Exhibit 53 - Annexed hereto and marked as Exhibit 51, true and exact copies of the original in my possession of “Exhibit 53 –Letter to Scott Franklin, Dated July 5, 1998,” a true and exact copy of the original in my possession, these facts are referenced herein as though set forth in full.
July 5, 1998
Dear Scott,
First, thank you for doing the right
thing and returning the money. Now I am going to discuss the content
of your letter.
You attacked Morgan. This is a simple
fact. You, no one else, threatened her life and the lives of the
other children. I am not sorry that I refused to allow you to live
with us any longer. It was incumbent on me, as a responsible adult,
to protect all of the children under my care, including you.
I am sorry that the breech between us
occured. But I do not see how I could have prevented that. In
retrospect you were not the source of the problem. Craig was. From
the beginning he refused to back me up as your step-parent. This led
to a steadily deteriorating situation in which I was unable to
maintain discipline and guarantee the safety of those who lived
there.
Craig was a terrible example of how to
live without violence, as you well know. He was a terrible example
of how to live together in any way. You, as any teenager would have,
took advantage of the situation and appealed to Craig whenever you
didn’t like my decisions. But he was not the one raising the
family. I was. He was hardly there. When he was home he secreted
himself in his bedroom, a pattern you were long familiar with.
Think about your relationship with
Craig then and earlier. You wanted him to love you. He had told you
for years that your mother was keeping the two of you from being
together. But it wasn’t true, was it? Do you think that Craig
loves you better now?
You went from a situation with us
where you were not getting enough discipline or individual attention
to a situation where you were. You began living with your Aunt
Priscilla. It was a good change for you. It enabled you to graduate
high school and begin college. I know that it hurt feeling rejected.
Of course it did. And if I had been able to trust Craig’s
judgment it would not have been necessary. But I had learned that
trusting Craig’s judgment was impossible.
You were not put up in a motel to
ensure your safety. This was made necessary by your violent
behavior. You do recall that you and Craig were the only ones who
were ever violent, don’t you? Our fear was for the safety of
others, not your safety. That violent behavior did not start with
your attack on Morgan. You will remember you also had been violent
towards your own mother, hence, your change of residence to Burnet.
You brought your problems with you.
Remember the events of that spring.
You hurt Dawn by throwing her cat at her in the pool. That was an
act that could have caused her more serious injuries than the rather
bad scratches she sustained. The cat could have scratched her eyes.
Throwing the cat was an act of animal abuse. I am sure, when you
recall what you did, you are ashamed.
Do you remember why you were living in
the garage? Edi offered to share his room with you and you bullied
and physically abused him. Craig would have let you get away with
it, even given you Edi’s room. Do you think I regret putting my
foot down and refusing to allow that to happen? I don’t.
Frankly, I do not know what I could
have done differently that would have been responsible. I am sorry
that your feelings were hurt. But imagine the consequences if I had
allowed you to remain and you had harmed one of the children badly
enough to require hospitalization, or even killed one of them? I had
to accept that as a possibility. That would have had life-wrenching
consequences for you as well as the rest of us.
Imagine what would have happened if
you had succeeded in strangling Morgan. You would have been
incarcerated, perhaps treated, but certainly involved in the justice
system for all of the remaining years of your childhood and a good
part of your adulthood. It would have tainted your life. And I
would never have been able to forgive you. How would you have felt
about yourself?
I am glad I did not allow you to stay
with us. I am sorry for your pain.
Now I will go over the rest of your
letter.
You could not trust me? What a
pathetic and self-justifying statement. I kicked you out. I did it
openly. I did not mandate a trial; Craig did. The kids all felt,
and feel, that your behavior was unacceptable. Since I wasn’t
there for the events, I accepted the accounts that were relayed to
me. There was no sustantial disagreement as to the facts. I’m not
devious. I never have been. You and Craig have been devious, not
me.
You said in our previous, last,
converation, that if I needed money I could sell the jewelry that
Craig gave me. The subject came up over my need for money to pay
Ed’s medical bills. I want you to remember that conversation. I
want you to remember the previous conversations in which you elicited
from me, through careful manipulation and selective slams against
myself, which you credited to both Craig and Michael Emerling Cloud,
the comments about Craig which you now attempt to characterize as
hurtful to you. Did you think I would feel charitable towards either
of them when you told me that they wanted to see me become a bag
lady?
