Chapter 14 - The System - 1

For more than a decade, the defining feature of my case was not the danger I reported, but the silence that followed every attempt to raise it. I went from agency to agency, repeating the same information to new officials, new departments, new reporting channels. The pattern never shifted: acknowledgments without action, referrals without follow‑through, and a quiet administrative disappearance that became predictable over time. I watched myself shrink inside the system, reduced to a file number that moved but never progressed. I had believed that truth would be enough to trigger intervention. Instead, I learned how easily a person can vanish in plain sight when institutions decide not to listen.

I have always been clear about the forces involved in what happened to me. The pattern I lived through was deliberate, sustained, and executed with a precision that left little room for misinterpretation. The environment included individuals connected to organised criminal activity, and the behaviour I witnessed aligned with what is publicly known about the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), one of the most violent and strategically sophisticated criminal organisations in Mexico. I am not an expert in criminal networks, but I know what I lived through, and the pattern was unmistakable.

Yet the more I tried to report it, the more the focus shifted away from the threat itself and toward the institutions that refused to assess it. Instead of examining the danger, agencies examined me. Instead of asking what happened, they asked whether I was “okay.” Instead of looking at the pattern, they looked for ways to redirect responsibility elsewhere.

Eventually, fearlessness stopped being courage and became exhaustion — the predictable outcome when protection is neither offered nor expected. When you have been dismissed enough times, fear loses its purpose. You stop expecting help. You stop expecting intervention. You stop expecting anyone to take the situation seriously.

And that left me asking a question I never imagined I would have to consider:

In cases like mine, does the greater harm come from those who violate the rules, or from those who uphold them but fail to act.

The long‑term separation from my children remains the most enduring consequence of that silence. I sought help repeatedly, believing someone would intervene before the distance became irreversible. No agency provided a pathway that might have preserved our relationship. By the time my children reached independence, the window for meaningful reunification had narrowed to almost nothing. That outcome was not inevitable; it was shaped by institutional inaction rather than any formal decision. The facts of what happened to us have never changed, and the ease with which my case was set aside raises difficult questions about the thresholds used to assess risk and the systems responsible for safeguarding families.

I once believed that a clear, consistent account would be enough to prompt inquiry. Instead, I encountered a process in which victims rarely receive the opportunity to substantiate their claims. Complex cases, I learned, are more likely to be deferred than examined. This leads to the question that still follows me: what conditions must be met for a report of harm to be taken seriously, and why did mine fail to meet them. After years of trying to be heard, I reached a level of exhaustion that is entirely predictable when dismissal becomes the dominant response. That exhaustion is real, but it does not mean further risk is required to validate the truth of what occurred. It reflects the cumulative impact of a system that did not listen.

Running parallel to these institutional failures was the personal history unfolding in the background. My former husband left our family while we were living in Mexico, a departure shaped by his own untreated mental‑health challenges. That abandonment deepened our vulnerability at a moment when stability mattered most, yet it received little attention from any authority. Its practical and emotional consequences remain woven through everything that followed.

Mexico is the last place where my family existed in one piece, and it remains the landscape where my memories of my children are anchored. Returning there carries uncertainty, but I see it less as an ending and more as a reckoning — a way of standing in the last place where we were together and acknowledging what was lost. The memories will not fade, and my identity as a mother has never changed, despite the years of distance. The broader question is not about geography, but about the systems that failed to intervene when intervention was still possible. The outcome was never predetermined. The love I held for my children was constant, even when everything around us was not.

I often feel embarrassed by how many drafts I’ve written, how many times I’ve tried to explain what happened only to realise I don’t know which parts matter most. I am not trained for any of this. I am not a lawyer, or a police officer, or a journalist. I am an ordinary person who was forced to navigate situations that belong in fields I have never studied. And when I sit down to write, I find myself wrestling with questions I never imagined I would have to ask.

How do I explain the difference between a neighbour delivering a bottle of beer and the moment I realised the bottle had been tampered with. How do I describe the way my ex‑husband’s mental‑health deterioration intersected with the danger around us, when I have no background in psychology or military trauma. How do I convey the significance of a witness who seemed terrified of the people giving him instructions, when I don’t have the vocabulary to describe organised‑crime dynamics or coercive control.

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To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing to request guidance and assistance regarding a series of incidents that occurred during my residence in Lo de Marcos, Nayarit, Mexico, between 2017 and 2024. These incidents involved coercive behaviour, concerns about non‑consensual recording, and suspected manipulation involving substances. I have been unable to report them through any formal channel due to jurisdictional and safety barriers.

