The internet version has a birthday party, a manila envelope, three photographs on a coffee table, sirens, red and blue lights on the walls, agents coming in the front and the back, and my daughter being dragged down a driveway in handcuffs screaming that she’s my daughter.
None of that happened and I would ask people to please stop sharing it, because Emma is ten now and she can read, and she has friends whose parents have shown them that version.
Here’s what actually happened, on a Thursday, in a conference room.
Mark Stevens was arrested on a Tuesday morning in October in the parking lot of his own office, by two detectives, with no weapons drawn, and he was in and out of the county jail in nine hours on bond.
Emma was not present. She was at school. I picked her up at 3:10 that afternoon from the front office with a social worker named Beverly Okonkwo standing beside me and a temporary order in my hand that a judge had signed at 11:15 that morning.
