Right to Privacy: Who We Protect

When I was 18 years old, the local police raided our house without a warrant. We had rushed out of the house during dinner to pick up my mom who had fallen in a hotel bathroom in Pennsylvania while taking my oldest sister on a missions trip. In our rush to travel 14 hours on a moment’s notice with 3 kids and two dogs, we literally dropped our dinner in place.

The conspiracy included the Chief of Police and Building Inspector who together would immediately condemn our home — an act which was in violation of our own ordinances. In their report, they cited rooms we were actively not using and were being remodeled as “unsafe for use” (duh), claimed “three rats ran out the door”, and other absurd and false claims. The rat claim is especially heinous. In our 35 years of living in this town, we have not once seen a rat, in town, in nature, or in our house — definitely not with three cats present in the house.

The building inspector would later claim there was never any evidence of a rat.

For over a month and a half, we lived in a motel as we were forced to gut our home and finish remodeling. During this time, our feckless attorney admitted similar events were occurring all over our county to “low equity” homes.

Worse yet, for 6 months, my parents fought with Social Services who threatened foster care for my younger siblings. They would later admit no evidence or grounds for actually being involved beyond “the police said so.”

There was no photographic evidence outside of a bathtub being remodeled and a dish of spaghetti in a sink.

Twenty-two years later, my heart still skips a beat when I hear a knock on our door. To this day, my parents still are afraid of having people in their house. To this day, I recognize the right to privacy has nothing to do with what you have to hide and everything to do with who and what you have to protect.

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