Soapbox Diner
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It's in God's hands now |
03.10.07 |
March 9, 2007
Your Honor:
Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to address the Court. I hope you can accept my apologies for being unable to attend in person today, as I do not have adequate reserves of paid time off to leave work. However, I have asked my appointed advocate to read this statement aloud in my absence today.
Your Honor, throughout these upcoming proceedings, the Court will likely hear many difficult and concerning things about the defendant, Mr. T. However, what you may not hear are the buoying and redeeming qualities he possesses.
Mr. T has had a troubled life. Despite having been blessed with a good and stable family life in his youth, Mr. T is only able to read at a remedial level. Throughout his youth and adulthood, he has depended on the help of those close to him with even the most basic life functions such as filling out job or residency applications. He has often expressed shame and embarrassment over his deficit, and has often felt compelled to hide it from society.
As an adolescent, Mr. T went to live with his stepfather, whom he characterizes as a strict disciplinarian. Instead of having the opportunity to enjoy his adolescence by doing such activities as joining sports, he worked in his stepfather’s janitorial service after school and in the evenings. Mr. T has often expressed that although working early in life would not have been his own choice, he now values the work ethic it instilled in him. His youthful role model was a strict disciplinarian. That is what he was taught was the appropriate way to raise young men, such as my own son.
As a teenager, Mr. T met a female peer with whom he fell in love. While still in high school, they conceived a child together. Mr. T did not abandon the girl or their child. Rather, he finished high school, got a job with the Sanitation Department, and set up a home for the three of them to live in. He provided for his family both before and after they married. Throughout the duration of their marriage, he continued to provide for his family with the income he earned working at the Sanitation Department. He maintained and took care of his responsibilities.
When his wife asked for a divorce after some 13 plus years of continuous partnership, Mr. T was devastated. In his severe emotional distress, he unfortunately made bad life choices for which he was convicted, imprisoned, and released. He repaid his debt for those bad choices, and he moved on in his life for many years without incident.
Mr. T had no other encounters with the justice system until he initiated the process of ending a long term relationship with Ms. E. Allegedly she felt compelled to call in a report of Domestic Violence against Mr. T. Although I do not possess a full knowledge of the incidents surrounding that allegation, I do know and can personally attest as fact that Ms. E has continued to attempt contact and reconciliation with Mr. T, despite the relationship having been over for over three years.
To this day, Ms. E calls not only Mr. T's cell phone on a regular, sometimes daily basis, but she surreptitiously obtained both our home telephone number in (our last home) prior to our move to (the new house), as well as the home number (at the new house). She has continued on all three numbers to call in the middle of the night, waking and disrupting the entire household. She has threatened myself and my child with violence, and has followed us in her vehicle when we have been out running errands. Based on these actions alone, I personally find her allegations of abuse to be of dubious veracity, and I question her motivation for making her allegations.
Since that time, Mr. T has continued to make many strides to improve his life and help others in his community and extended family. He has spent years volunteering as an art coordinator for the (______) Foundation, which is an advocacy organization for families of mentally retarded children and adults. He also assists his retired parents, aunts, and his 99-year-old great aunt by constructing and maintaining aids to daily living such as mobility ramps and hand railings. He is an asset to the community and his family, persons whom without Mr. T’s assistance would suffer hardship.
The foregoing are the traits and characteristics which I admire and respect in Mr. T: steadfastness and willing assistance to others in need.
For myself in regards to the occurrences of March 3, 2007, it is true that I did not want Mr. T’s attentions. It is also a fact that our relationship has been troubled for the better part of its duration. It is my belief, and one with which Mr. T expressed disagreement, that it was unhealthy. It is also my belief that it was a relationship that should have ended long before it did. However the Court now titles me a victim. I dislike that term and refuse acceptance of it in my life.
For my son who witnessed the events of that night, I acknowledge what he witnessed, and experienced as a result, was traumatic for him. However, it is a fact that life is full of traumatic experiences, some of which are uninvited or unexpected. I now have the choice to guide him in a life lesson on how to be a victim, or how to recover through exploration of those traumatic events and their subsequent emotional impact. It is my job as his parent to teach him how to reconcile those emotions and how to persevere through determination to overcome, as well as how to succeed despite adverse circumstances we may experience. I prefer to teach my son the latter, and I hope that I am successful in providing him with an example of that in myself.
I can also teach my son about forgiveness, rather than retribution or revenge. I have the opportunity to teach him how to examine events and weigh them with appropriate objectivity to determine and enforce appropriate consequences.
Mr. T’s actions, in my estimation, resulted from a lifetime in which he has had the desire to determine his own destiny; a desire which has been frustrated from his youth through his adulthood by his inability to read. This has necessitated his dependence on others to help him accomplish his life goals. Exacerbating this lifelong frustration have been the traumatic experiences he has suffered which he has felt helpless to correct.
The events of March 3 were a culmination of desperation to maintain a home life that he felt benefited him, the frustration of having to establish new support systems, and the helplessness to alter or affect the course of his future. In that way, I believe Mr. T is the greater victim. I do not agree that imprisonment will benefit or rehabilitate Mr. T, or protect the community.
It is my belief that what is appropriate for Mr. T now is counseling to help him overcome his negative self-image as a victim of his circumstances, his frustration and embarrassment, and his emotional aversion to change. He needs educational rehabilitation in matters of reading and tasks of daily living. Were those successfully established in his life, and he instituted the changes personally and with conscious acceptance of responsibility, I feel Mr. T’s questionable choices of behavior would be resolved, and he could continue in life as a benefit and a blessing for his family and the community.
I encourage the Court to view Mr. T holistically and with mercy. It is my hope that the Court will serve all parties in this case with creative, courageous faith in the inherent goodness we all possess, despite our shortcomings. Thank you again for allowing me to express my thoughts and concerns today.
Sincerely,
SBD
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