To Jan and John Bruenger:
Addendum: This is about YOU and what YOU have done. Shame on you for continuing to trick others into fighting your battles. YOU take responsibility for YOUR conduct, YOUR lies.
I am writing this open letter regarding numerous matters to which, for years, you have never responded or refused to respond, have repeatedly lied about, or have shown abusive conduct—particularly towards members of my family.
I am writing this in an open forum as a last recourse for requesting answers, many of which I've sought since the day you separated me from my family, yet you have never responded to.
Yes. You continue to offer round and categorical "denials". You do this with no accountability for your conduct, your willful abuse and your isolation of my family members from me and refusal for any reasonable reconciliation for the past sixteen years.
It's been your willful intent to poison others against me, and use the very fact that I attempt to communicate or beg you for visits, which you continued to deny until those involved were adults -- and now you blame them for this. Shame on you and John, both. We never deserved this, never deserved to be ripped apart and kept from each other. None of us deserved to be lied to about the circumstance -- you libelled me to care providers in front of us, so you could further pretend these lies you told in secret were true.
When you accused me of this while I was on the phone, you refused to even let me respond before taking the phone and shouting over me until you hung up.
I asked you before why you did this, why you separated me from my family and kept us apart for an entire childhood, never even letting us see each other sometimes as few as once or twice a year. The answer you gave me, and I quote:
"I took him and am keeping him from you because you took my daughter from me! When my mother died! And you moved to Springfield!"
This is the only answer you have ever given me.
I responded, kindly. You were screaming at me as if I had done something wrong asking to be in the life of my family. I calmly explained to you that we moved to Springfield because I was able to get student loans at the university there. Because your daughter and I wanted to continue our education, even though you would not allow it.
Because when your daughter got pregnant, you immediately forced her to quit school. She begged and begged, but you cut off her funding, made her quit taking classes, quit paying for her student housing, forced her to move home.
She was doing great in art school. She would have done great. What could have been.
And you kept us apart because we moved to get away from your controlling financial influence. This is the only answer you have ever given. Other than the simple and easy lie to accuse me of, because I'm a man, that I certainly must have been violent. But—there’s no record of this in my history, no record on paper or person, no one has ever accused me of this—except you. Privately. Where you don’t allow me to respond, but continue to influence others with your slander.
I have the support for what I have to say, the many questions I have to ask. You can continue to choose not to respond. It is not going to stop me from asking, from asking you to stop isolating me from my family. What you have done, what you are doing, is wrong. I don't pretend to be perfect—but you do.
The "Agreement"
In 2011 you and John signed a visitation agreement I had demanded be put in place before allowing you any rights regarding my family. During this time you kept us separated without my consent, refusing to allow visitation outside of your home. There were long periods when I was denied any contact, despite my legal rights. This is addressed in The Kidnapping section.
This visitation agreement stated that while I lived in the state of Missouri, I would have regular visits every other weekend. After months of fighting you back and forth in court over the phrasing of the agreement, the agreement was finally signed, notarized, and entered into the court record.
Then your lawyer argued to the court: "This cannot be enforced. There is no enforcement law for visitation agreements made in probate court." We continued trying to fight this in court, but ultimately there was nothing I could do. At that time, before 2019, there were no laws to enforce visitation in guardianship cases.
It was June of 2011 before we had to give up the fight, because your money won out over my right to be with my family. I had moved from St. Louis back to my home in February, and by the time the guardianship matter was forced to a close, you had already told me flatly that you would not be following the agreement, that my parent's house was "too far away to visit every other weekend." It's only a three hour drive.
The visits you promised in writing, the visits you signed, the Word of Jan and John Bruenger, were immediately made lies.
Why, Jan, when you and John signed papers that I could have regular visits every other weekend, did you never allow more than a handful of visits a year, as a rule?
Why, Jan, for the two years while I lived with my parents, did you refuse to follow the visitation agreement?
Why, Jan, for the next sixteen years, did you never allow me to have visits in my own home?
Why, Jan, for sixteen years, did you only allow visits at my parent's home?
And, making it even worse, you lied about it.
When questions were raised about why I wasn't able to see my family more, I hesitated to tell the truth—that you solely were responsible for refusing to follow the visitation agreement you and John signed. And, what did you do?
You told others this was a lie. You told them that it was my fault that I didn't get to see my family more, you invented this story and said, "The court made the visitation agreement null and void when you moved out of state!"
Except, I didn't move out of state until two years later. I lived with my parents then—and you refused to follow the agreement you signed. Eventually I moved just outside of Kansas City, and this didn't change anything. You didn't let me have any more or fewer than a handful of visits a year, whether I was in Missouri or not.
The agreement you and John signed, the Word of John and Jan Bruenger, said that "Guardians should consider allowing visits out of state." You never did this. You never allowed the promised agreements when I was in Missouri. You never allowed visits in my home.
You lied. You signed the agreement, knowing it was a lie, knowing your lawyer would block it, knowing it couldn't be enforced. You took the guardianship, and gave me next to nothing.
Why? Why is your word worth so little? Why did you lie about the agreement, and what you did?
I took every opportunity I could get, the few that you ever allowed, to visit when you permitted it at my parents' house. For all these years you fought, you denied visits, you cancelled, you made excuses. We begged and begged, and if any of us ever questioned you or anything that you did, you threatened and carried out on restricting our communication and access. For sixteen years, you did this.
When it became necessary to have a phone for school and communication, we tried reaching out, tried calling, tried texting. You told us that communication was not allowed.
