- Jurisdiction
- Indiana
I recently found out that high ranking DOC staff opened my court ordered sealed records and informed other neighbors of my DOC past.
The DOC employees who are husband and wife, are now retired but before their retirement, they decided to look to see if I had any DOC history.. out of curiosity, I presume, and found that I did. He held the position of Deputy Commissioner and she was a Warden. They then told other neighbors to "warn" them that I had been imprisoned (briefly) for drugs and even had a charge for theft while in DOC. The theft charge was for walking out of the cafeteria with food haha. I was in DOC in 2000/2001 and they looked at my record in 2019 after being (friendly) neighbors since late 2012. My record was sealed in mid 2012. A friendly neighbor of ours, came forth with this information in mid June. They stated that they didn't tell me sooner because they knew that it would hurt me or make things weird.
My wife and filled out a report with the inspector General and it is currently under investigation. During our interview with the OIG, they had an attorney present and stated that it wasn't normal to do so, but said that it was such an interesting case and they wanted t make sure that this was handled in the most proper of ways. The attorney advised my wife and I to seek a private attorney to address this outside of IG, since they just handle the ethics side of it. The investigator informed me last week that he is about to wrap up the investigation and plans to have it to the IG, the first part of August. Side note.. the OIG opened my record and verified the it states "This Record is Sealed".
Learning of what they did has put an immense amount of stress and anxiety on my family.. my wife, my children and my mother who also lives with us. We feel that we are being viewed differently within our community and has made it very uncomfortable to even be outside. Just feels wrong. I would also like to add that we live in an excellent neighborhood, live a very normal life and I have held the same job for almost 20 years. I am a success story and all of this doesn't make me feel so successful.
Is it in my best interest to pursue this outside of IG? If this is just a small claims thing, it isn't worth my time or energy. But if there is a way to balance out the stress that has been brought upon us, I will go for it.
Thanks
The DOC employees who are husband and wife, are now retired but before their retirement, they decided to look to see if I had any DOC history.. out of curiosity, I presume, and found that I did. He held the position of Deputy Commissioner and she was a Warden. They then told other neighbors to "warn" them that I had been imprisoned (briefly) for drugs and even had a charge for theft while in DOC. The theft charge was for walking out of the cafeteria with food haha. I was in DOC in 2000/2001 and they looked at my record in 2019 after being (friendly) neighbors since late 2012. My record was sealed in mid 2012. A friendly neighbor of ours, came forth with this information in mid June. They stated that they didn't tell me sooner because they knew that it would hurt me or make things weird.
My wife and filled out a report with the inspector General and it is currently under investigation. During our interview with the OIG, they had an attorney present and stated that it wasn't normal to do so, but said that it was such an interesting case and they wanted t make sure that this was handled in the most proper of ways. The attorney advised my wife and I to seek a private attorney to address this outside of IG, since they just handle the ethics side of it. The investigator informed me last week that he is about to wrap up the investigation and plans to have it to the IG, the first part of August. Side note.. the OIG opened my record and verified the it states "This Record is Sealed".
Learning of what they did has put an immense amount of stress and anxiety on my family.. my wife, my children and my mother who also lives with us. We feel that we are being viewed differently within our community and has made it very uncomfortable to even be outside. Just feels wrong. I would also like to add that we live in an excellent neighborhood, live a very normal life and I have held the same job for almost 20 years. I am a success story and all of this doesn't make me feel so successful.
Is it in my best interest to pursue this outside of IG? If this is just a small claims thing, it isn't worth my time or energy. But if there is a way to balance out the stress that has been brought upon us, I will go for it.
Thanks
