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Does innocence matter to you?

Updated: Jan 13

The disappointing failures of the adversarial legal system warrants a more responsive alternative





  • Adversarial systems react more than respond to our needs for justice and safety.
  • Adversarial justice reveals its transphobia against the defendants and homophobia against the young complainant.
  • Adversarial systems easily trap us in our emotional pain of anxiety and depression.
  • Need-response could be the answer, but gets easily resisted by shortsighted legalists.

Join me on this journey from rejected LGBTQ+ children to launching an inspiring new service that embraces everyone with love.


 

Warning: Some details, strong

language and sexual content

may be upsetting to some.

 

What are the odds of growing up with a trans sibling? Of the estimated 1.6% of the population who identify as trans, only 1 to 5% of them include siblings who are both trans. You can count me in that figure.

 

One effect of growing up trans with a trans sibling is witnessing firsthand good reason to stay in the closet. After witnessing how my older trans sibling was mistreated, I kept my desire to crossdress a carefully guarded secret. I didn’t even tell her.


protester holding up sign that reads: TRANSGENDER CHILDREN ARE NOT POLITICAL PAWNS

This was back in the early 1970s, back when few had even heard of the term transgender. Back then, we were still in grade school and there was no Internet to seek answers. I remember how she often got into trouble for trying on our cisgender sister’s clothing.

 

One day, she got into trouble after I neglected to put back an item belonging to our cisgender sister. I always felt bad about that. A day of reckoning would eventually arrive some two decades later.

 

I finally came out as transgender in 1993. Among the first to whom I self-disclosed, yep, was to my trans sibling. She self-identified as Janet, the sister I never knew I had.

 

I sought her forgiveness for that one time she took the blame for what I did, and she granted mercy. We finally connected on a much deeper level.

 

We also learned that we’re both asexual. Specifically, that I am “demisexual” as I do not feel erotically aroused unless I first establish an emotionally deep connection with a woman—as I had with my then wife.

 

Janet reported how she could not function sexually with the wrong genitalia. Being open about being trans both cost us our marriages.

 

Neither of us had yet presented ourselves as trans to the other. That first occurred after we drove to a support event for trans people about an hour away.

 

We each entered a different bathroom to change into our more feminine selves, then stepped out to first meet each other’s trans side. Janet summed up the experience by quipping, "Well, this really changes the family structure a bit."

 

We felt empowered like never before while mingling with other trans like ourselves at this event. A group of young males stumbled upon us. The alpha male of the group boasts, “If I caught my little brother dressed up like that, I’d beat his ass.” To which Janet replied while pointing to me, “That’s my little brother right over there.”

 

Janet soon moved in with me. She quickly drew the unwanted attention of young neighbor girl. She gawked at Janet through our apartment’s front window, like a peeping tom. Janet was clearly male-bodied underneath her feminine veneer.

 

Janet tried placating this girl’s curiosity. Using poor judgment, she invited her into the apartment while I slept in the back bedroom. I awoke to the sound of an unfamiliar voice, then stepped out to see a young girl I had never met. They both ignored my presence.

 

The girl later got into trouble with her mom for not being home on time. She explained she was in someone’s apartment. Her mother angrily demanded, “What were you doing in a stranger’s apartment?” She claimed Janet had grabbed and dragged her into the apartment.

 

Then in anger, she demands that Janet come out and explain herself. “What were you doing f**king with my daughter!?” Janet steps out onto the balcony, then gets down on one knee to demonstrate how she's no threat.

 

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Janet attempts to ease the tension. “Let me explain.” But then I hear someone running down the balcony, just as Janet jumps back inside the apartment. I see an irate man wielding a crowbar, swinging it at Janet and barely missing her.

 

I abruptly close and lock the door. As this man I never met before beats on our door with his crowbar, the angry woman keeps yelling, “Somebody call the police! Someone call the police!”

 

I turned to Janet and say, “If she doesn’t call the police, I will.” Janet nods, and so I call 911. This was at 5:43 p.m. on July 7, 1993. I wrote it down.

