Legal Woes

As if victims didn't have enough problems obtaining proper legal representation,...

The Legal Situation, No. 2

(Remember, the writer of the letter in the previous post insisted I use a Texas attorney.)

TAJF Said

This is the reply I received from the Texas Access to Justice Foundation when I contacted them asking for help in finding proper legal representation. Texas RioGrande Legal Aid told me I didn't qualify financially for their help. My problems with the State Bar of Texas' referral services you already know about if you keep up with my blog.

This is one example of what domestic violence and abuse expert Alexis A. Moore calls "the domestic violence run-around": the passing of victims from one agency to another rather than providing them with actual assistance. Sadly, shockingly high percentages of victims experience this--often from agencies that accept public funds and contributions that are supposed to be used to help victims.

I have LOTS of these types of replies, and I will be posting more of them in the future in order to document what victims are subjected to. As Ms. Moore has said many times, what victims need are 1) individual advocacy, and 2) accountability from organizations accepting money to help them. If you agree, please go to Ms. Moore's website and sign the online petition she has posted there.

The State Bar of Texas Did

...Nothing again.

I filed a very serious and well-documented complaint with the state bar against the Boerne lawyer I've discussed previously in "They Said" (9/16/09) and elsewhere after it became clear that I would have to do so in order to force him to turn over copies of documents Ed Hodges said he'd sent to this lawyer, the lawyer was refusing to give me a complete copy of my file, and I desperately needed these documents for my lawsuit with Hodges. I also included in this complaint copies of the statements made by this lawyer as exemplified by the ones posted in "They Said", as well as copies of some of the legal documents this attorney had insisted on drawing up for me that the document expert I'd hired had found very serious problems with.

Officials with the State Bar of Texas notified me that they were investigating my complaint, and they eventually told me they had called the lawyer in for some sort of questioning session. However, I soon received notification that they had found no wrong-doing and would not be taking any action against the attorney. On the evening of the same day I received a letter from the state bar to this effect, someone in one of the houses close to ours threw a very large and loud party. We saw the lawyer I'd complained about and some of his family members at this party, and we also saw the lawyer, his family, and various friends of theirs doing repeated drive-bys, walk-bys, and even "bike-bys" of our home all evening long.

I also filed a formal complaint with the State Bar of Texas against the "government lawyer" (from her listing on their website at the time) who accepted a retainer check from me after meeting with the Boerne lawyer and his two p.i. friends (the former FBI and DEA agents) without my knowledge but supposedly on my behalf and then refused to meet with me or speak to me by phone. (See "Versions Of The Truth", posted here on 9/29/09). By the time I filed my complaint against her, I'd learned she had formerly been with the DEA but now had a criminal defense practice and had almost certainly actually been working for my ex-husband and his family. Despite my documenting what had been said and done by all involved and providing the bar with a copy of my cancelled check and bank statements regarding this lawyer, the bar association refused to even look into the matter, much less take any action. (This same attorney later suddenly moved to Washington, D.C. with her attorney husband after being charged in a strange incident in Boerne involving another attorney and a local police officer.)

The State Bar of Texas Said

...Nothing, of course.

As I've explained earlier, after I caught the Boerne lawyer and his two p.i. friends allowing my former father-in-law to listen in on my supposedly confidential meeting with them and had to fire them, I began extensively searching for an attorney to represent my children and me properly. I repeatedly tried using the state bar referral services, but none of the attorneys they sent me to would speak with me, return my phone calls, etc. After a while, I got tired of being given the run-around by lawyers the state bar had deliberately sent me to, so I wrote this letter and sent it to them in desperation, but I never received any response of any kind.

Then two years later, after having to also fire the San Antonio lawyer that was recommended to me by the highly regarded document expert with FBI contacts, I decided to give the state bar's referral services another try. Unfortunately, after dealing with numerous attorneys they recommended at different times, I eventually realized that of the ones that would speak to me (about half), all of them insisted that I either "sign off on" the clearly fraudulent trust I knew full well by know had never existed and that I sign over a percentage of my land as payment for their services, which I also knew was part of the con; when I refused to do this and indicated I was aware of what was going on, they inevitably got nervous and dropped me. Eventually, I got tired and disgusted with this "game" and reluctantly gave up on the referral service entirely, deciding instead to pursue other possible legal options (state and national organizations) instead. Meanwhile, my ex-husband, his family, and their associates were all claiming that even if I did succeed in finding us proper legal representation, they could easily bankrupt me with legal fees, since they have unlimited legal resources.

