Letter to my Ex-Wife

The following is a letter to my ex-wife.  This is the first time I have attempted to contact her in nearly five years.  Hopefully two evaluations and a 40 year history of non-violent behavior is enough to convince her that I am not a danger to my children.

July 20, 2014

Dear Melissa,

It has been nearly 5 years since I have seen or spoken to Mary and Audrey.  Since the time you had me arrested for telecommunication harassment, on September 11, 2009 (which was dismissed and expunged), I have made no attempts to contact you, your family, your friends, boyfriends, husband, employer(s), etc…  There has never been any evidence that I have ever presented any danger to you or the girls other than Judge Humphrey’s findings that were based on my criticisms of Dr. Connor, which were perfectly valid.  I never once challenged Connor’s findings that you should be the custodial parent; I simply challenged his conflicting statements and ethics.  Throughout our 2.5 year divorce, you never attempted to modify the amount of time I had with the girls.  There was never any evidence that the girls feared me or did not want to be with me.  I’ve been placed in a position to prove why I may not be a danger when no one has provided any reasonable evidence to suggest that I am.  Worse yet, the only reasoning the Courts have given on my “potential” dangerousness is Judge Humphrey’s interpretation of Dr. Connor’s custody evaluation, which recommended that I should be able to continue to care for the girls at least three days a week.  I think it is time to stop looking for excuses why to keep me away from the children because they need their father.  As their mother, you have the ability to expedite their ability to have their father in their lives.

For nearly the past 5 years, you have taken every opportunity to fight my path back to the girls.  You had me arrested in Cincinnati, Ohio for telecommunication harassment for trying to contact the girls when there was no order prohibiting me from doing so.  If you would not have fought the appointment of Dr. Henry Waite, I would have been able to present a psychiatric evaluation to the court in early 2010.  Your refusal to accept Dr. Waite as an evaluator and Judge Humphrey’s unethical conduct in continuing to serve as the judge in our case, while participating in a criminal investigation against me, delayed the appointment of an evaluator until January 24, 2011.  You played no small role in the investigation, arrest, and conviction in my criminal case, as you testified against me before both the grand jury and the trial jury.  On September 15, 2009, you told Dearborn County Special Crimes Unit Detective Michael Kreinhop that I made threats of violence to you.  Despite the fact that I had no violent past, you told Detective Kreinhop that you believed I was “capable of committing acts of violence.”  [See attached]  (Of course if you did not make these statements, I would hope you would take the appropriate measures to complete an affidavit in support of the truth.)  Our divorce, which you filed on January 8, 2007, lasted 2.5 years.  We went through a custody evaluation and several court hearings.  You’ve unsuccessfully attempted to hold me in contempt on several occasions.  You had me arrested in Cincinnati, Ohio.  You even filed for a (non-physical) protective order to have my web content removed, which was denied.  It wasn’t until after the custody evaluation, divorce proceedings, and you having me arrested did you accuse me of making threats of violence.  You had me arrested because I left you messages and sent you text asking you to have the girls contact me, yet you failed to take any measures to have me arrested or file for any protective orders after claiming that I made threats of violence against you.

As you may know, the Indiana Supreme Court upheld my intimidation, obstruction, and perjury convictions.  A large part of Justice Rush’s conclusions were based on what she claimed to be my history of violence against the victims and my violent behavior.  The trial record is void of any examples of violence against anyone.  Sheriff Kreinhop testified there were no findings of violence against any public official.  The only mention of violence anywhere in my criminal case were your accusations that I made threats of violence.  I recently filed a Petition for Rehearing because of the obvious mistakes of fact in the ruling of the Indiana Supreme Court.  If that fails, I am going to petition a federal court or the United States Supreme Court. 

I've never blamed you for Judge Humphrey terminating/suspending my parenting time with Mary and Audrey.  You do bear the responsibility associated with you and your attorney’s (Angela Loechel) efforts to fight the appointment of evaluators as well as taking every opportunity to damage my reputation as a good father since the filing of the divorce decree.  As such I am allowing you to decide if the children should have their father in their lives.  I am including a copy of a psychologicalevaluation completed by Dr. Christopher Sullivan.  In the report, he opines there is no reason why I should not be able to exercise unsupervised visitation with the girls.  (Please note that Dr. Sullivan requested information from Dr. Connor in order to make the evaluation as thorough as possible but Connor refused to provide Dr. Sullivan with any information.)  With the current state of my criminal case, I am not going to put myself in a position where I have to defend myself against baseless allegations that I am a danger because I criticized court officials.  I am also not going to sit in a courtroom and listen to your lawyer attack me for being a potential danger.  You know I am not dangerous.  You portray yourself to the court as a victim by requesting the Court to keep your address anonymous as if I would do something to harm you or the children.  The fact is I know where the children are because you invite my mother and her sister to the girls’ events.  You send me things in the mail from the girls.  Just recently you sent me a full update on their schooling, physical development, and other activities in their lives.  On September 6, 2009, I sent you a text message stating, “Are you going to have the girls call me?  If not, just say so and I will stop asking. Please tell the girls that I love them.”  Rather than a simple no, you just ignored me.  The following day I sent a text stating, “Tell the girls that I love them. Send me a text to let me know the girls are ok or I will be calling ur family to see if the children are ok becuz i'm worried.”  Rather than letting a father know his children are okay, you chose to ignore the simple request and then had me arrested for telecommunication harassment.  Now you send me somewhat frequent updates on the girls, which, objectively speaking suggests you do not fear me or you are taunting someone you claim to be violent and dangerous. 