 

Minutes later, officers arrive to try to sort out the commotion. One of them orders the man to drop the crowbar, which he does. After claiming her daughter was molested by a couple of f@gs.

 

The police asked Janet what had happened, and she asserted her right to remain silent. When asking me, I told them I had just woken up and hadn’t observed anything like this man claims.

 

The officer asks us to wait in the back of his squad car. While sitting there, Janet knows she is likely going to be taken to jail. She instructs me to find a folder on her shelf that could help her explain her transgender identity to any inquiring authorities.


sign posted to telephone pole: TRANS PEOPLE ARE 370% MORE LIKELY TO BE BRUTALIZED BY POLICE THAN CISGENDER PEOPLE

Other officers arrive on the scene. One of them interviews the girl, with the girl’s mother clearly influencing what the young girl says. After about twenty minutes, I learn I am now a suspect along with Janet for whatever the girl claims to have happened. No one will tell us.

 

The officer then takes us both to the county jail. He tells us we’re both being charged with C.S.C. I had to ask him what that means, and he replies that it means criminal sexual conduct. I asked what did the girl that claim we did to her. To which the officer replies, “I think you already know.” But I honestly had no clue.

 

We’re fingerprinted and processed at the local jail. Then put into a holding tank with other men. I quickly detransition, and revert to presenting as only male for my safety. Later, we’re sent to separate four-man cells in another part of the jail, to await our fate.

 

While sitting in jail, we finally discover the details of the accusation. We learn the young girl claimed how we she was grabbed by a “man with lipstick” and dragged to the apartment. She claims she was knocked unconscious for a moment, and then subjected to bizarre sexual abuse.

 

As an acer—someone who is asexual—I was completely naïve and uninterested in what others in the jail called ‘69’. But that’s what this girl accused Janet did to her. Or what she was guided to say was done to her.


Polaroid camera sitting on a table

Her testimony also has Janet taking a Polaroid instant photo of her with me. She describes how we forced her to hold a butter knife with jelly as if stabbing my chest, and that we would use it against her if she ever told the police. So I was charged with aiding and abetting whatever they claimed Janet had done.

 

No Polaroid camera existed in our apartment. No instant photo. No jelly. No corroborating evidence. They claimed to have found semen on a green blanket, but neither of us owned a green blanket. I don't recall any green blanket ever being presented in court.


The complainant declined to be medically examined by a doctor with a rape kit. The doctor observed how the complainant seemed unusually composed for someone who claims to have been assaulted. And he debunked the claim that she was knocked unconscious. He found no signs of the alleged assault.

 

I thought this lack of evidence would help acquit us. At the start of the trial, my court appointed lawyer disabused me. She showed me in a law book how the law permits a conviction based solely on testimony, no matter how inconsistent. Add in the widespread prejudices against trans people at that time, our fates were sealed.

 

Janet and I had a joint trial, but separate juries. This led to an incident where evidence ostensibly against Janet was leaked to my jury. “Harmless error” is the usually given excuse. In other words, let the damage be done because it’s not going to change the expected outcome.

 

I quickly observe how the adversarial process not only lacks scientific discipline, but openly defies such accountability. Indeed, if a DA could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, then it must be easy to use the adversarial process to project their sexual anxieties on those who actually lack such erotic feelings. Confirmation bias gets encouraged. Tunnel vision runs the show. Truth runs cheap.

 

This miscarriage of justice wrapped up in a week. My jury couldn’t agree on the theory of guilt, but agreed that I must be guilty of something. By late December of 1993, we were both found guilty. Exactly of what, well, I was never told. Sent back to jail, we awaited sentencing in early 1994.

 

Janet was sentenced 50 years for a crime that never occurred. I was sentenced to 30 years. They ship us off to spend countless years with violent men eager to exploit the likes of us. I once again kept my transgender side a carefully guarded secret, just to survive.


parent holding sign "DECRIMINALIZE TRANS IDENTITY' with child in their lap

Being smeared as a pedophile puts me at the bottom of the prison pecking order. Imagine the abuse of also labeled a queer or “bitch”. Perhaps it’s more acceptable now, but definitely not back then.

