[ Radio static ] [ Police radio chatter ] -10-4.
-Anonymous.
Unverified.
Officers fighting with gangs.
There's Bloods and Crips on street level.
Approximately five female blacks, Central.
-There's a gentleman that was stabbed by several girls.
-Paul, are you the patient?
-No.
A man's been stabbed.
-Okay.
Is the patient breathing?
-Yes.
-Awake?
Is he awake?
Hello?
-They were a pack of lesbians who jumped this guy and almost killed him.
-He was attacked by a group of women yesterday in Manhattan.
Police say the man made a comment allegedly to one of the women.
-He was attacked because he was a straight man.
Just a real nasty gang assault.
-What was this fight about?
Why did we even have this fight?
-It's called gay bashing, but they won't call it that.
If we wouldn't have defended ourselves, one of us would be dead.
I'm not pleading guilty 'cause I don't feel like I was guilty of anything.
Let the people judge it.
[ Indistinct conversation ] [ Both laugh ] [ Indistinct conversations ] -We all clicked with each other.
These are my friends.
This is my family.
-Patreese and Venice, they grew up with each other.
They knew each other since they were 2 years old.
Me and Terrain, we're like siblings.
We argue like we siblings.
You know, it's like a real bond that we have.
We always loved one another.
We was there for one another.
It was like we family, you know.
My mom's out.
Me and my mother came out around the same time.
When she told me she was gay, I said, "Yeah, me too."
You know, so, that's all -- That's the only person that really -- And my brothers, like, they fine with it.
They call me their "brister."
You know -- their brother/sister.
No, they fine with it.
They okay with it.
Long as I'm happy, they happy for me.
It doesn't change them.
-How old were you when you came out?
-I was...20.
-How about you, Terrain?
-Hmm.
She was like 4.
-[ Laughs ] -With her being gay, what I think is, everybody should just mind their own business.
[ Laughs ] And leave whoev-- If that's what you choose to do, that's what you choose to do.
-Say hi.
This is my little cousin Ebon.
Um...
I know this house has been here forever.
This house has been here forever.
We used to play right here in this house together with our friends.
We grew up in this house.
[ Bell ringing ] -It's definitely a tight-knit neighborhood.
Mainly everybody that lives out here been here.
You understand what I'm saying?
Like, our grandmothers and great-grandmothers bought these houses 20, 30, 40 years ago before we was all mainly born.
Went to the same school, played in the fire hydrant.
They're still here, and we're still here.
It's not a bad neighborhood to grow up in, but it's impoverished.
You got drugs.
You got gangs.
You got violence all in this area.
-There's no calling the police 'cause they never come.
The only time they come is, somebody done got shot, and they're dead.
I was 11 years old, and my brother got shot by a cop.
A fight broke out.
My brother was an innocent bystander.
A cop, he pulls out a gun and turned around and shoots my brother in his chest.
He died, and he was only 17.
Officer just went on about his business and... still getting paid.
-So, I guess a lot of trust in the police, how they say be your friend and protect and serve, that it wasn't happening, you know, with them.
And Patreese seen a lot of this, so I guess it took away a lot of trust, and it affected her negatively.
-From that day on, it was like, I'm never calling 911 ever again.
-In East Orange or North or whatever, the hood where we from, we... -Mnh-mnh.
-We ain't from the hood?
-[ Chuckles ] -We from the hood.
You know what I'm saying?
We can't go downtown north with our dildos on.
You know what I'm saying?
And you see the print through our pants without somebody like, "Oh, you seen that?
Yo, you seen that?"
Or "You F-ing dyke," blah, blah, blah, blah.
[ Woman vocalizing ] -Hi.
-Hey.
Yeah, hi.
Let me be a gentle-dyke.
Bye, Marie.
-Thank you.
[ Laughs ] [ Indistinct conversations ] -I like to go to the Village 'cause it's nothing but gay people.
-It's a safe haven for us.
It's a place that we can go to to be around people who are of our same sexual orientation.
-Hit up on a few chicks, do what you do.
