One morning in June, on the first page of our city's newspaper we discovered a sad story. A Yugoslavian ship, KAPETAN MARTINOVIC, was blocked in the harbor due to sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia by the United Nations. Fifteen sailors, however, without food or money, were blocked on it too. My father's conscience was working: He had enough stories with the Yugoslavs; but here, humanitarian reasons prevailed. We went to see them. At first they were a little withdrawn, but later they told us their story: "We have food --- old cans of food, so old that when we open them, they whistle (the fermentation inside had built up so much that some even exploded on their own), milk that has an expiration date of a year ago -- all this, churches brought to us," they said, "and then, they video-tape us when they hand it over to us to better spread their propaganda." (There are many more things to say, but it is not our duty to dirty the honor of some inhumane Americans and shame them.) The sailors came and worked in our garden to thank us. They refused all help from us, for they told my father, "It is not you that should be helping us, but we should be helping you with your six children." They were real sailors, very proud of themselves. One of them got sick and we were able to get him admitted to a hospital. They were so happy that they no longer knew how to thank us. The help we provided to these sailors did not please the people of Charleston, nor several other Americans. It fell into the ears of the Yugoslavian Secret Service and they jumped to the opportunity. The crew began to change and we noticed that it was no longer just sailors. First mate BUDA went back home after two months, paying his own fare to give his report on us.
In this situation, we made it to December 1993. My mother took us out of school for one week before Christmas to go selling, so that we could have our Christmas too. We were unlucky: We got snowed-in in Georgia and sold nothing. This Christmas, not a single church came to our aid, and our Christmas was very poor. My father raised money from some of the doctors at MUSC and the sailors were able to have a Christmas meal. Just a little before, a new crew had come aboard the ship, including a young mechanic that started talking with the sky because he was going crazy on the ship. In January, my teachers looked for ways to pick on my clothes to degrade me in front of my classmates, despite the fact that we all wear uniforms. I received my grades: 70, 73, 76, and all of the teachers were full of delight and ecstasy. At the end of the first quarter, I was at the top of my class, but this time I would be near the last. Excuse given: the tests I missed during my one week of absence. First, there were hardly any tests given during my absence, because it was the week before exams. Second, my father had spoken to the director and he had said that due to the reasons for my absence I would not be failed for the work missed, my grades would be averaged as is. Even if I had been given zeroes, my grades should not have been that low. I exploded and I decided that I was sick of being discriminated and I quit school. My quitting school seemed to encourage other teachers, those that taught my brother and sisters. They discriminated even more to the point that one of them, Ms. Tracy, an art teacher, took Christine and Catherine out of their group of friends, pulled them into a corner, and said, "You both do not have the right to have any friends."
I obtained my driver's license and then learned to drive the van. I wanted to continue my studies, but the Charleston County Department of Education refused to authorize me to take the GED, that which is necessary for me to go to college. This trio of pimps, the C.I.A., Secret Service, and Immigration service, really does want us out in the street. For my mother, this was too much, and she broke down in March of 1994. She went into a serious depression, no longer knew what she was doing or saying. The police were in the house twice and so were Social Services. Her family got in the middle (supported by the French D.S.T.) and advised her all the contrary and how to better break up the family. "Go to social services and tell them that he (my father) is abusing the child (me). Go and tell them anything. It is your word against his. Leave the house. You know we are well-supported and we guarantee you that we will bring him back with hand-cuffs to France." My grand-father and uncle threatened that they would kill my father right away, that they were coming to America right away, that they would repatriate us back to France, and that they would raise us up the French way, not the American way. They said that Americans work "by the stick" and that they would do anything that they were asked to do.
My father tried to call his friend in France and learned some surprising news: Mr. Olmiccia, in October of 1989, was found dead in a hotel room. (Mr. Olmiccia was the owner of the hotel in which my father had the accident, President of the Association of Hotels of Marseilles and an active member of the Republican Party; and closer, he was my god-father.) We spoke to his brother and we asked his ex-wife if she thought his death natural, to which she responded, "No!"
Concerning my mother's behavior, we wrote a five-page letter and gave it along with a videotape, containing footage of her lying naked in bed with the children, to Social Services. The shock was so great that they wanted to hospitalize her immediately, but her family opposed all of this. A family friend found someone who would donate a car to us as a gift. Social Services made us go see a psychiatrist at 2:00 p.m., April 1. Mrs. Mary Mueller, after speaking with the children, told us that it was my mother that caused all of the problems, that she is very dangerous, and in all urgency she set up appointments for her to see a psychiatrist at MUSC that spoke French. Ms. Anzilotti from the Dept. of Child Protective Services (DCPS) wanted to hospitalize my mother for a month for treatment. The curious part was that my mother had to go see a doctor April 1, at 3:00 p.m. We were driving the van to take the children to Mrs. Mueller, and Mrs. Latorre of D.S.S. would be coming off from her vacation to drive my mother to her appointment. At 5:00 p.m., after the meeting with the psychiatrist, we met with the donor of the car and were given the papers to it. They just wanted us to have only one car so someone would have to take my mother to the doctor. My mother told us that all they did was prick her finger, get a drop of blood, and waited two and one-half hours for results. Other than that, she has an empty memory. My father was afraid that they had taken the opportunity to hypnotize her so that a crevice could be opened up in our family. Later, we spoke to Mrs. Latorre and she said that the doctor was not a hypnotist and she was only in the room for thirty minutes and it would take longer for that to be done. Of all this, we wrote letters to the FBI, White House, and Immigration Service. It remained just a vacant silence for they were very much in agreement, even the Yugoslavs.
I say Yugoslavs because the new captain of the ship that arrived came to put "bugs" in our house, all the while bringing $800 for us from our family. Of this, what was most curious, is that they asked us to send a videotape of the sailors to Yugoslavia. Their intentions were not very honest and we did not send it to them. Perhaps because the "bugs" in our house did not succeed, we were offered a solid wooden table with "bugs" in it. We rented a metal detector and it indicated the presence of metal. To verify that what we thought was right, we said several things in the house about the sailors. The men on the ship were perfectly aware of everything said and did not even try to hide their reactions. One day when we went to get bread for the ship, we picked up the new captain in our car and he brought someone along with him that we had never seen. The new captain continuously occupied my father so that my father would not have the occasion to speak with the other person. Several other events indicated to us that, without a doubt, there must have been some illegal people on the ship who thought of themselves as BIG BOSSES in America.
Captain Luka from the ship came frequently to our home to speak with my father, and he could not believe all of the things he had seen and heard during his stay in the U.S. He said that some Americans must have melted brains to act as they do to foreigners, all the while saying that he did meet a few good Americans. Capt. Luka was the only one left from the old crew. All the newcomers, my father nicknamed "police-heads." Our second main problem came from D.S.S. Mrs. Nancy Wieman, whose son works at the Pentagon. She called Mrs. Latorre and told her to change the AFDC check from my father's name to my mother's. This was done without even consulting my father or the family, even though Mrs. Wieman has no legal power at D.S.S. whatsoever. French businessman, Mr. Lepoutre, immediately took my mother's side and went all the way to the point of saying that he had offered my father money for his eye surgeries and my father had refused. Luckily enough, I was with my father when the appointment was scheduled and can testify that this is certainly not true. Mrs. Latorre told us that in our D.S.S. file, she had a list of people who wrote letters to her saying that they had wanted to help us, but that we had refused. She said that we were paranoid and abnormal. My mother's behavior became increasingly dangerous. There were days when she would have blank stares, stare at us, and when we would call her name, she would jump and return to normal. There were nights when we would lock ourselves in our rooms, and my father would sleep on the floor in the office, for she would act very strangely. Several times, we informed the DCPS office of this, yet nothing was done. We informed Ms. Anzilotti personally and by mail, and though she promised much, she did absolutely nothing. April and May went by, and still my mother had not been to see any doctor. We finally went to see our psychiatrist, Mrs. Mueller, and she exploded. "HOW COME?" she said. "I did everything I could. I enrolled her at the MUSC so that she could see a psychiatrist three times a week. Why did Ms. Anzilotti cancel everything? I am going to go and see what is wrong."
Mrs. Latorre proudly announced to me that she would be cutting my welfare benefits since I would not go work outside the home, even though she perfectly well knew that I was staying home helping my blind father and watching my ill mother. We wrote a letter to Mrs. Clinton and asked her for her support so that I could continue my studies, and as the month of June, still nothing. She sent a request to a Chicago association who would pay for my father to go through eye surgery, and they referred the file to a doctor in Philadelphia, who may be able to operate. We listened to some of the conversations of my mother and her family. They advised her to keep her calm, for the French Consulate would give her all the necessary papers to go to France and take the children with her (including the four American children). May 31, my mother exploded. She took my brother out of the car in downtown Charleston and left him on the side of the road. After 15 minutes of drama, she came back to get him. Fifteen minutes later, she made him get out on the bridge, where cars are going by at 60 miles an hour and ran him around the car. She was ready to leave without him, but he quickly got inside before she left. DCPS was made aware of this, yet once again, they did nothing. June 10, as we were coming home, Christine came to greet us sobbing. She showed me the bruises where my mother had beaten her. We took her to the hospital. The doctor analyzed the situation and she wanted DCPS to come right away, but then prolonged it to the next morning for it was 11:00 p.m. She wanted the police to go and pick my mother up, but we convinced her not to. June 2, the Yugoslavian ship left the harbor for Mobile, Alabama. Something was developing. My mother had purchased a camera with the money she received from her family in France and was taking portraits of the children to get passports. Someone was covering up for her so that she could leave to go to France with the children. My father and I took out loans so that the family could live. June 14, in the morning we had the impression that someone from her family was already here. We were tired and we packed our belongings, took the children, and left Charleston.
We entered North Carolina and started selling. The first five minutes -- $60.00, and then nothing, the selling had been blocked. While taking baths along the ocean, we went up towards Washington, D.C. We start selling in front of churches in Chesapeake -- $55.00 at the first one. The second and third that we went to, the priests let the people out the back door. We talked to one of the priests and he said he would make a contribution, but he will send it through the mail and we have to go back down to Charleston. We sold in front of stores and we arrived in Pennsylvania with neither food, nor money. A priest gave us food and money for gas, but another person introduced himself on behalf of the Lion's Club and wanted to fix everything so that we could go to the hospital. We saw through the set-up: DCPS wants to be on our back so that they can say that the children have no food and we are made to go back to Charleston. We went and visited with the sisters from our school, who during the summer are in Danville, Pennsylvania. They gave us a gift, which permitted us to outlive and finish this letter. My little sisters have confided in me what my mother's plans and projects were.
My mother had told Christine that she was planning to kill my father and I. The several times when my Dad or I slept in the office were worth it. Our doubts were justified. My sisters told me how my mother had hugged them. I am too ashamed and disgusted to say what she did to them, and that she uncovered me during my sleep to take pictures of me. I shiver when I think of this trio of pimps, the C.I.A., the Secret Service, Immigration service, who are trying to facilitate her way to get to France. I have no doubt that she has money with her. Yet, we are in debt over our heads. (Our total debts totaled over $14,000.00) We have switched from one telephone company to another, etc... We would have been able to pay them if we had followed our plans and gone selling when we were supposed to do so. For many years, we had concentrated on how to reimburse our debts, our credit report was always number one, but since June or July, we have not been able to pay back anything since our selling has been stopped. I am afraid to even think of going back home, for my mother's behavior is uncontrollable, extremely dangerous. Credit companies must have come by asking for money. Worst part of all is that I fear they have set up something for us in which they will find an excuse to separate all of the children from my father for a few days, in order to better break up the family.
My father had called his mother in Yugoslavia who was ready to come over here to help us out until my mother is cured. He told my grandmother: "I fear that the DCPS will find an excuse to take the children away from me while Renee is in the hospital and that during the foster care, they will change the ideas in the children's minds. If only you knew what we have been through for years, we for them are an ideal affair: foreign, blind, with five girls. They couldn't ask for anything better." My grandmother replied: "I read an article over here that detailed several cases where people in America would try to break up families that had a lot of children so that they could be left without protection and then be easily tuned into prostitution." I still have a letter from Mrs. Dickson when she got information from Congressman Arthur Ravenel's office, who had requested information from the immigration office. It states that my father and mother have to go to school to learn English, so that they can better find a job, and my father has to go to work at the association of the blind for $200-$300 a month (we can make that much in one day if they let us go selling). They hope that my sisters and I will ask for a baby-sitting job. I complained to Sister Mary Joseph that someone keeps blocking us from selling and trying to manipulate us. She didn't understand why we did not let ourselves be manipulated, for as she explained, "Why not let others think for you and let them help you, and if they stop you from selling it is to protect the children." To protect the children from what? From working? You want us to place them in front of a television to degenerate them? The children are happy to go selling: they go from shop to shop and see everything in them, change cities often, have several dollars worth of tips at the end of the day that we let them keep to buy what they wish and often they are given free ice cream and drinks for the honest work they do. At night, they get a big meal and a hotel room. The hurt is from the services that block them from making the money and it is that which obliges the children to sleep in the van, no tips, and a life much more difficult than if we had sold normally. The children then become disgusted with people who do all they can to render their lives difficult. They also become disgusted with the country in which they were born. We have well found out where your "help" will lead us --- my sisters and I in the streets -- We are free citizens and certainly plan to think freely about our future! My grandmother had an appointment with the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade on August 11, 1994 to see if they would authorize a VISA for her. I thought that it would be too late, we needed a rapid solution now. We have been in the U.S. for twelve years, during which my father has asked for political asylum and has always been avoided to interview. The story of his accident dates back to 18 years ago, he was judged 10 months later, and thus one should not have to look for any excuse that there is something important to see or find. There is also one truth: They are trying to get rid of us so that they can be sure that they have stifled their dirty mess. My father and his six children would like to stay in the U.S., but with one condition: THAT THIS TRIO OF PIMPS LEAVES US ALONE AND THAT I CAN FINISH MY EDUCATION AND THAT ALL OF US CAN FREELY CHOOSE THE JOB WE WANT TO HAVE NOW AND WHEN WE GET OLDER. We are neither mentally retarded, nor immature so that we need the U.S. Secret Service to be our dear Mommy or Daddy. If you hope that the Despotovic family will walk the streets to please these sexually obscene Americans, then in this case, I ask that the U.S. Ambassador find another country for us to live in for my Yugoslav father, my French sister and me, and for my American brother and three sisters. Please answer as quickly as possible, Despotovic Family The evening of Wednesday, July 14, 1994, a big 10-mm bolt of our clutch transmission broke. We spent the night on the shoulder of 1-95 because there are no rest areas coming in to New Jersey. In the morning of the 15th, my father got under the van, and after some hard work, we entered Trenton in the first gear. We bought some parts at a hardware store that evening, and with some bolts and pieces of wire, we were able to drive to ask for help from a priest. We stopped at the Martin House, and the priest accepted, seeing my father full of grease and us drenched with rain. We needed a motel, and the Red Cross accepted the charges asking us to call them back in the morning. The next day at noon, I called them back and a different lady answered and asked from where I was calling. I told her and she then told me to go to the City Hall and ask for a train ticket back home. She was very angry and took full right on us commanding me to leave the van there and take the train home. As soon as I got back to the van, three police cars arrived on the parking lot and entered the store. I sent my sister to ask for directions, and upon her return I was told that the policemen where looking for a young, short girl, with short blond hair who was looking for trouble. LOOKING FOR TROUBLE??? It is again WE that are looking for trouble because it is WE that do not want to return to Charleston. These cruel, cold-hearted monsters must surely have taken advantage of our absence to render this situation much more difficult for us. We returned to the priest and he gave us some money, which enabled us to flee to Pennsylvania. We left from city to city while trying to earn time. We spent the weekend at a lake, which made the children very happy. Every night we changed cities, yet people awaited for us outside our van and tried to find excuses to cause us trouble. Everyday we drove, we looked for our freedom, our right to live. Tomorrow is July 19, and we are preparing to go to the United Nations Headquarters. That morning, we were not far from the New York border in New Jersey when two big 10 mm hardened bolts from our starter broke down. The police came and prohibited us from repairing the van under pretext that they are not allowed to let us do that and prohibited us from videotaping them. While holding the starter in our hands and a few pieces of wire wrapped around the rest of the parts, we proceeded to the first gas station in first gear. All of the priests refused to help us, except one, who gave us a lot of help. After two days of difficult work, my father repaired the van and left for the United Nations. It was vacation time, we knew that it would not create a large effect, and that the whole affair will most likely be stifled. (We were not mistaken.) Despite our doubts, we deposited letters for President Boutros-Ghali, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., and for the Director of the Commission for Human Rights. We then proceeded to Boston, Massachusetts. We tried to pass the time, for we were awaiting the U.S. Embassy's response to my grandmother's application for a VISA on August 11. In Connecticut, we asked some priests for some aid, and they all refused even gas and food. Yet, we still found some priests who studied us for a while and then gave us food or money to get us on our way. We suddenly noticed all at once that our front wheels were getting extremely hot. A mechanic from the Waterford BP gas station in Connecticut, said that the ball-bearings were, once again, full of metal shavings. He told us that the ball-bearings were ready to crack and that it would have been a total disaster if they had broken down. However, one thing that he cold not understand was how the shavings were there since there were no chips in any of the ball-bearings. His supervisor ordered that everything be put back, no greasing job done, and told us to leave. The next day, we asked the Nazarene Church in Croton, Connecticut if they could help us. The pastor accepted and a Mr. Jim (who we later learned was from the Navy) took us to buy food, wash clothes, and than paid for a night of motel rest. We tried to guess their trick: Tomorrow morning, social services would knock at our door. At 3:00 a.m., we entered Rhodes Island. The police stopped us on the road and wanted to know where we are going. Excuse for stopping us: driving too slowly --- 5 miles under the speed limit. They did quite some thinking and then let us leave. We then noticed that our front wheels were once again heating due to the brakes having been over-tightened.
