For more than ten years, my family has lived with the weight of a serious allegation made against my son, Justin. For most of those years, we chose not to fight the matter publicly. We did not take our pain to social media or attempt to destroy another person to defend our own family. But silence can be misunderstood. Quietness is not an admission of guilt, and restraint does not mean there is not another side to a story.
This story began with something very different: an effort to help a family. We believed in second chances. A mother who had experienced incarceration was trying to reconnect with her children, and our family wanted to help. During a difficult transition involving the children, Justin became involved in helping them maintain some stability and continue their education.
As a praying mother, I remember becoming deeply uneasy. I told my son that I felt in my spirit that he was going to be set up. Justin eventually decided he needed to remove himself from the situation. Around that period, a dispute arose involving an order of protection. According to Justin, he was asked to support a claim that the order had been violated, but he believed that was not true and refused to give testimony he could not stand behind.
What followed changed his young life. A serious allegation was made against him, and he was arrested in New York City. Ultimately, rather than take the original and more serious allegations to trial, Justin accepted a plea to a lesser charge. As our family understands the disposition, that charge was acting in a manner injurious to a child. I do not omit that fact because telling the whole story means acknowledging the difficult parts as well. But a plea to a lesser charge should not be presented as an admission to every allegation originally made against him.
During that period, Justin experienced the darkest time of his young life. One person I will always remember with gratitude is his pastor. His pastor walked with him, talked with him, prayed with him, and reminded him that his life still had meaning. As his mother, I believe that kindness may have saved his life. Sometimes ministry is not delivered from a pulpit. Sometimes it is simply refusing to abandon a young person when he believes his future is gone.
Years later, Justin challenged the separate indicated child-abuse and maltreatment report maintained through the New York State system. In a March 23, 2023 administrative decision, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services recorded that the Westchester County Department of Social Services would not submit evidence in support of the indicated report. The decision stated that the agency did not meet its burden of proving by a fair preponderance of the evidence that Justin committed the alleged maltreatment and/or abuse. His request was granted, and the report was ordered amended to unfounded and sealed.
That administrative decision does not erase every event that came before it, and I do not present it as a criminal acquittal. The criminal proceeding and the later administrative proceeding were different matters. But if Justin’s history is going to be discussed publicly, the later administrative outcome should not be erased either.
Today, more than a decade after these events began, my son’s photograph and painful history are again being circulated publicly. That is why I have decided to speak. I will not answer a photograph with another photograph. I will not answer an accusation with personal retaliation. If my concern is that my son’s humanity has been forgotten, I cannot defend his humanity by forgetting someone else’s.
Instead, I choose the record. I choose context. I choose to distinguish what I personally witnessed, what my son told me, and what official documents establish. Truth does not need exaggeration to make it powerful.
There is also a larger issue here. Advocacy, particularly advocacy involving children and families, carries a responsibility to be accurate and fair. An organization’s mission should never become a vehicle for settling personal grievances. Protecting children and strengthening families should produce healing, not provide a stage for reopening old wounds or reducing a human being to the worst allegation ever made against him.
Our family entered this relationship because we believed in second chances, and after everything that happened, I still believe in them. Second chances cannot be reserved only for people we like or understand. Grace cannot be demanded for ourselves and denied to someone else.
My faith has also taught me that forgiveness and silence are not the same thing. I can forgive without surrendering the truth. I can pray for someone while establishing boundaries. I can refuse revenge while still saying that my son’s complete story deserves to be heard.
When people see a photograph on social media, they may see only a face attached to an allegation. I see my child. I remember the fear, the prayers, the uncertainty, and the pastor who helped him believe there was still a tomorrow. I see a young man who survived.
That, ultimately, is the part of this story that matters most to me. My son is still here. He continued living. He grew. The worst chapter of his young life did not become the end of his story.
I am not asking anyone to ignore the past. I am asking that if the past is going to be told, it be told completely and responsibly. Tell the accusation. Tell the difficult decisions. Tell the plea accurately. But also tell what happened when the indicated report was challenged administratively. Tell the whole story.
For years, our response was silence. Today, my response is truth – not vengeance, humiliation, or hatred. I still believe in redemption, restoration, and the possibility of another chapter.
God did not bring him through the darkest chapter of his life for someone else to continually turn back the pages and pretend that chapter is where his story ended.
It wasn’t the ending. By the grace of God, it was only a chapter. It was not easy for him to plead guilty. All he could think about was Mother. Do you remember what happened with the Central Park 5? They were guilty without any proof.
That was a heartbreaking moment for me: “Guilty without proof.” Until he confessed to something, he wasn’t even allowed to make a phone call to his family, and that’s a sad statement about the New York City Police.
