It was a very emotional day at the Bradley Manning sentencing hearing. After hearing from two expert witnesses on Manning’s psychiatric history, his sister, Casey Major, testified describing a very difficult childhood for Manning with two alcoholic parents she raised Manning (she is 11 years older than he is). The Guardian reports:
Manning’s sister, Casey Major, provided the court with an insight of their difficult upbringing with two alcoholic parents. Major, 36, said that while her father, Brian, was a “functional alcoholic”, who could get up to work after drinking, her mother, Susan, had a more serious problem.
She said her mother drank hard liquor from around lunchtime, and would often continue through the night until she had passed out. Asked how often she was drunk, Major replied: “At least every day.”
Their mother would often wake-up in a terrible mood, Major said. “She was mean, very mean, yelled, screamed at you, to get her cigarettes, or make her a cup of tea.”
She said her mother drunk through her pregnancy with Manning and, when he was born, it often fell to Major, then aged eleven, to look after her infant brother.
When Manning was 12, their father left the family home. One night her mother attempted suicide, and Major recalled how when they got into the family car in their rural home in Oklahoma to drive to the hospital, their father refused to sit on the back seat to monitor their mother.
“Unfortunately my 12 year old brother had to go back there and check his mom was breathing for the whole car ride,” she said. After that incident, she said her mother threatened to kill herself “every day”.
Manning took the stand just after her testimony
Pfc. Bradley Manning Unsworn Statement during Sentencing Trial
This is a rush transcript of an unsworn statement by Pfc. Bradley Manning on August 14, 2013, during the defense case, during the sentencing phase of U.S. versus Pfc. Bradley E. Manning.
First your Honor. I want to start off with an apology. I am sorry. I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I am sorry that it hurt the United States. At the time of my decisions, as you know, I was dealing with a lot of issues– issues that are ongoing and they are continuing to affect me.
Although they have caused me considerable difficulty in my life, these issues are not an excuse for my actions. I understood what I was doing and the decisions I made. However, I did not truly appreciate the broader effects of my actions. Those effects are clearer to me now through both self-reflection during my confinement in its various forms and through the merits and sentencing testimony that I have seen here.
I am sorry for the unintended consequences of my actions. When I made these decisions I believed I was gonna help people, not hurt people. The last few years have been a learning experience. I look back at my decisions and wonder, ‘How on earth could I, a junior analyst, possibly believe I could change the world for the better over the decisions of those with the proper authority?’
In retrospect I should have worked more aggressively inside the system as we discussed during the Providence Statement and had options and I should have used these options. Unfortunately, I can’t go back and change things. I can only go forward. i want to go forward. Before I can do that though, I understand that I must pay a price for my decisions and actions.
Once I pay that price, I hope to one day live in the manner I haven’t been able to in the past. I want to be a better person– to go to college– to get a degree– and to have a meaningful relationship with my sister’s family and my family.
I want to be a positive influence in their lives, just as my aunt Deborah has been to me. I have flaws and issues that I have to deal with, but I know that I can and will be a better person. I hope you can give me the opportunity to prove– not through words, but through conduct– that I am a good person, and that I can return to a productive place in society.
Thank you, your Honor.