 

I already faced repeated harassment for asserting my innocence in prison. Other prisoners would shout back, “You think you’re better than me?” I continually had to navigate their hyper-defensiveness.


Few prisoners consistently maintain their innocence as I did. Despite what you may see in the movies like Shawshank Redemption, most prisoners eventually own up to their harmful deeds. They may complain about the harsh sentencing. But they rarely, like me, insist on total innocence.

 

Much of this prejudice likely stems from media coverage of perp walks. Being arrested and losing one’s freedom naturally sparks the grieving process. Early on, they understandably deny they did anything wrong.


They express anger at the “system”. Their attorney encourages them to deny the most serious charges, to position themselves for a plea bargain. Over time, prisoners typically accept being convicted, often by plea deal.

 

Once sentenced and serving time in prison, all that drama is gone. So are the media’s cameras. Only about 15% of prisoners claim to be wrongly convicted. And a portion of them provide a compelling claim of being fully innocent. Like me, where no crime actually occurred.


prisoner holding bars to his prison cell as a free bird flies by

There is no reason or scientific explanation to account for maintaining innocence in the face of repeated parole denials, other than understanding the integrity of the falsely incarcerated innocent.

 

There is no psychiatric disorder to explain why a prisoner would continually risk being denigrated by other prisoners while also repeatedly pass up opportunity to get out of prison early. Pure and simple, it is a legally privileged prejudice.


On the other hand, there is growing awareness of a problem with prosecutors who hold the power to repeatedly resist review of compelling innocence claims. It's called "innocence denial". Boasting of their high conviction rates holds more political currency than accountably delivering just results for the politically less advantaged.


Such distorting incentives of prosecutors with minimal accountability for their actions persist as a black mark on the adversarial judicial system. Instead of blindly trusting law enforcement to secure our communities, their abuses of discretion can actually threaten the security of our communities in less visible ways.

 

In late 2005, I was finally discharged. Since I maintained my innocence, I was never eligible for parole. The parole board claimed I lacked remorse, which projected their lack of remorse for their participation in carrying on this miscarriage of justice.

 

I was finally free, but not fully free. Shortly after starting the prison term, a new law was passed: The national sex offender registry. Because of the young age of the complainant, my name is now kept on this registry for life. Yes, the national sex offender registry includes an asexual person.

 

Thus far, I’ve only been sexually intimate with my former wife. Nothing prior since knowing her. Nothing since we went our different ways. No felonies or misdemeanors prior to this wrongful conviction. None afterwards.

 

I don’t drink any alcohol. Don’t gamble. Don’t have any diagnosable mental health issues. I have no addictions. And yet I am stuck on the national sex offender registry.

 

Being falsely listed on the sex offender registry makes it impossible to find housing and a decent job. I still cannot find adequate housing or meaningful employment.

 

Fortunately, I was accepted to enroll at a state university. I earned my undergrad degree in sociology and anthropology. Then went on to earn my master’s degree in public administration. I returned for a second masters degree, this time in counseling.

 

Being falsely listed on the sex offender registry cost me that degree. I can share more about that elsewhere.

 

At least I was still alive. In late 2001, Janet was diagnosed with lung cancer that metastasized to her brain. She finally left prison by leaving her corpse behind. The prison repeatedly denied her attempts to medically address her gender dysphoria. So she finally left the prison of her male body that she felt was terribly wrong for her.

 

Right before she died, I wrote to her to say my last goodbyes. And to pledge to keep on fighting for the justice denied us. A couple hours after the prison doctor read to her my letter, she finally passed away.

 

After exhausting my state remedies to overturn this injustice, I reached out to the Innocence Project. Each attempt gets shot down.

 

My first attempt was rejected because they said they had to first help those on death row. Okay, that’s understandable. Strike one.

 

A couple years later, I tried again. This time they said they had to first help those with life sentences. Okay. Strike two.

 

In my third attempt just before being discharged, they told me they had to first serve innocence claimants still facing many years. The registry would continue to limit my rights. Strike three.

