by Abby Sher
The old man continued to beat and molest Maria regularly. She was in a constant haze of fear and disbelief. She kept working and doing what she was told because she couldn’t see any alternatives.
The only place Maria didn’t work was in the small guesthouse in the old man’s backyard. He rented it to a young couple, and though Maria never went in she was pretty sure that the old man visited the guesthouse to pursue the wife, too. Maria didn’t know if they’d been lured here by the same woman who had promised Maria a job. She just knew they were all caught in this man’s grip and there was no way out.
One day, Maria heard shrieks coming from the backyard followed by a loud whacking sound. Maria wanted to pretend she couldn’t hear anything, but then she thought of all those neighbors walking by, ignoring her screams, and she knew she couldn’t do the same.
The first thing she saw was blood inching through the grass.
Then she saw a plank of wood, soaked a deep red.
She saw the wife’s mouth open, screaming, and her husband stroking her hair.
Maria saw it all, but her brain could not process any of it, especially once she looked down and saw her torturer, the old man, splayed out on the ground. His smile was gone. His skull was cracked open and leaking into the earth.
The renter picked up the plank of wood that he’d just used to murder the old man and pushed it toward Maria. She just blinked, her eyes still not believing this could be true. He instructed her to bury it under the house. She felt like a zombie, her body separated from her brain. She followed the renter’s orders, digging through the dirt and burying the bloody plank next to the house. She had no idea what else to do. She was so used to following angry orders and commands.
Then the police were there. Maria’s sister was there, too. Maria didn’t know how or when they came. She was just wandering around the backyard, in a fog of terror. The renter and his wife were sent away.
Maria’s sister was still living with her husband and daughter in Sierra Madre. She drove Maria back to her house and rocked Maria in her arms, promising her she was safe now.
But Maria couldn’t hear her. She couldn’t eat or sleep or even find the words, I love you, too. Maria was caught in a loop of nightmares. All she could see was the old man on the ground, splattered with blood. Then Maria saw him pulling himself out of the grass and lunging at her with half of his head gone. She sat in her sister’s kitchen, quaking and sweating.
This is where the police found her when they came again.
Maria heard the words, “Maria Suarez, you are under arrest.”
Then she heard her sister screaming, “No!”
Maria felt the skin on her wrist catch in the handcuffs.
She smelled the warm vinyl of the police car.
But still, all she could see was the old man reaching for her. Please, she thought, somebody get him out of my head.
“I know that I am not guilty. I have not done anything wrong. I just didn’t know how to defend myself.”
~ Maria Suarez
The Sentence
Maria was assigned a lawyer to defend her in court. She didn’t understand what he was saying to her. English was still very difficult for her, and his words came at her quickly. She was mashing them all together in her head and couldn’t make sense of it all. He also couldn’t sit still or look her in the eye. Whenever they met to discuss her case, he paced around the room and checked all the security cameras. He swore he’d get her out of custody soon.
Maria didn’t know who or what to believe anymore. She was still having those visions of the old man coming to get her. She couldn’t focus, and she got more and more confused every time someone came in to question her.
Her sister came to visit and told her the police were working on her case. Maria nodded silently. Then her sister came back and said the police wouldn’t help because there were no reports of abuse from that house. Maria nodded silently again.
“Please tell them what happened!” her sister pleaded.
Maria sat with her lawyer again and tried to describe the house with the altar, the guesthouse, the bloodied plank of wood. Whether she spoke in Spanish or tried in English, her lawyer still didn’t get it.
She found out later that her attorney was watching the security cameras instead of looking at her because he had recently been caught selling drugs. He’d also been disbarred and was using someone else’s identity to fight her case. But by the time Maria learned all this, it didn’t matter. The judge and jury never heard about how she’d been tortured and raped. They just saw the plank of wood and the nervously pacing lawyer and decided she was guilty.
Maria was convicted of conspiracy to murder. She was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. Another door bolted shut. Maria nodded silently. There was nothing else to say.
“If I’m dreaming about this tunnel with the light far, far away, how am I gonna be able to reach the light if I’m this bitter, dark, helpless person? I need to bring myself back.”
~ Maria Suarez
Tunnel Vision
Where are you? I’ve been calling you over and over! Where are you?
This was Maria’s prayer night after night. She knelt on the floor and wept. She honestly felt like God had forgotten about her.
How could you leave me with him?
Maria had been raised Catholic and she knew all the psalms by heart, but she didn’t know what she believed in anymore. She felt bitter and abandoned, haunted by this old man who still took over her thoughts. She didn’t know if she was hot or cold, hungry or thirsty. Her senses had disappeared. Fear was the only thing she had left.
Maria’s mother and sister told her the only way she could be released was to pray. Her mom insisted there was a special saint who could help her, but only if Maria forgave the old man for everything he’d done. Maria felt like forgiving him was impossible after what he’d done to her. She muttered the prayers over and over again, calling on the saint to come save her. She didn’t know how it could work, but she was willing to try anything.
