Brandon James Furlough: Fatherhood, Reentry, And Life On The Sex Offender Registry

Brandon James Furlough has been out of prison for over ten years, but his sentence still shapes his life every day. Convicted of sex offenses committed as a teenager and required to register for life, Brandon talks openly about his arrest, the plea deal he took instead of risking 39 years, and the limits the registry puts on being a father to his 10-year-old son. He also talks about the support that got him through incarceration, the three businesses he runs today, and the book about his life, An American Sex Offender: A Father’s Fight to Be There After a Mistake That Never Ends.

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Brandon James Furlough: Fatherhood, Reentry, And Life On The Sex Offender Registry

Navigating Early Challenges And The First Arrest

I’m joined by Brandon Furlough, a father and entrepreneur who has been home from prison for over ten years and is still living with his sentence. Brandon was convicted of sex offenses committed as a teenager and must register for life, which shapes how he can be a father to his ten-year-old son. A quick note before we begin, this episode includes frank talk about sexual offenses involving minors, substance use, and the legal system. Listener discretion is advised. What you’ll hear is Brandon’s own account and understanding. It isn’t legal advice, and his views are his own. This is a story usually told this openly, and it offers a look at a world you may never have known existed.

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Brandon, thank you for being here and letting us into your world.

Thank you for having me, Julia.

You have quite a story to share. I always like to start with what life was like as you grew up. You got into some trouble, so what brought you to getting arrested the first time? How old were you?

To really start, when I was seventeen. On my seventeenth birthday, I actually committed my charges. I was out doing a lot of drinking, smoking, and popping opiates. After a long day, I came back home. My mother wasn’t there, so I went in and checked on my sisters. My little sister was asleep. My middle sister, who was like four years younger than me, was in a room with a friend. I told her I was home, checked in on her, and went and played my games. As I was playing the games later in the evening, her friend came into my room, and it led to sexual intercourse. About a month later, another event like that happened again. I thought at the time it was consensual, but I guess due to her age in the state of Indiana, it cannot be consensual.

This happened when you turned eighteen?

No, this is when I was seventeen, ma’am. Trust me, it’s a long story. We’re just getting started. Everyone wants to get popcorn, because this is a long story. About a month later, it happened again. Fast-forward a year, and it’s a little bit before my eighteenth birthday. Warren Central, the school that I graduated from in ’05, before I even turned 18. I turned 17 in June. Later that year, I started my senior year. Now here it is, May, the timeframe of ’05. I haven’t turned 18 yet, but I graduated high school.

The day I graduated high school, my mom politely kicked me out of the house because we had issues, and I was a bit of a dick. Anyway, she kicked me out. I was living on the streets, for lack of better words, bumming places and staying the night with friends, working construction, and I hated that job. My grandmother had come into the state because, around the time of my graduation, I was 18, something happened where we lost residence at the apartment over there on Wickerwood, where she kicked me out.

My grandmother was up helping to do all the adjustments, moving everything. On my 18th birthday, at about 5:30 in the morning, I met my grandmother over at, I do not remember the exact address, but I call it Wickerwood. I met her at the apartment over at Wickerwood, got in a car with her, and went to Virginia. I stayed in Virginia for a little bit, then ended up coming back with my grandfather to help his mother, who lives out in Fairland, do some work. My grandfather and I got into an argument. I do not remember exactly what it was, but when we got here, I went back to Indianapolis.

He stayed in Fairland to do the work under his mom’s house. While I was up here, the female that I had sex with when I was 17, I saw her, and she was with another one of her friends. Long story short, I ended up talking to this friend. I went back to Virginia. She came down to Virginia. She went back to Indiana. I came back to Indiana. Now I’m living with her. She kicked me out of the house one night. The only place I could go was to my mother’s house. In the course of finding a ride over to my mother’s house, I drank, smoked, and did my normal daily routine. When I got to my mother’s house, where she lived at the time, she was dating a biker.