Like, that's just about -- That's the only reason why we go out there.
Who don't?
Go to the club, get a few numbers, and that's it, and go home.
-We got old Chinese gay people -- like, people I never thought would be gay.
Like, wow!
Like, I didn't even know they had gayness out in, like, 1920.
You got people that are like 80 years old that's gay.
You know, you go to New York, it's normal.
Like, nobody's gonna look at you any different.
-That's not true.
That's what happened to us.
-Well, we thought... that we wouldn't have a problem if we went to New York and just be ourselves, but... That night, we didn't have a destination.
We was really just coming to the Village to have fun -- look at girls, be gay.
It was seven of us in total.
We was walking right here.
He was sitting on a fire hydrant.
We didn't notice him.
-Well, I had some DVDs and stuff on me like that.
There's a little theater.
It's called the IFC, the Independent Film Center, that a lot of independent filmmakers go.
I just decided to go hang out under the IFC and promote my movie.
They looked feminine.
One was slightly pretty, so I said hi to her.
-He said, "Let me get some of that."
And I thought he wanted somebody's Pepsi, so I told my girlfriend, I said, "He wants your Pepsi.
Give it to him."
He said, "I don't want that."
He pointed at my lower area, and he said, "I want that."
I laughed at him.
I said, "Mister, I'm gay."
-He stood up from the fire hydrant and started calling us dyke bitches, "You lesbian bitches, I'll...you straight."
-Basically say that you're gonna rape us when you say "I'll stick my," you know, "in your..." Like... -What did he say?
-You want me to say that?
So, no, when he said like, "I will stick my...in your..." you know, what would you have said if we was straight?
Would you still ask that?
That's basically saying that you're gonna rape us.
-From the time I was 9 years old on up, my mother's husband used to rape me.
With him approaching me in the manner that he approached me and saying the things that he was saying, basically you're saying that you're gonna rape me.
-Another girl came.
She had a wifebeater on, which is like a tank top, what the guys wear.
I told her she looks like a man.
My eyes, she did appear to look like a man.
So I said that.
And they were yelling at me.
She was disrespecting me as a man, so I called her an elephant.
-We're standing right here to cross the street.
He comes up towards us, shouting a lot of, like, obscene things.
[ Heart beating ] -We was just waiting for the light to change, and next thing you know, as soon as we about to walk again, he spits and throws a cigarette.
-We're walking backwards to protect ourselves to make sure he don't run up on us.
He was coming for us.
That was clear as day.
-No means no.
Just take no.
-Then he swung on me.
I started swinging back.
We started fighting.
-I remember being surrounded with hands in my face.
And after, uh, they started to hit me.
I went up into the defensive position, and then I just had my hands up in the air in defense of their blows.
-And he grabbed me down to the ground, and he's choking me.
I felt like I was basically fighting for my life.
-Somebody told me I was stabbed.
As soon as he said that, I felt it, you know.
I didn't feel it before like I'm feeling it now.
Like, I couldn't really breathe.
I was, like, hollering and screaming.
I felt like I was gonna die.
-Yeah, we need an ambulance over here on 6th Avenue and 1st Street.
There's a gentleman that was stabbed by several girls.
[ Siren wails ] -Officer in uniform in transit.
680, Sergeant, advise.
-We were doing patrol.
A radio call came over saying that there was a stabbing... -No description on the perp.
-...in the West Village, or a 10-13, which is a police officer needs assistance immediately.
-Looking for a male, black, green shirt.
Possibly it was five females.
-We did see a male laying on the ground.
-At West 3rd and 6th Avenue.
10-4.
-When I was following them, they were actually high-fiving each other, like, "We...this guy up," before I even -- That's why I kind of knew I had the right people.
-I was scared, but I was laughing and joking and basically trying to comfort the rest of the girls.
-We asked where we was going, and they said we was going to Rikers.
So I kind of panicked, 'cause I'm just thinking we're gonna be on this island in a jail on water.
Nobody's gonna know we there.
That's when it just hit us.
It was like, "We in jail."