Just before Providence, Rhodes Island, we stopped at several churches where we were refused all help and referred to Social Services. We called several television stations so that they would know what happened and they referred us to West Bay Community Services where we were given the minimal amount of help possible. They did however want to know our Social Security numbers and many other nit-picking types of information. We then entered Massachusetts using Route 1, where we are refused aid by some and helped by others. Friday, August 12, we made an appointment at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Institute for Research for August 17. We were told that my grandmother's application for a VISA had been approved and she would be coming the week after; however, this wonderful news did not seem to be in everyone's interest. August 13, our van broke down again: this would be the third time that two 10 mm hardened bolts break. We were in despair; we had no way to extract the little bit of bolt that was left in the hole. Sunday, once the stores had opened, we spent almost all of our money trying to fix it. We started working and the police arrived. From a neighboring house, a very nice American took our side. The man told the policeman that he was going to help us, so there was no need to worry. The man said that he would provide electricity, parking, and whatever else was necessary. The policeman just left dumbfounded. We managed to repair the van and several miles later, another policeman stopped us on pretext that our license plate lights are not working. We were beginning to get the feeling to be extremely careful, because they were going to stop us just before my grandmother arrived. The next day, we ask help from a church off of 1-84 in Connecticut. We tried to ask for help from several other churches, but neither the priests nor their secretary were in. A priest from a Catholic Church welcomed us very badly. A second called the convent in Charleston for references. We have lost our support, the priest, proud of himself, refused to help us. One hour later, we entered New York. For several days, we remained there and ate from the canned goods we had left. The evening of August 19, my grandmother arrived ---- we were saved. For hours, my father spoke to her and told her everything we had been through. She could not believe that people were capable of doing things as horrible as they had to us. Neither could I. While leaving New York, I thought of the Statue of Liberty --- LIBERTY OF WHAT??? LIBERTY FOR ONE TO TAKE THE LIBERTY OF ANOTHER??? I looked at it and wished that I could have just a sip of this cup of liberty that through history was supposed to be so famous. Maybe that was the key: it was history --- America had lost its grandeur to the pages of a history book. We had seen many people and priests, without character or personality, obeying to police orders. It is fortunate for me to have seen some who over-rode those orders and made their own judgments, or else I would have vomited. My grandmother showed me the letter that my mother's sister wrote to my grandparents in Yugoslavia. We have gotten used to the stories that my mother has invented; yet, I was still surprised. She said that we did not let her sleep in the house, so she had to sleep in the van all winter long. She had invented the many stories before to cause us trouble; however, we were beginning to believe that she might be losing her mind and thinking that these stories were actually true. My aunt threatened that we were wanted by the FBI, that an 18-year old file about my father's bomb is going to be retrialed and that they are going to deport us back to France. I knew that the French were specialists for creating set-ups, but to go hunting for trouble in an 18-year old file was just taking things too far. I do not know where this file will end, but all the proofs that my father has accumulated to prove his innocence since 1982, keep disappearing from our file. I am talking of a proof of November 1984, July 1985, November 1986, March 1987, etc... In the days to come, they will bring out new "proofs" that my father is a criminal and a terrorist. The proofs to prove the contrary of these accusations have also disappeared from our file. My father did not yet speak French when one day the police stopped him in the street asking him for his papers and found out that he was wanted by the Court of Aix, under the name, Michia Despotovic. Despite the fact that the witnesses did not recognize him, he was sentenced. While in jail, he was accused of robberies that occurred on August 17, 27, and 30, 1973. The stolen items: a bathing suit, a fishing cane, etc... The fact that he was in jail on those dates was ignored. The affair lasted a long time, it was tried to accuse him of several other things, but being even more ridiculous, those charges were dropped. There are many things to say and it is extremely long, but it is enough to say that he went to court five times. The third time his lawyer said that it was impossible to accuse someone for robberies done while one is in jail (because of the first set-up from July 30 - September 10, 1973). The whole audience laughed because they had never heard of such a thing. Despite all, he was still sentenced --- there is the equation of a criminal. Maybe the French can explain to you how one can be sentenced for an act committed while they are in jail. I have a certificate that lists the date he was in jail. If the French do not want to show it to you, I will. If you find out that we have said anything false about this matter, we agree to be deported right away. Later, my father found out that he was not the only one that had been victimized in this fashion, other Yugoslavs went through the same (Hodzic, Saban; Juraga, Boris; etc...) Later, the Honorable Judge Sinibaldi became the first judge of the military court in Marseilles. Soviet refugee Amarlik died in his sabotaged car while leaving Marseilles. It is never too good to know too much, and if my father received the bomb package, it was not for joking purposes. For some foreign interest, our file has been purposely sabotaged. Now, a cute little set-up in Charleston is awaiting us. We have already provided DCPS with a videotape of my naked mother with my naked sister and brother in the same bed, medical certificates of physical abuse to the children, and pictures of her naked while at the table. Despite this, one cancels psychiatric help for her and then does not get her the help she desperately needs. For months, they have cancelled appointments and waited for my father and I to leave home. My mother was advised to file for divorce and threw out new allegations in our absence, sufficient for D.S.S. to cut our welfare benefits. Charleston Housing was paying for our rent and we were told that this too was disconnected. Credit companies started to ask for payments on bills we owed, and they will probably take the opportunity to seize our woodworking machines. DCPS will be drowned by the parents' mutual allegations, and a judge will take over the case since it is now a divorce matter and will decide that the children be placed in foster homes until this case becomes clearer, leaving sufficient time for foster pimps to do their duty. What a beautiful job: 12 years later, we have accomplished taking away six children from a blind man. My grandmother, who is sick, came from Yugoslavia so that my mother can be hospitalized to be taken care of, my father operated, and us to be safe. She yearns to see our home, yet we do not dare tell her the truth concerning it. We do not know what to do, because your Secret Service has obscure plans in wanting to stifle this affair and send us back to Europe. Once more, MY FATHER AND THE SIX CHILDREN WANT TO REMAIN HERE. Once more, I would like to know if the White House is an accomplice with the monsters who have been given too much power of which they have abused. This part of the letter was given to the White House and Immigration Service, in August 1994. The FBI, advised in advance, refused to let us even enter the building so we could give them this letter. August 19, we picked up my grandmother at the airport in New York. The week after we were in Charleston. During the weekend, my mother told us all that she had made to live through during our absence. "Mrs. Nicole Ramsey told me that you were a terrible man, that I must divorce you, and took me everywhere so that I can file complaints against you. We called the police so that they can come and search the office, but since they found nothing to accuse you with, they left. Sister Mary Joseph told me you were a terrible man, that I must divorce you, she being a Catholic nun, and knows very well that divorce is not allowed, advised me that. Mrs. Latorre advised the same. Mrs. Anzilotti told me to write down everything that my husband did with the children and then send her the letters. My family told me that now was the time to get rid of you and told me to write letters everywhere so that they can put you in jail. So, you see what state I was in. They called me everyday to give me bad advice. When it was noticeable that I was at my wit's ends, Mrs. Ramsey tried to get me nervous: 'You are a woman alone in this house, for if someone knows, they can attack you and hurt you. You have a very nice and big library, a beautiful piano, a word processor, a facsimile machine, a camcorder, TV/VCR, a professional camera, and many other valuable things, such as your husband's big woodworking machines. I am telling you that someone may burglarize. You must be careful. Especially, you must be careful not to think of suicide.' And she constantly spoke about suicide. She asked me for your credit cards so that she could find out exactly what your debts were. August 1, Ms. Anzilotti told me, 'Mrs. Despotovic, find yourself a room, you will no longer need the house. During the week, I will get a court order so that when your husband gets back, I will take away your children.' I called my family in France and they laughed and said, 'Well, let them take them.' Your father from Yugoslavia encouraged me to hold on for just little more, for your mother was coming. When I said that to Ms. Anzilotti, she laughed and told me, 'Do not count on it. She will never, ever come, I guarantee it. You can sleep in peace.’ Only Seka and Andy Mance remained true friends to the end." The morning of August 29, Ms. Anzilotti, accompanied by a man, came to visit us at home. She was probably ready to take away the children, but when she found out that they were in school, it seemed to cool her down a little. My father asked her what she had done to help my mother, and asked her if she had received the letter that we had faxed her in June. "Yes, but two months late. The fax was received in the office, but they did not know whom to give it to.” I told her that the letter had her name on it and that she was the one that gave us the fax number to her office. She then turned her back towards my father and spoke only to my mother, talking about all of the things "that you said against your husband, I have the file here..." My mother interrupted her curtly and told her that all of the things that she had said were things that she had been pushed to say by Mrs. Ramsey, Sister Mary Joseph, Mrs. Latorre, and by herself, Ms. Anzilotti, and that everything was false. Ms. Anzilotti barely managed in holding back her anger. My mother brought out the file that we presented to the White House in 1990 and told Ms. Anzilotti that if she were not doing well mentally now, it is because of all of the things that were done to us in the past. Ms. Anzilotti said that the past did not interest her, but rather only the present. "Do you agree to the entire family seeing a psychiatrist?” We agreed. My mother had been awaiting treatment for six months -- treatment that never came. When psychiatrists scheduled appointments for my mother, Ms. Anzilotti cancelled them. American General Finance called our home for the debt we had with them and I told them that due to the family problem we were having, we were in no possibility of paying for the debt on time. The man was friendly and said he understood. He could see we had had an excellent credit report for years. He wondered what was going on, for a lady by the name of Nicole Ramsey called him and said that we had taken money out everywhere we could, had left the country, and would never come back. He just wanted us to know that there was someone in town calling around just to spread bad rumors. Since my father had a few offers for eye surgery in Chicago and my mother was getting from worse to worst, we put our belongings in storage, and we left for Chicago. Ms. Anzilotti was made aware that the children were no longer in school and quickly raced to discontinue our benefits with Charleston Housing. In September, my mother wrote a four page letter explaining all that she had been made to say, the bad advice she had been given, and the suggestions she had been pressured with, and denied and voided all accusations she had made against my father. She signed all four of the pages, and this was faxed to Ms. Shelly Anzilotti in Charleston. Thus, in September, we arrived in Chicago. Following addresses we had been given of people who were to help us with my father's eye surgeries, we went to see Mr. Milan Stokovich. He asked us to wait in the waiting room while he went to check on something (Mr. Stokovich owns a home for the elderly). We waited forty-five minutes after which a Mr. Desko Nikotic came and immediately began asking us detailed questions regarding everything from who we were, to why we were there, to whom we knew. It was very evident that he was an officer of some type. When he had finished his interrogation, the shadow, Mr. Milan Stokovich, who I could see had been waiting in the hallway came in the room. After Mr. Desko Nikotic gave him a nod, he said that we could spend the night at Srpska Bratska Pomoc (Serbian Brothers Help). We did, and the next day, we were placed in an apartment belonging to Mr. Mike Pavlovic (who is a realtor). It was a two-bedroom apartment on the third floor, and after we had moved in, we enrolled the children in school.
Chicago is big, there are many foreigners and with them, foreign stores and press. To our biggest surprise, we discovered very interesting articles in foreign magazines. We discovered truths about America that we never heard about here. A couple of years ago, on Radio France International, we heard that more than 2,500 children were being kid-napped from South America for the U.S. every year. However, we understood that the problem was becoming more serious when in a recent publication, we read an article that said that more than 4,000 children, who have been either kid-napped, or bought off in South America, enter America every year. The majority of them pass through Central America, and the C.I.A. covers their entrance into the United States. The majority of them are used either for prostitution, or for organ transplantation. Another article covered sexually abused and tortured children: a young child's body was thrown in a suitcase over Nevada. The stories were being covered-up, for they touched persons of the highest administration in America. We better understood why we had had so many troubles for the past 13 years so constantly. My mother had mentally exploded and was close to insanity. In October, after all the problems my mother had caused us in Charleston and then retracted, she once again began to set-up appointments with the Department of Children and Family Services in Chicago. She also had a contact person by the name of Suzanne in the neighborhood and other relations who began to cause us great problems. We feared that in Chicago we would have a bad set-up and that the children would be taken away. We tried to hurry for my father's eye surgeries, but Mr. Pavlovic, backed away --- Dr. Zecevic, the same. Mr. Stokovich made us promises and then backed off suddenly. In November, my father had an appointment at the University of Illinois. They performed several tests, except one ---the VER, the one that can prove that the optic nerve is alive and that he has a chance of regaining sight. Excuse, after excuse, the test was not performed. At 2:30 p.m., my grandmother, my father and we six children, spoke to Dr. Fischer. The children cried, but the doctor refused to perform surgery. I asked him to please try to perform surgery on my father, for I am sure that it would work. While Dr. Fischer was saying, "No," one of his assistants, discreetly said, "Yes." My mother lay in bed all day and did no work. My grandmother helped an 83 year-old man three times a week, Mr. Vojislav Petrovich, member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Political and Social Sciences, a scientist and engineer. My mother had more and more nerve crises. She pulled the telephone jack out of the wall and tried to throw the television out of the third-floor window. We had a hard time in calming her down. December 6, she beat Christine, broke open the lock on the bathroom door in order to get to her, only to find her with an open Ether bottle ready to commit suicide. I took the video camera and filmed as Christine confided in me everything that my mother had done to her. We placed tape recorders in our absence and recorded my mother saying the following things to Christine and my other sisters: "So, do you like it when Mommy touches you here? Let me see, those are Mommy's genitals. We will have fun tonight? We will have a good time.” No doubt about it, my mother had really gone insane. After that, we moved all of the children into my grandmother's bedroom, except for Caroline, who insisted on remaining with my mother.
We had difficulty in paying for our rent, for Charleston Housing had discontinued our Housing contract and did not want to transfer our certificate to Illinois. Assistant Director, James Heyward in Charleston, SC, said that he no longer wanted to hear from us. He told us, "I am sick of receiving letters from First Lady Clinton, of congressmen and representatives, my desk is stacked with letters about you.” WHO WROTE THESE LETTERS? Certainly, it was not we. Someone tried to dirty our faces in front of the people in Charleston so that we would no longer return. For several years, my mother had poisoned our food, increasingly more frequent, using detergent, Ajax, etc... We started keeping all of the food under key. Yet, so that she can better perform the poisoning, her family sent her a whole box full of surgical needles, a choice of the smallest to the largest, and later a second one, altogether totaling between 400 and 500 needles. During Christmas, as well as during the New Year, my mother called me the worst names in the sexual sense. We did not say anything to her, as we knew that she had problems. In December, I found a Christmas card addressed to my mother from her niece stating the following: "Do not worry for Regis's friend has a very high place in the U.S.A., who has a lot of power." In February, Mr. Petrovich needed to be admitted to the hospital because of foot gangrene. We took him to the hospital of his choice, St. Joseph Hospital. We visited him every day or every other day and brought him his mail. One day, when I was with my grandmother he told us that an U.D.B.-a. (Yugoslavian Secret Service) man tried to kill him. He told us that he was lying in bed and the man had been right next to him. When the man saw that Mr. Petrovich had seen him, he left immediately. I told my father of the incident when we went back home, but my father had a hard time believing the story, because he found it hard for someone to go all the way to the ninth floor and said that maybe it was just someone who was looking for something to steal. One week later, as I passed through the waiting room, leaving from visiting Mr. Petrovich, I saw a man in his forties with a mustache, matching the description that Mr. Petrovich had given me, along with another man speaking in Serbian. As I passed by, I was able to hear their words, which were, "After the injection, two hours later they die.” When they saw me, they immediately stopped talking. I entered the elevator and realized that Mr. Petrovich was in danger. I went back upstairs and pretended to look for some papers, but I had no luck, because the two had separated and pretended that they did not know each other. Mr. Petrovich was discharged from the hospital and given antibiotics to follow for a period of ten to twelve days at home. Mr. Petrovich was a great financial support for us and this hindered a great many people. The week after, in an appointment with Dr. Obradovich, he was told that because of his diabetes, he could not take the antibiotics. Mr. Petrovich was left with a foot gangrene which could at any time inflame to a general infection and cause him to die. We immediately took him to Rush Presbyterian Hospital's emergency room where he was admitted for treatment. He received excellent treatment for about one week. When we came in one day, Mr. Petrovich said, "What is this conspiracy against me? All of a sudden, the attitude of everyone has changed and they don't even seem to want to help me anymore.” We never could tell if it was because someone wanted to hinder us, or if it was because someone wanted him to die because of his many patents, which he refused to sell, or both.
February 11, we were visited by a Department of Children and Family Services investigator. They had received a report stating that my father had sexually abused Caroline, Catherine, and me. The report was found to be false. My mother got scared and asked us to take her to Charleston. When we got there, she decided that she did not want to stay within the first half-hour of our arrival in Charleston and wanted us to take her back all the way to Chicago. The week after, Mr. Stephen Peters came to our home for the investigation. A little angry one day on the telephone, he told us that the letter had come from my aunt from Yugoslavia. In the family, this was a big surprise, and the entire family traveled 150 miles to the American Embassy in Belgrade to file their declaration. By error, the declaration was sent to us at the home address and not at the post office box. This obliged us to ask the post office to transfer all mail addressed to our home to the post office box. We never informed anyone about this maneuver, nor did we speak about it in the house or car. To our great surprise, several times, Mr. Slobodan, the janitor of our building started bringing my mother her mail, giving it to her in her hand. Someone was afraid that the mail from her family would fall into our hands. Who could have informed my mother and the janitor? Another incident occurred with the janitor one day when he came to visit with us. He sat at the table in front of my father and next to him sat my mother (which was very unusual in the first place because she never shows herself when we have company). Despising Mr. Slobodan, I went in the bedroom and closed the curtain door. Through a tiny slit, for some odd reason, I watched them. To my greatest surprise, the two of them, Mr. Slobodan and my mother, exchanged notes. As soon as they had exchanged it, the janitor got up and left. Not only was my mother cooperating with the French through Ms. Suzanne and the rest, but now with the Yugoslavs against the family. Both Services were working together with the same goal in mind, covered up by the American services. Increasingly, someone was taking courage to dirty us in the eyes of neighbors, school, and the Department of Social Services.