You lied and told others and care providers that I "wasn't following the visitation agreement"—though it was you, the Bruengers, who violated the agreement for sixteen years.
You lied and told others and care providers that I "was violent with his mother", even though this never happened.
For years you repeated the lie that I have ever been violent. Even though this is an old story:
The one and only time I was accused, the police threatened to charge your daughter with filing a false police report, because she covered her eye in makeup to make it look bruised. The paramedics were not impressed, and I was not charged. It's a matter of record. It didn't stop her from calling the police repeatedly—always because I was ignoring her while she screamed at me, which made her more angry—but she never lied to them again saying I touched her. If it had happened, obviously I would not be writing this.
All of these things are on record.
The Kidnapping:
In October of 2010, you took and kept a member of my family from me without my consent, which I understand is kidnapping. We stood in your living room, and you told me that the mother had abandoned her child, had already signed papers giving up her rights, and you were trying to force me to allow you guardianship. When I learned the mother had not been involved with care for the previous four months, I demanded that you return my family member to me. You had lied to me for months, telling me she was still taking care of her child, while you hired a lawyer and drew up paperwork to try to keep us separated.
When you confronted me with the guardianship papers and told me the mother had abandoned her child, I demanded you return this family member to me. You said no. I warned you that I would call the police, and this is what you said:
"Well, we haven't filed the papers his mother signed giving up her rights. And, she is living in the house we bought for her, just a few blocks away. If you call the police, we will call her to come over here first, and we will tell the police that you are lying, that she did not abandon him and is still taking care of him."
My family member had been legally abandoned for four months, and during that time you kept us separated illegally without informing me, while you manipulated to take and keep us apart. There was nothing I could do. You had taken my family member, and had already planned to lie to the police before they even had a chance to get there.
In the years after this happened, your daughter was convicted twice for possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute, and was involved in manufacturing and selling meth around St. Louis. I found out days after the separation that you had stuck her in a hotel room and taken away her car, in a desperate attempt to get her to detox, so you could successfully lie to police if I attempted to report the situation. It appeared to me that your continued financial support enabled her substance use, as she often asked for and received money while struggling with addiction.
Jan, you never had children of your own. Whether this was your biology or your husband's, nature decided that you would never be a natural mother. You and John tried to adopt for over fifteen years, but every single person you met decided you were unsuitable, that you should not be allowed to adopt a child.
Finally, after many years of being told by professionals you should not be parents, having nothing but money and no skill at nurturing, you began to obsess over being seen as a good mother. Eventually, you found a child who was pregnant. How long had you known her? She was only 16 years old—Did you tell her that you would let her see her daughter? Did you lie to her the way you lied to me?
You raised a daughter who was spiteful and materialistic, who believed that screaming was the appropriate way to solve problems, that screaming was an appropriate way to force someone to do what you wanted them to do. You gave her a sheltered life, cultivated her materialism and antisocial behavior. You failed at raising your child.
Even more: It seemed to me that you provided financial support to your daughter at a time when she was struggling with substance abuse. For years, I know, all she had to do was ask for the money, and you just kept giving it to her while her life continued to fall apart. Knowing that her mother was also an addict, it seems as though you did this intentionally, encouraging your daughter to start drinking at a young age, giving her money for methamphetamine and heroin.
So, why did you do all of this? I've already revealed the answer: You desperately tried to adopt a child for over fifteen years, untold numbers of professionals and parents informing you that you were not suitable to be parents, and you became obsessed with this. Your mother humiliated you with comments about how you were unable to be a natural mother like she had been. And you became obsessed. Obsessed with being a mother, obsessed with being seen as someone capable of taking care of children—because for fifteen years, nobody believed you capable. Sadly, they were right.
Before all of this, you and John told me you had wanted a second child badly. But after the many years of failing to adopt, you knew there would never be any chance of this. So you raised a sheltered daughter, taught her not to take care of herself, taught her to be antisocial and unable to function in the real world. She still can't. And when she got pregnant, you were waiting to take control of her life and take that child.
Yes, you put your own wants above the health and well-being of others in your care. You exposed vulnerable people to unhealthy environments and influences.
In my personal opinion, your longstanding pattern of seeking attention and control through exaggerating or fabricating disabilities and medical issues in those around you resembles what is clinically described as Munchausen syndrome by proxy (Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another). I am not a medical professional, but your behavior appears consistent with this kind of disorder, in my experience and understanding.
But you know you're not a good parent. Because where is your daughter now, and where has she been? And what good have you done, insisting that others are “disabled” because you don't understand how to deal with them as individuals?
You don't nurture, you don't encourage, you don't teach to grow. You cultivate dependence and your own mental illness, and you try to instill it on others.
When you chastised others for bullying, why did you force the story to be changed, and insist that nothing happened? Does a kindergarten teacher not understand what bullying is?
You made decisions about family members’ care that I strongly disagree with, and which I believe were not in their best interest. I believe those in your care were capable of far more than you ever allowed.
Why did you tell others that those in your care were disabled, when they were not? Why did you insist on labeling capable individuals as disabled, with no basis for such claims? Why did you tell others that you were going to have guardianship extended after adulthood, based on this lie of disability?
All statements in this letter are my opinions, beliefs, or recollections, based on my direct experiences and records in my possession. Any errors or omissions are unintentional, and I will correct any verifiable inaccuracies. If you believe anything herein is inaccurate, I invite you to contact me for correction or clarification.
My intent with this letter is to be heard, not to harass or embarrass. I want to be clear that I am open to communication and correction if anything here is factually mistaken. I hope this can lead, somehow, to accountability and healing for everyone involved.