Have you or a loved one ever been in a position where someone else’s word mattered more than yours?

Can you think of anything more hurtful than someone using you as a scapegoat, accusing you of something you didn’t do, or lying about you and being believed over you because of who he or she is? Saturday was the release day for Broken Promises, which is about Reine Colbert, little Eva’s mom, who was granted parole and released from prison. Yet her release soon had her experiencing an abuse of power that happens too often to vulnerable people who don’t have the means to protect themselves, and it goes unchecked, flying under the radar, as the mainstream media don’t report on it.

A simple definition of abuse of power is the misuse of one’s position of power to take unfair and unjust advantage of people. What happens to a person who finds herself at a disadvantage, subject to abuse, especially when she doesn’t have the financial means to hire a lawyer to protect herself? Reine’s voice was taken from her, and she’d been stripped of any and all rights, being forced to follow a set of rules that would keep her from her daughter. Everything Reine did was because of Eva, whom she loves more than her next breath, and that left her with a burning anger that had only grown deeper, whether justified or not, toward Marcus O’Connell. Reine held him responsible for the shitty hand she’d been dealt.

As well, Reine had to report to her parole officer, a man who was anything but honorable and decent yet could show up whenever he wanted to wield power over her. Basically, he was the gatekeeper to her freedom, dangling the fact that she was one step from being locked back up again over her head. When he hit her, she knew she’d never be believed because of who she was. How often is the abuse of women by someone in a power position swept under the carpet or refused an investigation? Worse, victims are told that because of who they are, different rules apply, so reporting the abuse makes their lives only more difficult.

Credibility is everything, and so is the illusion of credibility given to a certain class of people, whether deserved or not.

Staying silent and keeping her head down was unfortunately Reine’s only recourse. She swallowed the hurt, the anger, the pain. Yet not longer after, she was accused of stealing from an old woman. According to her boss and the old woman’s daughter, who both pointed a finger at her, she had the opportunity to commit the theft, and the jewelry had been there before she was left alone with the old woman and was gone after. All it took for her parole to be revoked was the word of her boss and the old woman’s daughter, because they were seen as credible, a business owner and a property owner against someone who had nothing.

Unfortunately, someone of means can accuse someone of stealing based on as little as his or her word, especially if the person being accused doesn’t have the financial means to hire a lawyer for protection against that kind of assault, even when the evidence is purely circumstantial. Whether to charge is left up to the discretion of the police and the DA. Reine had too many strikes against her, having been released from prison on parole and already violated one condition when she showed up on Marcus’s doorstep. Her credibility was already in the toilet. Never mind the miserable fact that she had been left alone in the home with the old woman on the orders of her boss and the nurse she worked under for hours without pay, doing a job she wasn’t hired to do.

Could she have spoken up? In her mind, she couldn’t have, because that would have meant losing her job, and her employment was a condition of her parole. When the family called her boss and reported the stolen jewels, their word was all it took for Reine to be arrested, to have her freedom taken away again, and, worse, for people to believe she’d done it. She didn’t have a clue how to get them to see the truth. It was her word against two members of the public who were automatically deemed to have credibility and were believed over her.

Was it an open and shut case? It was circumstantial. When arresting Reine, Sherriff Marcus hoped she would just confess to the crime to make it easier for him. Marcus and Harold believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was guilty all because of who had pointed the finger at her. When under investigation for stealing, you should not speak to anyone, especially the police, at your home, at work, or anywhere else unless you have a lawyer there with you. The police have been trained to trip you up and get you to make the kind of inconsistent and incriminating statements that can and will be held against you. Even if you say something to someone else, not the police, that person could issue a statement to the police. In Reine’s case, one thing she did well was to shut her mouth, but that still didn’t save her.

Being wrongly accused of theft is a horrible situation, especially when the evidence is circumstantial and one person’s word means more than someone else’s. Has there been a time in your life when someone deliberately accused you of doing something you didn’t, and that person was believed over you?

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Coming to Audio Tomorrow

Narrated by Jennifer Pickens

Most cops have a past.
A past, they can speak of.
A past, they can share.
But not Diane….

BOUNTY will be available at Audible and Apple Books on August 3rd!

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New Release

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