Freekeenan's Blog

Amy Brown Finally Speaks

Hi, My name is Amy Brown, Keenan’s mom. As all the readers of this website know I’ve lost my supervised, mail, phone, and physical contact privileges many times. Once it has been through fault of my own, and other times I have been used as a pawn to hurt and punish my son. At this time however, they are restored.

Keenan received a felony charge and conviction, 3 days after his 12th birthday in 2007, for allegedly scuffling during a physical restraint at Camp E Ma Chamee. He was having some emotional issues around that time and was supposed to be participating in a group event when he became emotional and upset and walked off from the group to collect himself. A member of the staff felt it was necessary to come over and restrain him but during the restraint Keenan accidentally hit the staff member in the eye. Because of the charge and conviction, he was soon after transferred to Greenville Hills Academy, where he remains today.

Naturally I fear for Keenan’s life and I know that if he receives one more felony he would become a triple felon and be detained in a Department of Corrections Juvenile Prison. During the initial time of confinement I had no contact, and no one from the facility, the probation or judge’s office would speak to me, because I was not the custodial parent. Almost a year later my rights were restored because Keenan’s case manager at Greenville Hills Academy, Mr. Fudge, petitioned the courts and asked that they give my right to contact my son back to me.

With my rights restored, and my son going through a period of ups and downs, I decided to come to Florida to visit my son. We had a wonderful, but way too short 48 hours together. But of course all good things come to an end, and when Keenan returned to Greenville Hills Academy, he had an emotional break down and was restrained by a member of the staff. We were shortly thereafter told that since Keenan seemed to have emotional problems, after returning from visits home that he would not be allowed anymore 48 hour passes.

I should tell you that in the past, Keenan has always had some sort of emotional breakdown after being returned to captivity. When he was first told he could not graduate from Elementary School before going to Jail, as Judge Goodman had originally promised him, he had to be put on a suicide watch. He always seems to have breakdowns when returning to these facilities, his mind simply cannot cope with it. In some of the psychological reports, he has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, we feel that this is a direct result of that day so long ago that he saw me in shackles, at the age of 6.

After I was told that Keenan would not be getting anymore passes home, and that he might never be able to get out of Greenville Hills Academy if the breakdowns, and behavior issues continued, I made an easy decision and decided to stay in Florida where I could visit my son more frequently. I did this in hopes that the consistency of my visits would in turn give Keenan short goals to work towards so that he would eventually be able to get out.

I had noticed in the past that Keenan always managaed to keep his behavior in check for a few weeks at a time and was capable of working towards a more short term goal, but when it came to a longer goal he just couldn’t stay perfect for that length of time. When I say perfect I’m not exaggerating, these facilities expect the kids to be perfect and when they falter, their sentence often starts over, so in other words until the child maintains perfect behavior for a set length of time they cannot advance forward to the next phase of the “program”.

As a result some of these children remain in the system until they are 19 or even older, this is because they are not sentenced to a specific amount of time, like you or I would be if we committed a crime. In the juvenile court world these kids are most often given an indeterminate sentence which means they can be held until at least 19, or until the court decides that they have served enough time. This is how my son has come to do so much time over what originally started as childhood mischief, stealing a bicycle.

Since my return to Florida and my bi-weekly visits my son has finally received a “graduation” date and a possible release date. I am very proud of him, he is an amazing young man. Currently we are waiting for Judge Marci Goodman to sign the release papers and send them back to Greenville Hills Academy. It has been a few weeks now and we are starting to get worried that she won’t sign them, in fact we received a warning from Debra Allen, Keenan’s probation officer that often times the Judge does not sign the Academy’s release plan because she may feel that a few additional months are needed.

Keenan’s graduation from Greenville Hills was on July 10th, but his release is not scheduled until the 23rd. I think this is done so that he has time to mess up before his release so that the possibility of him not being released exists. You should also know that should Keenan get out, he may have to stay on probation until he is 19 years old. I am optimistic that he will be allowed to come home, and I am eagerly awaiting his return home so we can begin the rest of our lives together.

https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1BRJjgdYLWRxw

This entry was posted on July 19, 2008 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Free Keenan / exposing judge Marci Goodman, CPS, her devastating destruction & imminent harm to my family with tags Amy Brown Finally Speaks, begin the rest of our lives together, behavior issues continued, Camp E Ma Chamee, charge, conviction, Department of Corrections Juvenile Prison, Elementary School, emotional issues, Fascism, felony, Florida, goal, graduate, Greenville Hills Academy, Judge Marci Goodman, lost, mail, petitioned the courts, phone, physical contact priveleges, physical restraint, release, restored, rights, supervised. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.