Facing Legal Complexities And Plea Agreements

She wasn’t there. She was out with him. My little sister was at a friend’s house. My middle sister, the one four years younger than me, was there with another friend, separate from the first one. This friend was extremely developed in comparison to the other girl. Needless to say, during the course of the night, she and I got a little bit closer. It did not lead to sexual intercourse because I heard her, or she jumped, and I thought I had done something to her. At that point, she revealed to me that she had been raped before. I told her to get dressed. I got dressed. I slept on the floor. She slept on the couch behind me, and we were good.

I’m not quite sure how long it was, maybe a month or two, but a short time later, my mom called my friend because she was looking for me. I left my girlfriend’s house on the way to my dude’s house. When I got to my dude’s house, he told me my mom had called looking for me. When I called her back, she asked, “What did you do with that girl?” I said, “Mom, I do not think you want to know that.” She said, “The cops do.” I said, “I’m out of here. I’m not going to talk to them.” She said, “No, Brandon, we’re going to talk to those cops.” I said, “All right, Mom, whatever.

I’ll go down there and talk to them for you.” I was just going to take off if I had done something, let alone a sex case. This was right when that Monica Lewinsky stuff happened. They were hard on sex offenders. I was not going to talk to any cops. I went and talked to my mom. I talked to him, and he asked me what happened to her. I told him what happened to her. I did not lie about it. Why would I lie about it? She’s maybe four years younger than me. I had just turned eighteen. She did not look like it. I thought she was about sixteen.

A little bit of time went by, and I was lying in my mom’s spare room because I was living back with her due to the girlfriend issues. The cops came in about six deep to arrest me because they had a warrant out for my arrest for sexual misconduct with a minor. They arrested me and kept me in a paddy wagon. I got to holding and was there for a couple of weeks. I was released to GPS monitoring, which, back then, you had to carry a purse around holding the battery unit for it, along with an ankle bracelet. This was way back in the day, when GPS first came out.

About six months later, he called me and said, “Man, we need to go talk to the cops about this girl that you had sex with.” I said, “What? I’ve been dating this girl since I caught this case. What other girl did I have sex with?” He said, “Man, this is something from when you were seventeen. I do not even know why they’re questioning you about it.” I did not know either. I went to the juvenile police department and talked to the cop. He asked me, “What did you do with X, Y, Z?” I said, “What do you think I did? I had sex with her.” “How old were you, sir?”

This was a brand-new algorithm in my head. I was seventeen. It actually happened on my seventeenth birthday. They released me. By this time, I was living with my mama, who was my grandmother’s mother. She was older. The reason I was living with her was that she had hurt herself on vacation, got burned, and had some other issues. I was living with her and helping her out while I was dealing with all this. The cops came and knocked on her door looking for me. They said, “Brandon, come turn yourself in.”

I said, “No. I have a court date coming up. I’ll turn myself in at that court date.” I called my lawyer quickly to make sure I was thinking correctly. He said, “We’ll do it then.” They wanted to arrest me for the juvenile case. I went and turned myself in as a juvenile so I could go to court there. They waived me to adult court. While they were waiving me to adult court, they kept me in holding.

They took me from juvenile holding to adult holding, and I was in adult holding for a little over 24 hours, around 36 hours, somewhere between 24 and 48 hours. They came over the intercom and said, “Furlough, pack your bags,” which is what they say when they release you. I did not tell you what this charge was for. This charge was for child molestation, a B and a C felony. The sexual misconduct was for a C and a D felony.

This was when you were seventeen?

Actually, I’m nineteen at this point.

The offense happened when you were seventeen?

Yes, ma’am. That’s why I turned myself in as a juvenile, and then they pushed it and waived it to adult court. I’m nineteen now, and I have sexual misconduct, a C felony, and a D felony. From juvenile, they waived a B and a C felony for child molestation. Now I have a B, two C’s, and a D felony, and I just got here from juvenile, and this cop was coming on, telling me to pack my bags. I got on the intercom and said, “Bro, you ain’t bluffing, funny, bro. Either fat one, bro. You know what charges they put me in here with?” He came back on and asked, “You do not want to leave?”

