andreafrancine-blog

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“You’re the only one I trust enough to see inside my soul.” - William Chapman

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“We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.” - Chuck Palahniuk

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When no one listens to you, write, because the page will always listen to you.

missblueturtle  (via wnq-writers)

[andreafrancine-blog]

There is skin in words. Poems are made from skeletons. We write of things we cannot bury.

Pavana पवन (via maza-dohta)

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Why I don’t think my father should be paroled

I have been busy telling the world that my biological father should remain in prison, serving his life sentence of Aggravated Murder, for the brutal murder of his wife, my biological mother, Francine Spain Clumm. I have been busy telling anyone who will listen (or add me to their social media) that he does not deserve parole. Why do I believe that? Am I right? Does he really not deserve parole? What makes some people eligible for parole and not others? I actually believe in parole. I believe in the power of change. I believe that people make mistakes and can learn from them. I believe in giving people chance to prove that they want to be better. If I were being totally honest, which I am, I would have to say that I would, if in doubt, rather err on the side believing too easily that someone has changed than that he hasn’t. So, I believe, for many people, parole is appropriate and fitting. I think, by nature, I am an optimist. For me, the glass is half full. There is always a silver lining; the sun will come out tomorrow. (Frankly, I think this says a great deal about my basic personality when you consider my life story. I mean if practically watching your mother be murdered can’t destroy your belief in the basic goodness of humanity, then what will?) I look for the good in people. I have trouble believing that there isn’t some good in everyone. So believe me when I say, I would love to believe that William Clumm is worthy of parole. I would love to believe that my biological father who shares my chromosomes has changed. (I would rather think he was innocent but after studying the evidence, I can’t believe that.) Trust me, I have been searching and searching for something good in this man, but I keep coming up empty. According to the Ohio State Parole Board Handbook 2015 (last update), “The Board may grant parole “if in its judgment there is reasonable ground to believe that…paroling the prisoner would further the interests of justice and be consistent with the welfare and security of society.” R.C. § 2967.03.” How can a man who consistently denies he ever committed the crime be considered a changed person? I don’t believe true rehabilitation occurs if you don’t admit you are guilty and then feel remorse for your crime. I know someone is going to say that, well, maybe he isn’t guilty. I think it’s fair to look at that. First of all, for the sake of parole this isn’t actually a question to have to consider. A person’s guilt or innocence isn’t retried by the parole board. If a person is in prison, he or she is guilty in the eyes of the law. Therefore, as far as the parole board is concerned, the person is guilty. However, I assume no one from the parole board is reading this, so I think it’s a valid question. Secondly, all of the evidence points to his guilt The case against him was very tight. I, honestly, can’t see how he is not guilty. His legal defense was that my mother committed suicide. She left no note. She was a devoted mother whose suicide meant leaving two young girls with only her abusive husband. She was actively leaving her husband. She had rented a home in Amesville and had moved most of our possessions into it. She had never mentioned suicide to her close friend and neighbor but had confided her fears regarding her husband, including that he might try to kill her. Combine that with the fact that all of the evidence in the criminal investigation pointed to murder rather than suicide, I find his defense to be flimsy at best. Also, if he really believed she was depressed and committed suicide, why have several of his family members that I have tracked down and spoken to in the last year tell me that he told them that actually the two of them were doing drugs and she accidentally overdosed? I find it believable that he might initially not want to admit he was doing drugs, but I think most people facing an aggravated murder charge would ‘fess up to some drug doin’, especially since he appealed his case as far as it would go and never once brought this up as a possible defense. I find it hard to believe that an innocent man would have a different story depending on his audience. I would applaud a truly innocent man for refusing to lie and say he was guilty, just to gain favor with the parole