Carmen María Montiel - Stolen Identity

“Alberto, I would much appreciate it if you do not get my daughter on a motorcycle. They are very dangerous.”

My dad looked serious and worried. He meant what he said.

We were pale and scared, but Alberto managed to say yes to my father.

“ Mami , you can go in now!” Kamee said.

This woke me up from the half dream I was having.

“Well, Carmen, her story is just like yours. This is good,” my attorney said.

The judge had forbidden me to talk about the case with potential witnesses, so, I did not know what my daughter was going to say. At the time it happened, we never talked about it. She was mad at her dad as I was and had the same reaction toward him that I had. That is why I never wondered about it. But once I was charged, I started to wonder about the conversation we never had.

“It is the exact same story,” he continued. “Your husband kept on calling the flight attendant for no reason.”

The trial was set for October. However, they informed me it would be moved, which was good because we needed more time to investigate.

“It will be moved to January, which is also good, because guess what? The prosecutor is retiring and this case will be assigned to another. Nobody loves his children more than their own parents. This case is becoming a foster child case.”

“What do you mean?”

“People do not like to inherit cases,” he replied. “Especially this one when the consensus in the Federal Building is that if your husband gave you his shoulder, none of this ever would have happened. Plus, the prosecutor that is taking the case is my friend. I saw him at the grocery store the other day, and he told me to talk to him after the first of the year. He sounded not at all happy about this case.”

I was starting to realize how important whom you hire was in this process. It was all about who you know. It was all about negotiations. However, this could also backfire. Lawyers even negotiate among themselves and owe each other favors.

“I have been doing my research and we need to request the flight log and the black box,” I told my attorney. “This is important for the case. Plus, I think we also need the manual for the airline’s personnel. The flight attendant must have broken all the rules that night.”

“All of that has been ordered,” he said. “Now we will have more time to get it. My investigator has already spoken with the female police officer and will do more interviews. Now, Carmen, you know that comes at an extra charge! But I guess all of this will be solved in the temporary orders hearing.”

Another one of my attorneys asked: “What is it that you were fighting for on the airplane—peanuts?”

“Who did you hear that from?” I asked.

Alejandro was the one who was fighting for peanuts. But no one heard that. He wanted my peanuts, and I told him to eat his food. That was it! This happened a lot of times before the incident.

No one heard this. Unless they were talking with Alejandro. Were they?

In the meantime, we were getting ready to go to the temporary orders hearing where they set the spousal support and child support payments that Alejandro has to make while the divorce is pending, along with who pays what within the estate. There are credit cards, mortgages, loans, etc.

My legal team is expecting that Alejandro’s lawyers are going to play hard ball on the plane situation and they do not want me testifying under oath about this issue before trial. As a matter of fact, according to the research I had been doing, it is always recommended that the person accused not testify. One friend told me, “If you talk, you don’t walk!” That reminded me of OJ Simpson’s famous trial for his wife’s murder, when he did not testify.

Everything in my life was so scary now. I pray every day! God, why? Why did you allow this to happen? If I had never come to this country, this never would have happened. I wished to be back home, in my home country! Until one day while praying a thought came to my mind: “If you were in Venezuela, you would be dead.”

Oh My God! That is true. In Venezuela, the situation had gotten so bad that over 25,000 people a year are killed in robberies that go unsolved. People are so desperate for money; they sell themselves for very little as long as they can feed their families. It would have been so easy for my husband to have me killed as another victim of crime in Venezuela, just another statistic.

A few months later, Mónica Spears, Miss Venezuela 2004, was killed just like that in a robbery with her daughter and her ex-husband. Her infant daughter survived the assault.

When I heard the news, it was not only heartbreaking, but also a close call for me.

The emotional outpouring and protesting in my country were enormous. People were asking for violence and crime to stop in Venezuela. But all I kept thinking was: “It could have been me first!”

A day before the hearing, we all met at my family lawyers’ office. They had been working on who to get as witnesses for the hearing. The first thing I asked was whether they had talked with the female police officer who was in the back of the airplane when the whole thing happened. When I was taken back, she offered to help. My lawyers’ investigator interviewed her before the indictment, when she reported what happened exactly as my daughter and I had said.

“Carmen, she changed her story! What she’s telling us now has nothing to do with what our investigator’s report says.”

“God! How can people lie and destroy someone’s life? But the investigator has a recording of the conversation; we will get her lying under oath.”

“We better not use her,” my lawyer said.

“Why not? We have evidence and a recording of what she originally said.”

It was as if I was talking to the wall about very good evidence my own lawyer was dismissing. Incredible! That was not good. Apparently in family court, people can lie and create evidence. Anything plays there.

While we were there, Alejandro’s lawyers withdrew the motion to take over the house and my children. I was thankful that I did not need my friends to help me with that after all. The friends I had asked had refused to testify in my favor—my friends who knew the whole story, who knew I was both mother and father to my children, who themselves said, “He is not the Father of the Year. He never has been.” But I was tainted now and they wanted nothing to do with me.

We went to court and the female police officer was there with the prosecutor. My family lawyer said it was Alejandro who subpoenaed her. Years later, Alejandro said it was my lawyer. What I learned at this time of my life was that no one was telling the truth. I learned to never trust anybody. That feeling started once I realized my husband had been lying to me for years, and now in the courts with all the lawyers and judges, I confirmed that I was better off not trusting anybody.

Through the morning, my family lawyer scared me with the plane thing: “Carmen, people are gathering outside. It must be everybody from the plane.”

I felt this was good, so they could tell the court that they heard and saw nothing. They could tell the truth. The truth is: nothing happened and the other passengers were mad that this incident stopped their flight. In time, I learned that it was related to bad weather in Bogota.

Once again in my life, I was in the hands of a bully… my family lawyer. He negotiated for me the worst temporary orders in history. He should have known that Alejandro was not only going to destroy my credit, but also let every service be disconnected under this agreement. For the first time in my life, I lost control of all my finances, which were given to Alejandro, who had never written a check.