My mother's family in France encouraged her to cause the maximum amount of problems and she was supported by someone enabling her to do so. We did not have the time to take care of her troubles, for my father and I went to help Mr. Petrovich. I give him his insulin shots twice a day, his pills three times a day, his meal, and cleaned. While I was there, my father talked to him and kept him company. We learned of his very interesting past. He was born in 1911, and was part of the Resistance against the Communists during the war. After the war, he was imprisoned for political reasons for six months. He was a mine engineer and researcher. In 1957, he immigrated to France; and in 1969, he immigrated to the United States. He had no family to look after him. Interestingly, he told us that when he arrived here in the U.S., information was sent from Yugoslavia that he was a Communist. He said that he had wanted to open up a business, but that he was caused so much trouble that he had no other alternative other than to concentrate on his research. In his apartment, he had set-up a laboratory and he demonstrated to us how he performed his experiments. Out of his very small laboratory came 29 patents. His discoveries focused in the fields of chemistry, biology, and extraction of minerals and metals. Mr. Petrovich said that the American Services are terribly narrow-minded people, for it took years for them to leave him alone after they saw that he spent his life solely between the library and his laboratory. He said that he spent so much time in the laboratory or in the books that he no longer knew if it were day or night outside or, what day it was. He said that only then did they leave him alone. My father was happy to finally find someone who believed him and who understood him. My father told him that our story was a long one, but that exactly the same thing had happened to us. When we came to the U.S., the Yugoslavs sent information saying that my father was a Communist. For 13 years, the services of America have believed them; and the real Communists and Titoists, who are here, are cooperating with the American services.
March 4, after we had finished shopping, we returned home in the evening, and after I parked the car in front of our building, we decided to remain a few minutes to finish talking. As we were talking, I noticed that someone was watching us from the window. I told my father and as I turned to get another look, the man backed away from the window and the light went off in the room. My father and I got the packages ready so we could get home quickly. Just as we were about to leave the car, all of the hallway lights went out in the building. We figured something was wrong, and we decided to go to the back of the building and sound the horn so some of the children could come down and we would not be alone. As we drove to the back of the building, we saw a van with three men in it with a fourth one standing next to it, and a car in a garage with two men there. I knew something was wrong and I honked and got the car ready to leave. They saw that we had understood and the van drove off. The garage door where the car had been was shut. After that, the children and my grandmother came downstairs, and the hallway lights came back on. The set-up was easy to understand. The apartment on the first floor of our entrance was empty. If we had entered through the front door, like we usually did, we could have been easily pulled through the first floor's empty apartment and out of the back door of that apartment to the waiting van.
In April, all of the children and my father went on vacation for one week to South Carolina. For unknown reasons, a new complaint of abuse against the children was opened once more, and May 5, Mr. Edward came over to our house. He was very understanding and nice and explained that he was aware that an investigation had just been closed, but he had to follow procedures and investigate this new complaint. Of course, the "guilty" person was again my father. We talked to him and he understood everything. Much later, we learned that Mr. Edward had had just left the U.S. Army and had been employed by DCFS. Right after investigating us, he resigned from our file. Why??? We never really knew, but our guess is that he had external pressures to turn the case against us. Mr. Edward was a good man with a heart. I do not why, but I feel I have to say that Mr. Edward is black. And, here in America, thousands of times we have seen and experienced that black people always have more heart and comprehension than white people. Right after this, the file was taken over by Ms. Sonia Freemond, a sexy girl out of a nightclub in the Philippines, who had married an American military officer. We protected the children by placing them in the bedroom with their grandmother, all except Caroline, who remained with her mother. She was too much under her mother's influence and she spent her evenings with her mother outside of the house. One day, a 30 year-old man asked the children, "Where is your sister Caroline?" The same night, my father had a conversation with Caroline, and he gave her a slap because she was very rude to him and her behavior was unacceptable. Following the advice of her mother, she went to complain to someone at school. The next day, Sonia Freemond from the Department of Social Services came to our house. She came for ONE slap. I videotaped the entire conversation with Sonia Freemond, in the presence of the translator and Dr. Milenkovic, my father's cousin, who was visiting us at the time. My father called one child after the other, asking them if they were afraid of him. The children laughed when he did so, and at the end, they gave him a kiss. "Ms. Freemond, would you like for me to continue?” "No, no, that is enough." She then spoke to my mother, to Caroline, and then to me. I confided to her some of the things that my mother had done and said to me. Ms. Freemond was stupefied and told me, "I have heard mothers saying bad things to their daughters, but never in my life have I heard that a mother could say something so crude and vulgar, especially in the sexual sense, to her own daughter." She concluded that the family, especially my mother, needed emergency response therapy, but we never saw her again. At the same time, another social worker arrived because he heard from someone, that Christine told someone, that she had seen my father and I in the bathroom together. I showed him that the bathroom did not even have a lock, that my grandmother was with us 24 hours a day, and that there was my mother, grandmother, and five other children. After he questioned Christine, she told him that Caroline had told her that she saw it, and when he questioned Caroline, she said that her mother had said that. The week after, I called the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and asked to speak to Ms. Freemond. The switchboard operator asked, "Sonia, the new worker?" I do not know if she was new. However, she tried to incriminate my father and to cover up for my mother.
In the meantime, we were taking care of all of Mr. Petrovich's needs, for he had to be taken care of constantly between his injections, pills, and having to take him to the hospital often. He was very happy with us and he said that if we were not there to take care of him, he would have died alone and forgotten. He felt sorry that he did not have the money to pay for my father's eye surgery and he insisted that we take his patents and sell them so we could have the money to pay for surgery. My father refused, but after much insistence from Mr. Petrovich, my father paid him a symbolic price for five of the patents. Mr. Petrovich said that we could do whatever we wanted with them so that we could get the money for the surgeries. My mother's depression simply kept aggravating. She was getting more and more sure of herself. She kept saying that she was "protected," she carried around a notebook full of names and addresses, and repeatedly chided that, "it would not be much longer." We were waiting for school to finish so that in June we could go down to South Carolina. The morning of May 25, my mother lost control, and with all her might she pushed my father in the back. He fell. When he caught her to restrain her, she managed to escape with her 300 pounds, losing her balance, falling head into the wall. She had a new hysterical crisis and bit him. He had a hard time restraining her. My grandmother tried to get her to calm down too, but she turned around and slapped my grandmother. The police came, and at 8:30 a.m., they took her to Swedish Covenant Hospital to the psychiatric unit. We got there at 8:45. The doctors promised that they would speak to us too, but asked that we wait just a few minutes. My mother's "great protector" manifested, and the employees at the hospital started looking cross-wise at us. At 11:50, I went home to gather some more papers. As soon as I had left, the doctor went up to my father and grandmother and told them that they too could go home. They waited until 12:10, then decided to wait for me out on the sidewalk. This must have tricked someone that we had gone straight for home; but, actually, I picked them up only at 12:40. Arriving home, we fell face-to-face with men that pretended to be police officers and were trying to move cars from the space where we usually park. It seemed to us that they were looking for our car. They threatened to write two violations if we dare park on the side of the street. There were no signs prohibiting parking. Rudeness is not a common characteristic of normal police officers. We parked very far and called the police station for explanations. They, too, could not explain what was going on, for there was no scheduled street cleaning, etc..., but told us to call back if we had a problem. My mother was very well protected and supported. It seemed to me that they were trying to take away our car so that we would be immobilized. The next morning, Friday, May 26, we left at 7:00 a.m. to go to a Sears mechanic shop. At 8:00 a.m., the children got up as happy as they had ever been. There was no more pressure in the house, for my mother had not been there at all the previous day and night. They got up, washed, brushed, and put on clothes that my grandmother ironed for them. When my grandmother walked them to school, the children kissed her over and over along the way. At 9:00 a.m., Ms. Freemond came by our house and asked my grandmother where I was. She had wanted to kidnap me. At 12:45, she kidnapped the other five children from school. At two o'clock in the afternoon, I was still not in their hands. The hospital called and said that Mr. Petrovich was ready to be discharged, we must come and pick him up immediately. We rented a trailer, packed all of the documents, word processors, valuables, pictures, video and audiotapes, and the dog and cat. We stopped by to see Mr. Petrovich, explained to him what was happening, and left immediately for Washington, D.C. Sunday, May 28, we called our answering machine and found out that Despot had called, I giving us the address and phone number of where he was. He did not want to stay where he was and wanted us to come and get him. May 30, our case was heard in court. We learned the reasons why the children were taken away: 1) domestic violence, 2) alleged sexual abuse with me, and 3) physical abuse with Caroline (still for the month-old slap). It is more than certain that this was extremely well set-up with only one goal: to take away the children from a blind person and his wife who has become insane after so many years of mental torture, causing her to be totally disoriented. Friday, June 2, we called DCFS and we were told that Judge Zissman had authorized an arrest warrant for me. He was afraid that I, who was in my 18th year, would be abused by my blind father in the presence of my grandmother. I have done so much for this family: I was the one who shopped for the household, that looked over my brother's and sisters' school work, the one that gave Mr. Petrovich all of his medical care, and many other things. Judge Zissman authorized an arrest warrant for me, just as if I were a gangster in America. Because of my absence, I had not been able to take care of Mr. Petrovich and he was not able to even die at his home, but in a nursing home. Saturday, June 3, a new message was left on the answering machine. My brother called telling us that he was at 810 W. Montrose. We called and were finally able to get him. We were horrified at what we learned. My grandmother, who is aged, was shocked. America, America, it just was not possible. Our family in Yugoslavia had a hard time believing what we transmitted to them. My brother cried and wanted us to come and get him. It was very apparent that he missed the evenings when my father and him would each get a guitar and play together, sometimes I would accompany them with the piano. They missed their grandmother with whom they would always make cakes and cookies of all kinds and with whom they would play ball. They missed the times (which were frequent) when we would go out and eat ice cream, have a picnic in the park, go shopping, go on vacation, go to the beach, or just on a tour, etc.... They missed the times when I would play chess with them, games, read stories, sing songs, teach them to play the piano, etc... They surely missed their much-loved dog, Dzeki and their cat Maca, for to them they were part of the family. In no case could the children be as happy in a facility as they had been at home. But, of course, where there are people who are cold-hearted and narrow-minded by money, they do not understand. Despot, crying, told us: "Corinne, we are all crying every day all day. The first five days after they kid-napped us, they left us totally naked. We could not even dress. All day long, they inspected us from every angle. They all pretend to be doctors, but they were only a band of sexually obsessed people. Then they transferred us to here. They put oil in the girl's hair against lice. The rooms are more than dirty; we are more that 30 in one room. Every night we take out cots. In the morning, we fold the sheets and blankets and put them in one corner. Not twice have I had the same blanket. The blankets are extremely dirty. Some of the boys say that they have AIDS, but I do not know if it is true. The food is awful. For three days, I have not gone to the bathroom, for I have eaten only bread and water. Everyday, they give us a pill that makes my head spin as if I were drugged. The workers hit us, pinch us, twist our arms, call us names; it is horrible, I want to get out of here. In the beginning, we were all together, and now they are beginning to separate us, more and more. It is worse than the worst jails I have seen in the most horrible films. This Sonia asked me several times, 'What has your father done to you all? What has your father done to you all?’ When I tell, or at least try to tell her that it is not my father, but my mother, she interrupts me quickly and says that she doesn't care about my mother, but wants to know only about what my father does. They want me to say something bad about my Dad." My father could not believe it. He said, "This is happening in the 20th Century in America. This happened in Serbia during the Middle Ages when the Turks would come and kid-nap young boys and take them to Turkey. Then they would train them for the military and send them back to Serbia to fight their own blood. I could never have believed that this would happen in the 20th Century in a country that should be civilized." I am sure that if a true neglect/abuse investigator questioned the children, it would be concluded that the children are in an unsafe environment and are being abused by the workers themselves. It is time for Ms. Sonia Freemond and the other workers there to stop playing with other people's children like dolls. If they did not have a happy childhood and could not play pretend when they were younger, it is not by taking other people's children that they should fill their childhood happiness void. June 7, my father started a hunger strike in front of the White House. Every day, I called the radio stations, the television stations, and the newspapers of the area and asked them how it was possible for a blind man to be hunger-striking next to the White House and not a word be said about it in the news, not a picture taken, nothing. After ten days of hunger striking, still no one printed anything. This affair was very well stifled by the C.I.A. who was determined that the least amount of people know. Several Americans came up to us and apologized on the behalf of all good-hearted Americans and themselves for what their government had made us live through. Many foreigners told us, "I feel very bad for what has happened. If you had been in my country this would have never happened." A great many people were touched and offered us best wishes. Then, there were some who came up and laughed at us with a cynical smile, or told us that we were stupid, or that we did not know what we were talking about. We already knew those people. They were exactly the same people who had made us suffer so long; they were part of the dark side of America. When a large group of people were gathered, a Secret Service officer of the White House would come and stand with the group and mock us, start laughing, or tell the people to move on. So stupid are they that they did not even realize that they are just demonstrating that they are cold-hearted, rude, and just covering up; instead, in their little minds, they thought they were protecting America's honor. I once heard, "It is better for people to think you are a fool, rather than open your mouth and remove all doubt." The one encounter that remained in our memory the most was with a man who must have been in his sixties, accompanied by a bodyguard who was holding and umbrella over him. That person turned and gave my grandmother a look so full of hate that my grandmother froze. She said, "In all my life, I have never seen a look so full of hate, as the one that day." Later, our guess was that it is a possibility that this person, the scum of America, is the one who has dishonored his country so much. June 16, I called the White House at about 2:00 p.m. to ask for assurance and security. I was told that I was in Washington, D.C., that nothing could happen to me, and I was asked for the telephone number of where I was so that I could be reached. I asked for a guarantee that this information would not be used to capture me. The reply was, "Corinne, the White House does not engage in capturing or giving out that information." At 5:15 p.m., two police officers banged on my hotel room as my grandmother and I were getting ready to go see my father in front of the White House. One of them immediately took his flashlight and inspected every closet and space, while the other asked me for identification. I was shown no paper, and when I asked why they were there, they told me I would be told when I got to the police station, and that I must go with them. I called the Yugoslav Consulate, wrote a note on a piece of paper indicating to the taxi driver that my grandmother does not speak English and that she wanted to be taken to the White House. My grandmother, seeing that they were taking me away, started to pull her hair, shout, cry, and kept on screaming, "What am I suppose to do, alone, not knowing a word of English? Where are you taking her?" The way I was treated, I could have sworn that I thought I had been mistaken for Al Capone, even though I had put up no resistance and I was sitting on the edge of a bed in a short shirt and shorts, with no lethal weapons around me. I insisted that they give my grandmother the telephone number of where I would be, so that I could be reached. One of them wrote a number on a piece of paper and handed it to her. I was then driven to the Howard County Police Station. In the meantime, my grandmother had arrived in front of the White House and she went up to my father in tears and told him what had happened. He immediately dropped everything and went to the pay phone so that he could call. The telephone number given was a fake one. That night, my grandmother and father went to the police station that was next to Valencia hotel and asked to see me. The policemen there told them that I was not there, but at the county station and that the next morning, a county police car would come to pick both of them up so that they could drive them to see me. Upon my arrival to the station, I was brought before a very proud and arrogant Detective Proudlock, who was completely disinterested in anything I had to say, after which a lieutenant came to speak with me. I had managed to grab a copy of the file and videotape before my kid napping, and I showed it to the lieutenant. He could not come to his senses and told me, "Corinne, I really don't understand how it is possible for you to have so many proofs against your mother and for her to still be covered up like this. The Department of Children and Family Services in Chicago asked me to keep you here until the end of the week before someone can come get you. There is really nothing I can do to help you here, except for the fact that I can consider you a runaway. That would mean that I cannot lock you up and I would have the right to keep you only for six hours, after which I have the right to release you if they do not pick you up by then." However, when Ms. Irizarry from DCFS heard that, she immediately boarded a plane and arrived at Baltimore Washington Airport at 11:13 p.m. The police officers drove me to the airport and transferred me to her custody. I spent the entire night at the airport, extremely weary, tired, on an airport bench, shivering, with Ms. Irizarry, who refused to make any accommodations for me. It was only at 6:25 a.m. the next morning, June 17, that we boarded a plane for Chicago. I was flown under a false name, Mary Delaney, for "safety/security reasons." Meanwhile, the next morning, my father and grandmother were taken to the Howard County Police Station to see me. Of course, I was at that time already on a plane to Chicago and the police officers refused to drive them back. They had to pay a taxi for more that twenty miles of driving. They had very little money left and had to pay for a motel room as well as to take care of the car and trailer that were left on the parking lot after I had been taken. When my father called the White House to ask them what he was to do after they caused all of this, the lady told him to sell the car and trailer and the camcorder, cameras, everything, so that he would have the money to get back to Chicago. They were extremely happy that this affair would be finally stifled. My dad and grandmother asked for help from several organizations, including Salvation Army, etc..., but everyone refused. One priest said he would help by saying prayers for them, but that was all he could do. A couple of priests paid for a night of stay and some nights they spent in the car. The Serbian Community in Chicago heard that the children had been taken away, and a lady by the name of Vesna Radovich called my father and told him her story. Her children, too, had been taken away four years ago. There, too, was no abuse or neglect, but they were still keeping them. She told him that she knew many people who had their children taken away. She said that the majority of them are from Eastern Europe, Mexico, or are African-American. An idea came to my father's mind and he asked, "Mrs. Radovich, have you ever had any problems with the Yugoslavian Secret Service, truthfully?” "Oh, yes," she replied, "Before returning to the United States while in Yugoslavia, they came up to me and said, 'Mrs. Radovich, you are the manager of a building and your husband is a musician. You have a lot of contact with people and the information you could gather would be very useful for us.' I refused to cooperate because I told them that when I went to visit people it was as a friend and not as a spy. I told them that they very well knew where I was from and that my family had been massacred by the Communists, and I refused anything that had to do with them. Upon my return to Chicago, I enrolled the children in school, and my daughter one day refused to go to school. I questioned her and she said that the male teacher puts his finger in her anus when she is in the coatroom. I turned around and told my husband what she said. When she repeated her story the next day, I decided to go see the principal. The principal immediately turned the story around and said that she must have been abused by my husband. DCFS came and my children were taken away. The policewoman who came to take my children away is the one who has them in her home today. They take children away from Polish, Russian, or Serbian families, after which they are placed in foster homes and the families there are paid $1,000.00 a month per child. It is an incredible business. I am a lucky person for I at least know where my children are. I was so humiliated and taken advantage of, that it is unbelievable. First, I was told that I was aggressive; then, that I had epilepsy, and after one diagnosis was disproved, another was created. Every time that I had finished one test, I was made to take another one. This was done on purpose, of course, to drag the time. I was then told that if I divorced from my husband, I would get my children back. We have been divorced for two and one-half years, but I still do not have my children. If I go to see them, the policewoman tells me to leave or she will arrest me. I have the right to see them for one hour, once a month. The policewoman tried to adopt them. I spent thousands and thousands of dollars hiring attorneys and this was just barely opposed. I know a doctor who also had two children taken away. He knows that one of them is here somewhere in Chicago, but he does not know where the other one is. I know of another Radovich who also had political problems who had a fifteen year-old daughter who was taken away. She was put on a wrong path and got pregnant as a minor." She told him much more, but I believe you have gotten the general idea.
