If I were a defense attorney

September 17, 2014

I don't want to be a defense attorney. However, I have thought about what I would want to be like if I were one.

I would want to know whether or not my client had done what he or she was accused of doing.  If he or she were guilty of the crime, then I would encourage the client to take responsibility for what he or she had done.

If I were Adrian Peterson's lawyer, this is what I would say:

Don't waste time denying what you did or trying to define it as being something other than abuse.  If you have to go to jail, go to jail, and use your time there as productively as you can.

If it's true that you were abused when you were a child, then you are not one of the people who transcend their early experiences of abuse, who learn healthier ways of dealing with life and parenting than what they were exposed to when they were children.

Start educating yourself about what abuse is and about how and why it is not like healthy behavior.  Whatever you have to do to change your thinking, emotional and behavioral processes is something that you should address with the same discipline that you used to turn into a professional athlete.  Even if your sports career is over, your life doesn't have to be.

Children love their parents in a way that they never love anyone else.  It is not unusual for the victims of even the worst abuse to resist being taken from their parents.  Their parents' love is the most important thing in their lives. Most abused children would do anything to feel that their parents love them.  Many of them are incredibly forgiving for a long time.  Once those children get to be teenagers or adults, though, it is often too late even for repentant parents to establish better relationships with them.

What do you want the next ten years, and the rest of your life, to be like?  Do you want to be a good parent and a responsible person, with the difficulties and rewards that life has for people who try to be those things?

Copyright L. Kochman, September 17, 2014 @ 5:39 a.m.