I believe I was subjected to non‑consensual exposure and recording during this period. Another individual, José Antonio De la Torre Hernández (born January 1970, Tapalpa), was also affected. I do not know his current location.

A third individual, known to me only as José, was a witness to some of the events. I do not know his full name. At the time, he lived in Ursulo Galván, Nayarit, and had been a long‑term acquaintance of José Antonio. He expressed clear discomfort about actions he was asked to carry out, which contributed to my concern that the behaviour may have been influenced by pressures beyond the individuals directly involved. My understanding is that he had associations with organised criminal elements in the region, which may explain both his reluctance and the constraints he appeared to be under.

On two occasions, he delivered a single bottle of Pacifico beer to the home. On both occasions, the bottle appeared to have been tampered with, and after consuming it, both José Antonio and I experienced effects that were inconsistent with normal alcohol consumption. These incidents raised concerns about coercion, loss of control, and the possibility that we were recorded without consent. My children were present in the home at the time, asleep upstairs, which added to the distress and risk.

My goal is not to assign blame to any individual or group, but to understand:

• •Who held authority over the environment in which these incidents occurred;

• •Whether the actions taken against myself and my children were authorised, condoned, or known to any oversight body; and

• •How a civilian in my position is expected to report such incidents safely and appropriately.

If helpful, I can provide photographs of myself and of José Antonio De la Torre Hernández solely for identification purposes. I can also provide the addresses where the incidents occurred. If required, I can share further details regarding the witness, although I am unsure whether doing so would serve any practical purpose.

It was impossible to report these incidents while I was in Mexico, and the cross‑border nature of the harm has made it extremely difficult to report them promptly or through any recognised pathway. My primary request is guidance on how and where these incidents can be formally reported, given the absence of any functioning mechanism for civilians to report cross‑jurisdictional, coercive, or digitally‑enabled harm.

I am also concerned that others who were involved or aware of the events may have been acting under reluctance or pressure, which raises questions about who held authority in the area at the time and whether the actions taken against myself and my children were authorised, condoned, or known to any oversight body. These uncertainties make it even more important for me to understand which institutions are responsible for receiving and assessing information of this nature.

I understand that this is an unusual and complex situation, particularly given that Lo de Marcos is a small community with diverse backgrounds and connections, yet the people there have always been kind‑hearted.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

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These are not things ordinary people are taught to recognise, let alone document.

I struggle to know what is “important” because everything felt important at the time. Was it the night the power went out again, or the morning my phone behaved strangely. Was it the way strangers seemed to know details about my life they shouldn’t have known, or the way my children’s belongings kept disappearing from the house. Was it the fear in José’s eyes when he delivered that second bottle, or the way he avoided looking at me, as if he already knew what would happen next.

I don’t know which of these details matter to an investigator, or which ones will be dismissed as irrelevant. I only know how they felt, and how they accumulated until I could no longer separate one threat from another.

I also struggle because the systems I tried to report to speak a language I don’t understand. They want clean categories: criminal, civil, domestic, international, digital, physical, psychological. But what happened to us didn’t fit into any single category. It was all of them at once. And I am just one person, trying to explain a situation that crossed borders, institutions, and disciplines I had never even heard of before.

Sometimes I worry that I sound confused, when in reality I am trying to describe a kind of complexity that no ordinary person is prepared to articulate. And it makes me wonder who out there is actually qualified to deal with something like this — because from where I stand, it appears that nobody is. Not one agency, not one specialist, not one institution has ever been able to say, “Yes, this falls within our expertise.”

Sometimes I worry that I am including too much detail, and other times I worry that I am leaving out something essential. I have no training to guide me. I only have my memory, my instincts, and the responsibility of trying to make sense of something that never made sense while it was happening. I just thought there would be someone qualified enough to assist me — someone who could look at the whole picture and say, “I understand what this is.”

I never imagined that my case would be considered one of the most complex cases in the world. I never imagined that what I survived would fall so far outside the boundaries of what institutions are prepared to handle. And maybe that is the problem. Maybe the complexity isn’t a flaw in my story, but a flaw in the systems that were supposed to protect people like me.

Because what happens when a civilian encounters something that crosses every boundary — legal, geographic, institutional, psychological — and there is no one trained to receive it. What happens when the harm doesn’t fit into a single category, and the systems built to respond can only process neat, simple narratives. What happens when the truth is too complicated for the forms, too layered for the intake process, too real for the frameworks that were never designed for cases like mine.

Maybe that is why I kept being told to simplify.

Maybe that is why I kept being redirected, dismissed, or misunderstood.

Maybe that is why every attempt to report what happened collapsed before it even began.

Not because the story was unbelievable, but because the systems were unprepared.