Dear reader, if you are feeling overwhelmed by everything that has happened over the past dozen or more chapters then you know what it was like for me. There seemed to be no end and no limit to the depths of suffering I was experiencing.

I had lost the love of my life. I had lost my home. I had lost my career. Most of that happened in one month - August of 2000. Then in March of 2001, I had to surrender my clinical Social Work license.

I saved for this chapter the details about how the case of the false allegation by John Freifeld that I had made harassing phone calls was resolved. The lawyer who appealed the case was able to get the phone records for one of the two days that I was alleged to have called Freifeld on five separate times. He got the records for the day before and after just for good measure. It proved that I had never called Freifeld. I knew that was what would be found. So, we could prove that it was a lie. Right?

Wrong. For some reason, my lawyer couldn't get phone records for the other day that I was supposed to have called Freifeld. It was within a week of the other day so that made no sense. While it was a minor misdemeanor, it's the principle of the matter. It was wrong.

My lawyer said the infamous words "the truth doesn't matter, only what you can prove." I had thought that we were innocent until proven guilty.

Can you believe that? Someone can make stuff up about you and force you to spend a month of your life in jail on a lie. You will recall the humiliating way in which I was brought to Wilmington from Durham. In a cage with chains on me! Like I was a wild and dangerous animal! If you have read this far into this book you probably know that I am about as dangerous as a fluffy bunny or a butterfly.

Then I was back in Durham trying to put my life back together, little by little, and this happened in October of 2004. This was the kidnapping of Bruce Whealton by the state. The name of my attacker was Ana, she was the landlord's wife, Jimmy's wife.

This was a form of prolonged and seemingly never-ending suffering of biblical proportions.

I felt like I was experiencing shell shock. Literally.

If you are wondering what else happened during these four years from late 2000 through my victimization at the hands of Ana, there is not much to tell other than what I said. A bad nightmare of being profoundly depressed, without hope, poor and homeless. It was just a blur. I am not saying I have amnesia, but it is now very much a blur.

I cannot even remember 9/11 as a significant day! That is how overwhelmed I was.

It was October of 2004, and despite having done no wrong to anyone and having led a good life, always treating others with kindness and compassion, I found myself abandoned and in jail. Also, it should have been obvious that I was the victim here. My victimization was written in blood on the clothes that were still down in a locker room at the jailhouse – they would stay there from the day of my arrest until May when I got out.

When you get assigned a court-appointed lawyer, they take their sweet time coming to visit you. My lawyer didn't seem to care about me at all or how I was doing. I would write to him frequently, but it was close to impossible to get an appointment with him. I saw him over the next few months once and I saw someone else from the public defender's office just once. Each time it was for not more than fifteen minutes.

This was extremely terrifying for me. I was placed for a while in the general population. I met people who were guilty of real crimes, violent crimes. I met someone who had been on death row. I didn't feel safe. The guards seemed to have no compassion for individuals who might be innocent and are supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

My body was reacting in strange ways to this captivity. I was having panic attacks where I would feel overwhelmed by surges of adrenaline. Thinking I was going to die. Feeling short of breath. I would push the button in my cell as a way to cry out to see a doctor or nurse, but no one cared. At least no one cared for a good long time until they put me into protective custody.

I also discovered new things about my gender and how we think of gender. The first signs of that were in jail. I met a very effeminate person who went by the name Lulu. She was born male but identified as female.

She was an African American woman who was born a man. I am sure she had male genitalia. I didn't care.

She was very kind and sweet to me. I needed to be close to someone. No, you don't get that much privacy in the Durham County jail... nothing remotely intimate happened. Not physically intimate.

I thought she was attractive though. I only remember noticing her legs and her face.

While I did find some comfort and humanity from Lulu, there was no way to change the reality of what was happening to me. My entire life hung in the balance. I was terrified every moment of every day.

I had reached out to my so-called family from the depths of my pain and desperation. Surely, a mother would be moved by the unjust suffering of her firstborn son. For reasons I will never understand, nor can I forgive, both parents abandoned their own flesh and blood - they abandoned the son who shared the same name as his father - I am Bruce Martin Whealton Jr and he is Sr.

I spent seven months in jail! Seven nightmarish months.

Despite my desperate pleas, my family lacked human compassion and empathy. What little capacity they once had for somewhat normal human emotions had died. My sister also could have done something. They all had the means to rescue me. They knew just how horrifying this was, and yet they did NOTHING!

It would be literally impossible for me to not act to hire a lawyer and free my siblings or a parent, or even a son or daughter if I had one.

