Growing up I lived with my biological mother. At age seven she decided she didn’t want me, she sent me to live with my biological father and his wife. After living there for almost two years, I was raped by him. This continued from the ages of nine until I was almost fourteen. I was terrified to tell anyone, and when I finally did he was arrested. I had no other family, no relationship with my biological mother and the only person I had was his wife. She had taken care of me and loved me all of those years and she was my mom. I had wanted her to adopt me for years but my father never allowed it. Now I am almost sixteen and I still live with her and we want to go through with adoption. However, the adoption process will cost us thousands of dollars that we don’t have. All because he still has rights to me. A contested adoption in the state of Tennessee costs more money for us because he isn’t willing to give up his rights. We believe that any adult who is convicted of a crime against children in anyway; if they have children, they should automatically have their parental rights terminated. No one who harms children should have any rights to them. This makes it so that children who are in situations like mine can have a chance to be adopted into families that will love and care for them. To give them the opportunity to have a happy life without the issue of having to pay thousands of dollars that most of us don’t have. Having these rights terminated from the adults who are convicted of these crimes, will benefit me because I would be able to be adopted by the people who have been by my side for years. They are my true parents not the people I get my genetics from. I would be able to not constantly worry about whether or not I’m going to be taken away from them, because legally I’m not their child. There are so many children who have been hurt in different ways by their biological parents, that are in situations similar to mine. They can’t live their lives and try to move past this when they constantly have to remember that that parent who hurt them still has control over their life. Signing this petition will help the children who have been harmed by their parents move forward and not worry about all of those things that I still do.