Fortunately, a priest from Chicago sent two young men who were studying to become priests to help them get back in Chicago. They took turns driving the car and trailer to Chicago. When they arrived in Chicago, they parked the car in front of the apartment building and asked my grandmother which apartment was theirs. My grandmother got out of the car, and could not recognize any part of the neighborhood. She was so shocked that she did not know her address, nor how or which building it was, nor remember any aspect of the apartment she had left only one month earlier. My father was obliged to give the priests the address and they had to search where it was located. Meanwhile, my brother, who was 12 years old at the time, went on a hunger strike for ten days. He was hospitalized and then transferred to a psychiatric hospital, because he wanted to return to his father. Caroline, meanwhile, continued to make plans with her mother with the goal of incriminating my father as much as possible, so that they could leave for France while he is in jail. All of the children were terribly depressed. Dr. Matkovic called our answering machine and left us a message, "Mr. Despotovic, please contact us, the children are in a terrible state." While the rest of the children were traumatized and Despot was lying in a hospital bed, Caroline was receiving lace lingerie from France. Her mother was encouraging her to stay in a foster home where she would receive $300.00 a month. Despite the fact that Caroline no longer had contact with my father, she continued to make up stories and lengthen the accusation list. Caroline was allowed to come and go as she pleased and she considered herself happy. My mother was given the right to go to the hospital to visit Despot, who was hunger striking to be allowed to return to his father, with an I.V. in his arm. While he lay there, she told him it would be a good idea for him to be placed in a foster home too, so that he too could get $300.00 a month and for him to save that money because she would need it later. In June, Catherine ran away from the foster home and got on a bus to get back home. She knew that we lived off Pulaski Road, but she had no idea where. Because she did not know where to get off, she was returned to the foster home. (We later learned that she got on at 15,900 South, and we lived 4,300 North. That is a difference of about 20 miles.) Christine secretly called my father in July and told him, "Dad, they told me that I did not have the right to call you, but I am calling you anyway." The following is a letter I wrote to my grandmother and father in June of 1995, while hidden in Mr. Petrovich's apartment, after I had runaway from the foster home. "Dear Grandma and Dad: "Ms. Irizarry and I were to wait until 6:25 A.M. to board a plane back to Chicago, giving her a chance to tell me about her private life. She has two children, I believe, of nine and twelve years of age. She works at a department, which is supposed to protect children, but she tells me, "My kids drive me crazy sometimes so much that I feel like plastering them... That I feel like throwing them against the wall or strangling them..." AND THIS LADY WORKS TO PROTECT CHILDREN FROM ABUSE!!! I asked her how they had found out where I was. She said that she did not know everything, but they had known my location Thursday afternoon and Friday they went to court to get an arrest warrant transferred to Washington, D.C. Then they had picked me up and she had been obliged to come get me. How had they known at which hotel I was staying? They had paid a detective to follow me after I left from visiting you at the White House. That is what they call American Liberty. Serial rapists, serial murderers, criminals, they do not know where they are. However, a young girl who has helped her family, who has done everything she can to get her brother and sisters back, and who goes to bring water to her father in front of the White House, Oh my God!!! Quickly hire detectives, she is a great criminal!!! Engage the courts in two different states to bring her back so that our Mafia in Chicago will not be as dirty as she is telling people they are, so that we can silence her once she is in our hands. "At 6:25 A.M., Saturday morning (June 17, 1995) we boarded the plane. After our arrival in Chicago, Ms. Irizarry drove me to Maryville Foster Center at 810 W. Montrose. There, they even have bullet-proof windows, which are not really there to protect the children, but rather so that their screams cannot be heard from the street. Children there are drilled to believe that they have been abused, and they break them to place them in foster homes. I refused to submit to a physical exam. Worse would I have been if I had accepted, for I would have had to go to the third floor, where girls as young as 15 have a child, others who have several, and others who are pregnant. Along with teenage motherhood, if it can so be called, comes the street-found language. It is with panic that I faced this, not for myself, but for my younger sisters, Camille (8 years of age), Christine (10), Catherine (11), and Caroline (14), who are in the tender years of their character development. The children who are locked up there would go into crisis and rages, would throw objects, howl, kick, and everything else. The staff would tie them down, or to the chairs, or hold them until the child gives up. If the child would reach to grab the phone to call their parents, it would be snatched from them, and they would be thrown to the floor. One of the girls there was twelve years of age and did not even know how to spell her name. I spent two days with her and taught her number order and how to write her name. When she would go into rages, the staff would tie her down, but I would go up to her and tell her that if she got quiet, I would play cards with her. Immediately, she stopped. The staff looked at me, amazed. We had outings, and once we were with a group of little boys, one of them who remembered Despot. He said that Despot had continually asked to be with his father. I felt very badly about all of the children there, for all of them could not wait to go back home and were there only because of a whim of a social worker. "Monday, June 19, Ms. Irizarry appeared to take me to court. I asked to call my parish priest, but it was continually refused to me. Upon my arrival to Juvenile Court, I am introduced to my attorney, Nancy Gargano, James Burton, Supervisor of P.A.L. Guardians, Mr. Lawrence Page, attorney for the state, and another P.A.L. guardian, who is not directly involved in the case. “When I told Mr. Lawrence Page that I had sent over 75 copies of the letter and over 20 video tapes to different agencies, he fell into the chair, dumbfounded. Mrs. Nancy Gargano tells me that I must either submit to a medical exam or the court, Judge Zissman, would order one, and I would be taken in by force. This is the country that is called the Champion of Liberty. I imposed several conditions: 1) that I would not be medicated 2) that I would be informed of all procedures beforehand, 3) that I would not undergo brain scans, and that 4) there would be no psychiatric evaluation, though I knew there would be a psychological evaluation When my attorney stated brain scans to the court, the court had a hard time restraining their laughter. I had to stand up for myself and tell them that my condition was not unfounded, for Despot had been forced to undergo an ultrasound of the brain. Judge Zissman was apparently not aware of that fact and not very happy about it. Upon my departure from court, Ms. Irizarry said, "What you told the judge was not very nice.” Of course, anything that puts her in an uneasy spot was not considered nice. I asked the judge that instead of going to a foster home, I be allowed to go to our priest's home, but this was turned down. I asked the judge why I am not allowed to speak to the other children. He said, ‘You might orchestrate something and you would be smart enough to do that.’ If I wish to write letters to my brother and sisters, I must give the letter to Ms. Irizarry, who will read it, and if she finds nothing offensive, she will deliver it to my brother and sisters. If she does, however, find something offensive, she will tear it up and inform me that she has “censored” it! Judge Zissman told me that he wanted the best for us and "that he did not doubt my father was a good man, for he had received personal letters testifying to his good character from all over the world.” I asked him if he had read my letter, and he said he had not yet, because it had been given to the Sheriff's Department to make sure it was safe to open, after which, IF it were, he would read it! "I was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital to have the exam. It was noticed that my blood pressure was quite high, and that it was due to stress. I talked to a psychologist who kept trying to veer the conversation towards making me say that I felt sad. I do not know how many times I had to tell her that if I felt sad it was only because of the forced separation and that yes, I do have plans for my own future, and that no, my father is not a dictator at home. I was given an intelligence test, result: over the 99th percentile for my age group. I no longer know how many times I requested calling my attorney or Father Djura. I was continually told that I could not do so. I finally stayed in my room and refused to speak to anyone until I could talk to my priest. Finally, a nurse comes to get me and tells me that I can call my attorney, but that she must listen to the conversation. My attorney finally finds a way for me to speak to my priest, but once again, someone must listen in. I ask her why I still cannot call my father, and she said because I may tell him where I am at, and the reason why someone must listen while I speak to my priest is because I "might fabricate something." I told her that I really did not know that I was an Al Capone who was or would be giving his fellow Al Capones out of jail directions on putting a bomb in New York. "Mrs. Karen Burgers and a Mr. Michael picked me up from Mt. Sinai Hospital at 3:45 P.M., Friday, June 23, and drove me to Lakewood Home. Again, with file and videotape in hand, I told my story. Before leaving me there, they gave me a hug and both of them wished me lots of good luck. “I was shocked after arriving at the foster home. The subject conversation revolved only around sex, boys, and how beautiful they are. One twelve-year-old girl could not forget how she had let seventeen (17) men sleep with her free. Twelve years old and she cannot forget how seventeen men had slept with her for free. How many had slept with her for pay??? Dear God, My Lord, in these same types of foster homes are where Camille, Christine, Catherine, and Caroline are. Despot is a boy, and I do not know what their subject of conversation is, but I have a feeling that he must be suffering wherever he is. The girls also discussed drugs, and I believe all of them smoke. You can be sure that I was regarded as very, very abnormal. Can you believe me when I tell you that I could not sleep all night long? How could I? I had to hold on to my bed so that I would not faint. How could I sleep when they were saying that this was good money and an easy job? I could not help but think of my little sisters who are young, small, and that they were most likely hearing the same things. How could I sleep when I had worked seventeen years to rear my sisters with good moral behavior, and that I had to be exemplary so that they would have a role model other than their mother to look at? Despot, in one of his letters, told me in a poem, "Corinne is my big sister, with no blisters; Corinne is my big sister who can never sleep, nor play; Corinne is my big sister who loves books, but never has time to look; Corinne is my big sister, who has been my mother." Why so much sacrifice when at the utmost whim of a department, they have the right to come in and take your brother and sisters because of the allegations of a mother who says that her husband abuses her children? Why??? "If my mother, if she can so be called, had really worked for us and had suddenly fallen ill, I would have been the first to help her. However, this was never the case. Furthermore, I will do everything I can to make sure my brother and sisters are protected. EVERYTHING. I promised it to myself when I was younger, because she had physically abused me, and there is no reason for her to be allowed to abuse them. I remember her threatening the children from saying anything because she had carried them nine months and the judge would attribute the children to her. If she thinks her maternal duties end there, she is wrong. "Dad, we came to the United States in November of 1982. We stayed at Hotel Vista International, and from our window, we could see the Statue of Liberty. I had asked you what it was. You had told me, "That is WHY we have come here." I was young and could not understand more. However, I still will not forget that. America says that is has much abundance; however, we had encountered famine. America says that it has something called human rights. I cannot tell you what that means because I have not been able to experience that. At school, we would read stories about little boys or girls who would come to the U.S.A., and heavens, they were happy. How many times I wished that our family could be the same way. How many times did I wish that I could drink from the Cup of Liberty, just one sip. Yes, we have walked with our heads held high, disregarding the shame that was tried to be placed on our family. We have always been able to look the other person straight in the eye. Many people say that I am bold. I take that as a compliment. At school, I remember my classmates stating the reason why they disliked me: "Because you have character, you are so strong.” Thank you. But all of this did not come by itself. I had to suffer, and work hard, and endured many hardships to reach that point. Despot was placed in a mental hospital because he would not eat; he was on a hunger strike. I asked why someone on a hunger strike would be considered abnormal --- because, according to them, to starve yourself is considered suicidal. Have they forgotten, surely they have, that when Despot was a baby, he did not have anything to eat. Not because of neglect, but because the Department of Social Services, would not provide milk nor Food Stamps. When we tried to sell our toys, they forbade people from buying them. "Despot had to drink cookies dissolved in tea in his bottle. Now, when we have everything that we could possibly want, but peace, the Department of Children and Family Services comes in to our family life to inspect my behind to make sure that I am not being abused. Last August, we again saw the Statue of Liberty, and as I stood there to look at it, I thought to myself, ‘Yes, you are just as hollow physically as the truth for which you supposedly stand for.’ To me there, it was like a big lie standing in the middle of the harbor, like the first page of a book saying, ‘Here I am; I am lighting your way to a country full of lies.’ I saw America through the people that run it. For example, the White House who aided in my kid-napping; Through the people that were afraid I would receive an education, and who prohibited me from enrolling in school, for ‘American schools are only for American citizens;’ Through my fellow classmates who laughed and mocked me when they found out I was not a citizen; Through the people who were supposedly our friends, but left our home without even saying good-bye because they had seen my school grades; Through the people that put nails around our house, snakes in our home, needles in our clothes; Through the gun-shots against our van and through the cutting of our tires repeatedly; And, of course, through those who came to take away my brother and sisters. I saw American Justice through being put in jail for what I believe in and for standing up for my family. I saw America through tears the last twelve years. ‘One should not judge a book by its cover.’ I did not. I was young and my heart and spirit had much room for hope and love. And when I look back to that cover picture of the Statue of Liberty at age five, twelve years later, half-way through the book, I must say, I have not had many good experiences. None of my experiences were as bold and as full of glory as the statue stands, except the ones with my brother and sisters, my grandmother, and my father. My native country, France, gave that statue as a gift to the U.S.A. It was a symbol for what America was supposed to stand for. How I wish, and I am sure that I am not the only one, that it would be well represented. I am only 17, I am still young, and somehow, I still have a little bit of hope left. Maybe, just maybe, as sometimes happens in stories, the story will change. Dear God, I certainly hope so! "The psychologist that I spoke to at the hospital asked me how I could place so much belief in the political stories, experiences you say that you encountered, Dad. I told her that what I have lived through for the second part of your life, gives me enough credibility so that I believe everything else about your experiences. They do not like it when I say the word Mafia. They try to say that I am crazy. However, whoever is behind this will not change my position. I want my brother and sisters, because I love them, because there was no reason for them to be taken away, because they would be in the best possible care, and because I do not want this Mafia to get a hold of them. The social workers and judge want me to believe that they are here for my good. Where were they when we had nowhere to live, when we had nothing to eat, when I was discriminated against, and when we were hurt? When we asked for help then, they would not come because we were not American citizens. Now when we are old enough to be placed on the street, they come to our ‘rescue.’ They come and inspect our genitals to see how much money they can make off us. And of course, they find legal ways to do it. "So, I spent Saturday and Sunday in the foster home. Monday morning, I had to go to see the director of the foster homes program, Mrs. Yvonne Brown-Watson. She could not understand why I was in the program, and while I was there, she received a call from Ms. Irizarry who asked that I be placed in isolation. I continued to talk to her and explained to her the entire file. She concluded that she did not understand why I was to be placed in isolation, and let me return to the foster home. I had known I had to runaway quickly, and Sunday, I had managed to smuggle purchasing hair color and to keep two dollars to buy a bus ticket. Upon my return to the foster home, I colored my hair and very narrowly escaped. In a Country of Liberty, at 17 years of age, I had to fight to remain alive, and free. I have had some time to read a magazine called The World and I, published by the Washington Times Corporation. One article was very interesting, and titled Abuses of the Child Abuse War. Another had some very interesting information: --"70% of juveniles placed in correctional facilities grew up in homes without fathers." --"Radical feminists and advocates of alternate lifestyles have tried, for example, to make it appear that the rise of the euphemistically designated 'female-headed household' is a perfectly viable alternative to old patriarchal male-headed, two-parent families. That is, at best, dangerously mis-leading." --Both from The World and I, July 1995, p.29 --"All the evidence we have so far, however, indicates that the welfare state cannot substitute for the family." --From The World and I, July 1995, p.31." June 19, while I was in court, the same day, though I had no idea at the time, Mr. Petrovich "died" at the hospital due "to heart failure.” Whether he died on his own or whether he was made to die, I do not know. However, we were listed in the medical files as his family, and whenever the doctors had previously had a question or needed authorization for something, we had been called. However, we received no phone call, no letter, nothing to let us know that he had died. They had stifled his death as if they had been afraid that we would ask for an autopsy. June 26, I ran away from the foster home. I ended up hiding in Mr. Petrovich's apartment. In the meantime, my father, with the few words of English that he knew, tried calling people to get information. By accident, while talking to translator, Jean Benkovski, he learned that there was a court hearing June 30. He appeared at the criminal court June 30, and asked the receptionist where he was supposed to be. After all the computer files were checked, he was told that there was no hearing set for that day, and that he was not even in the computer. Just as my father and grandmother were about to leave, they saw my mother entering the court followed by a few people. They decided to follow her and waited in the room that she was waiting. Their name was called and the hearing was performed. Why was my father's name not listed in any files? Why did he not receive any notification whatsoever? The goal was, of course, that he not attends and that he be arrested later for not appearing. Not only were such dirty set-ups maneuvered, but the translator, a French woman, Mrs. Morgan, would turn things around, even though she spoke both languages perfectly. For example, when my father refused to be represented by an attorney, the judge tried to convince him to accept. Finally, my father accepted on the condition that he could address the court himself as well for five or ten minutes. Mrs. Morgan, however, translated that my father accepted an attorney if he could also speak to his "mother" (in French, the word court and mother are very different) for five or ten minutes. Mrs. Morgan could not have simply just made a mistake, but she permitted herself to turn such phrases around because she ignored how much English my father knew. After my father corrected her, she apologized. The judge paused and sensed that the situation was abnormal, but he did not take time to investigate. Afterwards, he spoke with Attorney Albukerk so that my father could explain to him with happened the morning of May 24 between my father and mother. With Mrs. Morgan translating, He told the whole story once, and then a second time. He was concentrated on explaining how the rooms are located and trying to include all the details of that morning. Finally, he had to explain a third time, and finally Mr. Albukerk got angry and said, "You've told me this story three times, and not once has it been the same.” My father finally realized what was happening, and he turned to Mrs. Morgan and in small phrases, once again explained, listening to every word she was saying. This time, Mrs. Morgan pretended to finally understand everything, and things went well. Four or five months later, my father was represented with another translator and learned that the judges and attorneys in that court were all aware of my father supposedly saying that he would put a bomb in their court building. At the end of June, my father met Ms. Mildred Irizarry who came to visit us in our apartment, along with another social worker. The questions were numerous, but one of them was, "in which way did my father punish the children if they misbehaved.” He explained that usually he raised his voice, and that is usually enough, but it also depends on what the children did. He said for example, if Caroline, who is 5 1/2 feet tall kicks Christine (the smallest), who only comes up to Caroline's belly button; in that case, he would probably make Caroline sit down and have Christine return the one or more kicks that Caroline gave her, etc... All of his explanations were useless. It was very apparent that Ms. Irizarry had taken my mother's side. Due to the fact that she was even more overweight than my mother was, they had solidarity amongst themselves. Ms. Irizarry herself had already been divorced for eight years and, what a coincidence --- her brother, with whom she was close, was in the U.S. Army. July 5, was the date of the first hearing in Juvenile Court. Judge Zissman kept provoking and threatening my father that he would put him in jail. Finally, my father took his belt off, gave it to the judge, and told him to put him in jail. Only at that point did the judge see that my father was not afraid of going to jail and did he stop from outright provoking him.
