Our Legal System Needs Urgent Revision!

 

I refuse to call the Legal system in this country, a Justice system.  It is far, far from being just.  In fact, the system too often allows for gross miscarriages of justice, damaging many innocent people, to varying degrees.

Take the case of Susan Cox Powell.  In 2009, Susan mysteriously disappeared one night in Utah, leaving behind a husband and two young sons.  Her husband, Josh Powell, was not arrested, despite an overwhelming amount of facts that very strongly pointed towards the conclusion that he was behind the disappearance, and likely death, of his wife.

Josh Powell said, “he’d taken his two sons on a sudden late-night camping trip the night his wife was last seen, despite freezing temperatures and a snowstorm.”  Source: https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/dateline-investigates-the-disappearance-of-susan-powell-in-new-2-hour-special.html/  Retrieved 11/20/19.  After the disappearance, one of the sons, when being interviewed separately from their father at a police station, said that his Mom had gone on that trip too!  She never came back.

I understand the hesitation to declare a person guilty until there is enough evidence.  Innocent until proven guilty.  Susan’s body was not found.  But Susan had confided in female friends, letting them know that Josh was a controlling, abusive husband.  And Susan had consulted a divorce lawyer.  We know that one of the most dangerous times for a victim of domestic violence is when the abusive partner finds out that his partner has decided to leave the relationship.

Following the highly suspicious disappearance of Susan, the two sons, Charles and Braden, (then ages four years and two years), were initially allowed to stay living with their father, Josh.  I see this, in basic terms, as allowing a suspected murderer to be allowed to freely take care of two very young children.  Josh had moved in with his father.  When Josh’s father was arrested for child pornography, the situation was re-visited and Charles and Braden went to live with the parents of Susan Powell, their grandparents.  A judge ruled that Josh Powell could see his sons, with supervision.  Supervision in the form of a social worker being present.

In 2012, a social worker arrived with Charles and Braden at a house that Josh was renting.  Charles and Braden entered the house.  Josh shut the front door on the social worker before she had a chance to enter.  Then, in the spirit of pure evil, “Josh killed himself and his two children in a murder-suicide, attacking the boys with a hatchet before setting his home on fire, leading to an explosion.”  Source: https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/dateline-investigates-the-disappearance-of-susan-powell-in-new-2-hour-special.html/  Retrieved 11/20/19.

Meanwhile, despite so many reasons to back up the innocence of Rodney Reed, Rodney Reed “has spent the past 22 years in prison after being convicted of the 1996 murder of Stacy Stites.”  Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/rodney-reed-jason-flom-wrongful-conviction-interview-913170/  Retrieved 11/20/19.  For example, “Rodney Reed and Stacey Stites were having a consensual sexual relationship.”  Source: https://www.innocenceproject.org/10-facts-you-need-to-know-about-rodney-reed-who-is-scheduled-for-execution-on-november-20/  Retrieved 11/20/19.  So, accusing Rodney Reed of rape and murder makes no sense.  By the way, Rodney Reed is a black man.  Furthermore, a prison-mate of Jimmy Fennell’s, (Jimmy Fennell being the man who had been engaged to Stacey, and both Jimmy and Stacey being white people), reported that he had heard Jimmy Fennell confessing “to murdering Stacey stating, “I had to kill my n*****-loving fiancée”.  Note: Jimmy Fennell “served a 10-year prison term for a sex crime and kidnapping” after Stacey Stites was murdered.  Source: https://www.innocenceproject.org/10-facts-you-need-to-know-about-rodney-reed-who-is-scheduled-for-execution-on-november-20/  Retrieved 11/20/19.

Rodney Reed was due to be executed in Texas today, November 20th, 2019.  Fortunately, this execution was halted.  Just five days ago!  But, … Bitter-sweet.  Innocent people in prison for decades for crimes they did not commit?!  Where is the justice?!

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To Trust, or Not to Trust?

 

To trust, or not to trust?  That is the question.  After exiting from a relationship in which one was abused, how ought one best approach the issue of trust?  In my case, possibly unusually, despite having been quite severely abused, both physically and emotionally, I did not struggle to trust future men who entered my life as potential partners.  Am I saying that this is a positive thing?

On the one hand, I believe it is.  For it means that I was not allowing the bad behavior/character of my abusive ex-boyfriend to lead me to automatically distrust other men, therefore giving any new man in my life a fair chance to show me naturally whether he was to be trusted or not.

On the other hand, I am questioning the ease with which I trust men.  Is this innate trust that I seem to have perhaps one of the factors that led me deeper, further, into an abusive relationship?  Trusting when it wasn’t earned, when it wasn’t deserved.  Trusting when to others it would have been obvious that the man cannot be trusted!

In the abusive relationship that I found myself in, and in a subsequent long-term relationship in which my partner was, unbeknownst to me, cheating on me, I most definitely had a habit of giving the man I was with, the benefit of the doubt.  Again, and again, and again.  And that was despite my doubts, my suspicions, the warning signs!  So, given that I did see the “red flags”, we can say that this is not a case of blindly trusting.  So, on what basis has my trust lived?

I have asked myself this question.  My deep well of trust was not born out of naivety.  I saw the signs that pointed towards reasons to either at least suspend judgment as to whether something that he said was true, or to veer towards distrusting his future actions in advance because of so many past let-downs.  Let-downs like the broken promises to change, to do better.  So, why did I keep trusting?  Actually, I think the more pertinent question is: Why did I keep hoping?  Hoping that things would change for the better.  Hoping that he would stop hurting me, in any form.  I think the simple answer to that, although it is actually more complicated, is twofold.  1. Since I find it so difficult to “wrap my head around” the fact that a person can and does hurt another person, especially his/her partner, I struggle to believe, or perhaps to accept, that a person would not want to change his/her behavior and work seriously hard on doing so.  And 2. Because I wanted so very much for him to change, as there were some things about him and our relationship that I loved, I didn’t want to lose those things and I fantasized about his cruel ‘side’ leaving him.

So, when does one give up hoping that things will change?  When is enough, enough?!

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