Location: Ohio
Hi all, I am in my early 20s trying to navigate ending generation addiction & trauma and therefore have been put in a tough position. My dad, 45M, has been in active addiction since he was around 14 years old. I was born when he was 22 and he had his first adult DUI when I was 3 months old.
Fast forward, I am 23F and helping my mom to raise my younger brothers & financially support them. My dad started to have his worst spiral in 2019 when he had a hit n run and was strung up on fentanyl. It hasn’t stopped since. He lived in our family home up until 2022 when a few days before my brother’s 9th birthday, he came home belligerently drunk and my mom had to call the police as he is very violent. Since then, he has hopped around from place to place while still actively using and not paying any bills or providing for his minor children.
There are many details that I’m not including for the sake of time but to sum it up, he ended up moving in 2 doors down from my house last spring (2024) and had another DUI by November, crashing into my neighbors garage. That same night, he was at a casino trying to take home a homeless woman (nothing wrong with a homeless woman but not like his character) and was escorted out by security after trying to fight a wealthy man. After that, my mom and I went and filed for a protection order as it was not okay for him to be in such close proximity to my brothers and I when he was still not sober. Due to the years of evidence we have of domestic abuse, my mom and I were awarded the protection order but it does not include my brothers. Since then, he has not spoken one word to either one of my minor brothers (16M & 12M) nor given them a penny. However, we have received an abundance of information that he is living in a trap house and actively using despite being on probation in two different places.
Although I know it’s the healthy choice to create boundaries as I have to stop generational addiction & trauma, that’s still my dad and despite everything he’s put my family and I through, I somehow still love him more than anything. I’m terrified I’m going to get a call he’s dead. My only hope is to possibly get a welfare check done on the house he’s staying at so he is arrested and forced to serve the suspended sentences on both of his probation cases-aka being sober and maybe just maybe getting help for the sake of his kids.
So, am I allowed to call for a welfare check despite having a protection order against him?
Comments
You are allowed, but do you really want to send a large group of men with guns to what they see as a dangerous situation with your father and others plus drugs?
If you truly care about your father, do you want to substantially increases his chances of getting shot?
The thing about addiction is that it is a life long illness that does not go away even if you are clean. He is a grown man. Are you going to call the cops on him multiple times when he is in a similar situation next year and the year after?
You might consider that you want to do something because you are feeling powerless. You have an end result in mind, but that is not necessarily going to happen. A criminal case, a police investigation, incarceration or probation can go a lot of different ways. If he loses his residence and goes homeless or gets rapped up in a worse situation, you might be discouraged because your goal from getting police involved didn’t work out.
If you want to help him, get professional help from social services. Their mandate is different from police. You could also try to give him something to work for that motivated him into recovery like religion or family. There are plenty of parents who were heavily addicted who got clean in order to have visitation of their children. They set legal precedent regarding parental rights when fighting against termination. Law enforcement is not going to change him.
Under criminal law, theories of punishment range in decreasing utility from rehabilitation, universal deterrence, specific deterrence, incapacitation, and finally retribution. Incarceration is rather poor for rehabilitation and is mostly about deterrence and incapacitation. Drug addiction takes over deterrence and the addicted will seek out drugs and crimes that lead to them until their are incapacitated by being locked up.
Consider your goal. If you want rehabilitation, seek social services. If you want him to be deterred from doing drugs, that won’t come from prison, religion or family may give a stronger incentive. If you want incapacitation by getting him thrown in prison, the crime may not fit a length of time that you have in mind and he will be back at it again in the future. If you are looking for retribution, the state is not interested in punishing addicts and the sentence may not meet what you are looking for.
The most important thing is to deal with the effects, which may be best in moving on and not putting effort or time into his situation. At some point, you will have to find forgiveness, even if you don’t talk to him ever again. That moment is when you can finally release the burden and pain you have been carrying for years. If you get involved, you may not be ready for the outcome, just be mindful of it. Society has a very difficult time getting results, so you should be ready that the results may not meet what you are looking for.
Concentrate on yourself and making peace with it. This is the only focus that you truly have control over. Support yourself and each other in the family you choose to make for yourself.