This is the first-person account from the wife of an incarcerated registered citizen. Names are changed and locations other than Nebraska are concealed to protect the identity of this family. The story appears here as it was related to NebraskaFACTS, with minimal editing or other changes. We relate this story during a week in which we give thanks for, among other things, the freedoms we are supposed to enjoy in this nation. When you give thanks this week for being with your loved ones, stop for just a brief moment and say a prayer for David, his wife and his 2-year-old daughter. Ponder what their country has done to them.
Some readers will be moved to pass judgment on David and for his decisions. If you are among them, think about this: Here is a guy suffering from chemical addiction, which is as much a disease as cancer. What if, instead of imposing a lifetime of bashing for a terrible mistake when he was 18, we had somehow been able to help David get treatment for his addiction? Ask any recovering addict: Treatment and recovery will free you from fear and vastly improve your decision-making ability.
PART VII: Tears of Joy for a Six-Year Sentence
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We were both writing desperate letters and just crossing our fingers that no matter what the judge gave him as far as prison time, that they would kill the lifetime probation, which very rarely happens. In that state, once they get you, they won’t let go.
His lawyer worked very hard and somehow, miraculously, David wound up with six years for cutting the bracelet, to run consecutively after two-and-a-half years for each failure to register (FTR) charge. The FTR charges run concurrently. (They charged him once for FTR for not giving notification he was moving, and a second charge for not getting an ID with an address). He had multiple lifetime probations on the table, and the judge knocked them all off!! Which had me in tears. Which is pretty messed up.
He gets all that time (and three years standard probation for the drug charges), but I was crying tears of joy that my husband ONLY has to spend six more years in prison.
His parole date as of now is 10/26/2020, and his standard probation will end on our daughter’s 10th birthday. We were both ecstatic that the lifetime probation nightmare is over, but because we have dealt with this, are just waiting to see what other BS we will still have to deal with when he gets out. He will always be on the registry, because that state registers every former sex-offender for life.
So by the time this is said and done, my husband will be 40 and spent about half his life in prison for this. He missed the birth of our first child because he was afraid of being arrested for not having an updated ID.
In addition, I watched my dad die a slow death in a nursing home without the support of my husband. In the course of events dealing with the nursing home, I discovered that an SO is not allowed to be a guardian, so if I ever find myself in the same position as my dad, my own husband will not be allowed to be named my guardian. It might be some stranger, as was the case with my dad for other reasons, and that didn’t go well at all. My dad died on July 7, 2014, and I didn’t have my husband for that either. All because of fear and the registry and how it destroys. My daughter and I are absolutely collateral damage of the registry, and I will tell our story to whoever will listen, because this bullshit has got to end.
Recently, my husband called to tell me that he was told by the warden that because they have nowhere else to put him, they are moving him to the Special Management Unit (SMU), where he was nearly murdered in 2006. David already has panic attacks (and I believe PTSD from prison and things that happened in his life as a kid), and for them to want to put him back in a place he was almost murdered is astounding.
An inmate with the same last name as David was murdered in there. He was gutted and had his face bashed in. The next day, a corrections officer asked David for his lotto numbers and told him, “You should be pushing up daisies right now.”
Aside from him almost being killed there, David’s victim’s father also worked there at the time, and he might still, I don’t know for sure. I don’t understand how the hell that isn’t a conflict of interest.
If David is moved to SMU, it will be six years of no-contact visits, and our 2-year-old daughter and I will only be able to see him through glass.