What do the mothers of heinous criminals do?

Factual Questions
41

I think it is wonderful that your family is so supportive of your nephew. Hopefully, it is this support that will prevent him from ever reoffending, which is my true wish.

I am very supportive of my incarcerated son. I write to him all the time, and see him once a month or so (can’t afford the trip any more often than that, though, and he understands this). I am going to be sending him pictures of my wedding on the 14th of next month, and then, when I go see him shortly after that, I will be wearing the dress I wore to the wedding so that he can see it in person.

My son in prison recently expressed something to me that he said he had never felt before that was remorse. Not remorse for being in prison but, for the first time in his adult life, remorse for what he did, for the crimes he committed and the people he hurt, not just the 2 victims, but his family and friends as well. To me, this is a step back to human that I have been hoping and praying for since he started using the drugs and getting in trouble.

42

CZPhoenix, you seem a very humble and earnest person, so this probably isn’t what you’re expecting, but I’ll say it anyway: YOU are an inspiration… My son is only 8 and no trouble outside of normal 8-year-old boy foolishness, but you make me want to scoop him up and love him like never before. Thank you for sharing your story and your thoughts and feelings.

HH

43

Thank you.

44

At some point children become people who make their own choices. LIke your son did. He made some bad ones. But you continued to make choices, as well. Good ones. At least ones that I hope I would make if I ever found myself in your position. Your son is lucky to have you there for him. And I feel lucky to have read your post and see the sense and grace a person can walk through life with, even when thrown one ugly curveball.

Thank you for sharing.

45

Some of you may be interested in the Texas Inmate Families Association. TIFA, as it is called, works for the “Breaking the cycle of crime by strengthening families through support, education, and advocacy.” They do come from the point of view that the friends and loved ones of offenders did not commit the crime and they need the support to navigate the confusing world of the Texas Justice System. I encourage those with interest in this subject to browse this website. I especially encourage you to look at the picture of the TIFA board of directors. Every one of those people has a loved one in a Texas prison. So they look like monsters? They’re just people. One of them has been a friend of my parents’ for my whole life. She’s a public school teacher. She could live next door to you. I have pictures of me and her son playing together when we were little. He is serving a life sentence for murder and will never see the outside of a prison.

46

I vaguely recall a few years ago Marilyn Vos Savant was asked this question in her Parade column- would she stop loving her child if they were a horrible criminal, or some such. She said yes, she would stop loving them- she has never had children, btw. She got a ton of responses chiding her for that- the vast majority of people seem to love their children unconditionally, but isn’t that what mothers and fathers are for?

47

My brother spent some time in prison for some pretty unpleasant stuff.

He’s still my brother. He knows he did wrong, he tries to do better now. That’s all you can ask of anyone.

48

Sometimes, they do this

49

In Erma Bombeck’s book “Mother The Second Oldest Profession” she includes a letter from the mother of a criminal that she received, along with this comment: I cannot possibly improve or add to this letter. She belongs in this book.

Basically, the mother states about her son’s crimes: I didn’t do it, nor do I condone it. But I still love him, and it hurts.

50

First, you must define what you mean by “a loyal mother”. Is a loyal mother the one who accepts what her son/daughter did and hides it? Is a loyal mother the one who accepts what her son/daughter did and hides from it? Is a loyal mother the one who realizes that her child may have grown into something that she doesn’t recognize and run from it?

Or is a loyal mother the person who says “This is my child. I birthed this child. I raised this child and Holy Moly! What the heck happened?” (that’s my category, by the way, right were I was when I found out what my son did).

I love all of my children. I realize that they are each individuals and that one of them is a convicted felon. What he did was hideous, but when do we say “that’s in the past and he’s trying to become a better person, even with the limited resources of a prison”?

(For those of you who don’t know what my son did, scroll down a long ways. It’s there. Not the grim, bloody details, but it’s there.)

For me, regular visits to my son, who is held in a medium security facility in North Carolina, are very important to him and to me. For me, it lets me see what, if any changes, are manifesting in my son. For him, it lets him see that, even though I know each and every grim detail of what he did, I still love him. I do not condone what he did, neither do I think that the system was unfair to him or that he was unjustly convicted. But to know that his mother still loves him means a lot to him. To know that, even though he did these things, there is one person in the world that it is still safe to talk to, to be soft with and to admit things to.

Would I ever take that from him? No, I would not. Does this mean that I am hiding from what he did? Not hardly. Does my still loving him mean that I think that he should be released back into society? Nope, it sure doesn’t. But what it means is that I love the child I birthed. I love the man he has become and is still becoming.

I think that it’s time the courts stopped trying to automatically cast the mother of a heinous criminal in the same light as the criminal. The courts, the attorneys, the jury, none of them know the real story about the past. No one can.

My son’s attorney, back in the trial phase of his crime, asked me to write a letter about his childhood. He told me to include any abuse, abandonment, etc, that had happened. I was furious. There was no abuse. There was no abandonment. Those were things that the lawyer was fishing for to excuse my son for what he did. I did NOT write him the letter that he had hoped to receive. Later, when I finally got to talk to my son, I asked him about that, and he was furious that his attorney had done that. He said “I told him that I wasn’t abused, abandoned, neglected or anything else. Why does no one believe me?”

51

The mother of Anders Behring Breivik has essentially gone into hiding and has not sought contact with him, even though it would now be permitted.

His father and sister live in other countries and have also not tried to contact him.

Of course, what he did was several orders of magnitude worse than CZPhoenix’s son or Shakester’s brother.