The Lifelong Impact Of The Sex Offender Registry

I said, “What? Yeah, I want to leave. Are you being serious?” He said, “I’m being serious. Pack your bags.” I went back and gave all the complimentary hygiene items that the jail gives you when you first get there to the other inmates so they had something. I went out, and they dropped the charges. They dropped the B and C felony child molestation charges that I committed when I was seventeen. Along with those charges went the waiver to adult court. I called my girlfriend and said, “Babe, come get me.” She came and got me. I was more than ecstatic in the car on the ride.

“Man, I knew it. Yes. Now I can just go plead guilty to this D, get an alternative misdemeanor sentence, and then I won’t even be a sex offender all my life.” No. About roughly 30 days later, my public defender called me and said, “There’s another one out for your arrest.” I said, “Bro, what for? Is there another girl or something?” He said, “In a way, yeah, but not a different one.” I asked, “What are you talking about?” He said, “They’re bringing those charges back up.” I said, “They’re bringing them back up? They just dropped them. Why would they bring them back up?”

He said, “This charging information is a little bit different.” I said, “A little bit? I thought the charging information had been relevant to what was committed in the case. What did he mean? What changed?” He said, “The ages changed.” I asked, “How did the ages change? I did not know I could be 17 and 35 at the same time. What are you talking about?” He said, “Instead of 17, they’re saying that you were 18.” I said, “Bro, I did not even live in the state where they’re trying to say this happened between the two time frames they’re saying this happened.

I believe it was from my birthday to August 17th. I lived in Virginia, and my grandmother can testify to that. What are you talking about?” He said, “I do not know what it is either, but we’ll get it handled.” At my next court date, I turned myself in for this new cause number, this adult cause number. Now they’re saying that I was 18 when I had sex with her, and she’s now 11. Her age has been 11, 12, and 13 in the official documents. What finally got cleared up after the plea agreement and everything went through was that she was actually 12, but she was 11 at one point.

She could still have been eleven. Honestly, I have not looked at my documents since I filed my PCR. Needless to say, they brought up the charges again, saying that I was eighteen. Now I have a B and C felony child molestation charge where I was eighteen at the time of commission, as well as sexual misconduct, C and D felonies, where I was eighteen at the time of commission. From a chronological perspective, I’m going into court with four sex offenses over about a six-month time frame. It did not look good. I looked like I was a serial sex offender, collecting them like Pokémon cards.

I’m not making excuses for anybody tuning in, but just think of a teenage boy. This is something we really have to educate people about. Even though you’re a teenager and you have these urges, as a young man, as a teenager, we need to talk to young men about this so they do not find themselves in a situation. Not to interrupt what you’re saying, but I just want some clarity. You were a teenager. You were, excuse me, stupid.

Very stupid. I was thinking with my wrong head. You’re absolutely right. Education is needed. Yes, parents should let their kids know, but there is so much more that schools could be letting kids know, since they spend so much of their young years there. They need to learn about all the cases they can catch and all the laws they can break without even knowing it. There is so much more that could be done. My fear is that we, as a country and as a society, become so reliant on labels to tell us whether something is good or bad that we are not even paying attention to what is really going on.

I do not understand it. Anyway, now I went and turned myself in. They released me on my own recognizance. I am facing a B, two C’s, and a D, found you. The B and a C for child molestation, the C and the D for sexual misconduct. I initially told my like, “Bro, take it to the box, man. Take it to jury trial, bro. I am not, man. I was not eighteen when I did that.” He was like, “Look, I get it. He was not eighteen.” He is like, “Here is what they are going to do. You are going to go into a jury trial, and you are going to tell them that, no, you did not do it when you were eighteen.

You did it when you were seventeen. All they are going to do is file an amendment.” “An amendment?” He is like, “Yes, they are going to file an amendment, and they are going to change your age and say that you were seventeen. Whatever sentence the jury gives you after you confess to doing it is what it is, and I was facing 40 or 39 years at the age of 20.” I took the plea. They dropped the B, dropped the D. I pled guilty to two C’s. They gave me a six through three for sexual misconduct and a four due to child molestation. Now I have to register as a sex offender for the rest of my life. My label has changed. I have been in OAC SVP.

All those letters.

Fighting To Be A Father Amidst Strict Registry Barriers

I do not know. I have been the whole alphabet, though. It has been interesting.

