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Dec. 30, 2004 Perhaps the overwhelming majority of Americans are fortunate enough to live out their lives comfortably enough, never having to put to the test those constitutional guarantees and liberties of ours that are the wonder and the envy of the world. So they go on believing in them implicitly, defensively, even pugnaciously. I was not so fortunate. Back in the seventies, my wife divorced me. There were quite a few post-trial hearings involving a number of issues. One issue—not the main one—was that I sleuthed out where my wife was living with her boyfriend, whom she had met in the course of her duties as an employee of the Senate, and went to see her, hoping to persuade her to return. Her boyfriend, there alone, was alarmed to see me at his door and shrank back a few steps, whereupon I entered, took a quick look and left, without touching him or his apartment. The next day, my wife called demanding $1000 and threatening to swear out a false warrant for my arrest, which I didn’t doubt she and her boyfriend could do, with her shyster lawyer’s help and encouragement. So I sent an installment of $200. Later, though, when they pressed me for more money, I told her I was going to complain to her employer, the Senator, about the extortion, for which I had a canceled check. Two days later I got a falsified emergency notice of motion accompanying a petition alleging I had beaten the boyfriend. I learnt in telephone calls that my wife didn’t even know of the existence of the petition and didn’t believe its allegations. She signed it only later. What this really means is that her lawyer cooked up the petition, served it and then got her to sign it, very probably telling her it was just a routine form. He did this, in my opinion, because he had learned that her employer was a Senator and supposed something might come of my complaint. I did send a letter to the Senator, but my wife intercepted it, arriving at the office very early, before the letter had been stamped in. This, of course, is obstruction of correspondence. She gave it to her lawyer, who presented it in court as evidence against me, telling the judge that I had written a libellous letter to her employer. The judge, without so much as looking at the letter or inquiring into the nature of the contents or their truth or falsity, told me that this was ‘character assassination’ and ordered me to write no further letters to her employer, who, incidentally, was my Senator as well as hers. I reasoned that it was my inalienable right to write to my Senator about anything I chose, providing only that I stuck to the truth, and so I kept on writing, in effect spitting on the court order with justifiable contempt. In the meantime, I reported the attorney both to the state’s attorney—simulating legal process and subornation of perjury are criminal acts—and to the local attorney commission. I reported my wife to the Senate Ethics Committee for extortion and perjury and to the US Postal Service for obstruction of correspondence. And I reported the judge to the local judicial inquiry board for violation of Rules of Civil Procedure. I didn’t simply make a phone call, I sent fully explanatory reports on all the acts committed, backing them up with iron-clad evidence. And I didn’t do it just once. I sent 10, 20, 30 complaints to each of those agencies. The judicial inquiry board went to the courthouse and got a transcript of that particular hearing, but did nothing. The court reporter must have told the judge the judicial inquiry board had been by, because after that I could get no more transcripts. The postal inspectors called my wife about a year later, when I finally got a local newspaper to send them an inquiry. They asked her if she’d been tampering with the mail, she said ‘No’, and that was the end of that. During a whole year, I got no response from the Senate Ethics Committee, until I threatened to wring someone’s neck over there, which brought the FBI down on me temporarily. After about a bushel of letters to government agencies, I began to try private organizations and foundations, but I fared no better with them. I must have tried the ACLU 20 times. I received half a dozen form letters saying ‘Sorry’. I tried the local newspapers, which featured consumers’ and citizens’ complaint departments, but this did no good. I wrote to the offices of various local officeholders and to other Senators. You guessed it—zero. I tried finding another attorney, but the only one I found who’d sue a fellow attorney wanted to decriminalize the whole thing, turning it into an innocuous little source of fees. Wasn’t I making a mountain of a molehill? As I say, this was just one issue. There were others. When I got to about 20 counts of contempt of court, I knew that there was no way out. The sheriff would simply come to my office— I held a responsible position—and arrest me. I abandoned the job. No job, no house payments. I lost the house, along with my credit standing. And I became a fugitive in another state. I’m so lucky to be an American. I like to be admired for my rights and freedoms. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non- fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. 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