 

I tried again in 2014, to get off the registry. This time they told me how they must first help those still in prison. Strike four.

 

More recently, in 2020, my request was once again rejected. This time because they couldn’t see a path toward reversing the conviction in court under current circumstance. Strike five.

 

This year, I will try once more. This time, to test the process. This time, to offer a viable alternative that transcends the limiting adversarial process.


That alternative compares the details of my case with those already exonerated. Then provides an estimate of the viability of my innocence claim.

 

Moreover, it transcends the oversimplifying binary of guilt-or-innocence with a viability score. It challenges the adversarial system to rethink its untested assumptions.

 

Innocence projects routinely deny helping the vast number of innocence claimants. They tend to favor cases with a plainly wrongful conviction more easily reversed in court. They generally lack the resources to effectively process all viable innocence claims.

 

Let’s do the math. A conservative estimate finds 4 to 6% of all prisoners to be innocent of the crime. Not just wrongly convicted, but had no role in the crime at all. Or the action is no longer illegal, such as possession of a small amount of marijuana. Of the 2 million incarcerated in the U.S., that comes to 80,000 to 120,000 human beings. After including those on parole or discharged, that number soars.

 

Less than 4,000 have been exonerated by the same adversarial process routinely repeating this error. That’s a drop in the bucket in the sheer volume of miscarriages of justice. Cases kicked up to the U.S. Supreme Court have some top justices questioning if innocence can be grounds for dismissal.

 

As Samuel Gross, the editor of the National Registry of Exonerations, put it in a Washington Post op ed, “We know without doubt that the vast majority of innocent defendants who are [wrongly] convicted of crimes are never identified and cleared.”

 

The adversarial legal system blinds itself to its own destructive behaviors. While ostensibly intending to do good, it continues to do evil under color of law. In this current crisis, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, the adversarial judicial system is not the solution to our problems; the adversarial judicial system is the problem.


Paraphrasing Ronald Regan: In this present crisis, the criminal justice system is not the solution to the problem; the criminal justice system is the problem.

If there was anyone equipped to envision a viable alternative to this debilitating process, perhaps that person is me. I do not seek the role. But who else will step up to inspire us with a more responsive alternative? Who else can transcend the traps of such destructive legalism?

 

While in prison, I explored the spiritual depths compelling me to transcend gender norms. By 2002, I realized I was less transgender and more transspirit. Being a transspirit means that I am spiritually compelled to transcend divisive norms in order to resolve needs. It’s not about gender identity but connecting deeper with life’s full potential, by transcending limiting divides like gender norms.

 

Consider the three main stages of moral reasoning put forth by Lawrence Kohlberg. Transspirituality grounds me in the more developed stage of post-conventional moral reasoning. I intuitively relate to the inflexible needs of all. Spirituality compels me to properly resolve needs over catering to rules.


But I face a backlash from norm enforcers who are at a pre-conventional or conventional level of moral reasoning. That may include other trans people. Such norm-enforcers easily mistake need-responsive transcendence of norms as unacceptable violations of established rules. After all, most of us prefer our familiar pain of partially met needs from applied rules over the unknown pain of fully resolving those needs despite comforting norms.

 

The essence of my life cuts against the grain of the many debilitating norms ailing society. I learn to endure life’s natural pain, where norms have us repressing such pain. I learn to engage others to relate to their needs, where norms have us pitted needlessly against each other. I learn to sort through the nuance of life, where norms have us find comfort in low hanging fruit generalities.

 

Those most dependent on such divisive norms—like the adversarial legal system—tend to push back. They perhaps sense they risk losing the most from my need-resolving purpose in life. I can understand clinging to familiar coping methods over risking unknown solutions.

But I am spiritually compelled to resolve needs, in ways the adversarial legal system fails to address. Even at risk of being persecuted by the adversarial system for defying gender or other divisive norms they try to enforce in vain. Much like Gandhi and Dr. King, I cannot submit to violent laws.

 

I am spiritually compelled to transcend adversarial categories—which needlessly provokes mutual defensiveness—to address each side’s affected needs. I am spiritually compelled to relate to the underserved needs of both accused and accuser. That includes my accuser.