You could not comprehend my life in the past several years.  I’ve gone nearly five years without speaking to the two most precious people in my life.  I spent 2.5 years in prison because your attorney initiated a criminal complaint against me on behalf of Judge Humphrey.  You could have spoken in my favor to the falsity of Dr. Connor’s statements.  You could have just sat idle and have done nothing.  Rather than take a passive stance on the issue or try to help our children’s father, you did nearly everything in your power to portray me as a bad person in an effort to send me to prison.  Your recorded statements in my criminal proceedings are either exaggerated or they conflict with your prior statements that exist in the record of our divorce.  What you failed to do during my criminal trial is testify that I threatened you with violence.  I can only assume you did not make that accusation while testifying in my criminal trial because you would have perjured yourself.  I’ve never threated you nor anyone else with violence or any other illegal activity.  People had to lie to send me to prison.  Even after spending 2.5 years in prison and not seeing Mary and Audrey for nearly five years, I still haven’t resorted to any acts of violence nor will I ever do so.  That’s who I am.  That’s who I will always be.

I am at a crossroads in life.  I am 40 years old and I have to make a decision.  How can I possibly prove that I am not a danger to you or the girls when there was no evidence suggesting that I ever was?  If you believed I was a danger, as a responsible parent you would have attempted to modify my parenting time somewhere along the line of our 2.5 year divorce.  The evaluation performed by Dr. Sullivan should be sufficient to demonstrate I am not a danger.  Dr. Connor’s recommendation of liberal parenting time should be enough as well.  If you are willing to enter into an agreed order where I would get some kind of normal unsupervised parenting time, the girls will be able to once again have their father in their lives.  If the visitation recommendations of Dr. Connor and Dr. Sullivan, my record of non-violence, combined with the fact I have not seen you or attempted to contact you in nearly five years does not convince you that I do not present a danger to anyone, then I am done.  I am not going to spend any more time and money fighting unsubstantiated and false allegations about me being potentially dangerous, especially as you have fought to keep me from obtaining the information in Dr. Connor’s case file that would definitively demonstrate that I was correct in my assertions regarding Dr. Connor’s ethics.

I live with a huge void in my heart.  You can continue to speculate to what you believe are my true intentions in everything I have done but it has always been about my love for Mary and Audrey.  Throughout the course of our 2.5 year divorce, I did not leave the girls with mom so I could go out at night.  I never asked you to take the girls on my days because I wanted to make other plans.  You continued to speculate why I might not be a good father or why I might not love Audrey and Mary rather than acknowledging that I could love them as much as you.  I’m not going to put myself at risk in continuing to argue the inarguable against you in a court system that has actively worked to put me put me in prison for 2.5 years; especially as your attorney has a reputation of successfully initiating secret criminal investigations against me.   Your lawyer made a criminal complaint on behalf of Judge Humphrey’s “welfare” then sat idly by while Judge Humphrey continued to preside over custody matters for nearly a year, delaying my ability to have an evaluator approved.  I’m not going to continue to fight with my hands tied behind my back; especially as I defend myself against a malicious Supreme Court ruling and your unsubstantiated fears as to why I may be capable of committing acts of violence when I have a 40 year record of a non-violent lifestyle.  As I am representing myself, if your attorney believes I make the wrong legal strategy, file too many motions, or if she can use one of my statements out of context, she can make another complaint to the police, where I would be susceptible to further incarceration.  So you can decide if you want me to play a role in the lives of our daughters while they are young.  Regardless of what becomes of this situation, the girls will become adults and I feel confident any lost bond will be reconnected.  Children are afraid of dangerous parents.  Neither of the girls have ever been afraid of me and you nor any other person have ever asserted that they were.  They will someday learn about the nature of the bad acts by Judge Humphrey, Prosecutor Negangard, Dr. Connor and others who put their dad in prison and worked tirelessly to lie in their efforts to do so.  The only question you don’t want the girls to ask is, “why didn’t mommy do anything to help?” 

You do whatever it is you believe to be in the children’s best interest.  I’m no longer putting myself at risk to fight baseless allegations in an unfair system that refuses to provide me with the resources to dispute the allegations.  If you want to continue to argue that I am a dangerous father who you claim is “capable of committing acts of violence,” then I guess I will see the girls when they are adults when I can definitely prove that I did not do anything to harm them or their mother.

Dan Brewington