By Tim…
I previously posted as “a man without a country.” I’ve lived overseas since my release from probation. Until February, 2018, I had no problems overseas, only when I returned to the US the last few, as I had to after my last parent died. Last year, using the same route and carrier as four times before, I was denied a boarding pass when something came up on the screen at check-in. They asked if I were “traveling alone”; I nodded incredulously and indicated no one was standing near me. I later wondered if this was something to do with the ‘trafficking’ we hear a lot about. Because of a health issue, I request wheelchair assistance in airports. Even though I’d spend just a two-hour layover sitting in a wheelchair in that airline’s hub, I was told to find another carrier with another route. Less than an hour after telling my family I’d be back in a month, I was waking them up to let me back in the house. Then, I spent months and months wondering when the other shoe would drop.
I had a relatively peaceful life here for 16 years; we used to fly to the beach once a year. After my aborted trip, I found myself making excuses not to travel where my three-year-old passport would be scanned and my wife of 12 years might learn of something I thought I’d left behind on the other side of the world. Now, though I had no problem renewing a year-long visa to stay last year, I’m faced with a very strong possibility I won’t be so lucky this year. As a result of IML and things getting ‘lost in translation,’ I’m boarding a plane next week and might wind up homeless, stateless, and torn apart from my family. (I’m not being deported; I am voluntarily leaving for other reasons below.)
It’s not just potential discrimination due misunderstanding outside of the States. I do wonder every day if the smaller-than-an-old-tweet info that pops up on the airport check-in screen includes what my psychologist (a PhD/LPC and devout Christian) told me about what happened being not all my fault or if there’s anything about the mother of my ‘victim’ being a ‘sociopath,’ as Doc figured out from my detailed description of her. We need to raise awareness that parents can and do cause more life-long damage to their kids than SOs are accused of doing. Ask anyone whose parent(s) had Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
I am writing this because I sense indifference back in the US to my family’s suffering as so many of us are experiencing. Above, I referred to my last parent dying. I was left a trust, which wound up having several issues requiring help from lawyers (we all know how fun that is). As there were potential needs to go to civil court, I was honest with my lawyers about my past and showed them a letter from my psychologist, in which he reaffirmed me as Level 1 ten years after I was released from probation and ended my monthly sessions with him. The problem was with the lawyers working for the trust, the defendant who took a lot of money from my dying parent, and his lawyer, who probably all knew about my secret. All of them seem to be the type to think they know all they need to know already about my story, which (like many reading this) includes details that should make an ethical, fair-minded person pause in their judgment.
My civil lawsuit to recoup money much needed for my own family’s future safety and survival fizzled, and I wound up losing not just the money I was hoping to recoup but a sizable amount of money (my late father’s) I’d invested trying to get it back and the money spent by trust principal to pay lawyers. None of the people involved seem to have a conscience about how my family is on the verge of financial ruination. I have to wonder how much of that is because everyone knows just a smidgen of my old problems.
I wish I knew how the story will end next week. I fear I might not be able to update it, so I am hoping this gets published to Tales soon. Twenty years after my mistake in judgement and sixteen years after I was released from probation, the collateral damage to me and to my new family since I thought I’d been able to start a new life is threatening to crumble like a house of cards.
I don’t know what to expect when I try to board a plane here as I tried to do a year and a half ago. I will be leaving two days before my visa here expires. I never got a letter about passport revocation. Maybe that will be when I land in the US and am greeted by our uniformed protectors of the border. I don’t have a home or any family to go to back in the US, but I have some business I need to attend to to see to it that my family will have some security in the future, even if it is without me.
I wish I could offer hope, but until the plight of registrants is brought to the U. .S. Supreme Court, I feel like we are living in a nightmare. After having my passport revoked, I even live in fear of traveling to another U.S. state. I recently turned down a membership scholarship to go to another state for our group’s convention. My only hope is that all sanctions against registrants become unconstitutional within my lifetime.
I want to escape the USA what countries allow RSO in? I have had it and do not want out live the rest of my life as a half citizen for something i did not even do. My God if you got out don’t come back this place is hell.
