In today’s society, we make assumptions about people by their appearance and where we meet them. As a society we need to take a look if that is the right thing to do.

Take for example, the case of 37 year old John , a former Military Police Officer in the US Army. Divorced twice with three children a respectable person, if unfortunate in love, most would agree.

A man who loves his children and supports them in all that they do. A man who would help anyone if they simply asked him to.

Now come forward to the year 2000 the same man who is now a resident of the Texas Department of Corrections.

In 2000, John was tried and convicted of Sexual Assault and received a sentence of 60 years with his earliest parole date being April 2031. He has also been disowned by his family and all those he thought cared about him.

Despite this John is a gentle mannered man who accepts his punishment for what he has done and admits that he was wrong.

Quote

(John: June 15^th, 2008)

I did wrong and deserve to be punished. I admit that, but I was not so unsalvageable that society should give up on me.

But what contributed to his crime?

In John’s life there is a long history of abuse and “learned behavior” This is his story. He is not asking for your pity or your sympathy.

Even to this day, John finds it difficult to admit he was abused physically, emotionally and sexually and by the people who were supposed to care about him the most.

John’s Story

Quote:

John June 2008:

I will start from what I see as the beginning for me and I will explain the things that were factors in the choice’s I made. I do not, by any means, blame anyone else. Ultimately I made the choice but there were things that affected the choices I made.

In approximately 1967 John’s parents met. John’s father was 32 years old and his mother was only 15 years old.

Between 1968 and 1970 John’s mother was to give birth to two sons’ neither of whom would live longer than 24 hours.

Then in the early morning hours of December 12^th, 1970 in Kahuku, Hawaii John was born.

John was the first child born to his parents to live longer than 24 hours and was viewed by his parents as a miracle child. They adored him and for two years he was the center of their world.

In 1972, his parents were blessed with a second son, Matt. John was no longer a miracle. For a child who had been the center of his parents world it was difficult for him to adjust to having a brother and it caused some resentment.

Circa 1974/75, John’s father passed away and the young boy was left without a male role model until his mother met her new partner. From here all form of a normal life stopped.

From 1978 – 1983 John’s stepfather would watch him shower; this had an adverse effect on his self confidence and self esteem.

In 1979, on what should have been an enjoyable trip to Burger King in Wahiawa, Hawaii, John was Sexually Assaulted in the bathroom by an older man.

This experience left John scared and withdrawn for some time.

In 1980, John went out on a school field trip, the children stayed in cabins with a dorm monitor from the University of Hawaii.

For some reason there was not enough male dorm monitors so John’s cabin had a female monitor approximately 19 years of age.

Again John was singled out and the female showed John how to do things of a sexual nature. John thought it was a game and showed no fear. This was to further blur the lines regarding acceptable sexual conduct.

The following year (1981) his younger brothers had a baby sitter a girl of about 18 who again showed John how to do things of a sexual nature.

Things deteriorated further in the summer of 1983, when John was raped by two older male cousins.

In 1985 and after eight years of abuse, John began to fight back resulting in physical confrontations with his stepfather. His step father did not like either John or Matt as they were his “white” step sons. (Hawaii is the only state in American where Caucasians are a minority.)

John recalls one such incident.

Quote:

John Teixeira June 2008

“One day my stepfather forced my brother, my cousin (his son) and I to fistfight saying that the first one to stop was going to get beat. It ended up in my cousin (his son) stopping first and my stepfather did nothing to him but he began beating my brother and I with a stout stick.

When my mom came home and she asked about the many bruises we had he had told her we had gotten into a fight. When we told her what happened, she refused to believe us.

I can remember several incidents like that.

If this physical abuse was not enough the young John and Matt had to contend with their mothers’ constant emotional abuse. His mother took every opportunity to yell at her two eldest sons’. They were constantly told that she wished they were dead and that she wished they had never been born.

When John’s mother was not blaming John and Matt for all her problems she would lecture them on how they should revere women and not abuse them.

The formative, impressionable years that most people receive nurturing encouragement and kindness both John and Matt were subjected to abuse. The switch from being blamed for everything to being preached to about how to treat a woman both John and Matt became shy and awkward around women.

In 1986, John, his mother, his two half brothers and half sister went to stay with his Grandparents. His mother and half siblings only stayed a year but a lot happened in that year.His grandparents both worked and his mother found work in the local convenience store. John was often left with child minders who had little to no time for the children.

