“Andrew Pearson, you’re under arrest.”

Those were the first words I understood since I had been knocked to the floor. My arms were yanked painfully behind my back and handcuffed so tight that I thought my hands were being cut off. I had gone to answer the front door, but as soon as I opened it, I was bowled over by at least four uniformed officers barging into my house. I was roughly dragged to my feet as three more people in civilian suits walked into my house.

“Mr. Pearson, this is a warrant to search the premises,” said one gray-haired man, snapping a piece of paper in front of my face. “Get him out of here.”

“Wait!” I yelled, struggling to get free of the hands that were holding me. “There must be some mista...”

I didn’t get to say anything more as I was spun around to smash into the front door jamb. My glasses went flying.

“That’s resisting arrest, pervert!” hissed the officer who had slammed me into the jamb.

“Hey!” admonished the first man. “Just get him down to booking to be processed.”

A million thoughts raced through my mind as I was literally thrown into the back of a police car. My main concern was for my two kids, Melody, age 12, and Tony, age 11. The officer who had spun me around into the wall sat down in the driver’s seat, buckled up, and started driving away from my home.

“Look,” I said, sitting up in the back seat and wincing from the pain in my wrists. “My kids will be home soon from school. I need...”

“You don’t need anything, but to shut your big, fat mouth!” snarled the officer.

“These are my kids!” I yelled.

The next thing I knew I was slamming into the heavy grill that separated the front seat from the back seat. There’s a principle in physics that says an object in motion tends to stay in motion. In other words, I was traveling along at 35mph when the cop jammed on his brakes until the grill stopped my forward momentum. That I learned later involved mass and velocity.

The cop turned round in his seat and said, “Look, scumbag. One more word out of you and I’ll come back there and beat you to death! By the way, my bodycam is turned off.”

I had managed to turn my head so my nose wasn’t broken, but my right cheek was beginning to swell. I stayed quiet until we reached the station. Pulling into the prisoner garage, the officer locked up his weapon before yanking me out of the car and into the booking area. A female officer was standing there waiting for us.

“Paperwork?” she asked just before the other officer handed it over to her. “What happened to him?”

“Resisting arrest,” said the first officer as he put leg irons on me.

She shrugged as if it was no big deal. I gasped in relief after she took off the handcuffs. After taking my front and side pictures, and scanning my fingerprints, she started asking me questions.

“Height?”

“Six feet.”

“Weight?”

“210.”

“Charges?”

“I don’t know. No one told me what they are?”

With a sigh of exasperation, she grabbed the papers she had been given and began leafing through them. I saw her face turn white and then beet red. Marching over to a cell door, she threw it open and pointed inside.

“May I make a phone call first?” I asked.

She pointed to the phone on the wall and said, “One.”

I called the law firm that handles my company’s business. I studied mechanical engineering in college and invented two medical clamps that took off. I rented out the patents until I could build my own manufacturing company. It gave me and my family a nice low to mid six figure income. I don’t feel the need to gouge those in the business who need the clamps. While I don’t deny myself luxuries, I don’t feel the need to live like a Rockefeller or an overpaid sports hero.

“Reilly, Gordon, and Martin.”

“Hello, this is Drew Pearson. Is Jerry Crane in?”

“Please hold.”

I listened to elevator music for about thirty seconds before the line was picked up.

“Mr. Pearson? Jonathan Reilly here.”

“Oh, I was expecting Jerry, Mr. Reilly. I’ve been arrest and need help.”

“Mr. Pearson, I regret to inform you that our firm cannot represent you. It is a conflict of interest.”

“Conflict of interest?” I lost it. “You’re my God-Damn firm!”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Pearson,” and the phone went dead. I turned to see the female officer standing beside the cell room door.

“Get in!” she ordered.

Confused, but unwilling to confront her, I shuffled in my leg cuffs into the room. She slammed the door behind me. I watched as she headed back to her workstation, taking in deep breaths to calm herself down.

It was several hours before I was taken in front of a County Commissioner, who would set my initial bail. It was from her that I learned what I was charged with.

