Jace was arrested on a friday evening, February 17th, 2017 at 7pm.

That monday, the 20th, was president’s day. So my son was held an extra day as I scrambled desperately to find out what was happening. You are not informed when your loved one is arrested. He left friday evening asking to borrow the car. I asked him where he was going and he replied he had met someone online and was going to play video games with them. Pretty normal for him. As he left I said ‘be careful’ – his reply was ‘ I always am’. We’ve had a good laugh about that over the last year.

That night I awoke at 1am. Jace hadn’t come home. I have that mothers sense of whats normal, and OK, and what isn’t. This wasn’t. There was no call, message, text, nothing. Not normal. I tried to relax and went back to sleep. I proceeded my pattern of wake, worry, drift off through the night. About 7 I am fully awake and know somethings very wrong.

I called the police. They checked and said there were no reports of him in their system. They said ‘call the hospitals and the surrounding jails’. Say what? When you’re in a frenzied panic there is not a list you can go to of places to call and check? On top of this request on my already frayed nerves, I am new to the area and do not know hospital names and jails in the area. A few blurred hours later I find my son is a guest of clark county jail in vancouver washington. I find he is charged with ‘attempted rape of a child’. This makes even less sense to me and I am close to hysteria.

Coincidentally my sister is flying in this morning from Tampa, Florida to visit. I need to pick her up at noon. I have no car but have enough brain cells left to take the train in and meet her.

My sister, my rock, spends her vacation weekend with me finding my car, helping me select an attorney for the arraignment, and sitting next to me as my son is brought out in chains in front of a judge.

Jace has told me that the pause before he appears is due to his crying, not wanting his mother to see him in chains. This hit him particularly hard – that I would think ill of him. But truly all I felt was his pain.

Now here’s the ‘funny’ part – you tell me if you think this is an honest mistake. My son has a unique name. ‘Jace’ was his great grandfather’s and grandfather’s name. There are very few ‘Jace’ around. Yet somehow, my son who has no criminal record, is brought up in front of this judge with the following attached to his arrest sheet:

While this is hard to read, it says… ‘the suspect’s criminal history indicates’… right after ‘DUI OFFENSES’. Ummmmm Jace doesn’t have any criminal history. No DUI. Nothing.

My 20 year old son, with no criminal history, gets $50,000 bail. The 50 some year old man who offered to help a mother ‘train’ her children sexually, who appeared directly before Jace, also received $50,000 bail.

Make sense to you? Honest mistake? I don’t think so.