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Brief Synopsis: While we were living in a small, rural Maine town, we learned the hard way that you don’t shit in your own backyard. Volunteering for a town finance committee position would turn out to be the biggest mistake of our lives. Meanwhile, I was asking for shared custody of my children of which my ex-wife who lives in Tennessee did not want. So she used a shared enemy while spreading misinformation on-line on a “support local police” forum and together they systematically destroyed our chances of custody and our futures in Maine. We got dragged into their evil plots to no fault of our own. My ex-wife weaponized the police department after she gaslit me into a suicidal meltdown and then accused me of abusing Jennifer. I was devastated after she told me I would never see my children again. On another occasion, Jennifer called emergency services to get help for me after my ex-wife used the manufactured domestic violence charges to regain physical custody of my children. Her actions made me suicidal again. They turned the situation into a “domestic altercation,” never interviewed the alleged victim (Jennifer), and handed her a summons for a felony alcohol charge related to beer I purchased. She doesn’t drink. And a third time, another out-of-state bad actor called the police department and told them Jennifer was “suicidal” when she was not. She was in bed and I walked outside at night to let our dogs out to police officers under the cover of darkness pointing guns at me. They detained Jennifer, put her in the back of a cop car, and took her to the hospital for a suicide assessment of which she was quickly released. In all three police encounters, they never interviewed us and either ran with a narrative or created one. Two weeks later, the abusive cop who targeted Jennifer in the second incident shot a suicidal woman with mental illness because she was brandishing a knife.
LEE’S VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT:
I want this article accusing me of fabricated domestic violence charges removed from the Sun Journal and any other publications it may appear in immediately.
This article printed in 2010 is still causing extreme emotional distress and pain to me, my wife Jennifer, my children, and an innocent young girl from Massachusetts. These lies and narratives are negatively impacting our mental and physical health every time we are reminded of it.
Everything in the article is manufactured, not true, and totally inaccurate. It was designed to discredit Jennifer and I. Both of the perpetrators had financial motives: the ex-wife wanted to hurt me and keep the child support checks coming and the police department didn’t want anyone touching their budget. It drove Jennifer and I into mental health treatment facilities due to suicidal ideation because the bullying destroyed us mentally and physically.
We pleaded to have the article removed, instead it’s open to the public, not even behind a paywall. We have thoughts of suicide every time we have to revisit this article. The entire situation caused us extreme emotional distress and is a time in our lives we would like to forget. But, we can’t escape it. We can’t get fair employment or even volunteer opportunities without this article coming back to haunt us. It’s like ripping the scab off a wound every time we are reminded of this dark time in our life. This ruined all chances of Jennifer using her Masters degree in public policy and management in Maine. It forced her to resign from the Finance Committee after bullying by the police and other finance committee members. It lead to a life of depression and isolation because we were too afraid to even be involved in the community.
The mention of earlier domestic violence charges against me in the newspaper were false allegations made by an ex-wife claiming I was abusing Jennifer. When in fact after my ex-wife found out I filed for shared custody of the kids, she threatened me and said I would never see my kids again. I had a visceral mental health reaction and she used this mental health crisis to justify that I am an abuser. Then she weaponized the system like she did when I was in the military, and she made a phone call to the Police Department from Tennessee to create a situation that would keep me from getting shared custody of my children, during a custody dispute. My lawyer told me there was no hope regardless of the charges being dropped, even Jennifer tried to tell the police I needed help for PTSD and I wasn’t an abuser. The police department filed a restraining order against me and I was left homeless in the middle of winter. I knew no one else in Maine.
Even after the temporary restraining order (TRO) was lifted within days and charges were dropped because Jennifer told them there was no abuse, I still lost custody and the ability to see my children because they moved back to Tennessee at the insistence of their mother. She wouldn’t let them visit us in Maine so we had to visit them in Tennessee under supervision. This was hard on us because both of us went untreated the entire time we were in Maine. She left the community and the internet with the impression that Jennifer was a faker and because I had Post Traumatic Stress, we were both “crazy” and “dangerous” and unfit to be parents. She interfered with court ordered visitation and there was nothing we could do. The repercussion of any action we took would result in extreme levels of abuse. We had to protect our mental health to prevent suicide.
We still struggle with suicidal ideation because of your blatantly dehumanizing article. It causes turmoil in our marriage. This first incident with my ex-wife is what lead to the mental health incident you failed to elaborate on because you had us pegged as criminals. Jennifer called for help. I was suicidal and experiencing a mental health crisis because I was losing my children to manufactured domestic violence charges; Jennifer was the alleged victim no less. The Police didn’t help us with my mental health crisis despite feeling suicidal, instead they used these opportunities to destroy me and my wife’s reputation preventing shared custody of the children, and ensuring Jennifer never worked in politics again. We were both innocent victims of circumstance.