 

When filling out the innocence claim form in 2014, I learned the young complainant is now an adult woman attracted to other women. That makes sense. I learned during the trial how her older female cousin dabbled in sexually intimate contact with her. The jury was not allowed to know this.


lesbian women walking with their daughters

She likely saw something of herself in Janet. She possibly wished to be as openly different as Janet. She perhaps yearned to be accepted for her own deviation from gender and sexuality norms.

 

She was not finding that level of acceptance at home. She could not risk being outed as a lesbian. Not at such a tender age. She had to protect herself somehow, even if resorting to lies about Janet’s actions.

 

All the adults around her eagerly stretched out this narrative. The big, bad “man with lipstick” would be the fall guy. “Believe the child,” they said, while manipulatively coaching the child to say what they wanted to hear.

 

This wrongful conviction reeks not only of transphobia, but also homophobia. Instead of helping this young lesbian find acceptance, they reinforced her family’s rejection of her honest self.

 

Janet and I would gladly affirm her sexual orientation, but instead were served up as scapegoats for these adults’ rejection of this vulnerable child. Both accuser and accused remain trapped in the transphobia and homophobia of that time.

 

Who watches the watchers of the failed corners of our criminal justice system? Who warns the blind leading the blind down the rabbit hole of perpetuated injustice?

 

Who can alert background checkers to cease perpetuating the injustice of wrongly convicted innocents? Who can warn landlords and employers who mistakenly rely on tainted background checks, which can make them complicit in this wrongdoing?

 

Who or what can help save us from ourselves? Taking inspiration from Isaiah 6:8, I can eagerly answer, “Why not me?”

 

All these challenging experiences, and the spiritual gift of wisdom mysteriously bestowed to me, uniquely positions me to provide a viable solution: need-response. Need-response prioritize resolving each other’s needs to improve wellness outcomes.

 

Need-response illuminates the problem of “toxic legalism” apparent in this wrongful conviction. Need-response prioritizes inflexible needs over flexible laws. While no one sits above the law, no law sits above the needs it exists to serve. Legalism prioritizes flexible laws over inflexible needs, in at least five damaging ways.

 

1. Prematurely adversarial. Law enforcement may assume a crime occurred based on their adversarial prejudices, and then imposes the divisive categories of complainant and defendant in ways that can prevent a meaningful resolution. Need-response counters by identifying the likely unmet needs fueling a conflict, then exhausts all mutuality options before resorting to adversarial options.

 

2. Privileged avoidance. Law enforcement never asked either defendant about being asexual or asked complainant about risking family rejection for being gay, but instead relied on their confirmation biases to keep coldly distant. Need-response counters by proactively engaging each one’s affected needs, for which laws ostensibly serve.

 

3. Overgeneralizing. There was no effective effort to be sure trans people were not mischaracterized as child recruiting predators, while the prosecutor benefitted from having a jury who holds such overgeneralizing views. Need-response counters by exploring every relevant specific affecting each other’s needs.

 

4. Hyperrational. Insisting the jury must “believe the child” without admitting how the child may have been coached to give such bizarre details about such adult sexual content. Need-response counters by incentivizing all sides to safely express their emotionally charged needs, without having to immediately explain such needs in rational or legal terms.

 

5. Hyper-individual. Failing to recognize how the collective of law enforcement can make egregious mistakes. Need-response recognizes how it’s now easier for accused individuals to admit to their mistakes than for power-privileged police and prosecutors to admit to theirs.


It's now easier for the accused to humbly admit their mistakes than for police and prosecutors to admit their mistakes.

 

Legalists perhaps balk at this, who insist I must obey every authority, no matter how errant it may be. I simply cannot. I am spiritually compelled to resolve needs above serving laws. I am compelled to honor the needs of others as my own, as a social kind of love. It affords no space to comfort those who hopelessly cling to falsehoods.