The G-Man Down The Road

The former FBI agent working as a private investigator and certified fraud investigator who defrauded me in 2005 (see my 9/16/09 post entitled "They Said") once insisted that I meet with him in his home in a nice subdivision just off I-10 near Boerne. (Much later, a DPS senior investigator told me p.i.s are not supposed to do this.) At his house, I met his wife, whom he said worked for him, as did their adult children.

While I was there, the former FBI agent showed me his gun and badge, which were in a glass case. Nearly, I noticed a distinctive framed art print that appeared to be either very similar or identical to one I'd remembered seeing on the wall of the FBI agent who lived next door to my father and stepmother (see "The G-Man Next Door" below). I was surprised to see a copy of this print in Texas, because I associated the artist (who has a very distinctive style and was a friend of my late mother's) more with the state my father lives in.

Several times during this and subsequent meetings with this man, he mentioned that his wife had been a high school classmate of a very prominent San Antonio attorney. (I later learned this attorney is a major criminal defense lawyer.) The former agent also told me (but always verbally, never in writing) on several different occasions that another former classmate of his wife's had been an FBI agent and colleague of his but, like him, had retired and become a private investigator. However, he described this former colleague as a "rogue agent" [his exact words] who'd gotten mixed up with a criminal known as "Murph The Surf" who had murdered a woman in Florida. He and the former DEA agent-turned-p.i. who'd recommended I hire him told me on several occasions they had reason to believe my ex-husband was somehow involved with these criminals, but they would not give me any proof or additional information on this, and I didn't know whether to believe them or not.

Also during this and subsequent meetings with the retired agent, he mentioned that he and his wife were involved in some sort of prison ministry that involved regularly visiting inmates on behalf of their church. I'm not familiar with the particular church they belonged to, but over the years, I've noticed that many of the churches here whose finances are handled only by very close associates of my former father-in-law also have these prison ministries. (They have extensive ongoing missionary projects in Mexico and Central America as well that involve frequent member trips to these countries.)

The final thing I need to mention for now about my meetings with this former FBI agent is that twice when I met with him, he was wearing a t-shirt identical to two owned by one of my children. These shirts were very distinctive, and both times I mentioned to the agent that one of my kids owned the same shirt. He just laughed it off as coincidence at the time, but a few weeks after I fired him (see "My Story" at the beginning of this blog), both of these shirts suddenly turned up together in my offspring's overnight bag upon returning from visitation with their dad, and they said they did not know how the shirts got in there. I have been forced to conclude that the ex-agent deliberately wore my child's shirts while meeting with me as a sick joke.

After I accidentally discovered this man was not really working for me and fired him, I began to have serious and repeated problems with him stalking and harassing me (that I have kept records of). One of these incidents occurred while I was driving to San Antonio on I-10 to meet with a lawyer who'd been recommended to me by the State Bar of Texas' referral service. As I passed the entrance ramp located closest to the former agent's house, he suddenly pulled up behind me and began tailgating me extremely aggressively. After doing this for several minutes, he changed lanes, drove right up beside me until he was sure I recognized him, grinned and waved, and then sped off; I saw him exit the freeway at the next off-ramp. (My meeting with the lawyer that day did not go well, especially after I accidentally discovered he was a close friend of the son of my ex-husband's divorce lawyer while I was there.) [I have discovered serious conflict of interest problems with every single lawyer I've been referred to by the state bar.]

All this happened in 2005, but I still sometimes see this man, his wife, or people in his vehicles who appear to be his family members, following and harassing me occasionally, and I have documented incidences of seeing him or his vehicle/s parked outside office buildings owned by my ex- and his family. Although I filed an extremely serious and well-documented complaint against him with the p.i. licensing bureau, the DPS refused to discipline him in any way; in fact, a DPS investigator lied to me over the phone by telling me he could find no record of this man's ever having worked for the FBI. (The tape I made of this phone call has been tampered with.) Even after I complained in person to a San Antonio FBI agent that on one occasion the guy had been following me so closely that I believe his car bumper touched mine when I stopped at a stop sign near my home, nothing was ever done about him.