What light?

How many cliche’s do we have that describe the times of troubles? Light at the end of the tunnel, darkest before dawn…I’m sick of cliches. Do they really even help or are we just trying to fool ourselves into holding on a bit longer? Whatever we need to tell ourselves to keep pressing forward I suppose.

R was transferred to a new facility today about two hours from here. I guess its a class all people charged with a sex offense need to attend before they move on to their parent facility. Initially it we were told it was a two week course then he moves on. Turns out, due to whatever bullshit reasons, they are running 6 weeks behind. It wouldn’t be too big of a deal if they kept the same “privileges” as they did at Lorain. He is on a 23 and 1 schedule which means 23 hours a day are spent in his cell and 1 hour a day he gets out to take a shower and get a library book. He is struggling pretty hard and asked to see a therapist to help him with the anxiety. The CO basically told him no and if persisted then his only option would be to get stripped down, thrown in a straight jacket and put in a glass room for observation. And we wonder why people don’t come out of prison reformed. The people in charge are awful. Look I understand that it is prison and it is not supposed to be a vacation and all that, but general decency would go a long way. It should take less effort to be kind than to be cruel. At least I am not so naive anymore to think people are generally good. Life has taught me the opposite.

The anger is still a primary emotion/obstacle for both of us. It is so difficult to understand how it was ever allowed to get this far. I have had someone reach out to me locally, turns out they are having similar issues with a certain lead detective just being a piece of shit and has a habit of omitting anything that goes against his personal opinions on his cases. I thought investigations were more of a “follow the evidence” than “I’ll find whatever supports my bias” situation. Turns out they can do whatever they want – most of these rules are just guidelines – lots of wiggle room to avoid accountability.

I want to be smart about our approach when we fight back. Over the two years that they dragged us through the court system, it felt like we didn’t have a voice. So, I went to social media. I demonstrated on so many different levels that what this girl claimed could not have happened. I thought “there’s no way they can move forward with this”. I was so fucking wrong. I really believed that if the detective, prosecutor, and judge saw what we had they would immediately correct their mistake. But they don’t care about justice – truth or lies. They care about what they can convict and what is going to get them to the next step in their career. To me that was a really hard pill to swallow. I wanted to believe in our system so badly. I really wanted to believe that they would see their mistake and let us go back to our lives. Instead, they took our side, twisted it around so much and used it against us.

For the opening statement on the prosecution side, they used a picture of our family and theirs on New Year’s Eve (2019-2020) to demonstrate how close of a friendship we had. They were setting it up to make it seem like my husband was grooming this girl. What they failed to mention is that the night that photo was taken, A stayed the night at that house where the picture was taken. About an hour so after all of us had gone home, my phone starts ringing off the hook. I woke up to see it was A calling – over and over. I answered it, and it turns out her friends dad had drank too much that night and was screaming at all the girls and throwing them outside in the cold. They needed help. A couldn’t reach her parents. Turns out they were passed out drunk and left their phones on the kitchen counter and didn’t hear her calling. So she called us next. I drank that night and wasn’t in a position to go pick the girls up, so I woke up R and he went and got all of them and brought them too our home. We had left over pizza and we fed all the girls while each waited for their parents to come get them. There were so many times we had to go get A or her friends and help them because her parents either refused to do so or they weren’t around.

They left that part out when they showed the court that photo.  Instead they tried to make it seem like we were the bad guys. They used one of the Alexa recordings to demonstrate that she was drunk because she “slurred” when she said Lynryd Skynrd. Yep.. THAT was the selling point. Never mind the fact that’s a weird set of words to say in general, or that all the other parts of that recording were completely clear and coherent-same with the four other recordings, or that the recording was BEFORE she testified to even having her first drink and also ignore the fact that she is mostly deaf in her right ear (has a cochlear implant) and that she has a speech impediment due to her medical issue. The prosecution left that all out. They even coached her to speak clearly so no one would notice that she has a tendency to mumble/slur various syllables. That was how the entire trial went. One manipulation after the next.

I have ever intention of going public with all of this when the time is right. I want each individual to be held accountable for what has happened to my husband, myself, and my kids. I don’t care how long it takes to fight. They were far too comfortable making wild allegations and twisting information to win for this to be their first time. How many other innocent people are sitting in prison – with their lives all but destroyed- because these people were more concerned about their career points than the lives of those they are supposed to be protecting? It is a business and we are the product.