by Melanie Hemry
The
Gift of Adoption Someone motioned for 14-year-old Brandon Sanders
to leave his classroom. Glimpsing the police officers waiting in the office, he broke into a cold sweat. Brandon flashed back to another time he’d been surrounded by police. He’d been 5 years old; the only witness to the brutal murder of his mother—at the hands of his father.
He remembered sitting in the cold courthouse. He’d been called to testify. At the last moment, Brandon’s father accepted a plea deal. Fifty years in prison in return for one thing: Brandon didn’t have to take the witness stand. Brandon and his three sisters had been sent to live with a foster family. Week after week, they attended church. For almost 10 years, his foster father had had a lot to say at home.
8 : B VOV
“You’re stupid and completely useless,” he told Brandon. “You’re just like your daddy. Poor white trash. You’ll never be good enough to be my son.” During all those years, the man had sexually molested Brandon’s sisters. Until his oldest sister ran away…to the police. Now a police officer was saying to Brandon, “Son, we need you to take off your shirt.” Brandon didn’t have to say a word. His brutalized body showed a road map of years of
