Defying Silence: A Memoir of a Mother's Loss and Courage in the Face of Injustice

By Hera McLeod

Two weeks after giving birth to her son Prince, Hera McLeod discovered that everything she knew about her son's father was a lie. After a 12-month custody battle, full of terrifying evidence she uncovered, Prince's father murdered him during one of the first court-ordered unsupervised visitations. Determi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seeking Different Press
• Release date: Dec 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798989681105

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Defying Silence: A Memoir of a Mother’s Loss and Courage in the Face of Injustice

Copyright © 2023 by Hera McLeod

Published by Seeking Different

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author.

Cover Design, Interior Layout by Melissa Williams Design

Cover Photograph by Jonna Huseman, Jonna Michelle Photography, LLC

No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles, or reviews, or for teaching purposes.

ISBN: 979-8-9896811-0-5 (ebook)

ISBN: 979-8-9896811-1-2 (paperback)

Contents

Dedications

Author’s Note

Preface

Chapter 1: Interrogation

Chapter 2: Get Off the X

Chapter 3: Perfect Target

Chapter 4: The Great Resignation

Chapter 5: The Mask

Chapter 6: Unhinged

Chapter 7: Boiling Over

Chapter 8: Police Report

Chapter 9: Detox

Chapter 10: State-Sanctioned Terrorism

Chapter 11: Antebellum

Chapter 12: Terrorist Negotiations

Chapter 13: Trials and Tribulations

Chapter 14: Smoke and Clouds

Chapter 15: Jumping Out of Moving Cars

Chapter 16: Danger Assessment

Chapter 17: Casualty of War

Chapter 18: Rest in Peace

Chapter 19: Motive

Chapter 20: Hell Hath, No Fury

Chapter 21: Wheels of Justice

Chapter 22: Accountability

Chapter 23: My Kind of Justice

Epilogue

Dedications

My friends and family, those ride or die people,

who were there during my darkest hours.

People who risked their lives trying to protect

my son and fight for justice.

My daughter’s Estela and Isabel, the loves of my

life who both saved me and continue to

be my inspiration and my joy.

My sister Lara, my best friend, and the

smartest person I know.

My mother, my rock and co-conspirator.

My father, the fixer and inspiration when I need

to channel practical stoicism.

My Suno, the boy who made me feel like a

mom for the first time.

And finally—my son Prince, the true hero of this

story who changed me and the world in only 15-months.

I love you all and am so thankful you are in my life.

Thank you for giving me the strength to survive

and to defy silence.

Author’s Note

Defying Justice is not about a serial killer nor is it an indictment of any specific person or people. Many characters in the story represent cracks in the system and any one of them could be identifiable with people in similar roles across the nation. It’s a work of nonfiction based on the author’s recollection and perception of true events. Some names, locations, and identifying details have been changed. In this story there are characters that represent many types of people, and sometimes the essence of multiple people – some kind and heroic and some not. The following names are pseudonyms: Dr. Becky Smith, Officer Timothy Jones, Officer Bailey, Tracy, Sammy, Eduardo Flores, Eduardo Flores Jr., Delores Flores, Mark McBride, Officer Karen Martin, Officer Kramer, Gideon Horowitz, Officer Jameson, Noah Levin, Josiah Henson, Chastity Carter, Ronan Bailey, Roxy Bailey, Frank Kaplan, Ron Borger, and Judge Justin Jude.

Preface

My 15-month-old son Prince was murdered by his father. The murder occurred on the heels of a 12-month long custody battle, full of damning evidence, which pointed to the dangerousness of Prince’s father. In the decades since this tragedy, I’ve processed and analyzed the facts of this case—searching for both closure and justice. My son’s father, Joaquin Rams, is fully responsible for his actions; however, there’s more to this story than one sick and twisted man capable of killing his own child. This is the story of a family court and justice system that broke down, paving the way for a serial killer to gain access to an innocent child.