Thank you for being so transparent. You said that you would not be where you were. Given what you have been through, you would not have gotten your son. There are two things I want to talk about. I want to talk about your son. Also, we will get into what kind of support you had when you were incarcerated because I think that is really important for families to hear about support, or maybe support you did not have. Let us talk about your son.

My son is my world. Had you talked to Brandon eleven years ago, you would have been talking to a whole different dude. I was just going to be the cool uncle of the family. I was never going to have any kids. I knew the limitations that were in place. Like, should I become a father? My son is ten now, and that little dude, I do not want to say he is the greatest ever. He is the greatest ever. He is my whole world. Everything I try to do to be a father for a man is just met by barrier after barrier. If it is not his mother, then it is the law. When all that really my little dude wants is just his dad there, that is all that I really want to do.

Let us just focus on this right now because you are on the registry. That is one of the barriers because there are a lot of places that you cannot go even though you served your time. This is something that happened when you were a stupid teenager, and now you have a relationship with your son. You cannot go to games. How do you see him? What is your relationship? Where can you see him, and how can you see him? The only reason I am asking is that I want to let people know they are listening to the restrictions when somebody has been convicted of something when they were a teenager in this case, and they are put on the registry for possibly life, and how this affects their interaction with their children.

It creates more victims. We all know what sadness and trauma can do to you. Anything that adds to that is asinine. I get it. We need to protect kids. However, with that being said, just because you know a label is not protection. If anything, it is distracting you and making it worse; I just do not see how it is doing anything to help kids.

How can you see your son?

I have the bare minimum that I can get in terms of visitation with my son. There are two different schedules when he is in school and when he is not in school. When he is in school, I get my son for four hours every Wednesday. In order to do that, I need to pick up either my mother or my grandmother. We drive over to the other side of town, where I get out of the car and wait at a gas station.

Whoever I pick up to go with me goes to his school to pick him up because I am not allowed on school property. I cannot even drive up in the car and sit in the car on school property while my mother goes in and gets my son. That is how much of a terror and a danger I am. I go, and I wait at the gas station. They go and get them. I come back, and I drop them off. I get my son for three hours, during which we do schoolwork, we eat dinner, and then he goes on his own.

I get them on alternating weekends, so I go pick them up again. We go to the school and get him. I went to the gas station, and then I got them all the way until Sunday, as Mom comes to pick him up at 6:00 PM on Sundays. When he is not in school, nowadays we split it half and half. One week he will be with me. One week he will be with her. That is the closest I get to an equal split in my son’s life and time is when he is not in school.

It is not him that you cannot be with. You can be with your son. However, you cannot be in a place like a park or go to a game or go to a park.

There was almost a scare where it would be another felony offense if I went to a park with them. Luckily, in July, that did not go into effect because it did not pass. There was something that did not pass through with its wording that went into law. It almost did. It almost said my son loves to go to parks. We go to walk the trails. We will go out to Paul Ruster, who is out on the East side over here, and he rolls down the hills. My son is so awesome. I just want to be a dad to my boy. I am just trying to bring awareness to it. I do not know, me myself, I have not seen it on TV or anything like anyone standing up to it. Anything that I see on the news or on any television about sex offenders or the registry is only getting worse for sex offenders and registrants.

Societal Labels And The Reality Of Reentry

There are a lot of stories like yours. There are over 800,000 people in the United States on the registry. I do not know the percentages of what they are and how many were teenagers like yourself. However, that seems like a lot. It does affect your life because you have been out for so long. There has to be a point, and it is different in every state.

I do not know other states. I know here in Indiana, and this is only to my understanding, I am nothing more than a lowly felon. To my understanding, what makes your designation, whatever your label is, whatever your classification is, is your charge. To an extent, I get it. However, there are other extents like mine where I was a seventeen-year-old kid or young adult, and I do not even want to say, kid. I am not trying to shake or diminish my parts in what I did. I know what I did.