board, but I do not believe he is being a hero of truth. I believe he is guilty and will not admit it. (More discussion of the evidence will be discussed in future blog posts.) So, I believe without a doubt that William Clumm is guilty but refuses to acknowledge this guilt or believe that his incarceration is the consequence of his crime. As long as he will not accept imprisonment as punishment for his wrongdoing, then justice has not been served and parole is not appropriate. I think it is very appropriate for the sake of this discussion to assume that Clumm’s guilty verdict is appropriate. William Clumm refused to relinquish his parental rights to me while I was in foster care, delaying my adoption by my loving parents for years. To some this may seem like proof of fatherly love. Since I have no memories of fatherly love—only memories of fear and abuse, I never looked at it that way. His twisted behavior and his cold-blooded murder of my mother only convince me that he wanted to maintain his parental rights in an effort to maintain control and as additional proof that he shouldn’t be incarcerated. I believe that this lack of regard for my personal well-being is another example of how he only cares about himself. He is not a man who wants to benefit his own daughter, let alone the rest of society. How is his parole going to be of any benefit to society at large? I maintain that any parole board that would release a heartless, narcicisstic man like that who has not truly rehabilitated, is doing society and justice a disservice. My sister and I will never see William Clumm brought to justice for the abuse that he inflicted on us. These are crimes that he was never tried for. I do not blame the law enforcement agency. Those types of crimes more than 30 years ago perpetrated on small children who have no mother to speak for them would have been next to impossible to charge in a court of law. They worked tirelessly to keep us safe, see that we got good homes and that William Clumm was prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for the murder of our mother. They succeeded. He was given a life sentence. (Side note: at that time the death penalty was not legal in the state of Ohio.) How can it be in the best interest of justice for this man to be set free upon society? To my knowledge, he has never received relevant programming for these crimes, since he wasn’t ever tried and convicted of them. How can my family and I feel safe knowing he has been paroled back into our home community where he might prey on our daughters? The district attorney’s office and the Athens County Sheriff’s Department and Athens County Children’s Services did their job. The parole board needs to continue to do their job and uphold justice in this case. Throughout his incarceration, William Clumm has consistently showed disregard for the legal verdicts of the State of Ohio and for his victims. He appealed his conviction, fought to keep parental custody (to the Ohio Supreme Court), filed frivolous lawsuits against the State of Ohio (a notorious case being because he as a prisoner was denied the right to receive some mail order game tokens), and most recently attempted to sue my sister and myself for defamation when we protested ten years ago that he was granted parole by the Ohio State Parole Board. He attempted to sue us for defamation of character because we did television and newspaper interviews and referred to him as a “murderer.” It was ruled that it is not defamation to call someone a murderer when he has, indeed, been convicted in court of Aggravated Murder. It is actually a statement of fact. We also exercised our rights to full hearing board and presented our case and his parole was, in fact, overturned for ten years. He is now up for parole again in May. Don’t his actions when we protested his release due to fear for the safety of ourselves and our families and outrage that our mother’s murderer would not truly serve a “life sentence” prove that he should not be released? This act of bringing a lawsuit against us shows that he is vengeful and may be a safety risk should be released. Suing us was his only recourse while in prison? What more will he try to do when he released? When he was granted parole before, he was to be released into Athens County, Ohio. My family and I live in Athens County, Ohio. We are active participants in the community. We could easily be targeted. His actions after the last parole board decision are not consistent with the “welfare and security of society.” There are many prisoners who may be rehabilitated and be worthy of a second chance granted to them by parole. I wish those prisoners all the best. I pray that they are successful in leading happy, successful lives. I wish my own “father” could be worthy of a second chance. Sadly, he is not. He was given a life sentence, and a life sentence he should serve. Parole is a privilege, not a right, and he hasn’t earned it.