If I was guilty of this crime, I am of the character to own up to it. But the available evidence points overwhelmingly to my innocence, and to the legal system’s failures. I put the onus on others to demonstrate otherwise. Or they risk being publicly identified as complicit in this wrongful conviction, and the fallout it brings to the world.

 

The adversarial legal system, as it currently exists, too easily hinders resolving needs. The more it coerces compliance to demanding authorities, the greater the risk for rising rates of anxiety and depression.


Once adjudicated, both accuser and accused and both plaintiff and defendant get forced into a win-lose binary. Winning only offers some relief from the pain, and rarely any support to resolve the affected needs causing the pain.

 

Ultimately, the adversarial legal process risks compromising the wellness of all those it objectifies. Instead of attenuating rising rates of anxiety, depression, addiction and other societal maladies, the impersonal legal process tends to perpetuate the problems it cannot solve.

 

By directly addressing needs, need-response potentially can reduce or even remove the pain of depression. Instead of seeking a win-lose outcome, it offers a more disciplined process for the win-win outcome of resolving each other’s affected needs. Only resolved needs can improve our wellness. Not those who “win” an argument in court. Or those settling on pain relief.

 

Depression naturally exists to redirect your bodily energies. It denies you the strength to keep on appeasing others. It insists you attend to neglected parts of your inner self, even at the risk of appearing selfish.

 

Your wellness demands this reprioritization. There is no such thing as pain like depression apart from unresolved needs. Need-response prioritizes resolving the needs for which laws and authority ostensibly exist to serve.


Any callous imposition of authority tends to preserve the familiar status quo of defensive-provoking adversarialism, of alienating avoidance, and debilitating overgeneralizing. These easily violate the higher calling of love to honor the needs of others as one’s own. These all risk trapping us in painful depression and other maladies.


Love sits above the law. Because love fulfills the purpose of law. The more internally motivated and enabled to honor the needs of others as your own, the less cause to externally motivate by pressures from impersonal authority. After all, you don't exist for human authority. Human authority exists for you.


Individual law enforcers typically mean well. But the legalistic system they serve generally resists wellness. While trying to protect society from dangerous sexual predators, it continues to oppress the very person endowed to help society to not only stop sexual violence at its core, but prevents that person from improving all of our lives.


Realizing I am more transspirit than transgender, I no longer present my feminine side in public. Since it's not about gender identity for me, I've been fortunate to remain free of depression. The wisdom about needs that being a transspirit affords me I now wish to pass along to you with this new service, starting for free.

 

I seek to resolve your needs, to remove your pain from unmet needs, like any anxiety or depression you may suffer. Norm enforcers habitually resist my efforts. Some benefit from trapping you in pain. Some remain in positions of authority, with the means to prevent me from developing this new service that could serve you.

 

Against mounting odds, I struggle to create this new service of need-response. I’m introducing this visionary new service to you and to the world in a podcast by the same name. Increasingly, I need this service to allow me to create this service—an annoying catch-22.

 

You can help create it. You’re invited to help build it, to shape it to serve your overlooked needs, and to get this much needed service off the ground.

Through this podcast, I share with you how need-response offers a viable alternative to the built-in limits of the adversarial legal system. I can share with you the Estimated Innocence Form that calculates the viability of an innocence claim, by comparing it to already exonerated cases.

 

We’ll also apply empathy and love to melt political polarization. Yes, we’ll unpack our political differences in an inspiring way. And much more. 


The Need-Response podcast artwork

Each Wednesday, starting April 30th of 2025, the Need-Response podcast showcases what this new service can do for you. And for countless like you. The trailer is already available on Spotify.

 

If you need a service that equips you to speak your truth to power, then find out more at anankelogyfoundation.org. Together, we make it happen. Together, we’ll see if the odds for success can be greater than the odds of growing up with a trans sibling.


 

ADDENDUM

Need-response addresses the problem of overlooked wrongful convictions in two phases. The first attempts to improve innocence claim forms used by innocence projects. The second moves beyond the adversarial legal process itself to address the affected needs on all sides.


1) Estimated Innocence

This first step offers an estimated score of likely innocence, by comparing the innocence claim to those cases already exonerated. Since its creation, academic Carrie Leonetti, of the University of Auckland School of Law, has published a similar innocence checklist.


