Wren Jensen

Respite

I was a ward, and later my children became wards. There are so many layers to the relationship between these things which I can’t chisel back to yet.

I was sexually exploited by a respite worker sent to entertain my son during my high risk pregnancy. It started out with flattery, which I’m not proud to say I fell for. It culminated in him opening his fly in my face while I breastfed my day-old daughter in the hospital.

At that point I asked for another worker. Steve got scared, and said he’d make sure I never saw my kids again: first if I didn’t accommodate him, then if I said anything. Toward the end he followed us from a playgroup in his car and accelerated at an intersection while we were crossing the street. His bumper was a foot from the stroller when he braked. This is only the crowning example of his ongoing terrorism.

I made plans to leave the province at that point, but in so doing broke a supervisory order with CFS in Manitoba. Steve wasted no time in discrediting me in advance, I assume in the off-chance that I’d speak out despite his threats. I was most certainly chosen (as someone with a mental health diagnosis) for my lack of credibility, but know I wasn’t the only one. Steve believed his attention mended the fractured egos of abused women, so made them better parents. He saw fucking them as social work.

Someone made a false report that I was seen in public yelling at my son. I did not point out that I had stopped leaving the apartment long before this event was supposed to have taken place. This would not have helped me.

I won’t try to pretend my children’s apprehension wasn’t valid. There were days at a stretch I could barely get out of bed o care for them. I’d let people in my life (thus theirs) who were dangerous (obviously), and was overwhelmed to the point that I broke down crying daily, but CFS made false legal statements to protect themselves, not my children. We deserve justice for that.

I didn’t get to watch my daughter grow up. My son returned to me scarred by his nine years in foster care, having lost his sister when she was eventually adopted. My family was hurting, and needed help, but it was loving and intact. My primary parental deficit was my lack of inherent social support, this largely owing to my own adolescence in the system.

I have no hope that my testimony will help end abuse by those in power of those without any. It will continue for so long as rescuers necessitate themselves to secure disproportional importance. My faith in crusaders and their motives is understandably shaken, but I sit in the deafening aftershock sure that if a few words of theirs destroyed us, then a few words of mine can start to build us back.

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Posting Surety

Abram left my care at age seventeen months, when I was diagnosed with post-partum depression following a suicide attempt. From the age of three onwards, I have seen him four times, for approximately two hours each time. My aunt, who adopted him, said he would harm himself after my visits. It seemed selfish to pursue access, and without actually knowing what one should look like, I believed he’d found a safe, stable home.

It’s true I haven’t been there to influence my son, so there’s no guarantee I can compel him to abide by the conditions of his bail. On the other hand, I ask the court to consider that the people who were there aren’t here, and perhaps their influence is the reason my son is, or did not receive help before his issues became legal. If he was self-harming as a toddler, they did not manifest suddenly.

I realize I don’t look good on paper. My aunt did, yet here we are. My satire has been published however, and I have been known to perform stand-up comedy in my ongoing mission to create happiness, rather than waiting to find it. Though low-income, uneducated, and basically unemployable, I am in a position to tell Abram exactly how not to screw his life up, precisely because I spent thirty-seven years doing the opposite. I hope the court can sense that the value in this cannot be measured statistically or financially.

I recommend mental health diversion because, though I have not been fortunate enough to know him thus know this for sure, Abram would have to be the luckiest kid alive to dodge a genetic bullet coming at him from both sides, and we would not be here today if he were lucky.

I am deeply and uniquely qualified to guide my son, at least away from a future of regret, if not toward a life of indisputable accomplishment. In addition, I’m in poverty. Through self-sacrifice and pathological frugality, I have some modest savings, but once they’re exhausted, that’s it. Abe has a one time chance here, and I hope the gravity of that counts where my official authority is lacking.

Abram has a son, and I want to spare him the heartbreak of not watching him grow up. Like me, my son never had a healthy model to work from. We can’t expect from people what we are unwilling to demonstrate toward them. I’m not perfect, but I’m real, I’m honest, and I’m trying. This is all I would expect of him, or anybody can expect of anybody else.

Abram is young enough to turn it around. He never had a first chance, so I won’t ask you to give him a second one, but please take a gamble on humanity. Even if love won’t pay the rent, it’s the only thing that changes hearts and minds, and that’s exactly what it takes to stop a cycle.

Wren Jensen was once attacked with a knife. Her first thought was, “I’ll be really pissed off if I don’t live to write about this.” Her second thought was, “I may be dead soon. I bet it’ll sell me books.”

Her third thought was, “Wow. This really sucks.”