Framed. She was the PTA mom everyone knew. Who would want to harm her?

[Zorro]

The cop wanted her car keys. Kelli Peters handed them over. She told herself she had nothing to fear, that all he’d find inside her PT Cruiser was beach sand, dog hair, maybe one of her daughter’s toys.

They were outside Plaza Vista School in Irvine, where she had watched her daughter go from kindergarten to fifth grade, where any minute now the girl would be getting out of class to look for her. Parents had entrusted their own kids to Peters for years; she was the school’s PTA president and the heart of its after-school program.

Now she watched as her ruin seemed to unfold before her. Watched as the cop emerged from her car holding a Ziploc bag of marijuana, 17 grams worth, plus a ceramic pot pipe, plus two smaller EZY Dose Pill Pouch baggies, one with 11 Percocet pills, another with 29 Vicodin. It was enough to send her to jail, and more than enough to destroy her name.

Her legs buckled and she was on her knees, shaking violently and sobbing and insisting the drugs were not hers.

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-framed/

A long but very interesting read about how petty vindictiveness by an attorney couple against a school volunteer backfired with serious life consequences.

[Warpy]

1. Peters was lucky. She was busted by some very savvy cops

whose years of experience told them what was really going on.

I wonder if some of Jill Easter's weirdness came from being mommy tracked when she had her first kid. That would explain a hell of a lot about her out of proportion vindictiveness. Maybe not, but it's a thought.

It's obvious that neither law school attracted the best or the brightest.

[Control-Z]

5. Mommy tracked?

What is that? Did I miss a paragraph or two? Or is that a common knowledge thing?

So this happened 5 - 10 minutes from where I live and this is the first I've heard of it. Think I might be putting too much time into national political news? I don't seem to know what's going on in my own back yard.

[Warpy]

6. "Mommy tracking" happens in most corporate jobs

but is especially notorious in law firms. Once a woman has a kid, the company knows that kid is going to come first and her days of being married to the job are largely over. So her responsibilities are reduced, the plum jobs leading to advancement are given to either males or unmarried/childless women, and she's basically sidelined doing work that carries no chance of advancement.

Single men and childless women are seen as being willing and able to devote 80+ hours a week to the job. Mothers are not, even when her partner is a stay at home parent.

Most get frustrated and quit.

This is unfair on so many levels, starting with the basic unfairness of expecting human beings to do nothing but work and catch naps when they can and moving on to penalizing women for producing the next generation of workers and clients.

[Control-Z]

7. Of course, d'oh! I knew about the treatment of mothers

but didn't realize it had been named. Thanks for the full explanation.

[murielm99]

2. I took the time to read it.

Thanks for posting.

[matt819]

3. Tl;dr

What's the gist?

[murielm99]

4. She was framed by

a couple who were lawyers. They thought she had dissed their small son. They tried to ruin her life by planting drugs in her car. It took her a long time, but she won.

The wife sounded like the sick one. The husband should have put his foot down, but I get why he did not.

[Control-Z]

8. It's actually a good story

and an easy read.

[Pakid]

9. Good Story

I guess the lesson is you never can tell what someone is going to do. In this case what these people did was way over the top

[MicaelS]

10. Incredible story, thanks for posting.

Another example of helicopter parents. What a sick couple the Easters were. They ruined their lives in the name of pettiness.