Meanwhile, my mother's greatest wish of coming to visit me in the foster home, so that she can then give me a cynical smile and "show" me that it was because of her that I was there, had still not been fulfilled. She proudly announced to the judge that she had given the court all possible addresses of where I could possibly be. Judge Zissman allowed my father and grandmother to bring cakes to the children. Very happy, he called Mrs. Radovich and told her that the judge had authorized them to bring cookies for the children. "They won't give them to the children," she told him. My father asked her why, since the judge had authorized it. "Because," she said, "They don't want the children to be reminded of home at all. This is a business that they have. They will accept the cakes, but they will not give them to the children. I know. I've been there." Her husband told my father, "They treat the children like prisoners. I have seen with my own eyes, where children were tied to one another with a chain leaving a six-story building and getting into a bus. You will see a very dark side of America now." My grandmother baked five big plates of biscuits and cookies, those that could be stored for quite a long time and they brought them to Ms. Irizarry, the social worker, so that they could be given to the children. When my father called her later to see if the children had received the cookies, Ms. Irizarry said that they had been thrown away, because they had not been able to give the cookies to the children the same day. Mrs. Radovich had been right. In July, Despot called my father, asked him to bring him some food, and told him exactly what he wished to eat. So, my father and grandmother prepared a suitcase full of food containing chicken, bread, salad, cheese, fresh cherries, and cookies and brought it to my brother at the foster home so that he could eat it. The staff there gave him the suitcase, let him eat some of it that night, and threw the rest of it away. Revolted, my brother started another hunger strike. At the time, he was calling my father every day, and one day he told my father that he was calling him from the hospital. Only then did my father, surprised, find out that he had not been eating for a week already. My brother went on a hunger strike for a full twelve days in July, and wrote a letter to Judge Zissman as follows: "Dear Judge Zissman," "I wonder why I was taken away from home. I was safe and happy there with my Dad, my grandma, and my older sister. They took me away because they said that my father was abusing me. But, my Dad never abused me. They put me in this group home. I do not feel safe here and the doors are all open. The staff hits the kids with broomsticks and punches. The kids are all careless. They are sloppy and messy. They are also gay. I still can't wait to go home. Here at the group home, I cry every day because I miss my Dad and home. If you can allow my grandma or grandma and Dad to come bring me food, I will be happy to eat it. However, I will not eat UHLICH food. It is disgusting. Plus, it doesn't give an appetite. This place drives me up the walls and now I can't take it any more. I am telling you that I WANT TO GO HOME WITH MY DAD AND GRANDMA!! You wouldn't know how much it would mean to me if you could write out an order that I could go home with my Dad. Going home with my Dad is my biggest wish. Even money or anything else couldn't change my mind. It would be like going to heaven. I love my Dad very much and my grandma. And if you could write out an order before the next court date that I can go home with my Dad, you wouldn't know how much it would mean to me. Remember, I can't take it anymore. I want to go home with my Dad and grandma. "Despot Despotovic "July 17, 1995"
August 3, the court had a good time creating a comedy play. They all could not even control their laughter as they read certificates of more than twenty years ago regarding my father's political history. Judge Zissman issued a one-mile restraining order forbidding my father and grandmother to get anywhere near the foster home where Despot was. Then, they enacted a whole show testifying to what was in the bag of food that my grandma gave to my brother. The only other question left to ask was whether the chicken was fried or roasted. Though they see each other every day, they began spelling their names, letter by letter, for the "record," etc... My father had tried to control himself, but he got down on all fours and took a few steps crawling, feeling the floor for something, after which he got up. He had gotten the attention of the entire court, and the judge asked him, "Mr. Despotovic, are you looking for something?" "Yes," he said. "For what?" asked the judge. "For justice," replied my father. "TO JAIL!" yelled the judge. He spent the night in jail, and August 4, he was again brought before Judge Zissman. The judge told my father that DCFS needed to get into the apartment to gather the children's clothes, except those of Despot because he saw no reason why he could not return to my father. (One year later he still could not even contact my father.) So five police officers took my father and my grandmother to the apartment. They spread out all around, looking everywhere as if somebody were to attack them. Despite the fact that my father was to be considered a free man because he was to be released just after they had picked up the clothes, they hand-cuffed him. As soon as the door to the apartment was opened they all spread out inside and turned the entire apartment upside-down, inside-out. They looked at EVERY single piece of paper, EVERY box, EVERY little space, emptying EVERYTHING on the floor. My father grabbed a pear to eat, but they snatched it out of his hand, forbade him to eat it, and handcuffed him to the chair. After more than two hours of search, they had found nothing to incriminate my father and they left very unhappy. Because the police were missing a release form from the judge and could not get it until the weekend had passed, my father was obliged to spend an additional three days in jail. On August 25, the judge said that the extra three days would serve as punishment because my father had approached the foster home. This is their technique: They provoke the parents so that, revolted, the parents contact their children. After that, the court spends months talking about the incident, dragging the time.
My father and grandmother got ready to go to the White House to protest once more; however, they received a call from a French psychiatrist Michel Louvain for an exam. My father went to see him, and he found that Dr. Louvain had difficulty moving, for half of his body was paralyzed. My father had hope that his mind worked well, however. The conversation lasted 40-45 minutes and the questions were simple. He was asked to describe the relationship between his wife and him, and then asked if he knew why he was there. My father answered, "Yes, to examine my mental state.” Somewhere in the conversation, Dr. Louvain wanted my father to speak about the explosion, his problems with the Secret Service, etc... My father felt the trap right away, and he rounded off his answer to, "Those are stories of the past, and I do not like to speak about them much." Later, once again, Dr. Louvain insisted on the same subject. My father had to answer that it was a very complex problem, and it would take a very specialized person who knew and understood politics, and government agencies, in order for my Dad to be able to explain his case. My father apologized, but told the doctor that he did not have the impression that he was competent in that area. Leaving his office, my father had a bad feeling that either the doctor had taken my mothers side or that someone had contacted him and that the report would be "tricked.” My father was not mistaken. The report that Dr. Louvain issued was that my father had "paranoia and resonant schizophrenia." After fleeing Mr. Petrovich's apartment, I went and hid with a Serbian family at the beginning of July. They were ready to let me stay as long as necessary, as it caused no problems for them whatsoever. They had a daughter my age and a very strong comprehension for our case. Certainly, this hindered the interests of the people who had set-up this fiasco, who would have rather seen me in jail or somewhere else where they could brainwash me. The family of S.T. started receiving visits from new "friends," who, trying to scare them, kept repeating to them, "Oh my, having her here is dangerous --- you could go to jail ---- I would never take that chance ---- Do you know you're risking everything ---- That's dangerous" etc... The family was very compassionate and all those "threats" had no effect on them. Finally, their business, a car dealership, was attacked. A Puerto-Rican Mafia guy named Puco, with his two bodyguards appeared at their business. He spent his days there, and just his presence was enough to convince many customers to never step foot there again. When customers did want to buy a car, he would step in the middle and say, "That car is mine, I am going to buy it," though he never did. Little by little, he pushed harder and harder, now representing himself as an associate of S.T., and moved in to the second office they had. He had diverse little gangsters visit him all day long, bringing in gold, and other high-priced stolen items, trading and selling them out of that office. He did this with the goal that S.T. would get scared enough and relinquish his dealership. Business was failing, and S.T. started to go crazy, but was powerless to do anything. It was only after my departure from S.T.'s home in November, that Puco finally left the dealer. (A good example of teamwork between the C.I.A., the Yugolsav u.D.B.A., and the Chicago Mafia.) The last week of August, there was another hearing in Juvenile Court. Since my father knew he was leaving for Washington, D.C., he wanted his interests represented in court in his absence, and he accepted an attorney. Mr. James Young was there and put out great effort to try to impress my father, "Before I went into private practice, I spent 13 years in this court. I know the system and everyone here. I am almost sure that I can get authorization for you to speak to your son on the phone, but you cannot go to the White House. If you go to the White House, I am abandoning the case. Understand one thing: out of this court very, very, very, very few people have walked out happy." My father would not budge, and for one-half hour, they argued back and forth, and Mr. Young finally walked out furious. Later, when he saw that my father did go to the White House and the case became too hot, he abandoned the case. That was not all. Since mid-August, a Yugoslav lady, Ms. Vera (a widow, who had been married to an American police officer), was sent to meet us and she offered her services: she would enroll my dad for SSI, because he had a right to it since he was blind. At once, the application was filed, but it was turned down. (It is difficult to explain to you the surprise on the employees' faces when they found out how long my father had been in the United States, four children born here, and still had never benefited from SSI.) A day or two before their departure to Washington, D.C., she contacted my father saying that the SSI office had called her. They informed her that they had found a way to give my father benefits for six months, temporarily, but he would HAVE to go back to the office that coming week. That was done on purpose with the hope that they would miss their trip to Washington, D.C.
August 29, my father and grandmother again went back to Washington, D.C. where they set-up a large poster and began protesting and requesting that the children be returned. There, the guards tried to get them to leave by one day saying that they had to be three feet from the fence; the next day, twenty feet from the gate; a few days later, they were prohibited from having any belongings at all with them, so they left them with a hotel. Dozens of people stay in the park behind the White House, but my father and grandmother were prohibited from doing so. Many people went up to them as they stood there everyday and said that they would call their senator, their representative, and the mayor. Others called all the way to Chicago and said that they had spoken to Judge Zissman, to Ms. Irizarry, the court, or senator, etc..., and had been told that if they would return to Chicago, everything possible would be done so that the children would be returned. The night of September 27 or 28, at about 7 or 8 P.M., a lady officially introduced herself to them in front of the White House, Ms. Dorothy Bates. She went to the hotel room with them so they could talk, and until 2 a.m., they spoke, half-French, half-English. She spent the night with them, and at 7 a.m., they were already up. The conversation continued in the room and lasted until 4 p.m., and as she was getting ready to leave, she said, "the children have to try everything in life, even drugs." At the time, my father believed it was a trap to get his reaction, and he answered negatively. He could not imagine that less than a year later, the children would be abandoned so much that they would be trying drugs. Leaving the hotel, she took them on a tour of Washington, D.C., and showed them a few historical monuments. A few hours later, they separated. All that my father had asked Ms. Bates, is for the court to work in an honest fashion, to take the case and analyze it, and not as a story completely reversed against him. If Ms. Bates was not the one who for all these years has led this case, and directed all of this against us, she knows very well who this sick mind above her is. At this point, my father promised Ms. Bates that if the case took a normal turn and that we would be left alone, he would never use her name anywhere or tell anyone about her or the meeting. Seeing the events that followed; today, June 2001, I feel no obligation. With a perfectly clear conscience, I feel free to talk about this event. September 28 or 29, my father and grandmother returned to Chicago. October 2, my father appeared in court.
Judge Zissman requested that my father undergo psychological and psychiatric testing before he could authorize him to have visits with the children. October 19, was the date of the next hearing. My mother failed to appear. Later, we learned that she had had a fight and another one of her usual outrages. I wrote to the court and requested that I be emancipated or let go of their control several times. I told them that the arrest warrant that they had out for me was certainly not doing me any good, because it was preventing me from continuing my education. Furthermore, I wrote that whatever their goal was in getting me into a foster home was not going to ever be accomplished, because I would not remain in a foster home. At eighteen, there was still an arrest warrant out for me. Illinois State Law states that any person of my age who requests to be emancipated and who refuses to accept the services offered by the court, must be emancipated. This, of course, would not be the first time that the law was completely disregarded when it came to our case. September 19, my father was supposed to have appeared in criminal court due to accusations of domestic battery, but could not do so due to his being in Washington, D.C. at the time. At the end of October, the police came to my father's apartment and told him that they were there to arrest him because he had not appeared in court, or to pay $1,000.00. My father told them that he did not have the money, and secondly, that he was not even in town and had not received any papers telling him he had to be in court. The police asked my father to promise them that he would go to court on Friday and talk to the judge. Friday, my father did go and sat waiting for the judge to finish what he was doing so he could speak to him. In the meantime, a policeman came and asked my father what he was doing. He took my father downstairs, looked him up in the computer, found that there was a warrant out for him, and put him in jail. My father was told that he would be in jail for a week. My father did not mind since he would not miss the DCFS administrative case review hearing that was scheduled for November 6. However, when he was brought before the judge, another week was added on, forcing him to be in jail until November 9, which would have caused him to miss the DCFS hearing. My grandmother then asked everyone for money to pay for my father's bond so that he would not miss the hearing. The same day that my father was released, DCFS rescheduled the appointment for December. November 9, the domestic battery case was continued for November 28.
At the same time, Mr. Mike Pavlovic evicted my father and grandmother from the apartment. A few people helped them move to a small apartment far from Chicago. In the meantime, I was still staying with the Serbian family. People started to come and tried to turn the family there against me. When that did not work, they started making up stories saying that I had said this or that. Finally, in November, I moved in with my father and grandmother. I was always extremely careful where I went and tried to stay indoors the most I could, so that I would not be set-up and arrested. During all of the hearings that had taken place until now, my father could be reproached of nothing, especially when DCFS delivered a third certificate stating that the children had not been abused. It became very obvious that the whole affair was a "frame-up.” Even Public Guardian Berry Newman brought Despot to the waiting room to be with my father so that they could talk. One day, he officially said, "We have caused grave injustices against this man." Just as soon as he said that, he was replaced by James Burton, a person with a chilling personality, very much resembling a well-known person of World War II. Mr. Burton, with Prosecutor Willie, were two monsters in the Juvenile Court, and with the solid support of Judge Zissman, were able to continue with their fraudulent schemes. December 5, a pick-up slip was placed in our post office box for a registered letter. We tried to retrieve the letter Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, but the employees could not find it. Friday evening, it was “found.” It was a letter telling my father to appear in divorce court at 9:00 a.m. the following Monday, December 11. This was extremely well set-up because my father was already obliged to appear in Juvenile Court December 11, at 9:00 a.m. That morning, my father and grandmother went to divorce court, asked to be excused for that day, and raced over to Juvenile Court. By the time they got there, everything was already over. They later learned that the children had all been there that morning. So that they would not see my father, he was set-up to be elsewhere at that time. The hearing was continued for December 18. Profiting from this set-up, Judge Zissman ordered that any consultations my father would have with Dr. Rousseau would no longer be paid. The reports that Dr. Rousseau issued were too much in my father’s favor. One of the visits he went to lasted three to four hours and the second one was even longer. Dr. Rousseau gave him a very thorough psychiatric exam. Dr. Rousseau reported a very stable personality and an intelligence level above average (for the mother, he had reported intelligence levels below average). During one of these two visits, Dr. Rousseau read Dr. Michel Louvain's report and said, "The report I have here states he found paranoia and resonant schizophrenia. I do not see how, or any way or reason he could have concluded that." The test that my father took must have had 100 or 200 questions. Afterwards, this test was submitted to the computer. After the first visit, Ms. Irizarry, social worker, came to take them home. From a respectable distance from them, she spoke to Dr. Rousseau. After a brief conversation, she tried to pressure him to change his position. Dr. Rousseau kept shaking his head, "No, no, no." Despite Ms. Irizarry's strong insistence, Dr. Rousseau remained firm in his position. His final report concluded that the children would be better in the father's custody rather than the mother's and that they would not be in any danger. Despot, who was still in the Uhlich Foster Home, was told, "Your father is a very nice man, and you will be able to see him soon." Visits with the father were NEVER authorized.