They didn't even come to visit me! That is an act of evil in the faith in which they raised me. It is a mortal sin!

Their capacity for ignoring the pain of someone they were supposed to love knew no limits or bounds.

I don't know why I expected them to act like real human beings. They had been demonstrating their inhumanity for a long time now - since Lynn got sick in August of 2000.

Years later, my second wife said that you don't treat your enemies that way! That's true. Their actions were evil!

The faith in which I was raised does not allow for us to act this way. Everything about how they acted over these years goes against everything I was taught as a Christian. I have since metaphorically divorced myself from them. They are my ex-family.

I had kept in touch from time to time with my sister. She said she and our parents (my ex-parents) knew I was innocent of everything I was ever accused of doing.

I know that I did not deserve this to happen to me.

My so-called family could not even be bothered to bring me clothes to wear when I was released from jail.

I was released finally, in May, to await the trial.

I moved to Chapel Hill where it was safer. I was staying in the homeless shelter. After my release, I met with my lawyer for thirty minutes, if that. My lawyer had told me that I would sit on the stand and tell my story and that no one in the jury would believe that I was capable of doing what I was accused of doing. That was the plan.

He said he knew I was innocent. He should have known I was the victim too. I had asked him if he could test the bloody clothing that I had been wearing. He said that since I wore it outside of jail after I was released this could not be done to help my case.

He had seven months to do something like this! I had written to him countless times when I was in jail.

A Guilty Plea for the Victim

I called my lawyer on a day in March of 2006 and he told me to come to court immediately. He didn't say why. I got on a bus and rushed there. I didn't want to make my case any worse than it was.

My attacker should be the one going to prison. Ana should be in prison for what she did.

I was out of breath when I arrived in front of the courtroom. My lawyer was there, and the prosecutor saw me for the first time. You might think she would look at me and drop the whole case, laughing - I looked so pitiful and small.

My lawyer scared me, telling me that I would spend 10 years in jail if I didn't take a plea. I was in total shock. What was the big rush? Why was he telling me this in the hall outside the courtroom?

He could have at least told me something before I headed to court!

My lawyer insisted that I knew this was coming and that I knew what I was looking at if I was found guilty. That is patently false. He had never discussed anything like that.

He previously had told me to expect a trial. He also never hinted at the punishment that might come out of the matter. NEVER! It remained as some abstract idea that hung over me like a shroud for nearly two years.

He had promised that a jury of my peers would see the truth and free me. Then I would pursue justice against Ana - the perpetrator!

He knew that I was not only innocent but a victim according to his own prior statement to me.

One usually thinks that a person chooses to take a plea. This implies some time to think about the matter and contemplate the decision. I was still winded. I was hardly in my right mind. The last thing they wanted was for me to think about anything.

I walked down the aisle to stand in front of the judge. He began to speak. He asked if I was satisfied with my legal representation. This was my chance to protest this farce. I began to talk but my soft voice only managed to say, "I don't know."

The reality of what was happening began to settle in and I wanted out of this. I don't think the judge was picking up on what I was trying to tell him. My voice was soft as a mouse. I was scared, I had no allies. I couldn't get enough air to vocalize my words clear enough to be heard and understood.

I have seen on TV shows and movies where they ask the defendant if they are on drugs that might impair one's judgment when entering into a plea deal or if a person had a mental illness that would impair that ability to enter into a plea deal.

I would have answered that "yes I am on mind-altering drugs" though they were prescribed and "yes, I am suffering from a mental illness that would impair my judgment." I was suffering from anxiety, major depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. "So, I am not competent to be entering into a plea deal."

That's what I would have said.

I had been traumatized by the entire matter that resulted in me standing in front of a judge on this particular day in my life history up to this point.

The judge asked if I was in fact guilty. I said, "Well, that's what my lawyer told me to say for the purpose of this plea deal but... " I was trying to explain.

Sometimes on courtroom shows, they depict a person elocuting to the "crime." That means they say what happened.

Had anyone asked me to say what happened on that October day in 2004, this would not be the culmination of a plea deal. I would have described how I had been brutally attacked in my home resulting in every item of clothing being soaked in blood all the way down to my socks and sneakers. It would have been a statement of my victimization and my inability to even defend myself.

But no one was concerned about what really happened. They wanted this wrapped up before the real victim, who was being treated like the perpetrator had a chance to think about what is happening and what he is doing.

Guilt was an abstract term. No one in that courtroom heard anything resembling the truth as to what happened back in October of 2004. What I mean is that in no way did we talk about the events in question.

No one cared what really happened.

My fate and future were sealed. All hope is gone.