Unacknowledged Victims

Sitting on the front porch, when she was 11,
Lawyers coming around, no biggie to her.
Then someone says' "that's your father"
And all is lost in her world.

For years she's been wondering who he was.
Now she knows, her father,
a Man on Florida's Death row.
Her father now has a name, and a DC #.

To her, the truth that was supposed to make her happy
as brought another trial and great sadness in her life.
The same moment she found him,
he was taken from her.

Bittersweet isn't even a word for how this child felt.
This child felt anger, betrayal, hatred, to all those
responsible for taking the life she wanted to know.

On this day this girls
dreams and hopes were shattered.
Her grades in school
went from honor roll to straight F's.
This little girl quit caring...

And by the time she was 12 years old,
she herself had been in trouble with the law,
and they were quick to condemn her for 
her crimes of "running away" and "skipping school".

But they never bothered to find out why,
by the time she was 14 years old,
she had been in and out of Juvenile Detention centers,
and placements for troubled children.
To them she was a trouble maker:
To her, they were her problems.

She moved in with her boyfriend at the age of 15,
and had her first child at the age of 16,
her second child  at the age of 18.
Her boyfriend was abusive in every way,
and her life  was literally over....
All because of that fateful night when she found out
who her father really was...

Now she is 24, attending college, she has grown up,
is an active citizen in her community,
and is not the "trouble maker"
they claimed her to be as a child.
But the past of her childhood haunts her
every single day....

From the heart of "Wayne (Graycloud) Tompkins Daughter"
Thursday, October 24, 2002