The Truth of It All

I have never fully indicated what my husband's charges were because I did not want this blog to be a place to debate right or wrong.  I wanted it to be a place where spouses could go to know that they were not alone in what they were going through.  The problems and hurdles do not change regardless of the crime that is committed.  Many spouses recognized their own story in my entries while reading between the lines and have reached out to me in many ways to express their support and understanding of our situation.  We form a tight circle of wives, mothers and fathers continuing to support our loved ones regardless of what the outside world thinks of them.

To begin the story in a very simple way, we have learned that my husband has a addictive personality.  It is by the grace of God that he did not fall into a trap of alcohol or drug addictions.  It would have been very easy for him to become an alcoholic at a very early age within the environment that he was raised, and thankfully drugs were never a big part of his life.  The problem began for him with the discovery of pornography. 

Like any other addict, he could go for long periods of time and never want to look at it, but then when things in the world got too hard, and stress started taking over, the desire to view those pictures grew.  When we were younger, it was not so easy to view those pictures.  You had to go out and buy the magazines in the plain brown wrapper.  Then along came the internet, suddenly there are thousands of pictures at your finger tips and they are free.  It is so much easier looking at 2 dimensional pictures than dealing with a nagging wife, in depth conversations, household pressures, job stress, and over commitments with your time.  It becomes an escape when life got too hard.  The real problem arises when they are looking at all those legal pornography photos, and someone sticks in those borderline photos.  Suddenly this is something new, more interesting, and more exciting.  There is nothing wrong with it, it must be OK or it would not be out there, right?  The internet is regulated so nothing illegal is on it, right? 

Well that is all wrong.  Law enforcement knows these websites are out there.  They monitor most of them.  They caught my husband when "he was on a site known to traffic in illegal photos".  (If they know it, why don't they shut it down).  Ultimately, my husband plead to one count of possession of underage pornography, and was sentenced in the federal system to five years in federal prison.  They only found 15 "questionable" photos on his computer. 

I know my husband, he would never harm anyone, especially a child, but now he comes out of 5 years in federal prison and is labeled a sex offender.  I am not saying what he did was right, he did do something illegal, but did the punishment fit the crime.  Since all this has started, I have met men who have had hands on crimes and never spent a day in jail because they were convicted in the state system.  He spent 5 years away from his family and his children and now his punishment continues outside of the fence. 

What has been asked of my family just seems too much at times.  So much more has happened since he has been home.  He has been forced to leave our home after being there a month, he has been welcomed back by some wonderful people and has continued to hit a brick wall in trying to find work and in dealing with the federal justice system.  I feel pulled in too many directions, it is like the rubber band that keeps getting stretched until it just snaps.  I am waiting for the SNAP, but I manage to get up every day and keep going. 

Don't judge my family to harshly, for what I have learned in my last five years questioning the system is that we are all just one click away from these same charges.  They are on everyone's computer if you download anything from the internet or share files.  We all know someone who looked once, maybe just to see what it was or maybe it was an accident, but it does not matter in the eyes of the law.  You are guilty, and if you are found guilty they will continue to punish you for what they think you might do.  If you own a gun, you are not punished because you might murder someone.  If you watch murder mysteries and see murder victims you will not go out and kill someone so why do lawmakers think it is OK to punish one particular group they consider "sub-human" for what they might do?  And why does the public think this is acceptable?  If you believe it is acceptable today, I guarantee that your thinking will change when it happens to someone close to you.  Whether it be your son for sex with his girlfriend, your daughter for sexting, or your brother for file sharing, it will touch your lives because it is not getting better.  Law enforcement is going after everyone equally regardless of age or the situation.  

I will share more about all the challenges we are facing, because I know there are so many families going through the same thing.  It is affecting everyone's lives.  And if you think it does not affect you, think twice, as a tax payer you are footing the bill to have all these no risk offenders be monitored, counseled, and on public assistance while the high risk offenders are out there not being watched because 95% of all offenses against children are by people that they know. 

Only time will tell how this all plays out, but more battles lay ahead.  I will wallow for a moment but I will keep pushing forward.