John was now sixteen years old, tall and well built his mother asked him to stack the shelves with her and be a deterrent to trouble in the store. John recalls this in his own words:

Quote: John

June 2008

My mom was working at a convenience store. At least once a week I would go with her and help her by stocking stuff and I was a general deterrent to trouble. One of the things I discovered at this time was a magazine called “Forum”. There were several different ones and they were filled with letters and stories about sex. They were better than pictures to me. I would read them when I could and steal them when the chance arose. I can still remember some of the subject titles “Back yard play”, “A family that plays together, stays together” , “Randy Rivals”. I haven’t read anything from any of these books for about fifteen years it is a wonder I can remember any of this. I guess you can see the impact

By 1986 John was regarded as a “nerd” he was a big fan of Dungeons and Dragons, but due to the fact, John was also athletic and on the school’s Boxing team not many people teased him because of it.

By 1992, John had quit school, fathered three children and was in his second marriage. He was 21 years old and working with the developmentally disabled a job he enjoyed immensely.

In 1993, his probation for burglary ended and he entered the US military training as a Military Police Officer.

He thought his life had changed for the better.

After a tour of duty in Korea where he made several good friends he remembers in particular a fellow MP of African ~ American/ Native American mix whom he was caught in the middle of a Korean mob with and needed to fight his way out of.

Such fond memories are rare though.

In 1996 he was billeted to Texas, a state where he was not near his family and he was away from the abuse of his Stepfather and mother.

Now the army started to notice problems with the now twenty six year old man and sent him for psychiatric evaluation they concluded that he had a borderline personality, a factor that they feel influenced his later decisions in his life.

Quote:

John

June 2008

This all happened to me prior to moving to Texas in 1996. And even though I do not look badly on all of the experiences, I do see in retrospect that the incidents affected the way I viewed sex and age difference.

John is currently a G3 Custody prisoner due to the length rather of his sentence than the actual crime. There are inmates with the same crime only receiving a 10 year sentence.

In the last two years, since his last Custody Classification Review, he has not had a disciplinary hearing for fighting, nor has he ever made an escape attempt, assaulted a Corrections Officer or taken a hostage.

Despite spending the last seven years in incarceration John has tried to improve himself and learn why he did what he did.

He has sought out organizations that can help him understand why he behaved as he did and has even written leaflets about preventing such things happening again.

He is currently attending classes with the goal being a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology.

1994-1995 ~ Central Texas College, Kileen TX. ~ Law enforcement

(34 credit hours) ~ GPA ~ 3.57

April 2000 – Jan 2001~ San Antonio College now Kaplan Institute ~ Core Classes

(33 Credit Hours) ~ GPA 3.97

2005-2007 ~ Lee College, Bay Town ~ Core Classes ~ GPA 4.0

Were John a free man he would be considered an honor roll student, (Honor Roll starting at 3.5) his 4.0 translates to an A grade.

In conclusion John’s unfortunate life clearly shows that despite the abuse and mistakes he has made the lack of support from Children’s Protective Services (CPS) in Hawaii and his crimes that no one is unsalvageable or without a chance of redemption.

As a society we often complain that the inmates have it “easy” in prison and how they are waste of our time and will only re – offend.

A prisoner re-offends due to feeling outcast in “normal” society and that “They belong in prison with their own kind”.

These people, for that is what they are, were our kinsmen and women, friends, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and partners before they went to prison and are still the same on their release. Should we not look at the root causes of their crimes and learn by what went wrong so as to prevent it happening again. No one is beyond salvation if people are simply willing to listen and learn.

By accepting them into society again we break the cycle of re- offending as

In 2031, John will reenter society a released felon and a sexual offender. Yet this man was not a predator he was an abused child whose boundaries had been blurred by the conduct of his elders and those who were supposed to protect him.

He has paid for his crime with his freedom and liberty. I hope that his recent application for an I60 assessment is granted and he receives the help he so desperately needs. But as a society will we give up on him on his release as unworthy to walk amongst us?

Before you decide ask yourself this one question:

If I had lived that life, could this person be me?

Please note that all quotes are taken directly from correspondence with John and I have typed them with the same punctuation that John used in the original letters.