I chickened out. I didn’t know what to expect when I went to board the plane here overseas. Maybe my passport has already been revoked? Maybe I would be denied boarding and transit in yet another carrier’s hub while trying to get back and… what? Be detained by the gestapo at a US airport because I hadn’t informed anyone in advance of my travel plans?
If I had made it back, would my passport then been confiscated and replaced with the new scarlet letter one? Then, I’d have trouble getting back to my family here, my wife of 12 years and our child, both of whom rely on MY supporting them for food and shelter. The $2,000 I just lost on my plane ticket, before chickening out, would have paid for a couple months of that.
I just keep losing and losing and losing. I needed to sell my stuff in storage back there to get a little money to make up for the loss in the civil suit I am a plaintiff of. Thanks to the greedy, blinder-wearing legal system and my late father’s greedy, lying, hypocritical relatives who took money we needed for food and shelter for the next 20 years, we are financially doomed.
I wrote about a parent doing more damage to a son or daughter than an SO. My late father had Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He supported me through my SO stuff and hated the hypocrisy of all involved, but when I called him out on some of his NPD behavior, he turned on me and did things which will affect me and my family financially the rest of my life, which I hope is not much longer.
I’m just a man trying to see to it that my family will not be destitute when I die, which can’t come soon enough.
You did the right thing. If anyone is a registrant in the US and has made it to a foriegn country to live in peace, dont ever come back to this miserable country. I lived outside the US for 5 years, started a business, started a family, had a dog, friends, apartment and everything I owned. Came back to visit my mom, just like Ive done for the past 5 years and now I cant get back. I have lost everything. I dont have the strength to start over from scratch again. I’m tired of losing friends, losing family, losing all my possessions. It is called learned helplessness. I’m tired. I am a failure and ive always been a failure.
I remember your story from more than a year ago. My story of deportation and revoking my passport in April 2018 was near your story around the same time. I am sorry you are experiencing problems none of us could ever imagine might happen in our futures once we did our time. The U.S. Government keeps unconstitutionally punishing RSOs and their families.
When you wrote: ” We need to raise awareness that parents can and do cause more life-long damage to their kids than SOs are accused of doing. Ask anyone whose parent(s) had Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” It reminded me that the so called “victim” in my case had parents who were abusive alcoholics. My non-alcoholic kindness drew him to me because of that. But I never wanted to accuse them of that or acknowledge their bad influence on him, until now. Now, although I may have had a small part in his delinquency due to my poor judgement, I refuse to take the blame for any part of his life that led to his death (see my story “U.S. Border Policies…” below your story).
My case was expunged in 2002, but I continue to suffer under U.S. Registration Laws. Like you, I worry that this will affect my inheritance and the future of my adult children, and my grandchildren.
Thanks for reading and posting. I’d read your story after it was posted. Tragedy abounds.
And the main reason for that is people do not acknowledge how much and how many things there are that they DO NOT KNOW. In my probation days twenty years ago, I used to think things would start to change when someone pushing these laws would be affected themselves (a son, a nephew). But now I think it’ll have to be a saturation point where between half and a third of all people are affected by the hysteria. If you watch “The Crucible” from 1996, that’s what happened in Salem, I believe; it got to the point where half of the people were being pointed at by the other half in the colony.
The way things in the world are today: something else may mean the end of “civilization” first.
Michael,
Thanks for your uplifting comment in this darkest of times.
Tim
I feel your pain. I’m trapped overseas currently with my family in limbo. My passport and all documents confiscated with no legal way to stay or to leave. After having been granted amnesty by the commissioner of this country the USA decided to add an all inclusive dishonest black list that makes a 22 year old concensual mistake long ago paid for appear like an active high profile crime. Courtesy of the Corruption of the United States government without any notice I am now blacklisted here. My family has been attacked, vandalized and assaulted and we’re permanently on the run even though never having broken any laws..sometimes it hard not to cheer what people call “terrorists ” because sometimes I wonder if they are not just retaliating for being abused by our government just like us..my family has died fighting in every war for our country but right now seeing what it is doing to my children and knowing its going the same to others, I would love to see the country taken down a few pegs..it is more criminal and evil then I’ve ever dreamed of being. .
Once lawyers get involved, you can kiss your inheritance goodbye!