I also know that I am sitting in the van that is full of ice cream and puppies, trying to get kids to come pet them so I can nap them. I do not call the chicken a duck when it is a goose. There is a difference. If we get to a point where, as a society, we are just casting people out, and not only people, their people, like we are grouping them into it as well. I am relatively sure that there has been a time in history where that has happened before, and it did not turn out well. In my opinion, it is a very slippery slope. I am saying that because I am affected by it. It is what it is. I just know that my son should not be wanting his dad to be there when his dad can and would be there just because he is on a registry.

One more question about your son before we move on. That is, does he know about your charges? If not, do you have a plan for how and when you are going to let him know?

He knows that I cannot be there. He knows that the only reason that I am not there is because I cannot be there. However, I have not gone into detail with him because it is an adult subject and my son is only ten. I wish that I had a concrete answer for you. I know that it is a sensitive subject matter given the circumstances. What I plan on telling him is, like, I do not know, to me, like, if you call the chicken a duck when it is a goose, you are doing nothing but wasting time.

I plan on being honest with my son. I guess the reason why I was never there was because I did this at this age. This is what it is. You want to see the paperwork. I got it, buddy. Here you go. Now I have some paperwork. After my PCR through one, the only paperwork that I have now is what he kept. I threw all my other stuff away because I thought. It was about to be behind me.

What is the PCR?

PCR is a post-conviction relief.

Letting everybody in.

Yes. When you sign a plea agreement, at least here in the state of Indiana. Again, I am not legal, from my understanding, filing a post-conviction relief is the only way you can attack a plea agreement. I signed the plea, even though I did not want to, because I did not want to go on the stand telling people that I did something so they can just file an amendment, and now I am guilty of it, and I got 39 years in prison.

No, I will take my little ten-piece, which initially I got all time suspended, and I was out on paper. I was not in the right mindset. Three months in the paper, I got like six new charges. Drunk and disorderly, driving a vehicle while drunk, giving alcohol to my girlfriend because she was under the age of 21, because I was not even 21. Battery on an officer, like three counts of that. I got time served for that and then was sent to prison.

That is all that anger. You were also saying you had words with your son’s mom. Where are you at with that now? Have you gone through anger management?

I have done a gang of anger management. I have done a gang of anger management.

Where are you at with that now? How do you talk to your son’s mother now?

It is a lot more civil than it used to be. I just want to say, too, it is not like I just woke up one day and decided to just be rude to her. I was rude to her, and I was very verbally aggressive and blunt. I was just rude. I was an asshole. At the same time, she was keeping my son from me. What am I supposed to do? My father was never there. I would be damned if I was going to be made into my father. I was aggressive. As I said, up until my son was born, like the time that I caught him, when he came out of his mama in my hands, I was a whole different human. I am not the same person now that I was then.

I do not think you are, and I just wanted everybody to know that. I know you all cannot see him. He is glowing when he talks about his son. We pretty much talked about a lot of things that you have been through, and I feel like we are skipping the support because we have been talking for quite a while, and I think it has been really interesting. What I want to talk about next is somebody that we have spoken about, and who is Brent?

Sharing The Story Through “An American Sex Offender” And Entrepreneurship

Brent is the author of An American Sex Offender: A Father’s Fight to Be There After a Mistake That Never Ends, which is centered around yours truly and my life. Brent was so kind as to offer his services to try to spread awareness of what is going on because I do not know about you. When someone hears sex offender, they instantly cut it off. I am not thrown away. Is there a difference in sex offenders between sex offenders? There is, but the whole premise of the book and the reason why he wrote it is just to bring awareness to what we are doing as a society, how we are bringing in this registration, and this registration is to protect the children.

Protect what children? Due to this registration, there are other children that are being harmed because their parents and their loved ones cannot be there even after their parents and loved ones have served their sentence and their supervision requirements. To me, how can you, as a society, say that you are doing something to help someone while you are hurting another who is in the same group? How are you protecting children while you are hurting children? It is a bit of a conundrum to me.

I understand. I just want to bring in that there are no extenuating circumstances in this case. Sometimes there are some extenuating circumstances where they cannot, people cannot see their children. However, that is not the case here. I just wanted to bring out that there was no violence or anything within the house. It was something that happened many years ago. You have been out of prison for ten years, and what are you doing with your life now? You have been out. How have you grown, and what are you doing?