“Solicitation of a minor!?!” I yelled as I leapt to my feet. A heavy hand from the transportation officer on my shoulder forced me back into my seat. “What the Hell? I would never do anything like that!”

“Sir, I am not here to determine guilt or innocence, only bail. The charge is a felony, punishable by ten years in jail and/or a $25,000 fine if you are found guilty. Bail is set at $500,000. You can post the bail yourself by cash or real property. You can hire a bail bondsman, who will charge you ten percent of the total amount. If you cannot post bail, you will appear before a judge tomorrow morning for a bail review. He can raise, lower, or keep the bail the same.”

After being returned to the precinct, I spent the next several hours calling everyone I could think of. My wife Chastity’s phone had been disconnected. No one was at work. I knew I had over $600,000 in a savings account. The house was completely paid for and I also had my business, both of which I could put up for collateral. I wasn’t ready to crank out 50 Gs to a bondsman for what was an obvious mistake.

I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep before I was awakened for a breakfast in a box and a small bottle of orange juice. I couldn’t get back on the phone because another prisoner was using it. In a short while, myself and three other prisoners were on our way to the District Court. We were locked into a holding cell in the basement of that building.

“Pearson!” shouted an officer. “Someone here to see you.”

“Yes?” I asked as I approached the cell door.

“Andrew Person?” asked a young woman.

“Yes, I am.”

“You’ve been served. Deputy?”

“Mr. Pearson, this is a restraining order. You are hereby ordered to stay five hundred feet away from Chastity Pearson, Melody Pearson, and Anthony Pearson. You are also ordered to stay the same distance away from Chastity Pearson’s place of business and residence. The order also includes the children’s schools. Do you understand the order?”

I understood, but couldn’t comprehend it. I barely remember signing the order. Opening the first envelope finished and coherent thoughts I had. They were papers for a limited divorce. In our state, a limited divorce is a legal separation. A final divorce wouldn’t be granted until both parties had lived apart for twelve months. The restraining order had been drawn up last night.

I was numb. I panicked when I realized that I may never see Melody or Tony again. Chastity had initiated both sets of papers. I knew we were going through a rough patch, but this just floored me. I met her in our junior year at college. I had already invented my clamps, but wasn’t making any money off them. We married after we graduated at the young age of 22. Now at 36, my life was exploding with all the force of a super nova.

At the bail review, things got worse. The prosecutor added the charges of possession of child pornography and resisting arrest. Shouting that I was innocent and that this was all a mistake ticked off the judge. My bail was denied and I was taken to the County Jail pending trial.

Pedophiles have it rough in jail. I was bumped, knocked down, punched, and kicked. I was lucky I wasn’t raped or killed, but that was only because I was locked alone in my cell for most of the time and I had a guard escort when I went to the bathroom.

I contacted lawyers, both for my trial and my divorce. The top ten lawyers I talked to stated that Chastity had been to see them about the divorce and that they couldn’t talk to me without it being a conflict of interest. A defense team was interested up to a point.

It turned out that all of my bank accounts had been emptied and closed. I learned through them that my business and patents had been placed in trust to my children by a Family Court judge after my arrest and the pending charges had been splashed all over the media. Chastity had used an old, but still valid, power of attorney to remove my name from the deed to our house. In other words, I was flat broke, except for $52.26 that I had in my wallet when I was arrested.

I did manage to find a couple of free lawyers to try and get my money back, but they ran for the hills when the law firm of Reilly, Gordon, and Martin showed them the error of their ways. That and the fact that they really didn’t want to be seen working for a pedophile. I spent all my time in jail cursing Chastity and everyone else who dropped me like a hot potatoes.

After about a month in jail, my court date came up. It was a farce. I met my overworked, very young, brand new to the Bar public defender for the first time about thirty minutes before my trial started. He looked at the charging documents and the evidence, and told me I was screwed. He did say it in legalese so it sounded better, but the meaning was the same.