Then, Maria’s dreams got even darker. Now she saw a narrow tunnel with a dot of light at the far end. It was long and cold and she was struggling to get to that light. She tried walking, running, crawling, scraping her body along the ground. The light kept moving farther away. As she pulled herself toward it, the old man was next to her, ready to pounce.
“Keep praying,” her mother implored.
One day, Maria woke up from the tunnel dream choking on huge sobs. She felt like all the tears and pain she’d been storing up and pushing away for the past several years were erupting. She imagined her past as a thick, knotted rope that someone was pulling out of her inch by inch.
She lay on her cot and cried for hours and hours, the bottomless well of hurt and fear coming up and out of her. She couldn’t hide from her demons or rush down cold tunnels anymore. She raged and shouted until her throat felt raw and until her brain was blissfully empty.
Then Maria looked around her cell and, for the first time in what felt like forever, she could breathe again.
She glanced up at the ceiling and wondered if God had finally heard her. Or maybe it was the special saint. She didn’t need an answer. She just knew in her heart that she had been released.
And now it was time to fight for her freedom.
“In prison, I felt free.”
~ Maria Suarez
Finding Momentum
Maria had only one thing on her mind now. She was determined to go back to school. There were university courses being offered in the state prison and she signed herself up for English first. She wanted to read, write, and speak the language fluently so she could tell her story.
Every time Maria opened one of her textbooks, she saw the letters like stepping stones, leading her out of captivity. She filled up notebook after notebook, memorizing new words and ideas. Her brain felt energized and hungry. She soon signed up for classes in computer science and social work, too, and she started collecting the credits she needed to
earn her General Educational Development (GED) degree.
Maria also started working with a doctor in the prison who counseled emotionally troubled prisoners. These were the people who either had emotional difficulties before they got there, or who just couldn’t accept that their life was now behind bars. Maria went to some of the doctor’s group sessions and held anyone’s hand who needed extra compassion as they tried to piece together their thoughts. For the older prisoners, Maria read books or listened to them talk about what they’d been through.
Maria never knew why her fellow inmates had been sentenced, and she didn’t feel like she needed to know. Innocent or guilty, young or old, they all had one thing in common: They all were grieving for the lives they’d lost outside of the prison walls. Maria felt that loss, too, and offering a hand or an ear was the most important thing she could think to do. She knew prison would never feel like home, but at least studying and working with that doctor gave her some sort of momentum. It was the most purposeful she’d felt since she was a little girl, carrying in tomatoes off the vine.
Maria’s family was in contact with her constantly. Her sister visited her all the time. The two of them tried to keep the visits cheerful, sharing stories and vending machine snacks. Maria wrote letters back and forth with her family in Mexico, too—in Spanish and in English. Even if they couldn’t fathom what it was like for her in prison or read this new language she was learning, they could tell she was motivated. They could feel how hard she was working to make each day a new beginning.
They celebrated each and every victory with her. They read her letters out loud and cheered as she described her GED test. They also sadly shared the news that Maria’s father was dying, and that he sent his love to her, always.
And, of course, in each letter, call, or visit, Maria and her family counted the days until her next parole review.
FICTION:
Nobody knows how to stop human trafficking. It’s every (wo)man for him or herself.
FACT:
It will definitely be tough to do, but there are incredibly talented and compassionate people working to end human trafficking on a global level. There is now a Global Human Trafficking Hotline Network, where countries all over the globe share information about who has been caught and where, as well as provide protection to victims and survivors wherever they are found.
The Dream Team
It took twenty years before the Board of Prison Terms (BPT) recommended that Maria be released. They called her case “one of the most egregious instances of battered woman syndrome that [the BPT has] ever investigated.” The renter from the guesthouse came forward and admitted that Maria had nothing to do with her trafficker’s murder.
On December 16, 2003, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger granted Maria parole.
But instead of walking out of the prison gates and dancing into freedom, two days later she was sent to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services detention center in San Pedro. The law had changed while she was in prison. Anyone who was in the United States with a green card and convicted of a crime had to be deported, even if they were later found innocent. The state prison had taken away her green card as soon as she was arrested. Schwarzenegger refused to give her a pardon and let her stay in America, where her family now lived.
Maria’s family was feeling desperate and furious, particularly her niece, Patricia. For almost all of Patricia’s life, she’d watched her Aunt Maria studying and counseling in prison. Maria was always the one cheering up Patricia at their visits, telling the young girl to keep hoping and believing. Patricia admired her aunt so much, she wished there were something she could do to challenge this unfair sentence.
Patricia found a lawyer named Jessica Dominguez. Jessica was an immigrant, too, and had just started her own law offices in Los Angeles with a desk she bought at a Salvation Army store and a passion for helping people she thought were mistreated by the American justice system. When Patricia told her Maria’s story, Jessica was horrified and said she would take the case pro bono (for free).
