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Originally Posted by Erebos
I thank you all for your time. I wonder if someone commits any crime they are to be permenantly branded for all time.
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Yes, yes they are.
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Originally Posted by Erebos
Regardless of the remorse shown or the steps taken to self improvement.
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Still yes.
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Originally Posted by Erebos
If that were the case there would be a lot of people living isolated and segregated lives.
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There are.
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Originally Posted by Erebos
I suspect I would have received more sympathy and understanding if I had said he was a murderer.
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Probably not. I have some experience in this one...
Here's a true story for you:
Three years ago last May, my doctor told me that I could continue working or live to see Christmas. My wife was not working at the time but quickly got a job. Then she got a second job. She still volunteers regularly though, making lunches for the elderly at the senior center on the Reservation and working at a horse rescue operation that works with Down Syndrome kids She cleans houses as well, whenever she gets the opportunity for a little extra money.
That November, she was hurt on the job and couldn't work for four months. We fell on extremely hard times. We moved into a place with no running water or heat about 40 miles from the Canadian border because it was cheap and our savings had already been decimated. We had gotten to the point where we were ripping up old clothes for toilet paper that they gave away at the food bank. Destitute.
She returned to work but just prior to getting her first paycheck since returning, she went to clean an elderly neighbors house who had offered her $50 to do so. She came home empty handed. "Honey, I couldn't take the money - she's almost as bad off as we are." That's the woman I'm married to. The girl who's deathly afraid of spiders but carries them outside while running out of the bathroom screaming cause she'd rather be scared to death than to hurt anything. She is, without a doubt, the most compassionate person I know.
And one last thing, she did twenty-four years in prison for aggravated murder. Read the newspapers or watch the news and you'll deem her a sociopath. Live with her and you'll deem her a saint. I suppose at the end of the day, she's a person - just like her victim.
And then there's me. I'm a murderer too. Of course, mine happened while I was wearing a uniform and following orders; that makes me a hero I'm told. Her case was after being kidnapped, sold into the sex trade and during an escape attempt - at fifteen years old. We're pretty much the same, her and I.