I wonder how such comments, aimed at
yourself, would have made you feel. I wonder what you would have
said to a ‘trusted’ confidante in those circumstances.
Did I say uncomplimentary things about
Craig? Hell yes, he had just left me, abused my trust, broken every
promise he had made to me. He had caused me to have a heart attack,
lied about filing his taxes for ten years, abandoned me to clean up
his mess and then tried to steal the money he promised me as partial
restitution. I was and am angry. But I am justifiably angry. My
trust has been violated. You have no such objectively appropriate
reason for anger. You offered yourself as a friend and confidant.
What did you expect me to say?
Take the log out of your eye,
Christian.
If I had known in 1986 that Craig
would not file his taxes I would have made very different decisions.
I would not have married him. I would not have allowed him to use my
money to buy the house on Burnet that he wanted. I would never have
lived with him. I would never have trusted him with everything that
was most precious to me in life. And you would never have lived with
me and my children. And consequently you would be looking at a very
different reality.
Don’t think for a moment that Craig
would therefore be wealthy. He would, as he well knows, still be a
high-tech hobo, disabled emotionally from benefiting from his own
brilliance.
As you know, Justin doesn’t want to
have anything to do with Craig. That is his own decision, one which
I was reluctant to let him make but which, after long consideration
and consultation with his therapist, I have agreed to. Justin’s
therapist thinks that, no matter how important the father/son
relationship is, that Craig is so toxic that Justin is better off
without him. I agree.
Craig, through his attorney, went
into court and refused to acknowledege that Justin was his son.
Justin, as you well know, has refused to have contact with you as
well. I am sure that Justin has told you about Craig’s abusive
behavior. Justin was publically battered, manipulated and coerced.
He has chosen to end his relationship with Craig - and you - because
of Craig’s abuse and your behavior towards him and me. Why have
you not expressed concern for Justin and what he is going through now
- at a younger age than you were when you had to leave Burnet? It
is curious that you are more wroth about events in the distant past
than you are over Craig’s recent abuse of either Justin or myself.
If you are a caring person, how can that be?
To try to justify your behavior,
deceiving me, defrauding me, and abusing my trust, by citing things
that happened ten years ago is sadly pathetic.
Do you think that you have lived your
life with truth, honesty, integrity or anything approaching those
values? You have not. I’ll share something with you. I have. I
know how difficult that is. I have made mistakes, done things I
regret. I acknowledge them and try to make amends. But I will be
glad to present my life’s record of what I have done, and why I
did it to God when I die. I live my life, every day, in the
knowledge that there are only two people whose opinion ultimately
matters. Myself and God.
I have done nothing for which I need
to be forgiven. You have. When we resumed our relationship several
years ago you were an adult. No one coerced you into signing
anything. You volunteered that you felt that you had acted
inappropriately in 1989. I never would have asked you to make such
statements. I was willing to let the past bury itself and begin our
relationship anew. And I was very willing to have a relationship
with you. We had some wonderful, warm conversations, if you allow
yourself to remember them now.
We began anew. I extended you trust,
and then, God help me, love. I listened to you, tried to help you
with your endeavors. I made sure that we kept our financial
committments to you throughout the period of the tax crisis.
Your response to that was a complete
violation of trust. That was your choice. I hope that, in the
future, you learn that carrying that kind of baggage and acting on
such vile motivations is more than just wrong. It was a moral
atrocity. I hope that the relationship you can have with Craig,
ethical and emotional cripple that he is, will be worth what you have
paid for it.
You could always have trusted me, you
know. You can still trust me. I never lied to you. I never will.
The truth is what we owe even those who make themselves our enemies.
I have learned my lesson about trusting you, though, and will not
make the same mistake again.
You ended this relationship. I can’t
be sure why you wrote that letter, but I suspect that your conscience
and Kathy were both in play. If so, I will try to ignore the obvious
self-justifications in your letter and hear what you did not say,
until you are willing to say it out loud. I think, at some level,
you know how wrongly you have acted and are sorry. Maybe, maybe not.
But I can hope that you are capable of enough introspection to begin
what I know will be a long and painful process. Good luck.
Sincerely,
Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
