ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS I'd like to say is I don't really blame Suzanne for what happened. She's had problems with anxiety disorders for years and I knew it, and to some degree I tried to protect her from embarrassment, I tried to protect the children from her anxiety disorder and mood swings, the only person I didn't try to protect was myself simply because I loved her and thought she would always love me.... Big mistake!
The story I'm about to relay may seem far fetched, and almost impossible. But it came from my oldest Daughter who was involved in what happened. There really is no accounting for what fear may do to shake a persons hold on reality.
It all started when I was up late one night watching TV about a man in Texas who got away with killing his wife and her lover upon finding then "in the act".
What I couldn't believe is that in this modern age a man could still get away with something like this. So I went to the Internet to check it out. Sure enough it had happened, it just hadn't happened as they portrayed in modern times. It actually happened in the 20's and resulted in case law that changed Texas law so that the "heat of the moment" defense could no longer be used as a mitigating factor in murder cases.
OK, so having my question satisfied I went to bed leaving the web page that I had been looking at on. And that would have been the end of it and my marriage may possibly have survived except for the fact that my oldest Daughter got up early the next morning to work on a school paper and when she woke the computer up she found that I had been looking up a web page about a man killing his wife!
This frightened my Daughter and at first she says she went to her brothers and sister who all found this serious enough to tell Mommy about.
From that moment on I couldn't do anything around the house without it being seen and talked about through that filter of "planning to hurt my wife", maybe even planning a family murder suicide.
For two years my wife became more and more nervous until she became convinced that because of my disability and increasing illness, I was planning some sort of murder suicide. Nothing more, it was all a figment of her imagination. As a result Suzanne had the children watch me closely so they could escape in time. You wouldn't believe the elaborate means they used to convince themselves that this was coming. It's so sad now, but who do you blame for paranoia and mental illness?
After I moved out of the house she took off every wall plate to search the wiring because she was sure I had installed some sort of listening or spying device in the home. When she found nothing she started to tear the walls apart looking for a bug. Finally she had the children prepare by putting knives and other weapons close to every door, presumably in case I tried to get into the house.
It was all crazy and it scared the hell out of my children to the point that it poisoned them against me but what could I do? The court had said I was dangerous simply because Suzanne had submitted a letter to the court from her psychologist saying I was dangerous. The problem is I didn't know this man from Adam or had ever met him. It was a total fiction based on nothing but Suzanne's sessions with him.
When everything was said and done, when I finally found out about their suspicions I was totally in disbelief but there was nothing I could do about it because by then they had been CONVINCED by this psychologist who put it in writing that I was dangerous.
I showed this letter around to every psychologist I ever saw and without exception I was told that what he had done was not only Libelous but it was also a professional ethics violation. Does it matter? No not until I can get a judge to rule that I was never a threat to anyone.