During the trial, it was stated that I had gone online and made friends with a 13 year old girl, Jane Doe #48. I had tried to get her to meet with me for sex. She, of course, told her mother who reported it to the police. The judge had been informed that the girl was severely traumatized and he excused her from appearing in court. There was also 162 pictures of underage girls downloaded to my computer and stored on a flash drive that I was supposed to have hidden away in my sock drawer. I pleaded innocent, but was found guilty. The judge gave me ten years, but since this was my first offense, he suspended five of those years and had the child pornography sentence run concurrent with the solicitation. Oh, he also ordered psychiatric counseling and that I will be placed on the sexual offender registry.

To say I was scared shitless would be an understatement. With nothing, but time on my hands in the County Jail, I worked out. However, even being in a more muscular physique than before I was arrested, I knew I was in for a rough five years.

At the state penitentiary, I was given my orange jumpsuit and shown to my cellblock, which would be my new home for awhile. I was sitting at a table in the cellblock composing a letter to Melody and Tony. I had written to them every other day while at the jail, but received nothing back from them. They were never brought by to visit. In fact, none of my old friends or acquaintances had been by to see me. As I was writing, I was surprised to see an older man around sixty with a white goatee sit down opposite me.

He looked at me quizzically, turning his head from side to side, before saying, “I don’t see it.”

I looked behind me, but no one was sneaking up on me. “See what?”

“What’s so special about you, “ he replied. “Just before you arrived, a pissant lawyer with a bald head came here. He promised pro bono work to the Aryans, blacks, chinks, even those crazy MS13 shits, if they left you alone. Hell, even the warden came down to tell us to stay away from you. So, what makes you so special?”

“Nothing that I know of,” I said. I did feel a little bit of joy. The only bald-headed lawyer I knew was Jerry Crane. I held out my hand. “Drew Pearson.”

The man looked at my hand, but made no move.

“I know your name. Alright, tell me your story.”

I told him everything from the arrest to ending up here. I explained how I had no wife, no kids, no money, no house, no business, no patents, no life, and was supposed to be a pedophile.

“Supposed to be... ?”

“The court found me guilty,” I said softly. “I have no idea where the evidence they used against me come from. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who does that to a child should have his dick cut off and shoved so far up his ass it’ll need to be surgically removed.”

“You know, I almost believe you. I’m Mason Boat. I’m a lifer.”

The next three years were unpleasant, but I managed to survive. My cellmate, Boat, was the unofficial arbitrator inside the prison. While I wasn’t his friend, I was an acquaintance, which offered me some protection. I was punched and shoved into walls, but that was just the normal harassment given to a loner. As a labeled pedo, I couldn’t join any gang and wasn’t allowed to mix with the general pop. That’s the term for the normal thieves, muggers, and criminals. I was still doing better than the real child molesters (Three died and another is a quadriplegic).

No one came to visit me. I received letters from my parents, but they were the ‘We’re fine, but how could you?’ variety. Mom and Dad were still my parents, but they couldn’t reconcile themselves to what I had been convicted of. My older brother and younger sister had dropped me completely with restraining orders to stay away from them and their kids.

I had heard through the prison grapevine that Jerry was stopping by two to three times a month to do free legal work for some of the inmates. It was rumored that he had been in to see the warden each time to check up on me.

Boat was the one who clued me in on life in the pen. After moping around for the first month, he had a guy slam me up against the wall and hold me there as he read me the riot act.

“You miss your kids ... get over it. You’re angry at your situation ... get over it. You’re down in the dumps because your life suck ... get over it. You’re making yourself a target.”

I listened. I started to exercise and train in self defense. That stopped the majority of the bullying that was sent my way. I studied and took classes at the prison library. I even taught some classes on engineering.

Chastity divorced me a year to the day after I had been arrested. The papers were delivered to me right after the hearing. She had gotten the ultra-feminist Wicked Witch of the East as the judge. The alimony and child support payments were based on what I had earned when I owned my own business and the patents. Since I was a felon in prison, the judge felt that I didn’t need any money and all my assets were forfeited. What really killed me was the order that since I was a registered sex offender, there was to be no contact or visitation in regards to my children. She also threw in that, if I was ever released, any and all wages were to be garnished.

Two days after the divorce hearing, I was slammed up against the wall by two huge prisoners while Boat looked on.