The innocence claimant downloads an Estimated Innocence Form. After filling it out with the details of the case, they see it will automatically produce an Estimated Innocence Report with a score of viable innocence, and a quick summary of the compelling nature of the claim.


You can find this form for innocence claimants right here.


This form is also offered to innocence litigators here.


You can find this form filled out by the author right here.


Estimated innocence of Steph Turner when compared to already exonerated cases:

92% chance of likely innocence.


Synopsis

Asexual person comes out as trans in early 90s. Is spiritually compelled to transcend polarizing differences to resolve needs. Nonconformity results in being falsely accused as a “sexual predator” homophobic stereotype. Convicted without evidence. Must register as sex offender for life. Forced into poverty and homelessness. Rejected cornerstone.


Highlights

  1. No other criminal history

  2. Consistently maintained innocence, took no plea deals

  3. Transphobic investigation and prosecution

  4. Convicted without corroborating evidence

  5. Climate of sex abuse hysteria

  6. Media sensationalized coverage

  7. Exculpatory evidence overlooked with untested DNA

  8. Spiritual compulsion to resolve needs at odds with judicial system


Tagline

Asexual "transspirit" registered for life as a sex offender


But what if the innocence claimant, with a high viability score, still cannot get their wrongful conviction reversed in a court of law? Need-response then asserts the higher authority of properly resolved needs.


2) Responsive Innocence

Need-response goes beyond asserting innocence by addressing all the affected needs on each side of a conflict. Need-response incentivizes the innocence claimant to transcend the imposing limits of the adversarial approach to respond directly to each others' needs.


Only need-response links the purpose of any law to accountably measure the actual outcomes of its application and enforcement. Mutual respect resolves more needs than mutual defensiveness.


This provides innocence claimants underserved by the legal process to then challenge the limits of the adversarial approach. This offers a mutuality alternative much more responsive to each side's needs. Laws themselves to not resolve needs; we do.


You can find the empty form here.


You can find this form filled out by the author right here.


You can get to the meat of this responsive alternative by reading the responses to these three key items.


1. Empathize with what the complainant actually needed at the time

"I sense she presented a personal struggle with her own emerging sexuality as same-sex attracted. She later came out as lesbian. She appears to be drawn to my transgender sister as someone openly being herself in a way she likely wish she could be. Or at least drawn to explore what this could all mean for her, at a time when LGBTQ+ people were largely marginalized by mainstream society and not readily accepted at home. When caught not at home when confronted by her mother, she could not say that she willingly interacted with such a "deviant" in the neighborhood."

 

2. Identify your own affected needs from the incident.

"My dominant need at the time was to come out as transgender without being smeared with popular transphobic or homophobic tropes, such as the widespread belief that we're more inclined to pedophilia than cisgender and straight males. To not be falsely accused of sexual misconduct but instead be accepted as an asexual (demisexual) person. Once accused, to have the preponderance of evidence favoring my innocence to show that I am not guilty of what I am not capable of doing. Once wrongly convicted, to be exonerated. Once sentenced to lifetime sex offender registration, to be removed from that listing with prejudice. Ultimately, to have legal recourse in a system less adversarial and based more on mutually addressing the affected needs on all sides to a conflict."

 

3. How would you address complainant’s apparent needs if you had the chance?

"If the law would allow it, I would affirm her same-sex attraction. And tell her that I do not personally hold any animosity toward her. I hold no grudge against her for falsely accusing me of things I am not capable of doing. I understand her need at the time to not be out to her mother or to her homophobic-presenting stepfather. I understand her motive to accuse my sibling and then me to avoid getting into trouble by her irate mother, when her mother demanded to know why she was not at home when her mother came home from work. I understand how she was incentivized by the homophobia of the time, that prompted her to shift the spotlight onto us and to then see how the adults would react to other LGBTQ+ people like herself. I appreciate how the reaction toward us would keep her in the proverbial closet for a long time."



Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quote on tyrannical legalism in the Soviet system




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