Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- A Critical Life Decision

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Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music):

1) Did you or your ancestor make a critical life decision that really changed their life in terms of place, work, family, relationships, etc.?
2)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a comment on Facebook or Google+.

There have been many life-changing critical decisions made during my adult life.  Several of them changed life as we knew it for many people. This is about some of the hardest.

A crime was committed and I reported it.  Yes, I turned in a relative and I don’t regret it for a moment. The crime was vile and disgusting and against a child.

Fast forward several years and this same child was at the center of another bit of family turmoil.  I testified in court against another, much closer relative.  Though I did not believe for a minute that this relative did what they were accused of, they had threatened to kill my husband because he’d said something that upset the wife of said relative.  I was scared and, while I do not believe that I committed absolute perjury, my testimony was such that this relative went to jail for the crime the child accused him of, a crime of which he was not guilty.

This severed ties to this branch of my family completely.  The incarceration of this older relative destroyed his family financially. While they did not lose their home, thank goodness, this relative lost his retirement benefits, which thrust them into financial ruin at a point in time when they were too old and infirm to recover.

David and I moved over a 1000 miles away from South Carolina due to further threats against our family.   This move robbed me of my last remaining grandparent for the last 13 years of her life.  I never saw my father again before he died.

I do not regret for a moment turning in the first relative mentioned. He was guilty and he even admitted it.  I will regret till my dying day the testimony against the second one because I know he was not guilty of what she said.

And this seemingly innocent, mistreated child? Well, it turns out she was a manipulator, a pathological liar.  She went on to her next victims, destroying yet another family with false accusations.




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