“Now that I have your attention,” said Boat. “Lose the attitude. You got screwed, fucked, and humiliated by the divorce judge. I’ve never seen anyone get it so bad. However, all that anger is leaking out and it’s starting to piss people off. You can’t afford to piss people off. What did I tell you when you first got here?”

“I need to survive.”

“Very good. That advice goes for outside of here as well as inside. I’ll let you in on a little something I’ve heard. This prison is overcrowded. To relieve the crunch, a number of non-violent prisoners are being granted early parole. You’re scheduled for next year, if you survive.”

I survived, barely. I was knifed by a new inmate who had been abused as a small child. I was then paroled. I know most of you out there think that now that I was parole that this was the time to get my revenge. Try it when you are a registered sex offender assigned to a halfway house run by a sadistic counselor and the only job you can get is a nighttime janitor to a large office building. An MBA and Masters in engineering doesn’t mean shit when you are labeled as a pedophile.

Boat came through for me just before I was released. He told me that Chastity had married Steven Huttington, who was going to be made a partner at the law firm of Reilly, Gordon, and Martin. It cost me a carton of cigarettes to get their new home address. The second day after I was released, I was in the park across from their condo building after I had gotten off of work.

I barely recognized him when my son, Tony, now 13, came out of the building. He had shot up at least eight inches and had lost all of his baby fat. To me, he looked positively skinny. There was no mistaking Melody. At 15, with her long brunette hair down to her waist, she was the spitting image of her mother. The two of them hopped into a small white bus and were gone as I wiped the tears from my eyes. It became a ritual for me to be there every morning to see them get on the buses that took them to their private school.

Four months after I had checked into the halfway house, two parolees sought to give me a pounding for being a pervert. I put them both into the hospital and got kicked out. Luckily, I had done a favor for another guy there and he spoke up to my P.O. (parole officer) when he came by to investigate. I managed to hold onto my job, but had to live on the streets or in shelters; subsidizing my meals with food stamps and at soup kitchens. It’s a wonder I just didn’t kill myself.

Well, even the cheapest gun was well beyond my means with most of my pay being sent to my ex-wife. Alcohol? Drugs? Slashing my wrists? All were viable options, but I remembered that I needed to survive. The one thing that give me the strength to do so was that ten to fifteen second window of time when I could see my children. For them, I could endure. Too many other people wanted to send me back to the pen.

Days became weeks; weeks become years. I tried on time early on to get the divorce decree changed using a pro bono lawyer. Jonathan Reilly ruined him so badly that he is to leave the state. No one would touch my appeal on my conviction. During one of my required visits, my P.O. warned me that there was a private investigator asking around about me. I was suddenly glad that I was homeless.

Patterns changed in my kids’ lives and I found new places to watch them during the day. Sometimes it was just a glimpse of them in a car being driven somewhere. A lot of times, they played in the park with their friends. I was always careful not to get too close and violate some distance rule that would land me back in the pen.

One fall day when Tony was a high school senior and Melody had just left home for her first year at Harvard, I was sitting in the park watching Tony walk over to his school bus. He looked over at the park and slowed to a stop. He stared at me for half a second and gave me a tentative wave before stepping into the bus.

I was shocked. There was no way he could have recognized me. I still worked out and had lost at least 40 pounds since my arrest. I had a full beard and cut my own hair with electric clippers that I charged up at work. I was scruffy-looking, but it saved me money that I could afford to spend on haircuts and shaves. I had an agreement with the manager of the office building to use their restrooms to get cleaned up. I didn’t need complaints about my appearance or personal hygiene.

For the rest of the school year, Tony would give me a wave every now and then. I realized he did not recognize me as his father, but as only a familiar guy who sat alone in the park each morning. Then came an incident that scared me half to death.

“Hey, mister. Mind if I join you?”

Tony was standing by my bench and I hadn’t even seen him approach. I looked around quickly for Chastity and the cops, but no one was nearby. Tony’s expression was sour, so I indicated that he could sit down.

“You seem down in the mouth? Girl problems?” I asked in a gravelly voice to try to disguise it.

“How did you know?” Tony asked in astonishment.