Pieces of my story were covered in newspapers, magazines, and television programs but this book is going to give you a deeper look into what happened from my perspective—as both a party to the case and an unofficial investigator. Joaquin got away with dozens of crimes before he killed Prince, and I was determined to see that his crime spree come to an end. Though Joaquin is in prison, there are lessons to learn from this story.

My story was a perfect storm of horrible wherein if just one variable of the equation hadn’t been an epic disaster, we all could’ve survived to tell the tale. I’m not telling my story to attract people addicted to trauma porn, but instead to highlight the deep fractures in our justice system. I want the truths between these pages to ignite a fire inside you that compels you to be a part of the solution. And I want to take readers step by step through how this happened so that we don’t keep repeating the mistakes that ruin families and take lives.

It’s taken me over a decade to write this story because for years I was completely stuck in my own trauma—unable to process my feelings to the degree required to give the story its due justice. Though rage still courses through my veins, I’ve channeled this rage into advocacy. And through this work, I continue to parent my son by working to protect the children who come next.

During the custody trial, I started blogging about my experience. Writing started as a mechanism to help me process and heal from my own trauma, but I started hearing from other parents who were suffering through similar situations. They’d write to tell me how they finally felt seen, explain the parallels they saw between things in their experience and mine, and asking for help and advice. At first, I worried about my ability to help because I’m not an attorney or a therapist. But after talking to thousands of parents, despite for as much information as possible, I began to share with them things that I wish I’d known and done. One story, that illustrates many others in the same vein, came from a woman named Sara.

I’m afraid to leave my son’s father because I am afraid of having to leave my son alone with him.

It was three in the morning, and my phone pinged loudly to notify me of a new Facebook message in my inbox. I rolled over in bed, rubbed my eyes, and immediately got mad at myself for forgetting to put my phone on mute before getting into bed. As I lifted my phone to turn off the noise, I noticed this haunting message and couldn’t look away.

My son is only 11-months old. Is there anything I can do to make sure he’s safe while still leaving this situation?

Sara, the woman who’d sent me these messages, wasn’t the first woman who reached out to me for advice since my very public, highly googleable, nightmare. Each time it happened, I found myself torn between wanting to give words of wisdom and being afraid that I wouldn’t say the right thing.

I am so sorry . . . I wrote, trying to shake myself awake enough to tell her something helpful.

Is he physically abusing you and your son?

Though I suspected, I didn’t want to assume. I’d learned over the years that not everyone has the same definition of abuse, but I often ask the question to try and understand the urgency of the situation.

Well, it’s more verbal abuse, she said.

Emotional abuse is terrible, but if you’re scared to leave your child alone with him, is there another red flag that you’ve ignored, I asked.

I felt a similar deep worry in my own gut before leaving my son’s father, Joaquin. I suspected that she also hadn’t considered emotional abuse a red flag, and that she was withholding additional concerns that would make her believe her son’s father was also a physical threat. It is hard to admit to a stranger that you have witnessed both physical and emotional abuse and still didn’t leave.

He’s hit my daughter in the head with his cellphone when she doesn’t listen to him. I’m not sure this is abuse, but I don’t think its ok because she isn’t even his daughter, she wrote.

There it was—she wasn’t clear on what constituted abuse, and whether her child’s father had crossed that threshold. I think it’s natural to not want to admit that someone you love, especially the father of your children, is abusive. Admitting this is also having to admit that your child will be abused and that you have essentially chosen this for them. What made it even more confusing was that he abused the child in the house that wasn’t biologically his. While he hadn’t yet hit the child they shared, her concerns were warranted. Someone who will abuse a child, whether they are related to that child or not, is not safe around any child.

Sara, that is abusive. Whether the child is biologically his doesn’t matter, I responded.

Sara responded with an emoji depicting tears and told me that she never knows if different cultures define abuse in different ways. Sara’s boyfriend told her that because she was White, she was too nice. His use of race to excuse abusive behavior made my skin crawl. Luckily, when it comes to the law, I suspected that a judge wasn’t likely to excuse abuse simply because the abuser happened to be Black.

