It could happen anywhere in the world but this is the continuing story of a trusting – some might say gullible – North American man called Terrence and his very unfortunate experience with a vicious, cunning and deceitful woman which led to a stay in prison in Costa Rica.

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I came to live permanently in Costa Rica in December of 2004. I am in Costa Rica because my mother lives here. I am her only family here in Costa Rica. Mom is getting old, she is 94.

She has some good friends, but only two sons, and only one son that lives nearby and stays with her as she gets up there in years. Mom doesn’t have any property or savings, just a US Social Security pension. She doesn’t speak español. Since 2007 she has been pretty much confined to her bed. Before that, she used to walk every day like 3 or 4 kms around Santa Theresa, all by herself.

When her friends asked me if I would come live here to be with her I said yes with no reservations. I wanted to be with my Mom as she got older. I had lots of other good reasons to leave the USA too and my work as a web and graphic designer gave me the mobility to do it.

So that’s why I’m here, and that’s the context in which I came to think it would be a good thing to get married and settle down after I got here and why I was prone to get mixed up with the woman I married almost 4 years ago. Looking for a straight, normal life made me prey to be preyed upon. Being so completely easy and trusting made me a victim.

Doña Violeta and I have a serious drama going on. A little about “us.”

We have no children. We lived together married for only 7 weeks in the last half of 2006, and 4 of those were spent coming to grips with what my bride had to say about who owned what.

The subject came up one afternoon as I was waiting on Doña Violeta bringing her tea to help her recover from a recent operation.

I mentioned that it was a point of pride that we had accomplished so much for ourselves in such a rapid period of time. She replied very simply that I was mistaken to speak of what “we” had accomplished. She reminded me that the house, the car and the furniture had all been bought under her name.

What I came to understand very well over the next few tense and unhappy weeks with Doña Violeta was that she was dead serious telling me that I would NEVER be legal co-owner of anything that the inheritance of my grandfather and father had just finishing buying.

Doña Violeta had all the aces.

She began to stay out all night getting drunk and partying. One night I got mad and the damn broke. I committed the grave error (and I as came to find out, CRIME) of calling my “wife” a bitch after a particularly bad morning trying and failing to understand what Doña Violeta meant by her behavior and actions.

That was the last day I lived with my “wife.” She explained to me how the law works and generously gave me two options. One was to leave immediately and the other was to stay and get arrested and/or deported. I left. That was in August 2006.

By law at that time we would have to wait until three years had passed until we could get a divorce. Until then, all we could do was prepare for that event. I followed the advice of Violeta’s ex-father-in-law Don Jorge to Bufete Pedro Beirute. They helped me see what I was dealing with and I settled down for a three year wait until we could be divorced, June 18, 2009.

At the center of our concerns since I left have been the ownership of a house and her alimony – “la pensión.”

After I left, over the course of a year and half or so Doña Violeta became accustomed to receiving $200-$300 per month from me. I used to give that to her because I was working making logos, advertisements, photography and websites for a very generous millionaire for a few years and I could afford it.

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My income fluctuated, but I usually made about $1,000 a month and I admit to believing in Christian charity. Notwithstanding that Doña Violeta was robbing me, she was still the mother of three fine girls whose well-being was something that I wanted to help with. Giving a single mother some money every month seemed to be a good thing to do. Plus, I wanted to keep Doña Violeta on my good side. Planning on winning half of my property back when we eventually got divorced, I meant to work with Violeta, not against her.

We had been separated for about a year and half when Violeta started insisting that I sign a legal document establishing the money I had been giving her as a formal pensión payment. I didn’t want to, and as we talked she explained that there was an urgent reason to make the payments legal. It seems that she was in trouble with her ex-husband for continuing to collect the pensión he had been giving her after she and I got married, which is a crime.

She told me that her lawyer had instructed her that my signing a pensión was the only way to keep her out of jail. She insisted that she had no intention of making me pay if I could not, nor after we got a divorce. The request was also tangled up with a veiled threat of her abandoning the house and disappearing leaving the property at the mercy of unknown creditors that she was telling me had entered the picture. She spoke of liens against the house and unpaid loans to third parties.

In April 2008 I signed, which was the single most ignorant thing I have ever done. At least it was done with nothing to hide, no intent to take what was not mine. At least that is, I am not GUILTY of anything, just maybe being a little stupid.

I really never expected to be put in jail. It never occurred to me that not having any money could be a crime. My stupid willingness to do what Doña Violeta wants me to do has made it so. I actually signed my way to being legally something like a slave to Doña Violeta, required to pay her $200 a month for the rest of my life, under penalty of imprisonment.

In September 2008, the US market crashed, tourism and real estate took an immediate hit and my work as a designer dried up and left me with completely bare cupboards. I was literally eating only bread and an avocado a day for months. I had to walk distances of 10-15 km to visit my mother, for lack of gas money or bus fare.

Starting in November 2008, Doña Violeta began to make terse phone calls and text messages demanding that I pay her hundreds of dollars when I had no money at all, down sometimes to less than 200 colones. She lectured me about responsibility.

In December began the threats to have me arrested if I didn’t come up with the money.

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Going into the depths of 2009 the pressure intensifies. The stakes are very high, to wit, here I am in prison. Bad year all around. All of my clients have been trying to cope with the falloff in business from the crisis 2008. There has been so little work and more clients who pay less. Going hungry becomes an art form, a discipline. My work options are limited by the fact that I have no residency nor work permit. There are Sportsbook online gambling jobs, but I have a revulsion to scams and frauds, having been victimized by a smooth con myself.

This is how I ended up standing here in handcuffs going down for 6 months. So far, Doña Violeta has the power to put me here. Power that I have given to her in a series of misjudgments of character and lapses of rationality to say the least.

It has been a spiritual challenge dealing with what the consequences of being so stupid have been. I’ve had to accept responsibility for my part in this. But still it is hard to comprehend how this could be happening. My errors in judgement have all been motivated by a desire to do good, in contrast, the manipulations of my “wife” have crossed the line to criminal acts of fraud and yet… I am going to jail.

So, no use whining. But damn, you just have to shake your head thinking of how I came to Costa Rica to be with my mom, fell for a woman who was conning me based on my desire to have a family where my mom could get old, I lose my inheritance and all my property to this new wife in that con, then get conned again trying to keep her from getting out of reach and now I’m losing my liberty as a result of that business.

Meanwhile, Doña Violeta lives in my house, at least, the house that two generations of my family worked to buy.

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Written by Terrence who is a 53 year old Gringo living in Costa Rica.

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