[andreafrancine-blog]

[andreafrancine-blog]

There is skin in words. Poems are made from skeletons. We write of things we cannot bury.

Pavana पवन (via maza-dohta)

[andreafrancine-blog]

I'm new to the blogosphere. Breaking in is tough! I may only be talking to myself at this point. So today I spent some time trying to find blogs like mine. So far, I haven't been very successful. I feel like I can't find anyone with a story similar to mine. My early childhood was filled with abuse and terror. My biological father murdered my biological father. Years of court cases finally left me adoptable into my awesome foster family. I have some adoption angst but not like what I read about because, frankly, my foster/adoptive family saved my life. Maybe my adoptive experience is atypical. I don't know. I will have to write more on that later I guess. I am going to spend some time on this blog discussing the events of the crime. So I guess I fit into the true crime category. I want to oppose his upcoming parole. I can't find anything like that on people's blogs...I've mostly spent a lot of my life feeling like I'm different and blogging is starting to confirm that. How would j define my blog? Well, I guess, using the upcoming parole hearing and my campaign to oppose it as a journey to understand myself and my roots. www.ipetitons.com/petition/life-means-life

[andreafrancine-blog]

I am grateful that my parents did not think they had to explain us all the time.

I wish APs would do the work of teaching folks that they aren’t entitled to any information at all. That it’s actually wildly inappropriate to approach a person with a chid and feel entitled to an explanation of that child’s origins, period. Especially in front of the child. It can be a real mindfuck for the child. It’s like, someone has to explain the legitimacy of my existence or my right to exist in the body/space/family/context i occupy through no fault or agency of my own while I’m just standing there trying to exist. 

This happened to me constantly growing up because my brother and I had fiery red hair, very fair skin, and blue eyes, while our parents had dark brown hair/eyes and darker skin tones. Very different of course than the often racist and classist assumptions and implications of these intrusive questions for a transracially adoptive family, but we were unavoidably marked as other in relationship to our parents, and so people regularly approached us demanding to know where we got our red hair from–does their father have red hair? No? An aunt? A grandmother? No. No. My devout Catholic mother gave very little information to strangers when pried, and for the most part told people we got our red hair from God (lol?) and kept it moving, except sometimes she would divulge we were adopted and then one of two things would happen: 1. The stranger would turn to look at us with pity face and say, oh, isnt that wonderful! or 2. The onslaught of questions would begin–where did they come from? Did she know anything about our real parents? How old were we when she got us? And on and on. Desperately, I always wanted my mother to just shut it down completely and be like: Hey stranger, it’s simply not ok to ask. No matter the person’s intentions, no matter how they phrased their questions, it always felt like a singling out and an accusation–a giant, looming glare as if through a fish-eye lens and a sharp pointed finger bearing down on me saying, YOU DO NOT BELONG. 

i still sometimes unconsciously assume i have this burden as an adult. That i have to explain or justify why i’m allowed to exist or take up space. And fuck all that noise. This isn’t the only reason why I came to believe my existence was problematic - existential questions for adoptees run deep and wide - but it certainly compounded the already fractured understanding of selfhood. 

There needs to be a culture shift around this practice. There are much better, less harmful ways for people to receive information about adoption. And anyway, these questions never once felt to me like a stranger’s desire for information about adoption. They felt like an attempt at an unnecessary, and frankly dangerous, kind of categorization that leaves the questioner with the idea that they understand something that is far more complicated than an uncomfortable two minute interaction in a public space can possibly convey. I think a lot of misconceptions, misunderstandings, and reinforcement of problematic narratives and binaries happen within these kinds of transactions.

Maybe try to challenge yourself not to have to be able to put any individual or family into an easily definable, understandable, or marketable category. Just resist. You don’t need to know if this family who is out trying to buy groceries for dinner is transracial or biracial, biological or adoptive. You don’t need to know if someone is a boy or a girl, straight or gay. It does nothing for you except keep you confined to spaces that lack awareness, compassion, possibility, multiplicity, and imagination. Let it go. Do better.  

[andreafrancine-blog]

I don’t have many pictures of my early childhood.  I have very few pictures of my half sister and me.  We spent most of my childhood in separate states after our mother was murdered.  I was placed in foster care in Ohio and later adopted.  She went to live with her biological father.  We didn’t see each other for 9 years.  I have a great adoptive family, and I love my adoptive siblings, but I miss the years with my half-sister J.  Another thing our mother’s murderer stole from us.  We will never get those years back.

[andreafrancine-blog]

My mother, killed at age 35 by my father.  Now he wants paroled from his life sentence of Aggravated Murder. Please sign this petition to keep him behind bars.  Parole is a privilege, not a right, and he hasn’t earned it.

[andreafrancine-blog]

[andreafrancine-blog]

“You are not accidental. The world needs you. Without you, something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it.” - Osho

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