Even though we live in a country where police are beating and killing Black people, often facing nothing more than a mild slap on the wrist and paid administrative leave, child abuse is still child abuse. What I didn’t explicitly tell her was that there are judges that knowingly place children in the hands of child abusers every single day. But for her child, she needed to try—she needed to acknowledge this was happening—and she still needed to do her best to leave him and protect her child.

As if hitting her child in the head with his cell phone wasn’t bad enough, this man was also self-destructive and potentially suicidal. Sara continued writing and disclosed that her son’s father kept telling her that he didn’t think he would grow old because of the way his mind thinks and that he would either get locked up or die. It was hard to deliver Sara the advice that I knew she needed because I knew it might tug on deep-seated insecurities and scare her more. The reality was that her presence didn’t ensure the safety of her child. Not only did it not seem as though her son’s father had concern for the safety of her older child (the one that wasn’t biologically his), while she was physically present, but his own words implied that he isn’t really all that concerned about his own life either. This is potentially the most dangerous kind of person because this is a person for whom self-destruction is part of his game plan.

In addition to not actually being able to protect her children as she intended, staying forced them to have more exposure to a man she knew was unstable. The longer she stayed would also imply to both the courts and her children that she condoned this abusive behavior.

I know this is hard. I understand how you have justified staying for so long and leaving is not going to be a walk in the park. But if you intend to protect your children, and if this man is as violent as you have described, you owe your children the best possible chance at having a good life.

It was now four in the morning, and I could no longer fall back asleep. Every time I speak to women who remind me of myself when I was with Joaquin, I try to tell them things I wish I had been able to tell myself.

1. Trust your gut: Women don’t trust their gut enough. Many people who have met Joaquin, have told me that they could tell something was off with him immediately. They aren’t wrong, and their gut isn’t more functional than mine. The difference was that I, like many other women, made the dangerous mistake of second guessing my gut.

Sara’s gut was completely functional, but it was constantly being tested by someone who had initially earned her trust. This forced her to second guess her gut and push it so deep inside that she was not able to distinguish what was real and what was not. Though she wanted someone to validate her feelings, and explain that what she was witnessing was abuse, she knew she needed to get her children out of that situation long before I told her. Our gut often tells us everything we need to know.

2. When people reveal who they are—you should believe them: I remember at least one time in my relationship when Joaquin told me that he wasn’t a good guy. Intimacy often breeds disclosure, and it is not always positive disclosure. In fact, he revealed that as a young adult he had treated women horribly to the point where his own mother was disgusted with him. At the time, I falsely assumed that if he was telling me this, he must not still be bad.

In Sara’s case, her child’s father was showing her who he was, and he was telling her. Healthy people don’t go around telling others that because of their personality they believe they will end up dead or in jail. While it was most likely also a plea for attention, he was revealing one of the most helpful red flags of a bad relationship.

3. A Psychopath never punches you in the face on the first date: In the 2017 film Get Out, directed by Jordan Peele, a psychotic White family lures an unsuspecting Black man into a nightmare. While things start out friendly and polite, the main character continues pushing past red flags until it’s too late, and he is trapped in this house of horrors.

At some point in every abusive relationship, the target reaches the moment when they realize they’re stuck in their own house of horrors without the keys to their car. If you wait too long, making excuses for all the red flags, you risk getting stuck. While leaving might always technically be a possibility, it becomes much harder when you’re financially tied to someone or when you share children. My relationship with Joaquin lasted less than two years, but I’ll never fully escape the damage he caused.

It was much easier for me to give Sara the advice that she should leave her abuser than it was for Sara to hear it. I was aware that I was giving her this advice from the safety of my home. She and her children were in danger, and the mechanics of leaving were a critical piece of the advice that I needed to provide. Toward the end of my conversation with Sara, she revealed that even though she blamed herself for getting into this mess—and for staying. She hadn’t realized that the justice system might blame her as well. Since she hadn’t left him yet and hadn’t revealed to her friends and family what was happening in the home, she also didn’t realize the long road that lay ahead. I don’t know if Sara ever ended up leaving her abuser. She never reached out to me again.

