Cari Barichello speaks about Tyler Edmonds’ ordeal:
Many have been angry about what happened to Tyler for years and fought hard to win him his freedom. We also fought hard to change the laws and the legislatures that made them. We fought hard against corrupt judges and yes, the unqualified pathologist. Many there believed in our goal but were to scared to join in for fear of retaliation. After all, it is good ole’ boy country.
Tyler during the trial
I have been by Tyler’s side since shortly after his arrest. He is now considered a member of my family. His faith in God, his family and those who have supported him gave him the strength to get through this. We provided him college courses in prison, sent books and did what ever we could to keep the juices flowing for freedom.
He wrote poems, drew beautiful pictures, wrote me letters signed always with smiley faces because he knew, I always ended our letters or phone calls with “Smile.”
He found a bunny outside a small window in his cell he yearned to watch and keep tabs on. He saved a bat stuck in the barbed wire and drew a safety poster for me for a Nuclear Plant that won in the contest. He waited patiently for over four years because we promised one day he would be set free.
That day has finally arrived.
…Why this happened to Tyler. It doesn’t only happen in MS, it happens all over. That is why I advocate, why I Administrate Justice For Juveniles, why I involve myself in children’s lives because if it weren’t for people like myself, these kids would be pushed through the cracks by the very people sworn to protect them.
It’s hard to get people involved. They don’t want to get involved or think it would never happen to them. It can and in Tyler’s case, it did. To many are warehoused for life while adults who commit the same crimes are offered freedom after their set term. It’s not fair, it’s not right and it’s the adults who make these laws that need to realize that children deserve MORE SO a second chance at life, redemption and rehabilitation than adult offenders do. After all, it’s the adults that mold and govern our children. Why should a child come second to any grown up?
Please visit www.justiceforjuveniles.org
Meet the other kids I speak of and the wonderful members from all over the country who work tiressly to save them. Trust in your ability to change a child’s life and to change our laws.
Keep close the inspirational words of Winston Churchill:
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
Like Cari, I too have become very close to Tyler and cannot express my joy at his exoneration a few weeks ago. But Cari makes the important point that Tyler is just one of THOUSANDS of children who suffer because of the draconian change in laws affecting children and crime. Tyler managed to survive prison because he is a great kid who respects authority and did what he was told to do while he was locked in his cage. But what about children with learning or behavioral disabilities, those who are mentally ill or have been abused. THOSE are the children who, more often than not, end up in prisons. We fail as a nation when we fail children, even when those children fall from grace. “No child left behind” is a joke, because children locked in our country’s prisons ARE left behind in every sad aspect of their lives. They are left with substandard schooling, poor psycological help, little counselling efforts and are subjected to physical and sexual assault by both guards and older inmates, they have higher instances of suicide. For those children serving life sentences without possibility of parole (and there are thousands of them in the US), prisons have no incentive to give them ANYTHING and the children have no incentive to try because they live with the hopelessness of knowing they were sent to prison to die. God help us as a nation if we cannot even find hope for a child who makes one terrible mistake. We, as a nation, advocate for human rights and yet we violate those international laws governing the imprisonment of children every day. Tyler Edmonds is but one example of children who’s lives are destroyed by the justice system, rather than changed and uplifted.
GO CARI, GO! *YOU* ROCK. WHAT ABOUT THIS 8 YEAR OLD IN THE NEWS…FIRST ARTICLE I READ, HIS ATTORNEY MENTIONED A *CONFESSION* HOW HARD WOULD IT BE TO GET A CONFESSION OUT OF AN 8 YEAR OLD?