Let’s assume that a violent crime takes place outside of you place of work involving individuals who are part of a crime syndicate. The F.B.I. shows up and investigates and they tell you that you have to become part of the Federal Witness Protection program. Your wife and young child don’t know anything about the crime.
Would you take your wife and child with you into protected custody, assuming their lives are not likely to be in danger regardless of your decision?
Leaving them behind means that you’ll never get to see them again (assuming that the crime syndicate will always pose a threat to you) and when you build your new life under your new identity, there will never be anyone with whom you can be completely honest about your past.
Taking them with you means that they’ll never get to return back to the town (which we’ll say is your hometown), and they can’t contact the other members of your family. They will also have to assume new identities, your spouse will have to find a new line of work.
What would you do?
I’d leave’em they’ll learn a lot from my untimely disappearance….
I’d take them with me. Maybe it’s selfish, but I’d want someone there who I could be REAL with and talk about the other members of my family. If my wife and son didn’t come with me, I could never talk to anyone about those who I left behind, and that would be heartbreaking I think. Even though they’d have to leave everyone else behind, too, I still think they’d want to be there for me. Scenarios switched around and it’s my wife who has to go on FWP, I think I’d definitely go with her.