Sara’s story is representative of so many women who’ve lived and are currently living through abusive relationships. But for every woman who’s experienced an abusive relationship, there are at least a hand full of trolls who would rather believe it could never happen to them then face the reality (and subsequent terror) that it absolutely could.

If I had a dollar whenever I heard someone say, If my partner abused me, I’d be gone so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him, I would be able to pay for my daughter’s college education in one-dollar bills. Abusers don’t generally come up to their targets and punch them in the face as a special form of hello. Instead, they boil us like frogs in a pot. At first, it seems like you are taking a warm bath in paradise as they shower you with affection.

By the time they throw the first punch, the water has already risen to a boil, and you are so far entrenched in his abuse that you can no longer identify that you are even being abused. I read letters from women who’d been raped and were forced to share custody of their child with their rapist. One woman’s face was burned after her child’s father threw hot water on her. The judge in her case didn’t believe the abuse she endured had any bearing on how her abuser would treat their children.

A Father cried on the phone with me, detailing how his children’s mother routinely drove drunk with them in the car. They once called him for help after their mother drove the car into a pole in the school parking lot. He worried that one day the call would come from the police or the hospital instead.

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), 683,000 victims of child abuse and neglect were reported to child protective services (CPS) in 2015. Roughly 1,670 children died from abuse or neglect that same year. The CDC estimates that the total lifetime cost of child abuse and neglect is estimated at $124 billion each year. It’s shocking that even with this data publicly available, courts seem to actively choose to ignore abuse as though a custody order will make all the risk of danger disappear.

My hope is that telling my story will arm people with knowledge that will help them fight for reform. Sure, this is my story—but know that much of what I experienced in family court wasn’t unique to my case. These problems are systemic and elements of what happened to me—are happening to others every day, across the country. My Prince represents children everywhere who are in danger and routinely stripped of basic civil rights.

And to the parents, children, or witnesses who love them—may my story be the inspiration you need to speak up and the virtual embrace to comfort you in the lonely silence. This is the story of how I survived an abusive relationship with a serial killer, uncovered cracks in the American system, and set out on a journey seeking justice. And this is the story of Prince—the little boy who changed the world.

Chapter 1: Interrogation

I was about four years old when my father hung me by my ankles over the railing of the 12-foot-high banister in our house. He held me there until I stopped crying.

Never show folks that you’re afraid. Showing fear can be dangerous, baby girl, he warned.

My father, a Black man, grew up in Corinth, Mississippi in the 1950s and 60s. He believed that this obviously nontraditional, and admittedly a bit crazy, parenting lesson would make me tougher. Being black in Mississippi back in his day, offered no forgiveness for the weak. In stark contrast, I grew up in a predominately white, affluent neighborhood. Being Mississippi Black kind of tough wasn’t a requirement in our suburban Sea Meadow neighborhood in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

As a child, I mostly shrugged off my father’s lessons as some deep South, Black folk stuff. He never dared to do these things while my mother was watching. She surely would have reminded him that his children were not in immediate danger of being lynched. Despite the balance my white, Irish Catholic mother brought to my childhood, I learned at an early age that Black people didn’t have the privilege to show fear the way that white folks did.

While as an adult I recognize these lessons as remnants of generational trauma, I didn’t experience the type of situation my father was trying to prepare me for that night he hung me over the stairs until I was 31 years old.

The night I fled my son’s abusive father, and the acute trauma in the years that followed, required a resilience—a calm in the face of chaos—and the ability to keep putting one foot in front of another despite the world erupting around me. Many people have asked me how I survived that time in my life, and there’s no easy response to that question.

