You might be asking yourself what the title of this post could possibly have to do with the purpose of this blog. But then again, some of you may not. Some of you may know this topic so well in your own lives that you know immediately the connotation. I suppose I might also have called it "the hamster wheel." Either way, you can deduce the analogy. You can run and run and run your heart out on either one, for as long as you possibly can, and at the end of the day, you'll still be right in the place where you started, only more exhausted.
Unfortunately, the update I'm about to deliver falls pretty much in line with what you'd expect after this intro...
As you know if you've been able to keep up with the blog, or at Bring Sean Home, the case of Sage and his father has been at a standstill for months now. After almost an entire year of testimony, evidence hearings, attempted visits with little to no enforcement, a move to Mexico and debilitating financial setbacks, the judge who had been hearing the case for Sage's hopeful return home requested, on the day before he was to finally make a ruling, to be excused from the case. At first giving no real viable explanation as to why he requested the excusal, he eventually claimed that it was due to harassment by my brother's lawyers, which led him to believe he could not deliver an unbiased judgment (nevermind the fact that this same lawyer also has other cases before this judge, from which the judge did not request to be removed). This happened in September. Since then, the judge who was to decide whether the other judge could be removed from the case also requested to be removed from deciding. Seriously??? Can you say hot potato? Or more likely to this has-become cynic, a deliberate game of pass the buck to buy more time. But I'll refrain from the hypotheticals for now...
Moving on, it has been roughly 5 months since the first judge failed to make his ruling as scheduled, and since then, very little has happened. Not only with the trial, but with enforcement of visitation orders (my brother has not seen his son since before I saw him for a few minutes while visiting in August), with enforcement of school attendance orders, or even with regards to verifying Sage's whereabouts and condition. Nothing has happened.
That is, until today.
As I was sitting at my computer sorting through a pool of volunteer requests from my own daughter's school, I received an email from my brother stating that yes, in fact, it has been ordered that judge Jose Francisco Lara Rodriguez, of some court whose official name I do not know, in Salamanca, GTO Mexico, has been excused from his responsibility in the case of my brother and nephew (and yes, this was in fact decided by a third judge, as the "second" judge did also manage to recuse him/herself). To make matters worse, the ministerio publico (whose bias against fathers or Americans or both has been demonstrated again and again, and is detailed in previous posts) did not attend any of the hearings to determine whether the aforementioned Jose Francisco Lara Rodriguez would be excused. It was her absence from hearings during the first Hague case, tried initially after Sage was abducted, that allowed the Mexican high courts to declare a mistrial then and start the whole thing over again.
So, like I suggested at the beginning of this post, these events clearly and quickly do bring to mind the image of a hamster running on a wheel, or, more poignantly, of a heartbroken father running on an endless treadmill, trying desperately to be reunited with his beloved son. The last time I spoke to my brother on the phone, only a week ago at most, we were talking about the gifts he had attempted to get to Sage during a particular Mexican holiday, which falls right around Christmas and is very similar in terms of its' tradition of gift-giving. Not allowed to present the gifts himself, despite the "orders" for visitation, Carlos submitted them to the courts as evidence, hoping they would somehow be passed on to Sage. Instead, they continue to sit in a judge's quarters.
If you've been able to view the videos of Sage on Carlos' YouTube channel, you might recognize one of the gifts--a little ride-in car. In the video you see Sage riding happily around in it, with his mother lurking close behind. The other gift, an EXTRA large cuddly teddy bear, had been in my brother's possession since before I visited him in Mexico, as he had never been given the opportunity to present it to his son. The third gift, a guitar.
And so, it seems that things have returned not-so-swiftly back to square one. Perhaps a small glimmer of promise lies in the recent acceptance by the Mexican National "Derechos Humanos," or Human Rights Agency of Sage's case. They will be initiating an investigation, but at this time I am not sure what the possible repurcussions of their investigation might be. Please send my brother any words of encouragement, and/or any pledges to provide assistance (in the form of letter-writing, phone calls, or financial support) that you can. Despite his ability to somehow keep things going through all this, I am sure he is once again in a heightened state of darkness and discouragement after hearing this news, and community is so important.
Thank you <3
Sonia
