Legal System

Throughout the events of the last year one thing I have learned is that the legal system is more like a business. From the moment the investigators showed up banging on my door, my family became entrenched in a new business experience. Maybe it was related to my husbands charges but the investigators did nothing to reassure or show compassion for me or my children. They did however encourage me to leave my home with my children after they tried to question me. I could not think of any place that I could go and wouldn't you know that me children did not have school that day. I finally decided to head to out of town friends. When I finally returned home later that evening all the lights had been left on and the door was left unlocked.

Immediately, money had to be secured to hire an attorney, hind sight being 20/20 I should have spent more time choosing an attorney. The attorney we hired was just another employee for "The Legal Business". All the money we spent was supposed to allow him to turn himself in if charges were filed, but mysteriously the papers never made it from our attorneys to the investigators and he was arrested while driving my oldest son to school. Later that day, I had to pick him up as he was getting his ankle monitor installed. The parole officer talked to us like this is something that happens every day, like grocery shopping. I understand that they do this every day and all day, but this was my first ever experience with all of this. Would it have been too much to ask to have them show just a small amount of compassion? I am not asking that they sit there and hold my hand but take a few minutes to explain what is happening and what the next step is. Don't tell me that they don't know your history when you are sitting there, that they don't know that you have not been through this before.

The attorney continued to only do what was necessary, explaining very little about what was going on. When my husband met with his "group" they joked that I was the only one who seemed to know what was going on, because whenever one of them called me for anything, I took the opportunity to ask as many questions as possible, not letting them hang up until every question I could think of in that moment had been answered. They want to handle this like a business, so could I. Everyone will talk to you as long as they are getting paid.

As a whole I have been enlightened to the workings of our legal system and am truly disappointed in what I have seen. I am not sure what I can do about the flaws and black holes in the system but I feel sympathy for all those yet to experience it in the future. The one bright spot in all of this was the counseling center I was referred to for my children, it is free, and yet it is a place of safety and comfort. A place that I know the healing can continue.