Jessica enlisted Charles Song from Los Angeles-based CAST (the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking). Jessica and Charles were the first lawyers who listened to Maria’s whole story and treated her like a human being instead of a crazed murderer. They added two more lawyer friends to the dream team: Andres Bustamante and Brigit Alvarez. The four of them worked for months and months to get testimony from other people who knew Maria when she was enslaved and even in prison, to show what an honest, hardworking, and forgiving person she was.
Jessica also started organizing rallies and letter-writing campaigns for Maria’s cause as an immigrant. Jessica called every elected official she knew. U.S. Representative Hilda Solis, a Democrat from California who would go on to serve as the U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Barack Obama, and Marta Sahagún de Fox, who at the time was the first lady of Mexico, promised they would join the fight to free Maria and keep her in the United States.
Solis helped write a letter to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge and Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson. It stated:
The United States is a beacon of light around the world because of its commitment to human rights. Our government should honor this commitment by recognizing the extreme sexual abuse and violence suffered by Maria Suarez in this country and allow Maria to remain in the U. S. with her family. This is a clear humanitarian case that deserves justice.
Thirty-one members of the U.S. Congress signed it, too.
Maria didn’t know how to thank the growing circle of supporters and fighters. She teared up every time Patricia, Jessica, or Charles came to meet with her. It was the first time she knew she could trust again. She had no idea what was going to happen to her next, but she knew she was no longer alone.
“When I’m free, I will start my own organization, with my own logo: an eagle. The eagle is very powerful. Very smart. Very, very strong. It never backs up from a problem, regardless how bad it is. An eagle can fly through any storm.”
~ Maria Suarez
Wings to Fly
May 24, 2004, was a Monday, and Maria was feeling particularly low that day. Her closest friend had just been deported. Maria was sitting in the dining hall, waiting to go outside for her hour of recreation.
Another detainee was trying to tell Maria some juicy bit of gossip, but Maria was completely distracted. Her eyes kept wandering toward the window where she could just make out a sliver of ocean and sky. She dreamed of floating away to an island or mountaintop. Anywhere that was away from here.
She was lost in thought when a bird flew directly to the window and started tapping on the glass. It was tapping loudly, too, as if to say, Look up! Over here!
“Good news!” Maria said out loud. “That bird is bringing me good news!”
The other detainee completely ignored Maria and kept yammering on and on. Maria didn’t care. All she could hear was that bird. She knew the bird was trying to tell her something. It fluttered its wings and started tapping again.
“I told you!” Maria squealed. “I’m gonna get good news today. He’s bringing me good news!”
The guard let everyone out into the yard for recreation. Maria couldn’t find the bird anywhere, but she wasn’t panicked. She tried to keep herself busy doing calisthenics and stretches. The fresh air felt alive and hopeful to her.
When she came back in for lunch, she washed her hands and face, filled her tray with salad, and found a little space of bench to sit down. Then she heard the tapping again, only this time it was coming from a different direction. The guard was tapping on the little bubble window from her office.
When Maria looked up, the guard motioned with a single finger, Come here.
Maria went into the office. The guard said, “You need to call your attorneys.”
“You mean my attorney?” Maria asked. “Which one? I have a few.”
The guard repeated herself slowly. “Your attorneys.”
>
Maria connected everything right away. She thought of her friend leaving, the bird coming, the word “attorneys.” Her body started heating up and trembling.
“Can I please use the phone in the dorm?” Maria whispered. She didn’t want to speak too loudly and shatter this incredible moment.
The guard said yes.
Maria called Charles first. She could tell he was trembling, too. He kept on stumbling and stuttering nervously. “Uh, well, uh yeah, I need to tell you something, but Jessica needs to tell you, too.”
His fingers fumbled as he tried to connect the three of them in a conference call. Maria was so anxious she felt like she was losing air.
What’s going on? Another deportation? Good news? Please somebody say!
Jessica picked up the line.
“Hello!” Maria gasped. And Jessica just started sobbing.
“What is it?” Maria asked.
Jessica said, in between gulps, “You’re … coming … home!”
May 25, 2004. It was a Tuesday, with intensely open skies. After almost twenty-three years in captivity, and almost six before that locked away with her trafficker, Maria Suarez was finally free.
“It’s painful. The pain is never going to go away. But if by me going through the pain, I can help somebody … It’s my mission, and I need to do it.”
~ Maria Suarez
Live, Love, Laugh
Maria wanted to hug everybody. First her family and friends, then complete strangers she saw on the street. The streets, the fresh air, the palm trees all felt so miraculous to her, she didn’t know how it could all be here, open and waiting for her.
At the same time, there was something very heavy inside Maria. As she walked into her first day of freedom, she kept feeling like there were weights on her legs, pulling her back, holding her down. She knew her family and her dream team had worked so hard to get her out. She wished she could jump into the celebrations with them. But even as they clinked glasses and turned up her favorite music, Maria was inching toward the door. She had to get someplace quiet to think.