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Justice costs much, injustice runs cheap
- Steph Turner
- Jan 7
- 5 min read
Updated: Jan 13
My pioneering efforts to end depression continue to be resisted by authorities
HIGHLIGHTS
Injustice sparks further injustice
What could alleviate depression is being hindered
You can engage me at the Need-Response podcast
I’m not a counselor, but I almost became one. A decade ago, I was trained to be one. I earned my master's in counseling in 2015, at Oakland University in Michigan.
Getting through the program as the only openly trans person proved a challenge. While most of my classmates and teachers proved supportive, I still met some detractors.
After completing all classwork, I interned at the local LGBTQ+ community center. Getting placed there was no easy matter. I first had to get permission from the school’s lawyer.
Unlike my counseling classmates, I entered the program as a wrongly convicted innocent person. When I first came out as trans in 1993, I was falsely accused and wrongly convicted by a jury who believed the popular trope of LGBTQ+ people as child recruiting predators.
No evidence supports the conviction. The accuser’s testimony seemed obviously coached. And I had no other felony or misdemeanor convictions, all which weigh in my favor of asserted innocence.
There are far more viable claims of innocence than the courts, or even the innocence projects, can effectively process. So I make the best of what I can with this monkey on my back.
The school’s attorney held up placement for my internship. I was able to secure the standard malpractice insurance without much of a hitch. But the lawyer delayed approval.
Thankfully, the school’s provost supported me. She understood how easy it can be for a trans person to be wrongly convicted. And end up falsely on the national sex offender registry, despite the fact that I am asexual.
As I waited, I continued enrolling in extra classes. As a wrongly convicted trans person, getting a job and housing proved elusive. I enrolled in college and lived on campus year-round just to survive. A fast-food job is all that I could find.
By the time the school’s attorney released me to intern at the local LGBTQ+ center, I had overextended by enrollment. Instantly, I was ineligible for tuition coverage.
While legally discriminated against by employers because of the wrongful conviction, I had no way to pay the added tuition. The fast-food job I found barely covered my rent. The wrongful conviction also cost me getting the degree I earned.
I couldn’t even find a place to live. I had to stay with my adult daughter for a while. She needed me to vacate to make room for her kids. So I ended up homeless for a year. I finally found somewhere to stay on the rough side of town, a rundown shack crawling with bugs.
Last month, a decade later, the state of Michigan sends a collection letter to my daughter’s address. They want that money now. All $3,659.16 of it. And they’re threatening to garnish my meager wages if I don’t cough up this full amount somehow. I definitely do not have that much money on hand.
The injustice I suffered in 1993 finds way to replicate itself. I now must pay for that lawyer’s delay back in 2015. No recourse to this action was offered. At least none that I’m aware of.
Besides, the adversarial legal process tends to favor those with more clout. It casts itself as the sole or even best means for justice. Even as it quietly squashes the vulnerable to being able to fully resolve their needs.
The timing disturbs me. I’m about to launch a podcast introducing an alternative to such adversarial legalistic pressures. Called the Need-Response podcast, it links wellness to being able to fully function without imposing pressures from powerful others. Then this occurs.
I am on the verge to end the plight of depression and other maladies by resolving stubborn needs, then this pops up in my way. I should be working on preparing the podcast, I tell myself. So much more to do, and now I must set aside precious time to deal with this?!
Or perhaps it’s an opportunity disguised as a challenge, that allows me to demonstrate the amazing potential of need-response. Perhaps the Service Collection Bureau in Lansing will receive the honor of being the first to benefit from this alternative to failing adversarialism.
Thank you, SCB in Lansing, for this opportunity to demonstrate this preferable alternative. Thank you, ahead of time, for this opportunity to incentivize you to be open to this more effective option to resolve such needs.
Thank you for this opportunity to replace failed hyper-individualism that excessively blames politically powerless individuals, like me, with greater appreciation for how wellness is psychosocial. I have little to no influence over how others mistreat me, like that school lawyer perpetuating the injustice of a wrongful conviction. Thank you for this opportunity to illuminate the psychosocial complexities of common problems dragging us all down.
Thank you for this opportunity to replace the hyperrationality evident in their blind faith in the adversarial process, both here and in the wrongful conviction, with greater awareness of our emotionally affected needs. Thank you for this opportunity to affirm your messy needs that defy rational explanations
Thank you for this opportunity to replace habits of overgeneralizing about what we think we know, since no one in this process appreciates the specifics of how that school lawyer delayed my internship placement, with relevant specifics too easily overlooked in the adversarial process. Thank you ahead of time to recognize these details that occurred beyond my control.
Thank you for this opportunity to replace the norms of impersonal alienation that permits lawyers to avoid the discomfort of getting to know my tragic situation, such as avoiding the painful facts of how the adversarial system mistakenly put an asexual trans person, with no history of violence, on the national sex offender registry. Thank you ahead of time for finally engaging who I really am.
Thank you for this opportunity to replace hostile adversarialism that needlessly provokes each other’s defensiveness, which vainly expects me to internalize the defendant role that I continually defy, with the mutuality to relate to each other’s affected needs. Thank you ahead of time for recognizing and respecting my affected needs as I strive to recognize and respect your affected needs.
You can follow the develops of how this unfolds in our upcoming podcast: the Need-Response podcast. Each Wednesday starting in April 2025, we share this vision for a much-needed service that breaks out of the debilitating mold of adversarialism.
If I’m unable to prevail and the state pushes me further into the abyss of poverty, I do not know now if this could prevent me from continuing the podcast. I am open to anyone’s financial help to help ensure the podcast and the need-response service has a chance to succeed.
To be blunt, I see little hope for us if we do not let go of our collective addiction to adversarial legalism. I brace for slipping further into collective despair without a service like this equipping us to speak truth to power in ways that incentivize the powerful to listen.
Help keep this vision alive. Donate whatever you can to support this visionary alternative. Go to AnankelogyFoundation.org and invest in your own future by helping to improve the chances for this service to become a living reality.
Thank you. Thank yourself for keeping hope alive to spread more love.
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