Project Summary
My father has been incarcerated since I was 13 months old for the rape and murder of a young teenage girl. Although he pleaded guilty during the initial trial, he maintained his innocence with his friends and family through the first decade of his incarceration. Due to this, I grew up visiting him on a regular basis at the Wyoming State Penitentiary (a maximum security facility – where the worst of the worst are housed).
When I was about 10 years old, my father confessed that he was in fact guilty of the charges against him and very quickly the possibility of “someday your father will be found innocent and will be home with us” was ripped out from under me. No more white picket fence for my future.
This, for fairly obvious reasons, was the catalyst for quite a bit of both internal and external turmoil in my life as a child and extended well into adulthood. In addition to the personal anguish felt, my mother was also personally broken by the news. Her inability to heal translated into a very emotionally, mentally and physically abusive method of raising me which inhibited my own ability to heal as I lacked a positive “model” for what a healthy way to process my life circumstances was.
Although currently there are more than 10 million children who have, or have had, a parent or both parents incarcerated – children with stories unmistakably similar to mine – to date there has not been a single one of us who has shined a light on the difficulties that circumstances like ours create in a no-holds-barred manner.
These difficulties often present in every aspect of our lives – friend, family, and romantic relationships; goals and aspirations; educational pursuits; career choices; physical health choices; personal faith and religious beliefs, and beyond.
While a small body of research does exist (statistical data, some case studies, articles, and the like), this will literally be the first book to detail what it’s like to grow up with such a stigma – the way the stigma manifests itself in everyday life situations – and how I’ve been able to heal from such deep seeded wounds.
There will be a decent amount of autobiographical information but I am not simply recounting my story year by year (the likes of “Shattered Silence” by Melissa Moore). Rather, A Murderer’s Son provides a view from 30,000 feet of the battleground that those like me must fight our way out of in order to begin healing. To complement the painting of the big picture, I provide a zoomed in view of the major hurtles that are likely to be faced during the journey, underlining the pitfalls that are often encountered along with some best practices that can be employed to prevent getting tripped up or sucked back in along the way.
To ensure that A Murderer’s Son is more than simply a one sided and biased view on the subject matter discussed, I have enlisted the cooperation and assistance of Dr. Denise Johnston – unarguably the world expert on the psychological, social and economic impacts that having an offender as a parent has on the child(ren) – and Dr. Vincent Felitti – the internationally renowned co-principle of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study, and I am including outside scholarly research whenever possible.
Additionally, while this book is not in any way an attempt to assert my own religious beliefs upon the reader, I would be remiss if I excluded the implications of my relationship with God, as I know Him, and how that has impacted my past, my current life, and my future view.
To ensure that all autobiographical information is recounted as truthfully as possible – avoiding personal bias and/or a skewed memory due to the traumatic nature surrounding some situations - I am interviewing as many key persons from my past as possible to obtain their memories of me and the situations that I am discussing. This research included making a trip to see my father, whom I hadn’t seen or spoken with since a very short one hour visit when I was 18 years old (12 years ago), to interview him. You as the reader, get a front row seat to how that visit went and how it has affected me.
The motivations for this project are:
1. Reaching out to those living with the same or similar circumstances as me, in order to:
a. Let them know that they aren’t alone.
b. Help them avoid making the same mistakes I did.
c. Provide them with hope by showing them that healing is possible.
2. To provide a resource for anyone who interacts with “us” (remaining parent, adoptive or step-parents, outside guardians, therapists, school teachers and counselors, police officers, etc.), especially pre-healing, in hopes of helping them understand what that child they are responsible for is going through and ultimately preparing them to help.
3. Be the first voice of brutally full disclosure – the initiator – of a global conversation on this topic.
Concerning #2 and #3 on the aforementioned list of motivations, coinciding with the release of A Murderer’s Son, I will be launching a website that will not only be a source of information and resources on the topics highlighted but will also include a discussion board that people around the world can use to continue the dialog that this book will be starting. It will be a venue that will allow myself and those like me (whom I term “peripheral victims”) to be themselves as they are provided a place to interact with others experiencing similar life circumstances. It will also be a place for professionals to go to gain a greater understanding of what we go through/are going through to enhance and improve their efforts to help us in the professional setting.
Although the target demographic of A Murderer’s Son is the child(ren) of offenders, it is my sincerest hope that the impact will be much greater and the reach will be much further.
Finally, while I do admit that this book and the journey I’ve embarked on to write it does provide a personal benefit – it’s fueling a strong and purposeful step forward in my own personal healing – my focus is on the reader. My focus is on getting the reader to a place of healing. To a place where no longer does a circumstance that they had no control over control their life. This is what
A Murderer’s Son has to offer. To write this book is why I am
A Murderer’s Son.
As IndieGoGo's instructions say, "And that’s all there is to it." My goal is simple - to reach out to and help as many people as I can by sharing my story. It's a difficult story to tell, even considering that I'm pretty far down the healing path, but if doing so can help others from going through some (or all) of what I went through to get to this point, I'm willing to stand naked on the proverbial world stage.
I appreciate all of you who even took the time to read all of this and thank you, from the bottom of my heart, if you're able to help me push this project forward - financially or otherwise!
P.S. For anyone wondering how I have an "@IHNPublishing.com" email address if I'm self-publishing, I own IHNPublishing.com. Part of the requirements to work with Lightening Source (since they don't work with authors directly) is that I had to establish a "publishing company" so I can sign contracts with them and establish my printing account.