Chapter 21 - DEREK’S SENTENCING
Sentencing was not a movie.
No family standing up one by one to curse him.
Victim-impact statements.
Defense mitigation.
Psychological evaluation.
Financial records.
Prior history.
No previous felony convictions.
Stable employment before Hard Lessons.
Community involvement.
Parenting history containing good periods.
Therapy progress.
Also:
Repeated deliberate misconduct.
Use of children for monetized content.
Physical injury to Sadie.
Injury to Owen in chair incident.
Attempted evidence deletion.
Minimization after discovery.
The judge considered all.
Derek spoke.
“I turned reactions into numbers.”
No one moved.
“Views. Retention. Renewals. I started measuring whether something worked by whether people watched.”
Then:
“I stopped asking whether the child in the frame trusted me.”
That was good.
Not enough.
He continued:
“I did not intend to break Sadie’s hand.”
I believed that.
Then:
“I intended to scare and hurt her enough to get a reaction.”
There.
No more accidental-step defense.
He looked at me.
The judge warned him not to address victims directly without permission.
He redirected.
Sentence:
A custodial term proportionate to the felony endangerment and assault plea, with part subject to supervised release structure.
No life sentence.
No theatrical decades for a fractured hand.
Probation/supervision afterward.
No unsupervised professional or commercial content involving minors during supervision.
No monetization of Sadie’s or Owen’s images.
No contact with Sadie unless later approved by court and by her parent while minor.
Parenting contact with Owen governed by family court separately.
Restitution for medical and certain counseling expenses.
Evidence-preservation compliance.
Hard Lessons child-content archive permanently surrendered/disabled under settlement and platform process where legally possible.
Not every copy on Earth erased.
No false promise.
Derek’s face remained still until Owen’s name came up.
Then he cried.
I did not.
Not because I felt nothing.
May you like
Because my daughter’s hand had healed and the man who broke it was finally speaking in nouns instead of jokes.
That was enough for the day.