-We didn't know what we was getting ourselves into.
We didn't know what was the outcome of it.
It was just... Me personally -- I only can speak for myself -- I know I was just scared.
-Well the only family that I had that I was in touch with at that time was my girlfriend and my son.
He was 5 years old then.
When I had him, I had it set in my head that I wasn't gonna allow him to grow up the way I grew up.
I was a parent, and he was my number-one priority, so I kind of shielded him and protected him from any type of stress.
I said, "Hey, my son is probably stressed out and he's probably wondering where I am, why I left."
I was on Rikers for nine months or something like that.
-I was one of Renata Hill's lawyers in the criminal case, along with Lori Cohen.
The district attorney in this case made very strong, certain decisions.
They sought all these women to remain in custody while the case was pending and seeking Draconian sentences.
They were told, "You're facing 25 years in prison if you fight this case and go to trial, or you can plead guilty, and you can get out today."
Three of them essentially were coerced by circumstances to plead guilty to a violent felony.
-I claimed self-defense.
If you're standing there and just watching a man beat on one of your friends, then turn around and hit you, you have a right to defend yourself.
-The D.A.
said that in order for me to take that deal, I had to plead guilty, and I didn't feel like I was guilty, so I said I'm not gonna take it because I'm not gonna say that I'm guilty.
-A 28-year-old man is recovering this morning after he was attacked by a group of seven women yesterday in Manhattan.
Police say the man made a comment allegedly to one of the women before they attacked him in the West Village.
The man was hit several times and then stabbed in the stomach with a steak knife.
-The headline writers had a very good time.
We went at this full bore.
I will lay claim to "seething sapphic septet," the accuracy of which I still stand by.
I don't think it was a stretch to say they were out for blood.
-At that point, I knew it was just gonna be a gay thing.
and then the nerve of you to be gay.
Terrain called.
She's apologetic.
"Oh, I'm so sorry for embarrassing you," and I'm like, "Embarrassing who?"
I'm like, "I don't care who sees it.
And anyone who's gonna judge you, then we're not interested in them.
My concern is you."
-The prosecutor began with, "This is a case about a vicious and unprovoked attack by these defendants and three other women, an attack in which he was stabbed, beaten, and punched, and in an unprovoked manner."
She painted a picture in which an almost bewildered man was beset upon by a group of women for no reason.
It was an interesting opening.
Judge McLaughlin is a very tough judge.
He sits in a courtroom that is fed primarily by gang cases, but these are real gangs.
These are the traditional gangs -- gun and drug gangs, criminal enterprises.
-We weren't labeling them a gang because we thought they were Bloods or Crips or anything else.
By the law, if it's three or more people are involved in beating someone, it's a gang assault.
-Here in New York City, a group of lesbians attacked a guy last August.
In Tennessee, authorities say a lesbian gang called GTO -- Gays Taking Over -- are involved in raping young girls.
And in Philadelphia, a lesbian gang called DTO -- Dykes Taking Over -- are allegedly terrorizing people, as well.
-We watched that video thousands of times.
It was in evidence for the jury so they could watch it themselves, which I believe they did.
-You see him in the surveillance tape.
He clearly was coming at them in an aggressive manner.
-The gentleman with the backpack right here in the upper left quadrant -- That's you, correct?
-Yes.
-And the young woman on the ground -- That's one of the women with whom you were fighting?
-I don't know what that is, actually.
I don't know if it's a lady on the ground.
I mean, I don't know.
-That's your arm.
Can you see where your hand is?
-It was kind of dark.
-It's not around the neck of the woman on the ground?
-I don't think so.
-Yes, I did pull my knife out, and I did because... [ Sighs ] You couldn't tell me my best friend wasn't about to die.
I carried a knife for one real reason -- 'cause my brothers told me to.
Like, "You real small, you know.
You'd have been in a lot of situations where we was never around, so how are you gonna defend yourself?"
All I really wanted to do was scare him, not really hurt him.
-After the "alleged" place where Patreese stabbed him, he's walking upright, he's waving his arms.