December 14, my father met with DCFS for the Administrative Case Review and learned very interesting things: Camille and Caroline had tried to commit suicide in October. Almost all of the children were on psychotropic medication, all of their grades had gone down dramatically, etc... Contrary to all psychiatric and medical results, Caroline now accused my father of sexual abuse. In August, at the review, the social workers had said that the plan to return the children to the mother would be cancelled because of the accusations that my father had made against my mother. Now, the social workers never recalled anyone saying that, and the children would be returned to the mother. The usual translator that would come to the appointments with DCFS was replaced. The new one was very well aware of my father's political history and several other details convinced my father that he was an officer. January 21, I called several people in Charleston to wish them a happy New Year. While speaking to one person, she told me that several people had recently come by looking for us, despite the fact that we had left Charleston in September of 1994. She recalled that one who had come over was working with an organization that helped pregnant teen-age mothers and had come by looking for me, leaving a number. Pregnant teen-age mothers? The next day, our telephone was disconnected without reason. I did call from a payphone, but the lady was ready for me and she said that she had just wanted to know how I was doing. After they had probably notified everyone not to say anything, our telephone service was turned back on. However, who was continuing to dirty us in Charleston? In January, my father was supposed to attend four hearings between three different courts. The divorce hearing was continued for February. January 25, my father’s attorney placed a motion for a substitute judge in Juvenile Court. Despite all the arguments, the motion was refused. During the last eight months all that we had been doing was running from court to court to attorneys, etc... My father and grandmother had to find the transportation and means by themselves to get around. My mother was always accompanied by one or more social workers. This was also the eighth month that she was living in a shelter, rent-free and well fed. DCFS caseworkers told the entire court that my father sexually abused all five of his girls. Judge Zissman of Juvenile Court prohibited Despot, Jr., who was to testify in Domestic Court, from testifying against the mother. The day of the domestic battery case, January 31, my mother arrived, accompanied by four social workers: Mildred Irizarry, Brenda, Sonia Freemond, and one other one. The dispute that had occurred May 25, occurred solely in our home and only the family was present. Not one social worker was present during the dispute and they had nothing to testify. The judge listened to Renee's side of the story which continually consisted of my father hitting her in the head, pushing her into the closet, even though she said she pushed him three times and caused him to fall to the ground, but he somehow managed to outrun her, etc... My father showed the judge that he was totally blind and that he had very limited mobility in his hands, etc... The judge asked Renee if she knew that her husband is blind. She responded, "No, I am not sure. Some people tell me that he must see a little." The judge said, "You have been married 18 years, and you do not know if your husband is blind?" Without even listening to my grandmother's testimony or continuing, he immediately declared my father not guilty and free to go. Since October 1995, a Chicago police officer, of Yugoslavian origin, agreed to help my father and grandmother after the request of a priest. Without knowing the story exactly, he tried to explain to my father that things here in America do not work that way, and that my father could not see things his way. Step-by-step, he would help my father to straighten everything out. He took my father to court for the domestic battery case, went with them to Juvenile Court, and went with them to the welfare office so that he could enroll them for Food Stamps and to get help. He found them lawyer Diego Bonesati to help him straighten out his immigration problems. The immigration file was transferred from Atlanta to Chicago. Mr. Bonesati filled out all the paperwork correctly and was to call them so they could meet at the Immigration office and obtain new papers. In November, the first surprise was that the welfare office found an excuse. Therefore, in December, they completely cancelled the file for Public Aid and Food Stamps. In January, the police officer, lawyer Bonesati, my grandmother, and my father met at the Immigration office and the papers were refused as well. The police officer tried to hold his anger in, but began to understand that this was no ordinary case. Still, he continued to try to help by showing up with my dad for divorce court, but he became increasingly perplexed at the results they were getting from everywhere they went and everything they did. (I apologize for not giving his name or initials. We agreed at the beginning that he would help us, but we could never give his name out.) In February, my father had to appear at quite a few courts, and on one of those days, someone entered our apartment and many documents as well as the audio tapes we had of Renee's conversations disappeared. When we asked our landlady if anyone had come by, she said that she had been at the doctor's office all day until 4:30 p.m. Thus, someone had chosen the time when both she and we would not be there. At the same time, my brother found out our telephone number and called my grandmother saying that he could not take it anymore. My grandmother said that she was old and ill and the reason she came over here was to see her grandchildren. Therefore, she decided to go see him and at least try to convince him to hold on just a little longer. February 20, was the date of the next hearing in Juvenile Court. That day, the children were all present. The hearing had been scheduled at 9:30 a.m., but the case was not presented before the court until 5:00 that evening. All day, the children played next to my father and grandmother in the same waiting room. Meanwhile, the social workers stood by and waited for my father to get up and talk to any of them or hug them, so that they could accuse him of contacting the children once in court. Renee's attorney requested that the children have unsupervised overnight visits with the children. The judge asked my father to prepare the reasons why he opposes the unsupervised overnight visits and to bring them to court February 22. That day, my father gave the court the following: "I oppose my wife's possibility of having unsupervised visits with the children because I strongly believe that such visits would carry dangerous risks of harm towards the children and that my wife lacks responsibility, substantiated by the following past incidents: "In the sixteen above points, I only listed the most recent and the most serious incidents. I did not detail any abuse against Corinne; for example, my wife used to pull her hair, bite her, beat her, throw her on the floor, call her extremely sexually vulgar names so that even Sonia Freemond, DCFS investigator, said that it was the first time she heard that a mother could call her daughter such names. I also did not include her abnormal behavior; such as, stopping our truck at a traffic light, getting out of the truck while leaving us there, and coming back ten minutes later to unplug the traffic congestion she caused. She would also step outside the house wrapped around only in a sheet. She would also hurt the children emotionally by frequently repeating that she, "sticks all seven of us up her a--," that, "Corinne and Dad have AIDS so don't touch their plates or glasses," and continually tried to turn the children against me. The court also possesses the following documents: A video tape in which: An audio tape given to Ms. Mildred Irizarry July 5, 1995, on which: Mildred Irizarry took the audiotape out of the file, but one month later; I gave the same tape to Mr. Berry Newman, the attorney for the children.
Despite the letter and the proofs, the unsupervised, overnight weekend and holiday visits were authorized in my mother's new apartment for which social services paid four months of rent in advance, Catholic Charities completely furnished, etc... About the same time, Despot, my brother, had begun fleeing the foster home and came to see us every weekend. One day, taking out revenge, the foster home supervisor, Mr. Frank Singleton, threw Despot to the floor, causing his head to hit the floor, making him lose his breath, and obliged them to take him to the hospital. In court on February 20, the story was completely faked by saying that it had been a fight between Despot and his sister, the staff was not in anyway asked to explain, and Despot who was there was not asked any questions. After the incident, my father addressed the following letter to Judge Zissman: “I just received a letter from Despot which profoundly shocked me and I believe this situation to no longer be tolerable. An end must be put to the violence that the children are undergoing immediately. I do not understand your way of working and sharing justice: permitting visits to a mother for which I furnished a videotape showing how she lies naked in bed with the children, showing Christine confirming that she was abused by the mother, and also Despot admitting that he saw his mother sucking Christine's tongue. I also furnished an audiotape on which Christine, a second time, confirms that her mother was sucking her tongue, and also where my wife herself tells Christine, "Tonight we will have a good time my dear, right? Let Mommy touch your genitals, they're Mommy's, right?” August 25, I told you once again that Christine had tried to suicide because of the sexual abuse she had been subjected to by her mother. In June, you received a 30-page letter in which Corinne described the abnormal behavior of her mother. I certify that everything in the letter is true and IF YOU CAN PROVE THAT THERE IS JUST ONE LIE IN THAT LETTER, I WILL TAKE ON ALL THE ALLEGATIONS AS TRUE AND GIVE UP CUSTODY OF THE: CHILDREN AND ALLOW THE FOSTER HOMES TO TAKE THEM.
February 22, we also learned that Caroline had stated that she was sexually abused by my father. Ms. Learetta Tyson, my father's attorney told my father not to worry because there was no evidence of sexual abuse in any of the medical examinations and nothing was indicated in the psychiatric exams. Judge Zissman told my father that as soon as my father fulfills his obligations to obtain a report from Dr. Rousseau stating that there is no obstacle to him having supervised visits with his son, he shall gladly authorize them right away. My father fulfilled his obligations and contrary to Judge Zissman's promise, a hearing had to be set for March 7, to determine if it were at all possible for my father to have supervised visits with his son. March 7, the judge was absent. The hearing was rescheduled for March 18. That day, all subjects, other than the authorization of the visits were discussed. At 3:00 p.m., he was left without a translator. As they know, my father is totally blind, 100% deaf in the left ear, can barely hear with his right ear, and understands very little English. Four times, they made him raise his hand, wanting to make him swear something, but he lowered his hand. I AM CONVINCED THAT THE AMERICAN LAW IS GOOD, BUT I AM ALSO CONVINCED THAT BEFORE A JUDGE CAN MAKE SOMEONE SWEAR SOMETHING, HE MUST BE SURE THAT ONE HAS HEARD AND UNDERSTOOD HIS QUESTION. After my father had lowered his hand for the fourth time, a social worker, who spoke a little bit of French, came and held his hand raised in the air, telling him in French that he was to swear. He accepted, thinking that she was to remain next to him to translate the judge's question, but she left. The judge and his attorney asked him several questions, having to repeat them several times because he either could not hear them or could not understand them. All of this created for them an amusement. My father later told me, "I heard them laugh several times, but I believe that in the American society, as well as anywhere else in the world, a handicapped person has the right to an honorable and dignified place, and that mockery on the court's behalf does not belong in a court of justice." Later, he understood that the judge maybe wanted to know his address so that he could send the police to his home and embarrass them in their new neighborhood. The dangerous part was that my mother was present, and because she threatened to kill him several times, he did not want her to know where he lived. In March 1994, the FBI in Charleston, SC, filed a report and placed a strict watch on persons entering the U.S. list for Robert Klos, Bernard Klos, and Camille Klos (my mother's father and two brothers), because they had threatened to come kill my father. At about this time, we found out where Catherine's and Christine's school was. One day, my father, grandmother, and I went there. While they waited in the car, I introduced myself as a social worker and the school allowed me to go see Catherine. Catherine was very happy and surprised when she saw me. She quickly warned me to be very careful of Christine because she would tell everything she saw to the foster parents. We could only talk for a few minutes and then I had to leave quickly. Everything went as normal and the school did not notice anything abnormal. Since that day, several times after that, on my way up to Chicago, vans tried to cut me off, in such a way that I would almost have an accident, but they would not carry a big risk. It was almost more than certain that these were not coincidences, but premeditated actions. A few weeks later, we decided to see Catherine in school again. As usual, we took I-94 to go to Chicago, and then suddenly exited for Tinley Park. Ten minutes later, we were at the school. This time, however, the school had been warned. (BY WHOM??) Upon my arrival at the school, five persons, including the principal awaited me. I could see a bit further away and my sisters were not in class, but were being held in the principal's office. They had taken them out of class so that I would not have a chance to visit them. They barred my path asking me for identification. I produced some papers, which they copied. Then, after handing me my papers, they refused to let me see them. They tried to restrain me, but after a physical struggle with the principal, I left and we drove off. My brother Despot would see his sisters from time to time. This gave us an opportunity to maintain some contact with the children by giving them gifts while hiding small notes inside them. The notes were hidden well, wrapped in the item and the package resealed to the same factory standard. However, once at the Uhlich Center, the workers would unwrap the gift, take out the note in a precise way, and give the gifts to the children. The way this was handled left no doubt that they had been forewarned that there was a note inside. Further, they did this only to the girls and not to any of the other kids in the center. April 9, the judge and the attorneys met together to discuss procedure plans for the trial that was supposed to take place April 17, but all was postponed because the state was not ready. May 1, my father and grandmother went to the divorce court, but it was postponed because neither Renee, nor her attorney, was present. In the meantime, I started working and contacted an attorney from the Legal Assistance Foundation, Ms. Stacey Platt. She wrote a letter to the court requesting information on my status and explaining my position. No response was received. However, my mother who worked only for a couple of months, January and February, before she quit her job, was very well supported by the social workers. After over eight months of living in a shelter, even though the limit for most women is 90 days, she moved to an apartment where the social workers prepaid her rent two months in advance, her deposit, and Catholic Charities totally furnished it for her. She also received Public Aid assistance and Food Stamps. On the other hand, my father who is blind and was in dire need of assistance still received no SSI, no Food Stamps, no medical insurance benefits, and no cash assistance. Furthermore, when he went out and tried to make a living on his own by selling the stock of trains he had left, people were forewarned not to buy anything. One day when having sold nothing all day in South Bend, Indiana, my father and I went to ask for help in the churches there to see if they could assist us in at least returning home, or with food. The secretary of St. Joseph Church said, "You are from Chicago, right?" Before I had time to say anything, she corrected herself and said, "No, that's right, you are from Gary." I had made no mention whatsoever of being from either Gary or Chicago, and nothing we had indicated that. How did she know that we were in some way connected with both Gary and Chicago? Furthermore, all of the priests in all of the churches somehow were not in and their secretaries had absolutely no idea when they would be back. The immigration problem was still unresolved. My father still could not contact or visit the children. May 6, my brother wrote a letter to President Clinton asking him why our family has been so mistreated here in the U.S. and why he, being a U.S. citizen, was sold to the French and Yugoslavs. He no longer wanted to return to the foster home. May 6, he slept under a stairwell of a building, the night after in a basement of a house. Wednesday, May 8, at about 2:30 p.m. he went to my father's home crying. He spent the night there and my grandmother accompanied him back to the foster home, May 9. Friday, May 10, he called my father and said that they had expelled him from school. The teachers of the foster home school put him out on the street and locked the door, so that he could not get back in. He went to Montgomery Ward and called my father. My father advised him to return to the foster home. Despot was placed in a psychiatric hospital where he held another 7-day hunger strike. The foster home staff had to have a reason to place him in the hospital, so they said that every time he ran away, he came back with a letter from my father, that he had told the staff that he had not eaten in a very long time, and that Despot weighed only 80 pounds. Of course, all of this was entirely false. Despot was in very good health except for the fact that he was very depressed. He was hospitalized from May 10 to May 30. His sisters came to visit him and he asked Caroline, "So, I hear you are going to testify against Dad?” She responded, "I don't want to, but Mom wants me to." My brother was given psychiatric medication while in the hospital. This time they switched hospitals, from River Edge to Children's Memorial, so that it would not be so obvious that they keep placing a child who has less mental problems than they do in a psychiatric hospital. Even the doctors asked him, "Why do they keep pushing so much against your father?" One would think that this is happening in the former U.S.S.R. where sane people are placed in hospitals so that their ideas can be changed. Some Americans call this liberty. When my father was younger, he had read books about hospitals in the Soviet Union, where people with different political opinions would be hospitalized and brainwashed. Often, this Communist regime was spoken about, but as something that does not concern us directly and that takes place far away from us. He could never imagine that ten years after the fall of the Soviet Union, these methods would still be used in the United States. Once after the children are broken down, and ready to testify against the father, the rest of the comedy continues. At our residence in Gary, the police come looking for me and I was obliged to hide in the apartment. I fled to my grandmother, who was staying with an elderly lady she was caring for. I stayed there awaiting June 3, to turn eighteen years of age, and my father remained alone in the apartment. In April, I found a small job at Ace Hardware. During my "free-time," sitting on a footstool, nervously, on the verge of a depression breakdown, I typed this letter. It is very difficult to explain how aggressively we were pursued. We were continually defending ourselves against all the accusations that were thrown at us and without financial means, we tried to do the best we could. At the same time, this herd of psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers were brainwashing the children. The "mother" was put on a pedestal. Qualities and characteristics, which she did not have, were attributed to her, and an illusion of the mother was created in the minds of the children. At the same time, the father was denounced; Sonja Freemond, Mildred Irizarry, James Burton, Brenda, etc..., mocked my father openly in waiting rooms in front of the children. Very often, they would place the children next to my father in the waiting rooms, and would tell them, "See, your father doesn't even care about you, he doesn't even speak to you." Of course, they never explained to them that my father was forbidden by court to even come in contact with them. What they were waiting for was for my father to break that order so that they would have something to speak about in court. During this time, Miss Brenda from court, despite her advanced age, never married, combed my children in front of my father, played with them and their hair, while speaking to them about how she was going to adopt them. You have to live through something like this to understand. Only making matters worse, May 22, my father called his attorney and we learned the following: Against the law, the judge authorized a motion to advance the trial date to May 24 without all parties being present. My father's attorney was not even told. Without having any time to prepare ourselves, we learned that Caroline would testify against my father. Despite Ms. Tyson's objections that my father and not all parties were present, as well as the fact that we were not given notice, the judge decided to have Caroline testify anyway. Excerpts from court records show how the court completely disregarded the law. Also, in Line 6, Mr. Williams specifically states how Caroline was prepared for testimony. We learned later that Caroline with the probation officer of the court, Ms. Brenda, visited our former apartment at North Keystone Avenue to better visualize and memorize her testimony. With Ms. Tyson's cross-examination, it is very easy to see that Caroline was well prepared beforehand. Furthermore, she continued to prove that the psychiatric reports were correct, which stated: Caroline is easily manipulated and likes to manipulate others. The following has been extracted from records of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, Department of Juvenile Justice and Child Protection Division, Circuit Court Case Numbers 95JA 3814-19, Volume 7, pages 27 and 28: 1. MS. TYSON: Judge, the supplemental petition was filed by the GAL. This is the first 2. I think that I know of that the State is now calling her [(CAROLINE) SIC] as a witness. 