I found this group yesterday evening. I just have to tell you that I cried for you and I cried for me. I knew that my grief has been incredibly deep and finally I've found people who get it.

My son has been waiting for 3 months for a hearing to determine whether his case can be taken back into juvenile court after having been charged as an adult. Only one thing that has gotten me through this so far. One of the very few people I've told, told me: In India it can take as long as 20 years for you to go in front of the court for the first time.

My son is Hispanic. I adopted him from foster care when he was 10 and he came to live with me when he was 7 1/2.

Right now, I'm pissed off. I am pissed off at every organization and institution that has failed him. I am pissed off at the school district who put him in this school to jail pipeline after being sexual abused by another student in second grade, not seeing him as a victim, but convering their asses by calling it a consensual relationship and treating him as a sexual predator thereafter. An 8-year-old. (I would have sued them if I had already adopted him.)

I'm angry at my mom who has emotionally abandonned me again. "Well, I could come out, but I don't see that I would be of any use. I can't do anything for you." Try just being there. So now, with the exception of one good friend, I'm mostly carrying this alone.

I'm pissed off at the people who have told me, "Oh, well I guess your job is done now." or "Are you going to give him back to the state?" HE'S MY SON! My own brother, the supposed devout Christian, one of them.

And I'm angry at society. You don't have the right to judge me as guilty or even my son as guilty when there has been no trial. And I'm angry at how the system uses our silence of shame and gried to take advantage of us and how it won't even allow me to be humane to my own child.  How I don't dare talk to him like I really would because I don't want to give the prosecutor anything.

It's more than having your child suddenly die.

I watch the news. I'm now rarely empathetic with the victims or their families. I just want to write the kids' parents and tell them, "You're not alone. You're about to go through the absolute worst thing you've ever experienced. But, you are not alone." We are a community of the silent, even with each other. I can barely carry my grief. I just want to give you a hug when I see you. But I don't dare less we both break up past being able to return to composure, to some semblance of dignity.

But I'm hoping to hit a point of being able to carry this and the sooner, the better. I intend on coming out of the shadows of the shame, the silence. I don't want to be silent. I want to stand up. I want this archaic system to be changed. We know so much more now about how people work on the inside and what the best way to help them to become contributing members of society. As a young a adult staring at the ceiling with your brain shut off for 12+ hours a day isn't it. It isn't right to throw people away. 

I want to tell my story, your stories. And thank you for sharing your stories here. Mine is barely comparable. I'm just at the beginning of the journey. I am appalled at the conditions you are seeing, at how different the environments are. And yet it's far worse behind the facade we don't see. The things they won't tell us. This has to change.