-Well, I don't know if I went up the street.
I know they were taunting me.
There was no audio on the videotape.
-I really didn't feel safe walking away, so I came back.
And I positioned myself to swing with all my might.
-If Ms. Hill wasn't there, this never would have happened.
She riled up the rest of them and then kept this thing going on longer than it should have.
-The most fascinating witness that the jury never got to see was the mysterious man in the pink shirt.
-One guy was telling him, "Why don't you fight us?
You're fighting girls, like, for no reason.
Why don't you fight us?"
Next thing I know, he picked him up and threw him on his head.
-The other guys, they jumped in to defend these women.
They didn't jump in to defend him.
-The male in the pink shirt -- Initially we thought maybe somebody just mistook it, maybe mistook a female for a male.
Later on, we did see a male with a pink shirt in the video.
But we did for probably three or four weeks keep an eye on that exact area.
Stopped, questioned, and frisked several people.
We couldn't find anyone.
-At that point, myself and other members of the press were getting a fuller picture of his views on the right of men to ogle women and shout out things to them as they walk by.
He also had posted to this website that same-sex relationships were a part of the hidden agenda of Satan.
It was with a big grain of salt that we sat there in the courtroom listening to him describe himself as not anti-gay, not a homophobe.
-Prosecutors who have a case where the action helps explain the defense don't want the jurors to think about motive or reason.
They just want the jurors to concentrate on that the "victim" was stabbed.
Well, why was he stabbed?
What did he do before he was stabbed?
-He was quite impressively injured.
Injuries to his abdomen were very serious.
His liver and his stomach had been lacerated.
-I had a bruise on my eye.
I had a busted lip.
Neesey had choke marks on her neck.
Venice had 15 dreadlocks pulled from her scalp, and it was bleeding.
-I have no reservations that they were acting in self-defense the entire time.
-Same with me.
-When they were gonna read the verdict, it was just like -- You would have thought it was a movie... like all the gangsters were all there at one time, like the Gambinos and Al Capones, because the walls were literally lined up with court officers, and they were all around the girls.
At one point, I couldn't even see Terrain.
When I saw that, I knew it wasn't gonna be favorable.
Well, when I got sentenced, the judge said he was sentencing me to eight years because I testified falsely, and my lawyer actually had to stand up and say, "Your Honor, she never testified."
And he was like, "Oh, yeah, but she played an aggressive role."
I remember screaming in court when they said eight years, like, "My son, my son.
I'm not gonna see my son till he 13."
-They didn't tell how my daughter was attacked, how she was choked.
It's called gay bashing, but they won't call it that.
They call it everything but that.
But it's called gay bashing, and my daughter is in jail for eight years for defending herself.
-Something inside me just kept saying, you know, just, "Patreese -- They're gonna hit Patreese.
They're gonna hit her with a lot of years," and...
Especially after, I believe it was Renata, after they said she had eight years.
I says, "Oh, wow.
Then I know Patreese got more than eight."
-I see now with me telling her to carry the knife to protect herself, it's like, look where it got her.
It got her out of 8 to 11 years of her life, like, all because I wanted her to be protected.
[ Voice breaking ] Yeah.
[ Crying ] -♪ The sun -Mommy, I didn't get no checks today.
-Good.
-It's "Cat in the Hat."
-♪ He's gone [ Horns honking ] -Hi!
-♪ And he may not come again -Yeah.
Mommy, I love you.
-I love you, too, babe.
-♪ Dusty road -Wow.
-My girls will be anywhere between 6 and 7 by the time she comes home.
-It was so much fun.
-That's taken a lot from her.
It's taken a lot from them.
It's taken a lot from me and the rest of her family.
I go to see her every other weekend, or I take my kids with me.
I want them to know who she is.
I didn't want her to just come home and be a stranger to her nieces.
-Hello, Mom.
Just walked in.
And I am feeding the cat and going to jump in the shower and get it all together.
So, I'll call you when I'm freshened up.
Okay.
Okay.
Love you.
Okay.
