AITA for not speaking with my mom after finding out she cooperated with prosecutors who sent my dad to prison (wrongfully) for 20 years?
When I was 16 (me 37 now) my mom called and told me that my dad was arrested for a crime and he would likely be going to prison. I had no idea and never suspected my dad of such a crime. My parents had been divorced since I was two and my dad was living out of state at the time.
Fast forward 7 years and now I am in law school trying to figure out what the hell happened with my dad… it never felt right.
Fast forward another 10 years and all of my suspicions and hunches were validated when a judge granted my dad’s habeas corpus petition and vacated his conviction and 25-to-life sentence… (obvs leaving lots of details out for confidentiality reasons)…
I have been very involved in his case for the last 13 years….
After reading copious amounts of transcripts and interviews, I learned that in the early 2000’s my mom was contacted by investigators and was invited to go and give them “factual/ general character” statements about my dad. I remember this bc when I was about 10 or 11, my mom told me that she was going on a “trip” and would be back in 2 weeks but she wouldn’t take me and refused to tell me anything about what she was doing. So my mom took them up on their offer, was put into a nice hotel, given stipends for meal vouchers and money to visit with her girlfriends.
After reading through the material, I discovered that my mom did more than provide factual character testimony. She blatantly lied and said my father was running from the police, which I know he wasn’t. That testimony was then used by prosecutors as “evidence” to convict my dad of a really, really bad crime (there was very little evidence against my father). And is still being used today to keep him in custody even after his conviction has been overturned.
He has been in prison for most of my life. My mom has always resented him and made sure that I knew he was a deadbeat. I have since uncovered the truth and learned his side of the story, which was so very different. I am completely crushed by this. I suspect my mom is bitter that my dad left her after wanting to improve his life and stop doing drugs and find true love, which he did. My mom went on and continued being an alcoholic for as long as I could remember.
I’ve set some hard boundaries with my mom and haven’t spoken with her in 6+ months…
AITA?