Many people believe I live in paradise. In a way, it's true. I do. Surrounded by lush jungle and pristine beaches, plied daily with fresh tropical fruit, and living a relatively easy life with a little work and a lot of play, it's easy to assume I enjoy a Utopian lifestyle. On Facebook, all anyone ever sees are the good parts, the funny events, the cute animals, the day's harvest from the garden, or the delicious food coming from the kitchen.
No one could ever tell from my posts that there is an ugly dark underbelly lurking in Mompiche. An insidious threat to all who have no voice skulks around the corners of the cute thatched-roof huts and slinks down packed sand streets. The people of the village are determinedly committed to not getting involved, to protecting the perpetrators, and to letting the voiceless suffer in silence until eventually someone is seriously hurt.
For just over ten years, I have lived next door to horrible neighbors who abuse their children on a daily basis. Every single day, the screams coming from that house rattle me to my bones. For those ten years, I've called everyone I could think of in a position of authority to come and do something about this abuse, only to be met by a void of indifference from police, children's services, politicians, church pastors, and medical professionals. The physical, verbal, and emotional abuse that these parents inflict on their beleaguered children is criminal. It's against the law and children are protected in the Constitution but, in Mompiche, there is no law. Nevertheless, I will continue to do the best I can to protect the kids, and call the police whenever necessary.
911. What Is Your Emergency?
She's torturing him. He's screaming, asking for a drink of water. He screams for over half an hour, begging her to get him a glass of water. She doesn't move. Instead, she slaps him for screaming. He's four years old. His mother is evil. She laughs at his trauma. When I realize she's taking pleasure from this torture of her son, I call the police.
“911. What is your emergency?”
“The neighbor is torturing her son. It's child abuse.”
“Where are you located?”
“Mompiche. Please send the police quickly.”
“Are you a foreigner?”
This stops me dead in my tracks. WTF? What has that got to do with anything? My looney-tunes neighbor is torturing her four-year-old child as we speak and the person who answered the phone wants to know whether I'm Ecuadorian or not? I bite my tongue.
“Please send the police to help this child.”
“What's the address?”
“Calle Mariposa and Calle Mango. The house is at the end of Mango Street.”
“Where is that?”
“Mompiche.”
“Where is the street?”
FFS! There are three freakin' streets in Mompiche. If the police can't figure out where Mariposa Street is, then they need to get different jobs. They have been called here so many times to protect these kids against their own parents that they know this neighborhood like the backs of their own hands. Again, I bite my tongue and direct them past the football field to Mariposa Street.
In the background, the child is howling in pain. She's hit him again. He doesn't stop screaming.
“I want water! I want water. Give me water!”
“Shut up!”
SLAP!
“Please,” I tell the person on the other end of the phone. “Tell them to come quickly. She's hitting him. This kid is going to be covered in bruises.”
“What's your name?”
Seriously... I could freakin' strangle the person on the other end. Why does my name matter? A child is being abused. It's urgent that the police come immediately and make her stop torturing her son.
“Maria,” I tell her, instead of screaming. In case the police decide to tell her who called (yes, that’s a thing here!) I give her a fake name instead.
“Are you there right now?”
Is she kidding? Can she not hear this poor child shrieking in the background? I could hear him from the corner, half a block from my house. I'm tempted to say, “No, I'm actually climbing a pyramid in Egypt and thought I'd just call you for fun.”
“Can you please send the police as soon as possible?”
“Thank you for calling!”
She hangs up the phone. The child is still screaming. I go to the window and yell at the mother.
“Stop abusing your son! What is wrong with you?”
“Mind your own business!” she yells back at me.
“Give that child some water!”
“F*ck off!”
“What you're doing is child abuse! You're insane!”
Feeling stressed, and hoping the police would arrive soon, I went back to washing the dishes. The child kept screaming for at least ten more minutes. I felt helpless. For over ten years, ever since I moved into the shell of what was to become my home, I have been trying to find a way to help the poor children of this horrific woman. Her husband is no better. They're both abusive in so many ways, verbally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally.
One afternoon, I heard the mother calling her daughter a “son of a bitch” while chasing her around the garden with a large kitchen knife. The daughter was screaming and trying to get away. The mother ran close behind, the knife held high in the air as if she would slice her own child in half with one swing of the blade. It was terrifying.
To distract her, I yelled out, “So who's the bitch? Wouldn't that be you?”
She picked up large rocks and threw them at my house.
While she was flipping out at me, her daughter escaped.
I called the police that day too.
For ten years, I've been calling the police. Mostly, they don't even show up. I've called children's services and the juvenile crime unit. I even emailed government ministers. I spoke to the pastor at the church they go to every week. Nothing. No one with any authority has lifted a finger to help these poor kids. At my wit's end, I started screaming at the parents out the window whenever they were being abusive.
“Stop hitting your kids!”
“Mind your own business!”
“That's child abuse!”
“I will kill you!”
“Better to kill me than your own children you sick psychopath!”
“F*ck off, gringa!”
“Do you feel like a big man hitting a little girl with a stick?”
While they're screaming at me, they're not abusing their children. It's a distraction. The children welcome it and use that opportunity to get out of the way of their crazy parents. While the adults are busy shouting insults across the fence, the kids are busy hiding the weapons they've been hit with; sticks, brooms, pieces of hose, shoes, rope, whatever was in their parent's hands at the time they went nuts and decided to hurt their children.
I watch as the kids scurry around, throwing things under the house or over the fence. I keep screaming insults until all the weapons are gone. The parents are so enraged at me that they forget they were abusing their children. When the coast is clear for the kids, I walk away from the window. The parents stand there shouting into the air for a while until they realize I'm gone.
Finally, the boy has stopped screaming. Did she give him water? I don't know. I hope so. It's fairly quiet in the neighborhood. Two hours after I called 911, the police slowly rolled by. Two hours. She could have killed him and dug the grave in that time. The police station is two hundred meters from my house. That's just over four minutes per meter, making them possibly the slowest police in the world. At least they showed up this time.
Beyond disgusted with the inaction of the police, I write letters to ministers, talk to doctors, and look for other ways to help these children. For more than ten years, I have tried to find a way to protect them from their parents. So far, I've had no success.
Hey Roni, such a devastating situation. Your bravery is commendable in giving relief for those poor kids. I assume parents were beaten as well. So hard to break this inter generational violence.