3. There has been no witness list produced by any of the parties. 4. MR. WILLIAMS: I was here on the pretrial date, and on the pretrial date, which we were 5. ready to proceed with those, my main concern is I have a child witness out there who is 6. willing to testify, and who has gone through a lot to be willing to testify today. I don't 7. care about the other issues, but as far as the trial today, I'd be asking this court to 8. allow her to testify, and the other issues we can deal with them -- I know that counsel 9. has issues with this child and having her finish her testimony in particular, but my concern 10. is with this child and having her finish today, and move on. If those issues come out, 11. and the parties have some issues stricken at a later time, I think we can definitely add 12. that part to the order, as well as, leave it up to your discretion of counsel's ability 13. to attack those issues at that time. My concern is for the child in allowing her to move 14. on with her life. 15. MS. TYSON: Judge, I would object to going forward and taking testimony from Caroline. 16. If the State and GAL was so interested in protecting the interest of the child, they would 17. not have called her here without having these issues resolved. 18. "THE COURT: Well, all of these issues are going forward. If you're claiming the 19. Defendant was surprise 20. MS. TYSON: I'm not claiming that it comes as a surprise, Judge, but in all fairness, 21. I had objections to the motions and the orders that were entered by this court, one of which 22. was to allow this child to testify today, and to have her -- bring her here, simply says 23. to me: "Well. the Court has already made up their mind, well particularly, the State's 24. Attorney and the GAL -- 25. MR. BURTON: I don't know about counsel -- 26. MS. TYSON: -- what's happening here is: they have already made up their minds, and 27. will move forward with allowing this child to testify here. This is a sham. An excerpt from page 5 of the same court record shows who was present in court that day: MR. AUGUSTYN: For the record, my name is Jim Augustyn, your Honor, attorney and GAL for Despotovic, Jr. and GAL for Corinne. MR. WILLIAMS: I'm David Williams, representing the People. MS. TYSON: I'm Learetta Tyson, representing the Respondent/father, Despot Despotovic, not present in court today. MS. TOUSSAINT: I'm Marie Toussaint, representing the mother, Renee Despotovic, who is present. MR. BURTON: James Burton, Assistant Public Guardian representing Caroline, Catherine, Christine, and Camille Despotovic (phonetic spellings) at this time. Caroline got on the witness stand. That day, she was fifteen years of age. Despite the fact that there was absolutely no evidence of physical, or sexual abuse in any medical, psychiatric, or psychological report, the court revolved around fondling, touching, fondling, touching, fondling, touching, the only allegations that could be stated. She tried to explain that in the past her father tried to, or has hit her with cables, belts, sticks, that she has suffered too much, that in Charleston she was sexually abused, etc... The judge asked her whether the abuse continued after our grandmother arrived from Yugoslavia to which she responded, "No." After she understood that my father could not be held liable for actions occurring in South Carolina in Chicago, she changed her testimony to saying that she was abused in Chicago as well. However, at all times while we were in Chicago, my grandmother was with us. She described one instance of alleged sexual abuse as follows: She was in the bedroom [the one that did not even have a door, but rather a curtain] while her other five brother and sisters, mother, and grandmother were right outside the curtain, in the living room watching television. She says my father went into the room and supposedly tried touching her, but she told him in a soft voice to move back. The second alleged time was in January 1995, in the bathroom after she had awoken. When questioned as to a time, she said that first it was about 5:00 A.M., then, no, 6:00 A.M., and finally, no, it was 8:00 A.M. while getting ready for school and the sun shining through. She stated that my father entered the bathroom and again started to touch her while she had gotten out of the bathtub and was wrapped only in a towel. When Ms. Tyson cross-examined her, she said that my father was the one to remove the towel. Ms. Tyson asked her if she tried to move away, she said, "No.” When asked how she responded, she said that she just told my father to move back. When asked if anyone else heard this, she said, "No, we were whispering." When asked where the other children were, she said everyone was asleep. That is completely false, for all the children got up at the same time each morning, 7:00 to 7:30 A.M., and there was always a wait to have access to the bathroom as they all got ready for school. Also, as lazy as Caroline was, she was usually the last one out of bed and the last one to get to the bathroom. When asked if she told anyone about these events at the time they occurred she said, "No." Many other contradictions developed through the testimonial comedy, which lasted a long time. Everyone saw through her lies, but the court accepted it because it followed the flow of their interest in giving a reason of why the children were taken away. May 30, Despot, Jr., was released from the hospital and returned to the Uhlich Foster Home. One-half hour later, he escaped, came to our house and we sent him to a safe place. Later, he sent a letter to the judge telling him that if they tried picking him up one more time, he would commit suicide. June 3, I turned eighteen years of age, and returned to stay with my father. A few days later, we received a telephone call from Caroline, as if nothing had happened. She wanted to meet with me. I drove up to Chicago, we met, embraced, talked, and she was very happy to see me. Day after day, while I was at work, she called and talked to my father. A second time, my father and I went up to Chicago, and all three of us met at Burger King. This time I brought pictures of the family and I realized that she had a hard time remembering things, for she was under psychotropic medication. She wanted to leave the foster home, but wanted to be with neither her mother, nor her father. She wanted me to rent an apartment and for both of us to get custody of the other children. She wanted her freedom, her outings. She skipped lots of classes. From being an honor roll student in the eighth grade, she fell to finishing her first year of high school with six "F's." At the end, she kissed my Dad good-bye and left. She continued to call us from a payphone away from the foster home. However, despite precautions that she herself took to avoid DCFS from finding out that she was calling us, DCFS mysteriously found out and Ms. Brenda and Ms. Irizarry surrounded Caroline. Since then, we have had no telephone contact with Caroline.
June 18, my grandfather from France arrived with a stack of money (a mystery as to the origin of the money) and bought a new car cash for my mother. At the beginning of July, my father and grandmother prepared to go once more in front of the White House to protest. They tried to hold my father back from going: A detective called my father at home and said that he needed to interrogate him regarding a complaint received from DCFS. Supposedly, Christine confided, more than one year later, to a social worker that she was improperly touched by her father. There was no testimony from Christine whatsoever, just a supposed secret to the social worker. Christine was asked to draw a picture of her father. She drew a face with a big smile and across the paper wrote "asshole." Psychiatric interpretation: The child knows what is demanded of her, to speak negatively against the father; however, her remembrance of her father is clear --- a smiling, loving person. We were conscious of the fact that they want to stop us from going to Washington, D.C. Despite all of this, Ms. Dorothy Bates from Washington, D.C., called us regularly to give us her support, to calm us down, and to convince us to remain patient and await for trial. Her hypocrisy had no end, and it was just to calm the game so that they could do anything they wanted with us. Sunday, July 7, 1997, my father and grandmother left for Washington, D.C. While they were in front of the White House, I appeared for trial in court July 9. Once they had found something to accuse my father with, it was no longer considered a hearing, but part of the trial. I had a chance to speak with my maternal grandfather and I learned that DCFS had opened all the files up for him, confided to him all of our depositions, and even gave him our address and telephone number. That was my first time back in court after I had run away. I was approached by a police officer who asked me what my name is and then took me to the police office in the court building, because I had a warrant for my arrest since I had runaway more than fourteen months ago. I was released to DCFS custody after which we all appeared before court. The judge questioned me on my whereabouts for that past year as well as the whereabouts of my brother. After I refused to release information about my brother, on basis that Despot said he would commit suicide if he were picked up, he threatened to hold me in contempt of court and send me to jail. Ms. Tyson blew up and tried everything to get the judge to change his mind. Even Ms. Irizarry and the attorney for DCFS proposed putting me in a foster home rather than sending me to jail. It was very clear to me that a spark of human conscience ignited in them, for they were sick of seeing my mother win all sides, despite proofs we had against her, and it was once again I that would suffer to satisfy her pleasures. They even tried getting Judge Zissman to switch jails, to a female only, or smaller jail. While everyone was panicking, ranting, and raving on my behalf, I turned and looked at my mother. I shall never forget what I saw that day: Seated, her hands folded across her chest, she sat there smiling. Without legal representation that day at all, I was handcuffed and escorted to the court jail, after which I was transferred to the worst jail in Chicagoland, Cook County Jail. The next morning, I was again brought in front of Judge Zissman, and asked if I was now willing to tell him where my brother was. I told him that the last time I spoke to my brother, he had told me that he was calling from our former neighborhood in Chicago, but that I had no idea where he was at now. The judge said that he was convinced I knew where he was, so he would hold me in contempt until I tell him. He made me call our home and check to see if Despot had left any messages on our answering machine several times a day while handcuffed to a chair. I was brought handcuffed before the judge several times a day, and kept locked up in jail in the meantime. My grandfather from Yugoslavia sent the court a letter by fax, telling the judge that neither my father, nor I knew where Despot was, for Despot had called him and my grandfather had sent him to a friend of a friend's house here in the United States. The judge still refused to let me free, and said he would keep me until Despot decided to show up in court. Friday evening, he said that spending the weekend in jail would probably either make me tell him where my brother was, or make my brother appear. By Monday, still nothing happened, and as everyone grew wearisome of his entire deal, he decided to continue to hold me. I spent my nights in Cook County Jail, surrounded by prostitutes, murderers, drug dealers and the like, who, despite their backgrounds, gave me full support and told me that they were only trying to scare me, for that is their technique. My days, I spent in the Juvenile Court jail, with breaks so that the judge could get a pleasure of interrogating me, and letting me see yet another horrible facet of America. Finally, a week later, after achieving nothing but to disgust me further of his so called court of justice, he decided to release me to a foster home. I told him very plainly that he was free to say what he wanted, but I had turned eighteen, was employed full-time, and that I was going to not go to a foster home, but return to my own home, and that no one was going to decide for me where I was to go. He quietly allowed me to go home with my father if I promised to show up for the next court date. I did. The same day, he told me that he would give me the right to see my sisters. The attorney in Renee's behalf objected, but he said, "No, I do not like for siblings to be separated. I want all of you to see each other." I was taken back to the Cook County Jail to be released that Tuesday. However, I was not released until Wednesday morning. While I had been in jail, my car had remained in the Juvenile Court Parking Garage. My mother found it and gave the license plate number to Donna and Ray from Tinley Park (Christine/Catherine's foster parents). They had it traced for her and gave her the address of the home of a Serbian family where I had registered my car. Renee then put the girls in the car and went cruising around their home hoping to spy on us. Her persistence was so great that the man living in the house got in his car to follow her and ask her what she was doing around his house. After a mad chase, with four girls in the car, she managed to escape. A little while afterwards, one day the Serbian family found their house surrounded by several people with guns. We only heard a part of this story, as after I asked what they were looking for, the person who told me this shrunk within themselves and said, "Oh, just the people who used to live here before us." We did not want to ask any more questions, because we were pretty sure that they had been looking for us and were embarrassed that it had caused them so much trouble. We were pretty sure that these people came from Caroline's behalf, who was already within gangs, and who did not spend her weekends with her sisters anymore, but spent them on the streets. During the whole time, my father and grandmother were in front of the White House for the third time. Once again, thousands and thousands of tourists passed them by. My father and grandmother each had a sign that measured six by four feet hanging around their necks, displaying pictures, documents, police reports, and explanations. This time, they noticed that even employees from the White House came out and read the signs discreetly. The White House was perfectly well aware of what was going on, but none of them had the courage to change anything. They are equal to an ostrich that sticks its head in a hole and tries to understand no further. Only a symbol of executive power, the White House does not govern this country but sadly, their C.I.A. Mafia. Mrs. Dorothy Bates came again to see them. She was not happy at all; however, she herself admitted that nothing was done. There was still no authorized visits for the grandmother; and, contrary to psychiatric recommendations, were still prohibited for the father as well. Short, nothing had changed. Her idea went farther; she wanted me, who had since turned eighteen, to be locked up in a psychiatric institution, so that six months later I would come out as a "happy person." Psychiatric institution for me??? It is more than certain that Mrs. Dorothy Bates has a mental problem, which is apparent at first contact. She also fits the role of a person infiltrated in the American administration with the duty of protecting the interests of another country. While in Washington, D.C., my father called the D.S.T. in Marseilles, France. Mr. Rene, Mr. Martinez, and Mr. Rossi were no longer there, but the secretary kept asking who was calling. Mr. Sardi was out of the office and would be back in half an hour after lunch. When he called back, they had no idea who Mr. Sardi was. My father introduced himself, and they said they had absolutely no idea who Mr. Despotovic was and said they were completely innocent for whatever was happening. After two weeks of protest, they came back home to Chicago, hoping that we had exposed enough documents to attract the responsible person in the White House and that something would change. In August, I got my first visit with my sisters. I brought all kinds of pastries, cookies, and drinks. The children were happy, but DCFS saw the danger: that my sisters would remember how nice it was at home and turn back towards us. Immediately, all visits were cancelled without any decision from the judge. In September, there were several trial dates. Most strangely, when Despot called Caroline and mentioned something about the next court date, she told him that it would be continued for another day and gave him the exact date. We did not even believe that, and went to court as usual. All parties were present, and we all waited the entire morning, after which we were told that the French translator was unavailable, and the court date was continued to the exact date Caroline had told Despot. Incredible, but true, Caroline and Renee were always told in advance exactly what would happen in court. Only one more proof that Judge Zissman was a puppet on a string and who only executed orders that came from higher up. The day of the trial, Renee testified and tried to throw out accusations that my father sexually abused me. However, she was unable to state that she heard or saw something. There was nothing concrete. It was absurd and ridiculous. Responding to a question, she said, "Yes, I saw him abusing Corinne. The first time was in Charleston. I would walk outside around the house while he was abusing her. I did not want to go inside to interrupt them. Later, here in Chicago, the same thing." The judge asked how could a mother who saw or suspected something like that did not intervene? "I couldn't," she said, "While he was abusing Corinne, his mother would stand guard at the door so that I wouldn't disturb them." The judge said, "As far as I can see, you are stronger and more corpulent than your mother-in-law. How come you didn't even try to intervene?" She responded, "Well, I didn't." The judge asked her, "Is it not true that you already signed four typed pages of a letter stating that all accusations you stated against your husband in South Carolina were false?" She said, "Yes, but they [my father and I] forced me to sign that." Exiting the courtroom, she herself aware of the transparency of her lies, angrily, kept repeating, "They didn't believe me, they didn't believe me." During the trial, the court asked us for our names and addresses. My mother grabbed the opportunity of finding out our real address in Gary, Indiana. One night, to my surprise, I saw her on a parking lot at Wiseway (grocery store) in a car, accompanied by a man seated next to her. It had shocked me terribly to have known she had come from the North side of Chicago to Gary, Indiana, with I do not know what goal.
