If only life were actually this simple, we would all have success stories to tell.
Reading stories like Pamela Riddick's and Kemba Smith made me realize the irony behind 'there but for the grace of God go I.'
Domestic violence, blind and foolish love know no color, racial, educational or socioeconomic boundaries. You could be a college eductaed woman with degrees, a house and money or a college student who comes from a loving, stable family and still end up falling for the wrong man or staying in abusive relationships that leads you down paths you never forsaw yourself walking.
Read on:
A Prince George's Educator Is Learning About Criminal Justice The Hard Way
By Wil HaygoodWashington Post Staff Writer
A 43-year-old woman in a white pantsuit is sitting in a Rockville diner, a billed cap pulled down near her large brown eyes.
Sunlight streams through the picture windows, flooding the Formica table.She hasn't been sleeping lately. There have been terrible dreams."It's exhaustion," Pamela Y. Hoffler-Riddick says.Usually she'd be at school now, jawboning with students, or out in the field, convening with her staff of principals.
But here she sits, on forced unpaid leave from her job as an assistant superintendent in the Prince George's County school system, where just months ago she oversaw more than 30 schools.
Now she is facing criminal charges.
On Jan. 24, she was arrested by federal agents and charged with five counts of money laundering in a $20 million drug operation. That ring, Operation Blowfish, authorities called it, included up to three dozen people and stretched along the East Coast and parts of the South. Hoffler-Riddick is charged with laundering about $50,000 of those alleged drug proceeds.
She is accused of laundering the money for drug kingpin Aaron Burton and his financial adviser, John McBride, a man she says she once loved.She pleaded not guilty on Feb. 9 at a Norfolk court appearance. David W. Bouchard, her lawyer, says it was all a misunderstanding: a man she dated; some issues of trust; some issues of naivete.
Her trial starts in July."I used to tell the kids to stay away from the criminal justice system," Hoffler-Riddick says. "That's what I preached. And I looked around that courtroom and there were all these black people. Defendants. And afterward people started talking about me and my PhD degree and the fact that some of the defendants hadn't finished high school. That burned me up! Just because they hadn't finished high school, you gonna judge them a certain way? I always said, 'There but for the grace of God go I.' "
Click the links below to follow Pamela's story.
Judge may dismiss most of the charges against Pamela Riddick
Former Norfolk principal sent to prison for laundering drug money
Asst. Superintendent Gets 6 Years in Drug Conspiracy
Parents Supporting Pamela Riddick
But here she sits, on forced unpaid leave from her job as an assistant superintendent in the Prince George's County school system, where just months ago she oversaw more than 30 schools.
Now she is facing criminal charges.
On Jan. 24, she was arrested by federal agents and charged with five counts of money laundering in a $20 million drug operation. That ring, Operation Blowfish, authorities called it, included up to three dozen people and stretched along the East Coast and parts of the South. Hoffler-Riddick is charged with laundering about $50,000 of those alleged drug proceeds.
She is accused of laundering the money for drug kingpin Aaron Burton and his financial adviser, John McBride, a man she says she once loved.She pleaded not guilty on Feb. 9 at a Norfolk court appearance. David W. Bouchard, her lawyer, says it was all a misunderstanding: a man she dated; some issues of trust; some issues of naivete.
Her trial starts in July."I used to tell the kids to stay away from the criminal justice system," Hoffler-Riddick says. "That's what I preached. And I looked around that courtroom and there were all these black people. Defendants. And afterward people started talking about me and my PhD degree and the fact that some of the defendants hadn't finished high school. That burned me up! Just because they hadn't finished high school, you gonna judge them a certain way? I always said, 'There but for the grace of God go I.' "
Click the links below to follow Pamela's story.
Judge may dismiss most of the charges against Pamela Riddick
Former Norfolk principal sent to prison for laundering drug money
Asst. Superintendent Gets 6 Years in Drug Conspiracy
Parents Supporting Pamela Riddick
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