I have thought more about my reasons for making a page on you.

I don't want to harass you. I agree that harassment doesn´t really help society. What I want to do is report, more like a journalist, what you did. I believe it is important for the world to know what you did and what happened with Ocean.

If you feel harassed or in need of protection from me please let me know and I will try to take your feelings into consideration. Of, course, I will also take the laws into consideration, which you know much better than I do. So please let me know if I am breaking a law.

Now let me get to the heart of why I am making a page on you.

I believe you misrepresented me.

I believe you misled the judge.

I believe the judge would feel misled if he had more information. Unfortunately, I was not able to be there to defend myself, so you could say whatever you wanted about me in the petition.

But I do not believe justice or Ocean was served by what you presented to the judge.

I am not sure if Ocean's father showed you all of the conversations, or just the excerpts. I am not sure if you really knew much about Ocean, or if you ever met her or even talked to her by phone. I am not sure if you ever talked to her therapist.

I am also not sure if you believe her statements, or her feelings or desires, have any relevance. I believe they do.

I believe this is an important case, because it deals with the rights and needs of teenagers like Ocean. Does a so called minor have any legal right to speak in a case such as this? To me this is a very important question.

I have talked to a lot of suicidal teens. I am compiling documentation of their stories to inform the public. What is happening inside their homes troubles me.

Before Ocean met me, she was suicidal. Before she met me, she had a bad relationship with her parents. Before she met me, she was looking for something she could do when she turned 18 and became legally free. When she found my site, she quickly liked the idea of coming to Peru to help me help other suicidal teens.

Since Ocean was not legally free, she began helping me and the other teens via the Internet. But you did not mention any of this in your petition.

What you presented to the judge was very misleading. I feel personally offended and very misrepresented.

I am not sure what your motivation was in taking the case and in presenting what you did to the judge. I find it hard to believe you were motivated to help Ocean and do what is best for her.

I did not have a good opinion of lawyers before this. I feel skeptical and cynical about many lawyers. I believe too many are motivated primarily by a) making money and b) winning cases instead of to me what is much more important: the truth.

I had a lawyer once tell me that "the truth has nothing to do with it." And someone once told me "the better liar wins" in the courtroom. This bothers me. The legal system truly is a foundation of any society. I believe lawyers should be held to a higher standard and the public should not tolerate lawyers who serve themselves more than they serve justice.

There is something else which bothers me. It is illegal for me to harass you, but it seems to be legal for you to ignore me. Yet ignoring someone also causes emotional pain. Especially when that person has been hurt by something you did.

I don't want to abuse the power of my website. I want to use it to help people like Ocean and society in general. If you have any suggestions on what I could better, please let me know.

I would really like to know how you feel about what you did, and why. I would like to have a chance to discuss this with you. I am putting a copy of this letter on my site not to harass you, but because I don't expect an answer from you, and at the least I want people to know a little more about you and the case, and about my beliefs. I also want the judge to have a chance to hear the other side of the case.

I don't really believe he wants to make decisions based on such a one-sided presentation. And I also believe he would feel somewhat used if he knew more about the truth. I don't think judges like to be lied to or misled. They can't possibly make fair decisions if the lawyers standing before them don't present truthful information.

I hope that the judge takes a personal interest in this and he doesn't just accept as truth what you and Ocean's father presented in that petition.

But if not, at least I want to do all I can to inform people about what happened. Eventually I would like to see the laws changed so what you and Ocean's father did could not happen again.

I believe the teenagers like Ocean need more legal rights than they have now.

There are many ways in which I believe you misrepresented me. One is how you made it seem that I was encouraging Ocean to run away. But if you had seen all of our conversations you would see that I spent much more time encouraging her to seek legal emancipation. In Washington, this is a possibility, but in some states it is not, if my understanding is correct.

I believe teenagers like Ocean need more freedom to decide where they live and who they talk to. I also believe they need more freedom to decide who they have romantic relationships with. In other countries 16 year olds can make this decision for themselves. In other countries, 16 year olds can also decide where they live. If the USA is really going to be the land of the free, then I believe the laws need to change to give teenagers more freedom, at the very least to be on par with other countries in the world. I am not sure what you believe, but I would be interested in knowing.

You represented me as having a sexual interest in Ocean. I believe this is another misrepresentation. While we very briefly talked about a physical relationship and the possibility of being romantic partners, this was not by any measure the central topic of our conversations, and the full conversations themselves clearly show this. What you, or Ocean's father did, was take out very small excerpts to show what you wanted to show. But this is not the way justice or truth is served.

In the petition you also said something about there being a nude photo of Ocean. But I never requested such a photo and she never sent me one. I never even knew she had a nude photo of herself. Perhaps she took one to send to someone else once and that is why one was found on her computer, but no such photo was ever sent to me. If you are interested in the truth, please go back through the convos and see if you can find a place where Ocean and I talked about any nude photos.

Please also look for any place where I called her parents "evil." In the petition you claimed that I was calling her parents evil. That is not even a word I use. I am opposed to the word itself. On my site I have criticized David Caruso, a psychologist who works in the area of emotional intelligence, for using that word. (See this file). I believe we can do a better job of explaining cause and effect than attributing something to "evil."

There are other things which are bothering me but I will address those in the future.

Steve Hein
Dec 16, 2005

PS I would like to put your full name on this page, but I am afraid to because I am afraid you will go back to the judge and say I am harassing you. So please let me know if you would feel harassed, and if I would be breaking a law, by putting your name on this page. In the meantime I will probably also seek my own legal advice, but I would appreciate it if you would communicate with me directly. It would also make it easier to respect your feelings if you tell me what they are.