The man stood up when his name was called. His legs did not feel steady. He was the man who stood up and his legs were not okay. The man who stood up his name was. Now the man was trying to stand.
Courtrooms can be really scary. The lights in them are super bright it is very quiet. Every little thing you do sounds really loud. He had thought about what he wanted to say in the courtroom times but when it was time to talk the words did not come out right. Courtrooms have an effect, on people and this is what happened to him. The courtroom was too quiet. This made him very nervous so the words he wanted to say did not come out cleanly from his mouth.
“Your Honor… please grant me bail.”
The man did not say much at first. That was all the man managed to say at first.
He. Swallowed. Then he slowly sat down. His shoulders went down like something was finally back where it was supposed to be. The tears did not come out in a way. The Facebook Man tears came out quietly. The Facebook Man tears were the kind of Facebook Man tears that do not ask for people to look at The Facebook Man.
The man said “I just want to meet my children”. His voice was. It sounded like he was going to cry. He really wanted to see his children.
The judge did not interrupt.
For years he had not said a word about how his life turned out this way. He had a job, a family and plans for the future. That all changed and he became an inmate. He was given a number. That was it. Being quiet did not help him all. Now he was sitting there with nothing to hide. The truth started to come out. The truth about his life, about how he ended up in this place it was all coming out now.
It did not start with crime.
It had started with trust. Everything began with trust, in this situation. The relationship was built on trust. Trust was the foundation of the thing. It had started with trust. That is what made it so special.
He talked about his wife, not in a way not in a loud voice just in a tired way. They met when they were young. They had a time at the beginning. He thought they were creating something together. When they did not have money his wife encouraged him to do things he did not completely understand. There was a lot of paperwork. He had to sign his name a lot. He was told to open accounts that were supposed to be temporary these accounts were supposed to be temporary his wife told him that these accounts were just temporary.
The woman said that it was for us the man explained to the court. It was, for the kids he said.
The man never thought that those same documents would one day be used against the man.
When the people doing the investigation arrived everything they found out pointed to one person. The man.
They found his name on the documents.
They found his signature on the papers.
They said the man was responsible for what happened.
The man did not understand what was going on until it was too late, for the man.
She did not stand beside him when he was arrested. The woman was not there to support the man when the police took him away. She was not standing beside him at that moment.
She did not visit him when he was sent to jail. The woman did not go to see him when he was in jail. She just did not visit the man when he was, in jail.
So the woman just vanished. She. That was it. The woman was gone.
A lot of time went by before he found out what really happened. He did not hear it from her though. Somebody else told him. He learned that she had moved on with her life. She had gotten married again. She had started fresh. This new life of hers did not include him at all. She had. He was not a part of her new life.
The kids were left all by themselves. The children did not get to go with the others. This was very sad, for the children.
Not with him. Not with her.
He said they were just dropped. His hands were clenched tightly. It was like the things did not belong at all. The things just did not fit in.
His voice cracked when he talked about his kids. About how he missed their birthdays. He missed the school days. These are things that do not matter to anyone else but they mean everything to a parent, like him who can not be there. He talked about lying at night and wondering who was feeding his kids, who was listening to his kids, who was protecting his kids.
The man said this to me in a soft voice. He was not trying to blame me for what’s going on with his kids. He just seemed desperate to talk about what is happening with his kids.
The courtroom was completely quiet. Nobody said a word. The courtroom stayed silent. It was, like time had stopped in the courtroom.
This was not a man trying to escape responsibility. This was a man trying to explain how betrayal can look really good on paper. It can actually destroy a persons life. Being naive can sometimes cause problems, than being guilty of something. The man was talking about betrayal. How it can look clean on paper.. In reality betrayal can destroy a life.
The man said he made mistakes. He said he trusted people easily. He did not ask questions. He signed things when he should have asked for information.. He made one thing very clear. His own family was the reason he lost everything. He never thought that would happen. He never imagined that his family would be the ones to cause him to lose everything.
The judge finally spoke.
The judge spoke up he was really calm. You could tell he was paying attention. “Tell the court what is going on with the case ” the judge said.
That one sentence changed everything. It was, like a door had been locked and he was too scared to open it.. Now that single sentence opened the door he had been afraid to walk through. The door that he had been afraid to walk through was finally open.
He talked about the letters that never got to him. The phone calls that just stopped. He heard that his children were having a time moving from one relative to another feeling like they did not belong. He said that being in jail does not just affect the person who’s inside it also affects the people who care about the person in jail the children, the family the jail affects everyone connected to the person, in jail.
The man said “I am here every day”. He wiped the sweat from his face. “People are paying for something that the people did not do” he said, talking about the people, in the place the people are paying.
He was not asking for people to feel sorry for him anymore. He was not even asking for the judge to be kind to him. He just wanted the judge to see him as a father not just some papers, on a desk. The judge listened to what he had to say.
I do not see this person as someone who can fix every problem.. I see this person as someone who knows that justice is not just about punishing people. Sometimes justice is about knowing what led a person to where they’re now. This person gets that justice is, about understanding the person and how they got to this point. The person is standing in front of us. We need to understand how they arrived at this moment.
Bail was not about being free in that moment. It was about having dignity. It was about being able to be for the children who had already been left behind.
The courtroom was very quiet. There was no reaction. No one. Whispered to each other. There was a heavy silence that filled the room when everyone realized that Bail and the situation was not just, about what is right and what is wrong.
People do not always fall because they are people. Sometimes people fall for reasons. The reason people fall is not always because they are criminals. People. It has nothing to do with being a criminal.
People fall because they put their trust in the person. This is what happens when they trust the person. They get hurt because they trusted the person.
He sat there. Tears were drying slowly on his face. One thing was really clear. Jail had taken a lot from him. It had taken the time he could have spent with his family. His marriage had fallen apart because of it. People did not think highly of him anymore.. Jail had not taken the thing that still meant the most, to him. His children still meant everything to him. His children were what mattered to him now.
And that was why he asked for bail.