-♪ For the wheels that keep on rollin' ♪ [ Train bell clanging ] ♪ There's time ♪ For me to walk along -Every other Friday after work, catch the train over at Church to go to 59th Street to catch the prison buses.
-♪ Thank God ♪ That he keeps on leading me home ♪ ♪ There and back again ♪ Oh, there... -I try to hold my head up.
I try to be strong, and she's crying, "Mommy," and I'm like, "We're gonna get through this."
But, um... it was extremely devastating.
[ Baby cries ] [ Cell door closes ] -The door slamming, and you can hear the click of the locks.
You hear it in your sleep.
I was very scared, and all I could do was cry for my mother.
-When we came in, we was in a facility where women not going nowhere, and they got to spend the rest of their lives there, so it was -- Like, I didn't know how to cope with that.
I'd say I was really out of it for like my first year.
It's like I had nothing else to look forward to but going home, which is a long time from now.
I'm just existing right now.
I don't really think I'm dealing with it.
-Such a gentle man.
I miss boxers, wearing boxers.
These panties is killing me.
Seriously.
But it's like nothing else I miss more than my son.
-Once we got on the bus, I felt very tired because it was we were standing, like, all day, just waiting for a bus.
I don't know how a bus can take forever.
I hugged her.
-It hurts to see him, to know that I can't leave.
Like, a part of me was like, I would have rather just not see him up here and just wait until I go home to see him, because once I get that close to him, it's like I don't want to know how it feels again to be away from him like that.
-It was hard to leave from there.
-My mother was a heroin addict when I was younger.
This case actually brought me and my mother closer together.
When I called home, somebody answered her phone, and they was crying.
And she was like, "I'm sorry to tell you.
Your mother just passed away."
I wasn't dealing with it well, so I started cutting up every time I got depressed.
I end up hallucinating, and my son and my mother came into my cell, and they said that I can leave.
And my son goes to walk out the door, and when I'm holding his hand and I go to walk out the door, I run into the door, like, headfirst, and that's when I realized that it really wasn't happening, and then I just got hysterical.
They sent me to Mental Health, and then that's when I was diagnosed with PTSD, and I was put on meds for it.
I was ashamed to tell my story, how I was raped and how I was abused because of how other people would look at me.
Me being 9 years old, there was no way I could defend myself against this man.
He ended up getting five years for it.
Five years, and I get eight years.
[ Woman vocalizing ] -♪ In the car ♪ In the jail ♪ In the everyday wide-open space of time ♪ ♪ In my body ♪ In my mind -The only people who have been considered the villains in this case were the seven women who were, you know, attacked and followed.
-♪ I know -Cases like Trayvon Martin, CeCe McDonald, like Marissa Alexander -- They all paint this picture that if you're a black person, you don't have the right to defend yourself, that it's legitimate for people to intimidate you.
It creates this environment where you are on guard because everyone around you perceives you as a threat before they know anything about you.
-The law does set forth a certain standard in cases where there's a claim of self-defense, but that doesn't address the trauma that women, that black women, that differently gendered people experience on the street all the time and what effect that cumulatively has.
-All that was established in this case was that she threw a couple of punches.
That's not felony conduct.
That's misdemeanor conduct.
[ Crowd chanting "Hands off Renata" ] -[ Chanting ] Hands off Renata!
-[ Chanting ] Now!
-Hands off Renata!
-Now!
-Hands off Renata!
-Now!
-Hands off Renata!
-Now!
-When you go to the appeals, it's nothing like the regular court system.
You actually only argue or state your case maybe 10, 12 minutes, and I was really shocked.
I'm like, "There's, like, so much at stake.
Like, how do you not go on all day and fight the case?"
Terrain's attorney had called, and she said, "We won the appeal.
Your baby's coming home."
And, of course, again, the nonemotional person that I am, screaming and hollering and praising God.
-With Terrain's case, the appellate court looked at the evidence, and it just said, "There's nothing at all that's even ambiguous or controversial, so therefore we're just dismissing this indictment."
But at the end of the day, she did two years in prison.
-Ah!