Before presenting our defense, Ms. Tyson confronted the judge about Caroline's testimony and asked that it be rejected. Ms. Tyson specifically listed the numerous times where Caroline continually contradicted herself, outright lied about instances, seen by an incoherent grouping of facts; Yet, the judge said that he would not throw her testimony out. Eric Moore, a DCFS social worker came to testify on our behalf, stating strongly that he did not believe the children had been abused. Eric Moore did not follow our case until the end; right after he was assigned our case, he asked for a transfer out of the department. WHY??? I testified after him. My testimony was shocking, the courtroom was full, and the judge himself looked for words to let things flow as if the testimony was like any other. However, it was quite disturbing to hear the following: I had taken on adult responsibilities at the age of seven or eight, my little sister Christine had tried to commit suicide by drinking a bottle of ether (the judge asked where the ether had come from to which I responded, "France") and had also been taken to a hospital because she had been brutalized by the mother, I defended my brother after the mother tried to make him eat vomited eggs off the floor, that I had sustained a quantity of verbal abuses, her food poisoning (including the fact that she admitted it herself), and much more. The court already possessed a bundle of needles and syringes which she used to poison our food and audiotapes with several excerpts of what her family from France advised her to do (including the part where she HERSELF told Christine, "These are Mommy’s' genitals aren't they? We are going to have a good time tonight," etc...). I explained under what condition the videotape showing her naked in bed with the children was made and the audiotape where Christine tells how she was abused by the mother, etc... As soon as the judge agreed on viewing the videotape, my mother's attorney opposed because the video was an excerpt, and not the original. I explained to them that I had to transfer all the video from the microcassettes to the regular VHS tape, but that I still had the original and could bring them next time. The reason everything had been placed on the VHS tape in excerpts was because of the volume needed, requiring many more tapes, and by creating one, I just placed all the important parts. Yet, because it would have been catastrophically negative for my mother, the judge refused to accept the videotape. In this way, my testimony under direct examination ended, and the court date was continued to October 25, when I would be cross-examined, more than one and one-half month later. October 25, 1996, was the last day of the trial. I was cross-examined by the attorneys, who are amazed at the lack of contradictions. They tried to hurt me by saying that my sisters refused to see me; false, of course, for the last time in court Christine had hugged me, cried with me and whispered in my ear, "Hug and kiss Daddy for me." The two video microcassettes that we brought were completely ignored, for now "they were of no use." Ms. Tyson presented her last witness, Dr. Aushtoff, whom as a professional psychiatrist had examined the case and concluded there was no abuse. Judge Zissman refused to allow him to testify, "because he would turn the case around." The children abusers are my father, my grandmother, and I, and we have no right to see the children. The same night, the children were handed over to the mother. The mother came out of the room, her mind blank and lost. She well appreciated the ceremony until then, for she was the star, the accused were us. However, now when the fact that she was now responsible for the children's welfare surfaced, she was panicking. She was firmly grasping and releasing repeatedly the handrail next to the staircase, while social workers patted her on the back offering comfort and not knowing why she was acting this way. For me, too, it was a terrible shock. I arrived in America at four years of age, and since then, I know nothing but tears. I looked around me, state's attorney (attorney for the people, which people though?), social workers, judges, etc..., all with cynical smiles, trying to mask the truth they well know underneath, yet still following orders from someone higher up. Amongst ourselves, we bet how many weeks or months my mother will be able to take care of the children. We tell each other that she will hold on until Christmas for sure because of the holidays, and will break down in January, as is her habit. Our guesses were too generous. The first week of December, someone called us at night, from Chicago, asking us if Renee was there. We were astonished, but with her, problems were already knee-deep. Later, we found out that after an argument, she had left the house and children by themselves. Someone had called us thinking she may have returned to her ex-husband. About this time, our landlady started to find nit-picking ways of harassing us. Her health degraded quickly and to our advantage, she had to spend the winter with her daughter in Minnesota. Had that not been the case, we would have most likely found ourselves out in the snow that winter. It is almost impossible to present to you this story because of its more than multi-plots which all occur at the same time. That is why I have not yet mentioned the problems occurring in Yugoslavia during 1996. With retirement, my grandparents had consecrated themselves to the church. In this way, my grandfather became Dakon to Vladika G. (Vladika would be the equal of an Archbishop in the Catholic faith and a Dakon would be the closest assistant to the Archbishop. Vladika G. is one of the most widely known Vladikas in Yugoslavia.) Being a friend of the family, Vladika G. asked the priests here while visiting to come to our aid in this difficult situation. His authority posed no doubt among the priests here, and the aid we received was significant, which obstructed the C.I.A. from drowning us to the lowest depths. The Yugoslavian services performed a service for the C.I.A. by publishing an article in four parts in Ilustrovana Politika stating the biggest lies against Vladika G. The hat for the main contributor of the information was "bestowed" to my grandfather, ensuring that Vladika G. would no longer come to our aid. Despite the attempt made to humiliate Vladika G., he remained high in respect, and no harm was done to his authority. This whole affair was not orchestrated solely to cause us problems, but also with the goal to weaken the authority of the Church in Yugoslavia. The population was turning away from Communism because of widespread corruption in politics. By degrading the authority of the Church, the government hoped to reclaim some respect. For me, stress was a major problem, for I not only encountered stress at home due to the children, but also terribly at my employment. Since spring, I had been working at Ace Hardware, and from month to month, the situation got worse due to widespread shoplifting by the employees. My fellow employees could not stand me, for they felt too watched by me. I was even threatened with death by Ms. Caroline Taylor. (She was also known as Caroline Davenport. The strangest thing in her case was the fact that she was jailed for criminal activities, is presently in court for a big shoplifting activity from Kohl's, receives Food Stamp, though she owns three houses, and is the legal guardian of three children from social services.) I was not afraid, but I cite it only to demonstrate how conditions were exceedingly difficult. The owner, Mr. Mike Ajder, told me to hang on, some more, and some more, and some more, for things would change. My employer and several others were amazed at the rate at which I learned my job, and I was very quickly promoted to assistant manager. January 2, 1997, someone broke my car, windows, steering column, and locks, while parked underneath my bedroom window. At first, we thought that it was the employees of my store who were out for vengeance because I had caught them shoplifting. However, several events later seemed to prove something else. Let me explain: At the end of 1996, because of DCFS intervention in our family life and because of a mentally disturbed mother, Caroline (child of 15) plunged into the gangs of Chicago's neighborhoods. At that time, we were living on Adams Street in Gary, Indiana. I was a manager at a retail store and divorce proceedings for my father were still pending. Despite all the aid that my mother received from organizations and public assistance, our financial situation was greatly above hers. The first days of January 1997, there was to be a hearing in Juvenile Court. To our great surprise, three days prior, someone vandalized my car during the night. We knew my mother very well, and being the third month that my sisters had been with her, we awaited to hear from them any day. The news came from court, the new judge, Judge Sharon Coleman, had decided that as of January 9, 1997, we (my father, grandmother, and I) were prohibited from interesting ourselves or contacting the children either directly or indirectly. More than certain, my mother had started to cause trouble. Afraid we would find out, they barred us from all means of contact in an effort to cover her up. In February, I was transferred to another Ace Hardware in Hobart, Indiana. It was a big store of 12,000 square feet (plus a large warehouse in back) containing more than 50,000 items. Being promoted to manager, it was now up to me to order all merchandise, make schedules, train and hire employees, take care of the money, and anything else. This forced me to work 12 hours a day, almost every day. I received many congratulations. People found it incredible that I was so young, knew every item in the store, did my work efficiently with no problems, and had only been one year. To me this was normal, and I seemed astonished at their remarks. All of this did not follow someone's plan, and one day, I received a phone call from an employee of the previous store telling me that the police had just left there and were on their way to find me. Very shortly afterwards, three police cars arrived creating a large ceremony --- all of this to make me sign a piece of paper saying that I would attend the hearing in Juvenile Court, Calender E, March 4. When I questioned the police as to why it took three cars to deliver a piece of paper, they said because they were the police. In their goal to degrade me in front of my fellow employees, they only obtained the opposite. Everyone at the store knew me as an honest person who spent her time working from morning to night, and they laughed saying, "Is it for those idiots that we pay taxes?" March 4, we were present in court and spoke to social worker Mildred Irizarry. It was very apparent that she was tired of this whole affair, and that may be why she told us that out of 90 school days, Caroline had NOT attended 73 of them. She said, "I spoke to her for about 10 hours, Mr. Francisco spoke to her, Ms. Brenda spoke to her, psychiatrists, counselors, and teachers. Nothing has changed, she still refuses to go to school." It was very apparent that neither my mother nor the entire DCFS gang had control over my sister and that slowly, but surely, she was going downhill. They tried all means to rescue the situation, to no avail, to avoid looking like a band of total incompetents, even by removing two students who were thought to have a negative influence on Caroline to another school. DCFS, perfectly aware that they had ruined the future of Caroline and the other children as well, still refused to confront their failure. They still wanted my father to be examined by yet another psychiatrist and for him to go to school and learn how to be a good parent. He responded, "To be a good parent? Maybe you should come to my house and learn a few things. With me, the children had honors in school, and did fine. With you, they are all going downhill." Dr. Andre Rousseau gave Ms. Irizarry a list of French-speaking psychiatrists in Chicago. Seven months later she finally recommended my father to one. In front of the judge, we learned our accusations: we had taped a letter on the building entrance where my mother was living in November of the previous year. They knew very well that we had no idea where she lived; yet, the accusation was against us. It gave them an ideal excuse to relocate her. A hearing was set for April, May, and finally occurred in June. During February, March, and April, several young people always hung about our house and at the end of the block, whenever Corinne was due to come home from work. In June, we were very stressed and felt that something was brewing. My father's cousin, Dr. Milenkovic, announced his arrival to the U.S. for June 17, 1997. June 18, there was to be a new hearing in Juvenile Court. The morning of June 14, my car was stolen from its parking space underneath the bedroom window. After calling the police, we learned that the thieves had been arrested 15 minutes after stealing the vehicle when they ran a red light a few streets away. The Gary police arrested two young men two blocks from our house with our car that they had just stolen. The steering column had been decapitated, the windows were broken, items in the car were stolen, and in the police chase, the car was dented and scratched --- a list of new fees we needed to pay. June 16, they were brought before the judge, a court date was set for October 30, and though I was told I would receive notice to appear, I never did.
June 17, my uncle, Dr. Milenkovic, arrived from Yugoslavia, and June 18, he was present in Juvenile Court with us. Judge Coleman asked him who he was, and he responded, "I am Dr. Milenkovic, the cousin of Mr. Despotovic." With that, she threw him out of the courtroom. Moreover, I, one of the accused, was barred from the courtroom as well. My mother was questioned about the letter supposedly found on the door of her apartment. She said that she recognized the style of writing as my father's, and that I was certainly the one who had written it. She also stated that my father was a very violent man, and that he always had said he regretted being blind because he wanted to beat them, etc... Dr. Rousseau testified the complete opposite on my father. The judge's question, "In your professional opinion, do you believe that the children were abused by the father?" He replied, "No, in my professional opinion, no, the children were not abused.” My father went up on the witness stand, interrogated by Ms. Tyson, and explained the kiss he received from Caroline during the meeting with her, two weeks after her testimony. Nothing changed, the judge prohibited my father and I from visiting with the children for one year. I was never even questioned or present in the courtroom when this occurred; yet, we were both found guilty and barred! Without even knowing what had happened, I was handed a paper in the waiting room, telling me I was prohibited from informing myself about my mother or siblings, either directly or indirectly and I had been found guilty. Yes, GUILTY when I had been barred from the courtroom for no reason and not even told of what I was guilty! Yes, in the United States of America. In June, we began receiving information that it was Caroline and her acquaintances in all the gangs that were out to do harm with most probably her mother backing her up. Much later, we learned that at this time the four girls would run away from home very often to escape from their mother. The children were 10, 12, 13, and 16 years old and would be gone for several weeks at a time. Police detectives from District 5 started looking for my father throughout the Serbian neighborhoods of Chicago to see if the children had come to him. The police reports started stocking up, but DCFS, who was fully aware of this, continued to cover all of this up. As usual, in such situations, other crises were fabricated for us, so that we would have to take care of something else, not giving us time to find out about the children. The landlord took us to court. Yes, because in July of 1996, when my father and grandmother were in front of the White House, the landlord entered the apartment and started hollering that the apartment was dirty and that she would throw all the belongings out in the street, a good excuse to get them to leave the White House. After our disputes with her, she filed a complaint, and the hearings were extended from one month to the next. We started looking for a new place to live; however, when we asked around, no one knew of anything, and anything we found required a wait for an unknown period of time. One day, we made a surprise trip to Michigan City, Indiana. In a small apartment neighborhood, we got lucky and managed to get the key to an apartment right away. Leaving the leasing office, several police cars followed us one after another. We did not care; we had the key and the lease. My brother slept there that night right away so that they could not come up with an excuse to take the apartment away from us. At the old address, we left the telephone line connected and paid for Ameritech voicemail. We kept paying the bill so that the children would have a means of contacting us since this was the last number they had for us. To better dirty us once more, in April 1997, they sent my mother to Charleston with my sisters to show off that she had received custody of the children, that my father was the one that had been accused for sexual abuse, and the he had been the one sent to jail, etc... They had foreseen and planned everything except for one thing: We had lived in Charleston for 11 years, many people knew the difference between my mother and father, the reason for which many refused to even see her. When they could not escape, they met her at the door. In April, we received a letter from Mr. Diego Bonesati, in which he told us that nothing could be done for my father, that there were deportation proceedings, etc..., etc... They could have avoided this comedy of paperwork, for immigration law states that as soon as one is found guilty of child abuse, they become immediately deportable. In Juvenile Court, the hearings were extended from month to month, and any excuse is good: the grandmother of so and so died, the mother died, etc..., etc... We knew their tricks and gave ourselves no illusions. We always get a set-up in the summer months when everyone is on vacation. Divorce court was scheduled for June 24, Juvenile Court for June 18, and court date with our landlord was also extended for September. June 24, divorce was finally announced; yet, my mother specifically chose to keep the Despotovic name. July 2, another uncle of mine from Yugoslavia arrived. He owns his private television studio in Belgrade, and came to Chicago to view the possibilities of airing a program he would record in Yugoslavia and air on television here. The real reason behind all of these visits was to see to what point they could pressure my grandmother to come back to Yugoslavia, for she is a hindrance to them here in causing us difficulties. With her educated vocabulary, good reputation, and the fact that she sings at our church (a type of very complex songs stemming from the Orthodox Church traditions, taking in to account that some priests do not know them as well) it rendered it more difficult for them to dirty us in this area. The suit with the landlord was dropped as well, for it had no more sense since we had moved, and we also withdrew our complaints. With all of the troubles we were caused in 1997, we were impeded from going to the White House to protest once more. In revenge, we were able to purchase an IBM computer, permitting us to fax letters and files 24 hours a day, and access the Internet. In September, senators, representatives, the White House, consulates, embassies, and almost everyone in the United Nations received a shortened version of this file. September 3, a hearing was scheduled for Juvenile Court. I faxed a letter to the court explaining that I would be unable to attend. Furthermore, I stated I did not see a reason to attend, because we were barred from finding anything out and from visiting the children for one year. The last time that I had attended, I said, I was accused and judged without even being present in the courtroom, but had been made to wait outside. Later that day, Ms. Tyson informed me that in receipt of my letter, the judge had completely forbidden me to enter the court entirely.
My two employers decided to retire, which resulted in the liquidation of the store. I worked my hardest at this enormous job, carrying the biggest part of the burden of closing the business. I was the only one to drive the U-Haul truck to move the last of the assets, and the last to leave on October 16, 1997, at 1 a.m. That same morning, I took the last $10,000.00 cash receipts from the sale to the owner. I took my vacation after that, waiting to receive notice to appear on October 30, in court regarding my car theft. I was never called, so I went to the police station to find out what had happened. I was unable to get the correct police report: Ones that had my name on it had the wrong car as reported stolen, and the names of the thieves were nowhere to be found. It thus became impossible to file suit against anyone to be paid for damages to my car --- Just as if these mysterious thieves were well covered-up for. From day to day, I awaited my paycheck from my former employers. While Ms. Benjamin remained silent without returning my calls or giving me a response, Mr. Ajder kept promising me a check from one day to the next. Every day, he would clear himself of any responsibility and throw it upon Ms. Benjamin or their attorney, Mr. Gouveia. Their false promises caused me to write several checks without money to cover them, and in turn caused me other types of troubles. Luckily, my grandmother had been hired to care for an elderly lady, and her income permitted us to survive. I, as many other people, could not come to understand and believe how, as much as I had done for Ms. Benjamin and Mr. Ajder, they found the courage to completely detach themselves from the responsibilities of paying me. I received a telephone call from another Ace Hardware offering temporary employment, which I had to immediately accept. That same day, my previous colleague, Vic, who managed in another hardware chain, Menards, promised to find a spot for me within two weeks. Weeks after weeks went by, Christmas, New Year's, and still nothing from Menards. People, who knew Vic, like I, could not understand how he had not fulfilled his promise, completely the contrary of Vic. When I went to visit him, he was deep in thought, avoided looking at me, and was unable to give me any explanation for the delay in getting me employed. In December, I filed a lawsuit against Ms. Benjamin, for I wanted the money owed to me; yet, they continued to mock me. I warned them several times that I could file for payment of overtime as well, but that I simply wanted my vacation check. After their refusal, I found an attorney who decided to file suit for everything: back pay, vacation, and overtime. The grand total came to about $10,000.00, because for more than one year, they had not paid me overtime. In January 1998, at my current employment, someone started causing little troubles, hoping that these troubles would be blamed on me, which did not work at all. Tensions started to rise at work, until Sunday, January 25, after having left work and exiting the interstate, I backed up on a parking lot to discover I had no brakes. After inspection, the two front brake lines were cut. All possibilities of wear and tear are void, for the lines were cut where there is no wear. I thanked God that this happened on the parking lot, for had it happened on the interstate a minute earlier, I could have died. I was already being as careful as I could, I knew very well that I was at risk, for it is with my income that I supported the family, the storages, and the rent. It was I who was preparing this file for the Internet, which would hinder the interest of many people. This time, their efforts failed, and the focus was tried to be pulled away from the secret services to try to pass this off as being work-related. That is why Mr. B, a co-worker, tried to attract attention to himself by asking me the next day if I had gotten a new car. I did not believe that he was the culprit. Right afterwards, Mr. Ajder called asking me how I was, and specifically found it necessary to tell me in a very short conversation that he had been out of town for the last four or five days. Analyzing the situation at home, we knew that neither of them was the culprit. Several days later, the assistant store manager's, Ms. Debbie, two front tires were cut in front of her house. By all possible means, it was tried to convince us that this brake line incident happened in connection to the store and that the secret services had nothing to do with it. It was still shocking for everyone at work, for no one understood what was going on in reality.
In February, we received a letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service addressed to my mother, sent to our address with the following contents:
We still do not understand why this letter was sent to us, except for the most probable cause being that the relation between her and the children had turned very badly. DCFS would get to the point of being unable to cover her any longer, for they were already fully taking care of the children, and giving her Food Stamps, etc..., reaching the best solution of sending her to France soon. Thus, she would not be accused of leaving for France with the children, but was sent due to an error in bureaucratic paperwork. Seventeen months later, Ms. Tyson still has not filed the rest of the appeal. She is always busy and tells us that it is to our advantage that she delays this as long as possible. According to her, the earliest we would have our appeal heard would be in the summer of 1998 --- enough time for my mother to flee to France with my sisters. In less than three years, our file has changed judges three times. this story was broken into six parts. Please continue to Part 3 (click here). |
At the same time, they sent her a card where they offered her support and protection. On this card, the following was written: "Even more since Regis's best friend has a very high place in the U.S.A., and a lot, a lot of power." The sad truth: As they had already told her, "Americans walk by the stick," and it was the French D.S.T. that governs in the United States via Washington, D.C.