With a gun pressed to my temple, I had to reach deep into the stores of my life experience to find a courage inside myself that my abuser tried his best to kill. How I reacted in that moment was the difference between whether I lived or died. That night, and many times after, I’ve needed that Mississippi Black kind of tough.

July 2011

I used to think that a near death experience would cause my life to flash before my eyes like cartoon images flipping rapidly across a movie screen. But as my son’s father pressed a gun to my temple—time slowed down. It was as though my brain was conserving energy in the event it had to figure out how to sustain my life. The words he spoke came at me as though he uttered them through some sort of distorted technical delay.

Leave and I’ll kill you, just like I killed Shawn, Joaquin said, lips slowly curling upward into a terrorizing grin while his cold-blooded eyes moved between me and our newborn son in my arms.

TAP, TAP, TAP.

Ms. McLeod? Ms. McLeod, can you hear me?

Detective Jones was tapping on the table in front of me, attempting to get my attention.

Huh? I jumped in my seat, surprised to see the chubby, fair-skinned officer hovering just a few inches from my face.

Suddenly remembering that I was in a police interrogation room, I cleared my throat and apologized for the difficulty I was having being fully present. I plastered a fake smile on my face, desperately trying to stifle tears. Jones’s breath smelled like old tuna fish, and his closeness made me feel like I was going to throw up.

‘I’m not the man who was brandishing weapons earlier, but why do I feel like I’m being investigated,’ I thought.

OK, Ms. McLeod, why don’t you start by telling me what happened tonight, Jones asked, thankfully moving back from my face to take the seat across from me.

Detective Jones stated his questions in such a monotone that it was as though he was reading from a script. As he prepared the recorder, I looked around the room. The walls looked like they were once bright white, but the years since fresh paint made them look like a pack of toddlers walked all over them with filthy gym shoes. The only furniture was a steel desk and two chairs—one for me and one for the detective across from me.

It was the middle of July, but the room was cold enough for a heavy jacket. I clenched my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering and goose bumps covered my arms and legs. I was still wearing my pajamas—a tank top and a thin pair of casual, cotton pajama pants. Reaching for the water he’d placed in front of me, my arm shook so violently that some water spilled on my shirt before I could get it to my lips.

I looked down at my son, who’d been splashed with some water I’d just spilled, wondering what our lives would be like now. I was relieved that we got out of the house alive that night, but also terrified and deeply ashamed. I’d become the stereotypical victim of domestic violence who didn’t leave soon enough. With every question, I felt like I needed to wash off judgment and the dirt and grime of sitting in that room.

I knew it would be hard to believe that I stayed because I wanted so badly to keep my family together. I wanted so badly for Joaquin to be the man I’d fallen in love with—the man I’d hoped to raise children and spend the rest of my life with.

‘Hold Fast. Stay tough. Don’t cry.’ I gave myself a pep talk.

I wanted to cry and scream and worried my body language would betray my desire to remain in control. My father always taught me to remain calm. But this outward calm came at an emotional cost. The pain boiled under the surface and the degree of mental and emotional effort it took to suppress it took its toll. These culturally engraved trauma responses, often rooted in generational and historical trauma, are often misunderstood by the person on the receiving end—in this case, Officer Jones.

As Black folks, we aren’t given the luxury of losing our cool, my father told the child version of me.

My father tried to prepare us for a time when we’d have to convince an authority figure of our legitimacy. I needed this police officer to hear me, and I couldn’t risk falling apart and not able to tell him what happened that night.

Can my parents come in here with me, I asked, my voice shaking.

I’m afraid we can’t allow that, Jones responded, now tapping his pen loudly on the table impatiently.

Giving my report would have been a bit easier had the police allowed either of my parents to be present in the interrogation room. Their denial of my request made me feel uneasy.

Prince’s diaper was full, and I worried it would soon leak all over my pajamas. I didn’t have any backup clothing for either of us and hadn’t thought to grab diapers before escaping to safety. I was lucky that Prince had such an easygoing disposition. He never seemed to care about a full diaper. He was the type