Currently, I am an entrepreneur. I own and operate three businesses. A Better Deal LLC, which is my retail operation. That was my first baby. I have Miclo Unlimited LLC, which is helping to fund, publish, and push Brent and my book. I have Miclos Visionary Holdings LLC, which is my real estate and holdings company that is focused on one day having properties that I can use to help fellow convicts when they are coming out be able to have a place to live. It is also going to fit in with the community, so it is not like they got to. They are unsure if they can go stay there, so it will meet all the registry requirements if they are in that boat and they need it. I got some plans. It is just taking longer to get the machine going.

Sounds like you are doing really good and we call people coming out of prison returning citizens. Because again, I am talking to you about humanizing the situation and humanizing people coming out of prison, and especially people that are on the registry. People can see who is on the registry in their neighborhood, and they freak out, and there are different levels. Just be aware. We talked about a lot, and you spoke about the book, An American Sex Offender: A Father’s Fight to Be There After a Mistake That Never Ends, that tells your story, and where can people get this book?

They can go to Amazon and find. It is available in an ebook format on KDP. There is also a paperback and a hardcover as well. A paperback and a hardcover.

It is called An American Sex Offender: A Father’s Fight to Be There After a Mistake That Never Ends. You are there for your son. It is more of your story. I just really appreciate all the time that we spent. I do not know if there is anything else that you want to tell our audiences.

First off, I know that you wanted me to say something about the support. The support for anyone tuning in who is playing a support role to those on the inside, like you guys are doing, and the measurable service for them, even if it is only for their spirits. If you are doing it, I encourage you to keep doing it because it does help them on the inside. I know that. I would not say it was the best support. They were there where they could be.

I had visits, I got letters, I could call occasionally. I am extremely grateful for the support that I had when I went through it. My grandmother has been invaluable. Really, she is like the hierarchy of our family unit. The support is definitely essential, and anyone who is in that role, you are awesome for doing it for whoever you are doing it for, and I applaud you for that.

Brandon, thank you so much for bringing up the supporters because it is really important. It is important for the supporter to be in touch with their loved one and know that they are doing well, or push them along, take some anger management, whatever it is. Also, for the person who is incarcerated. If people want to learn more about you or get in touch with you, what are some ways?

Probably the best way is to go to my website, which is MicloUnlimited.com. On there, you can find my blog. I have a couple of blogs on there. You can find links to Brent’s author hub and links to the book. You can also find some knowledge on AI there. It is only over when you quit. Do not quit, and it will not be over. Just keep on pushing on, pushing on like Dory says, “Just keep swimming.”

Thank you. It is so true. You do the same. We will be in touch, and thank you so much for your time.

Yes, ma’am, thank you for your time as well.

Important Links

• Brandon Furlough on LinkedIn
• Miclo Unlimited LLC
• Miclos Visionary Holdings LLC on Facebook
• An American Sex Offender: A Father’s Fight to Be There After a Mistake That Never Ends
• Prison: The Hidden Sentence™: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR LOVED ONE IS ARRESTED AND INCARCERATED
• Brent Jovani Falcone
• Brent Jovani Falcone on Instagram
• Brent Jovani Falcone on TikTok
• An American Sex Offender: A Father’s Fight to Be There After a Mistake That Never Ends – Kindle
• An American Sex Offender: A Father’s Fight to Be There After a Mistake That Never Ends – Paperback
• An American Sex Offender: A Father’s Fight to Be There After a Mistake That Never Ends – Hardcover
• Prison: The Hidden Sentence
• Prison Families Alliance

About Brandon James Furlough

Brandon James Furlough is an Indiana father and entrepreneur whose life experiences have shaped his determination to challenge adversity, question societal assumptions, and advocate for greater awareness of the lasting consequences of criminal convictions.

Having experienced incarceration and the challenges of rebuilding his life afterward, Brandon understands firsthand that completing a criminal sentence does not necessarily mean the end of its consequences. Despite the obstacles he has encountered, he has continued pursuing entrepreneurship, personal growth, and, most importantly, an active and meaningful role in his son’s life.