My baby!
My baby!
[ Laughs ] Ah!
-Take me away from my family?
The nerve of you.
But I got one better.
I'm gonna still pray for you.
Yo, only 19 at the time, took me away from my world, still in my prime.
Now I have 3 1/2 years to do.
Yeah, they convicted me with time, but the moral of the story is, I never did the crime.
[ Cheers and applause ] -[ Chanting ] No justice, no peace!
Free Patreese!
No justice, no peace!
Free Patreese!
No justice, no peace!
Free Patreese!
-Two critical issues in the case pertain to the instructions that the judge who presided over this trial gave to the jury.
What a judge has to do is instruct the jury on the law.
What does it mean to be an accessory to a crime, like gang assault?
What the judge in this case did instead was sort of use this very elaborate metaphor about an orchestra.
[ Baton tapping, classical music plays ] He stated, "Everybody is dressed in tuxedoes.
The conductor is whaling away with a baton for the whole performance.
Perhaps there is a soloist lumbering in the back, whether the thing is a cymbal where he's gonna make a racket or a triangle where he's gonna make a ting.
The tinger and the slammer are in the orchestra even though their performance is so far outweighed by everything everybody else does.
So a jury doesn't have to decide whether a person who supposedly is involved is 1% involved, whether it's 50/50.
It doesn't matter.
You're either pregnant, or you're not.
You're either involved, or you're not."
That actually doesn't describe accessorial liability at all.
The judge truly gave an erroneous and just confusing instruction about what it means to be an accessory.
So the appellate division said, "It could cut either way.
We're not actually 100% sure what happened that night, but what we are sure of is that the judge did not give proper instructions to the jury in that case, and that might have compromised this verdict, so we have to start again."
-[ Laughs ] -There's two?
-No.
Some... [ Laughs ] -Now I look like I belong in society.
[ Clicks tongue ] Yep.
Yo.
Oh, I look like I'm a human being now, not an inmate!
Ha!
[ Laughs ] -We were fine until we got to the bridge.
Candace, this is Renata.
-How you doing?
-You're coming in?
-Yeah.
-Candace.
Nice to meet you.
[ Indistinct conversation ] -We didn't put a bed in here for your son 'cause I think that's gonna take awhile.
And it's gonna be a little tight if we do that.
But we'll work it out, okay?
It's not the Ritz, but it beats a shelter.
-It beats Albion and Bedford, also.
Thank you.
-You're welcome.
-When I first came home, I called my son.
They said I wasn't allowed to speak to him or see him, and that's when I got the information that I didn't have custody anymore, which I didn't know.
Then it was that fear of, "What if I don't get him back?"
[ Man speaking indistinctly on TV ] -All for $19.99.
So don't wander around.
-You can call 1-800-742-0413 to order... -Me and my mom are close.
She told me that she's gonna be there for a little while.
I couldn't stay with her or see her, but she told me that to don't be sad because she's always there.
-They say, "Brown, pack up.
You're going home."
I didn't ask no more questions.
I just left.
We can go inside here.
May we come over here?
-Yeah!
Come on!
Come on in!
-[ Laughs ] -How you like the place?
-Nice.
It changed a lot.
Hi.
Oh, man.
It's a lot.
It's emotional, but it's a lot.
I just want my best friend to come home -- Patreese.
I want her to come home -- like now.
I want her to come home now.
-They could count their time on one hand, and I'm still counting on two.
Like, I could own up to what I could have done or what I did or my part in it, but I still feel like I don't deserve this much time at the end of the day.
[ Radio static ] [ Beep ] [ Beep ] -I first found out about the case through the news.
I read an article and was horrified about the lesbian wolf pack.
There was something about the way that they're being talked about, the kind of primal, animal thing.
You can't help but take it personally.
I'm, you know, a black woman, I'm a lesbian, and it instantly felt wrong.
We've all been sexually harassed on the street.
As black women, we're never really believed that we could have feelings about that or that we don't want that.
The statute that she was convicted under was a gang assault.