Jennifer made the mistake of volunteering on a Finance Committee in this town. She cared about the community, the high tax rates, and reducing the budget. She advocated for the removal of two vacant police officer positions in a run down town with less than 5000 people. The police aggressively fought to keep them. In the end, the citizens voted to eliminate the positions and the police department went from 14 full time officers to 12. These blatant misuse of the police force incidents and your subsequent narrative has ruined our reputation and lives. The officer involved in targeting Jennifer was a documented abuser and bully (especially of women) and his behavior resulted in disciplinary action in 2005 and a threat to fire him if he mistreated citizens again. Apparently, what he did to us in 2010 didn’t count. Four years after he traumatized and harmed us, he was entangled in an officer involved shooting of a suicidal woman with mental illness.
We have since moved out of state to escape this police department, get treatment and start a new life. We are both disabled veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We both served our country honorably in the United States Air Force for 15+ years before being medically retired. We have since been diagnosed with other illnesses that went untreated while serving and living in rural Maine. Jennifer has chronic lead poisoning from military service which impacts the brain primarily; it rendered her debilitated and mute. I have multiple untreated brain injuries and gastrointestinal issues that caused malnutrition. All of our conditions severely impacted the brain, mental health, and physical health. Being abused by the local cops and my ex-wife and then losing access to the kids only compounded the trauma and Post Traumatic Stress.
This article serves no purpose today. It accomplished what it set out to do. It drove us out of the community and systematically ruined our lives. It makes us want to die every time we think about it. We are in treatment for trauma, lead poisoning, brain injuries, Lyme disease and other diseases but are slowly healing. We want a chance in life, but even though neither of us have a criminal record and worked hard our entire lives, we have to explain ourselves over and over to correct the narrative. It negatively impacts our mental and physical health and sets us back in treatment.
All charges surrounding the manufactured domestic violence charges and the alcohol charge were dropped because they were in fact ludicrous. Jennifer should not have been charged anything when she called to ask for help for me because I was suicidal after my ex-wife threatened to keep my children from me. Jennifer was charged with a felony charge that had I not bought the beer, this never would have happened to her, and I live with that. There was no basis and nothing would hold up in court because nothing was real. Nothing was handled properly. And it was shocking to read your article as a healthier person looking back at how helpless, vulnerable and sick we were.
I never received any mental health treatment from these calls, we instead were all treated like criminals, dehumanized, and destroyed. We want a second chance and we’re going to fight this article until it is removed. We have nothing left. We can’t get a fair chance in life with this article. And you look like the bullies that you are by assisting the police department dehumanize two disabled veterans and two kids who were having a hard time too. We want this removed immediately for our mental health purposes and for our future prosperity.
I promise you that someday this article will cause someone to die by suicide. All it takes for someone with Post Traumatic Stress and brain injuries is a hair pin trigger to initiate a suicidal tailspin. The next person who throws this article in our face may be the trigger. This letter will be documentation that the Sun Journal and the Police Department are ultimately responsible for the outcome. Your actions and inactions over the years are deplorable. They have had negative consequences for everyone, including my two sons. You taught us that there is no justice in Maine. You taught us that the Home Rule Law doesn’t work. And you taught us that we were better off dead, or you would do it for us.
The mass shooting incident with Army National Guard member Robert Card in Maine is just one of many examples of how abuse, neglect, and bullying impacts a person’s psyche and their soul, especially if they’re really sick. He had a traumatic brain injury and the “authorities” just blew him off as another mentally ill person and let him downward spiral, just like they do to everyone in Maine. We didn’t realize how bad Maine is until we moved somewhere new. It’s authoritarian and there is zero investment in the people and their health. It’s like being in a mental prison. And no one hears or sees you. Haven’t we done enough time? Where’s our second chance? Where’s our treatment? We didn’t realize that being perfect still wasn’t good enough. We’d like to put you, the police department, and the State of Maine in our rear view.
You’re traumatizing us to this day but we’re taking the power back.
RELATED LINKS:
Jennifer and Lee: Until Death Do Us Part
Parental Alienation: I Watched What Happened to My Father Happen to My Husband & It Broke Me
“I Just Want to Disappear”: The End Result of a Lifetime of Dehumanization and Abuse
Socials:
Facebook: @ftoxicpeople
Twitter: @ftoxicpeople
Instagram: @ftoxicpeople
YouTube: @fktoxicpeople
Other websites: Military Justice for All
Jennifer and Lee 