as a mother and a person and hold me in the highest regard. Point blank, this was poor moral behavior of me fourteen years ago, I have no sexual interest in teenagers/children. I am told by the sex offender specialists that because I have done this once, I’m at risk to do it again/re-offend (I cannot be ‘fixed’), and those family and friends who KNOW I am not, ‘cannot appreciate that I am at risk to re-offend’ therefor they cannot be parties of supervision between my children and me.
I loaned $10,000 at 6-1/4% against my life insurance policy (my children are the beneficiaries) for legal fees due to this criminal case. While incarcerated my home went into foreclosure, I am filing bankruptcy. I was placed in a third tier sex offender catagory as per the AWA, though the charges of my crime occurred in May of 2007. As per parole restrictions I cannot go to a shopping mall, I cannot attend church services, unless there are no children in the building, I cannot attend any activity where children congregate (a professional basket ball game was cited as an example), I cannot be around anyone under the age of 18. Not my own family members or my friends’ children. It’s not just the I, I, I’s in this paragraph, look deeper into the ramifications of all this for my children. The collateral damage is atleast as inexusable as the action/behavior for which I was prosecuted. I know I was wrong, I took accountability. The sex offender specialist for the Adult Parole Athority said to me in response to my frustration and grievance over the psychological impact on my children not having contact with their mother to which the APA is imposing, “…to put it bluntly they are victims of the system”. ( You don’t say?) And there’s more, so much more. I’m just trying to keep this brief.