One of the requirements of that statute says that the person who is on trial has to have injured somebody and caused serious physical injury.
I was able to go through the record very carefully, and it was not clear to me that any of those things were true for him.
My argument was that serious physical injury hadn't actually occurred.
When he had his stomach sutured during surgery, they found and repaired a hernia.
The hospital reports note that he was never in imminent danger.
-Well, he had a wound, but it wasn't as serious as they said it was.
The D.A., she made it seem like it was a life-threatening situation, and it wasn't.
-When we got our actual opinion back, they rejected every single legal argument I made.
But they still decreased her sentence from 11 to 8 years.
The court ruled that they were going to lessen her sentence in the interest of justice.
That's kind of an interesting turn of phrase.
Whatever happened in that trial court, they knew it was wrong.
-It made me feel safe to carry a knife on me, but when I get out, I'm not gonna carry no weapon because... [Breathes deeply] because a weapon caused me to be in this situation.
I don't even know how home is right now, how Newark is.
Is it still the same way?
Deadly, you know?
Is bodies still dropping?
I don't know.
-The shots that was fired, it was six shots fired.
I didn't run to the window right away.
I waited for them to finish.
[ Chuckles ] And then I got up, and I seen that my window here, these holes here, and on my door here down at the bottom, and that hole right there in the screen -- it's for the door -- went straight through.
Guess it's time for me to leave this neighborhood.
[ Laughs ] Time for me to definitely leave this neighborhood.
-♪ Oh, day -♪ Yonder come day -♪ Oh, day -♪ Yonder come day -♪ Oh, day -♪ Yonder come day ♪ Day done broke in my soul ♪ Yonder come day -When I got custody back of my son, I felt alive.
-♪ Yonder come day -He slept with me the first two months, every single night.
He'd just jump up.
He used to talk in his sleep, jump up and talking.
I'd be like, "T.J., go to sleep."
Like, you know, push his head back down.
"Go to sleep.
What's wrong with you?"
And I used to just listen to him.
But it was a big fear of him feeling like that he was gonna roll over and I wasn't gonna be there, so just I let him get out of that process on his own, and now he sleeps in his own room.
I can't pay him to spend a night with me.
Me and my son share a bond that I didn't have with my mom.
Now I'm living for her.
She messed up, but I'm correcting it with my own life and for my son.
-"It was...
It was blank to be in my nice, warm bed when it was so cold outside."
"It was... Oh.
Doesn't "comforting" mean "comfortable"?
-Yep.
-Uh-huh.
I met Marilyn a couple of months after I came home from prison.
See that?
That's Marilyn.
We're both gonna give it to her at the same time, all right?
-I want to go get it, and it was like a Valentine's bear.
I want to give her it, but with my money.
-[ Chuckles ] You're trying to snatch my girl, yo.
He trying to snatch my girl.
I'm telling you... yo, son, you better back up on it.
-♪ In my soul ♪ Yonder come day ♪ Yonder come day ♪ Day done broke -We're building a family together, working on a home, and one day I'm gonna ask her to marry me.
-♪ Yonder come day -♪ Yonder come day -♪ Yonder come day -♪ Yonder come day -♪ Yonder come day -♪ Yonder come day -♪ Yonder come day -♪ Yonder come day -♪ Yonder come day -I don't need no permission.
-♪ As the sun goes down ♪ And it's time for count ♪ On the noise ♪ Nothing but silence ♪ Lights out -As the sun go down and it's time for count, on the noise, nothing but silence, lights out.
And this is where the tears began.
As my tears drop, each one full of hope and wishes, I close my eyes, and I hear these... -♪ Each one full of hope and wishes ♪ ♪ I close my eyes, and I hear these women cry ♪ ♪ Souls lost in the system ♪ And as I listen ♪ I'm just speechless ♪ The story that these women cry ♪ ♪ Oh, my God -I love you.
-♪ Tears full of reason ♪ As the sun goes down -♪ Sun goes down ♪ And it's time for count ♪ With each tear ♪ I miss my mommy ♪ With each tear ♪ I feel my family ties