Wow, great jury questions yesterday afternoon! I have to admit though, the added bits about TA's abusive childhood made me pretty angry. Again, it felt like she didn't have all the pieces and made conclusions based on the lies she was told and a few texts/emails.
Honestly, I see a bit of TA in myself. No one or anything in this life is perfect. One of the things that I have a tendency to do as an adult is remain positive in bad situations. Coping skills. No matter what, I can think of worse things and make myself able to handle things. As an adult survivor of severe childhood abuse, I found myself in the past with partners who were not all that wonderful to me but I could make excuses for their behavior or think of something 'worse' they could hav done to force myself to stay or deny whatever was going on. I think this was one thing TA took with him into adulthood. He was a motivational speaker with PPL and at some point doing very well. One of the things you need as a motivational speaker is to be positive everything comes up roses, lift the people/crowd up to your way of thinking. He was probably really good at that. I am very good at what I do in my real life job because I am able to compartmentalize and no matter what spin things to the positive. A lot of that is learning to store things away, make yourself believe it doesn't matter now etc.
Anyway, I think if TA's childhood plays anything in the conversation it really has to do more with the fact he could always think of something worse that could happen. It wasn't so bad all this stuff with JA. He had been through worse. He could handle the behavior all by himself, he had handled worse and survived. And thats what made me mad. AVL made it seem like TA's childhood could ONLY make for a terrible adult, not a great adult with positive experiences and relationships, i.e. overcoming the abuse. Did TA have things that followed him that were not so great? Yes, I am sure. I only know what has been said, I did not know him personally. However, he seemed to do find forming attachment with friends and having good relationships. Obviously his family is loving and supportive. ALV saw one email from his sister. I gather it wasn't the most loving and supportive in her opinion. But, hey, sometimes siblings tell the truth and what was needed at that time. Or maybe there is a background story to that one email...
It was just so disheartening to hear ALV say that about his childhood and totally disregard the fact he went to live with a loving grandmother and grandfather. He had structure through them and the Mormon faith. I think they did very well with what they were given..look at his siblings sitting in the court room everyday. They obviously love each other a great deal. It made me angry that she, not one time, said anything about that. She sure had a lot to say about everything else but that.
Kelly