Linda's story: Alone, afraid and sad
Part 2 of 2
By Marley Shebala
Navajo Times
NAGEEZI, N.M., May 19, 2011
(Special to the Times - Leigh T. Jimmie)
On June 12, 2009, Linda Begay thinks back to the terror she endured living with her husband as she visits her trailer for the first time in months in Nageezi, N.M.
Pointing to the back door of her white doublewide trailer, she recalled the day Wallace threw her son from a previous relationship, a teenager at the time, out that door and kicked him so hard in the groin that he later required surgery.
She giggled, threw up her hands, and said she didn't know what started the fight because she was returning from the outhouse when she saw her son come flying out the trailer.
You don't have to spend too much time with Linda before you realize the 44-year-old mother of five has a mental impairment of some kind. But for the past two and a half years, as she struggled to free herself and her kids from an abusive home life, none of the authorities from whom she sought help have coped effectively with this crucial fact.
Instead of receiving the extra help she needed to negotiate the complex system of police, courts and social services that provide assistance to domestic violence victims, Linda has been penalized repeatedly for not following the proper procedures.
To start with, she received little help from law enforcement.
Geographically isolated from both Crownpoint and Shiprock, Linda was on her own when Wallace got violent. It's a two-hour drive from either police station to her trailer, so even when police did respond they were too late to intervene, she said. The fight would be over, Wallace would be gone somewhere cooling off, and no charges would be filed.
The Division of Public Safety says it has records of half a dozen incident reports involving the Begay family - Linda claims she made many more calls than that - but no charges were ever filed against Wallace. He declined to be interviewed for this story.
Former Navajo Nation Division of Public Safety director Sampson Cowboy said a "major factor" for the lack of police reports and police response to Linda's calls for emergency assistance was the area's remoteness.
He added that communication problems between the police districts of Crownpoint and Shiprock and a police manpower shortage didn't help.
Cowboy recalled that as a police officer, he was assigned to the Nageezi area and it was challenging because there's "nothing out there" - no recreational areas, no housing, and until last year, no police substation.
A police substation opened in July in Nageezi Chapter, but by that time the Begay family was in pieces. Linda is homeless, her four youngest children in tribal custody, and Wallace comes and goes from the trailer as he pleases.
Linda and her children became homeless Oct. 13, 2008, when she and her youngest son fled for their lives after Wallace allegedly threatened to kill her and the kids. The following day she returned for her three other children and they all took shelter with her cousin-brother, Calvin Hesuse, who lives alone in a tiny house nearby.
The day after that she petitioned the Shiprock District Court for a protection order against Wallace. Linda had to refile her petition after the court rejected the first one, saying it was done on an outdated form.
She didn't know it then, but that bit of carelessness by the court worker who gave her the wrong form heralded a pattern of official indifference that has left her more alone, frightened and sad than she was the night she huddled in a roadside ditch after fleeing her husband's death threats.
But the abuse no longer came just from Wallace, it has come from her own tribal government.
Two years later, her case has revealed serious lapses in service delivery by tribal offices mandated to help intellectually disabled people and domestic violence victims, including the most high-profile advocates for domestic violence victims - former President Joe Shirley Jr. and his wife Vikki.
As president from 2003 to 2011, Shirley asked the Navajo Nation Council in 2003 to reinstate and fund the Office of the First Lady, saying its priority would be the prevention of domestic violence and support services for victims.
But for Linda, those protections proved to be an illusion, and the promises hollow. Instead, she found herself falling through the cracks in one agency after another.
On her own
No one, it seems, wants Linda Begay for a client.
She's had four legal representatives, including former tribal attorney Jim Zion of Albuquerque, but all have withdrawn from her case.
Hesuse said he has tried to help Linda but tribal court and social service officials see him as a busybody and don't want him involved. He is prohibited from sitting next to her in court or attending meetings between Linda and her social workers, he said.
As soon as she made the decision to leave Wallace permanently, she faced multiple legal challenges. She got an emergency protection order but Wallace, she said, ignored it, returning to the trailer - which is in her name - and scrawling threats and obscenities about her and Hesuse.
While Linda was in court Oct. 23, 2008, seeking a second order to enforce the first one, a social worker from the Division of Social Services was picking up the Begay children at school under an order of temporary custody based on "allegations of physical neglect, domestic violence and drinking by (the) father."
To get them back, she would have to prove she could provide a stable, safe home, and be adequate as a parent.
Assisted by Hesuse, Linda applied to DNA People's Legal Services Inc. in Shiprock. She was assigned a legal advocate, Esther Keeswood of Farmington, to help her get protection order against Wallace and regain custody of her children.
But relations with Keeswood quickly soured.
A custody hearing was scheduled for Nov. 5, but Keeswood said she couldn't make it. Linda complained to Keeswood's supervisor about the missed hearing, and Keeswood immediately moved to withdraw as Linda's representative in the case against her husband.
Feeling betrayed, Linda filed a complaint Nov. 13, 2008, against Keeswood with the Navajo Nation Bar Association. Five days later, Keeswood petitioned the Crownpoint court to also withdraw from the case involving custody of Linda's children. The court granted Keeswood's request Dec. 2, 2008.
Keeswood declined to comment to the Navajo Times, but stated in an April 16, 2009, letter to the bar association Disciplinary Committee that Linda and Hesuse told her and Shiprock District Court that they were dissatisfied with her services and were getting another attorney.
After speaking to Keeswood, DNA Executive Director Levon Henry told the Times that he supports Keeswood's handling of the situation.
And so Linda, an intellectually disabled person, appeared in court representing herself Dec. 5, 2008, when she sought to extend her protection order against Wallace. She obtained a one-year protection order and says now that no one told her that she could have asked the court for a five-year order.
In theory, the court system isn't supposed to leave clients, especially one with a disability, on their own. The Navajo Nation court system provides "special assistance" to people with intellectual disabilities "but only if a disability is either brought to the attention of the presiding judge in a pleading or the behavior of that party suggests to the judge that such a disability may exist," Crownpoint District Court staff attorney Patrick Dooley explained in an Aug. 18, 2009, letter to the Times.
"Regarding Ms. Begay, I have consulted with the two judges that handled Ms. Begay's case," Dooley stated. "Neither judge recalls being struck with behavior, at least in their presence, that led them to believe that Ms. Begay has a mental disability."
According to court records, Linda has appeared "pro se" before former District Judge Eleanor Shirley, who now sits on the Navajo Nation Supreme Court, and District Court judges Irene Toledo, Kathy Begay and Genevieve Woody.
Linda, with Hesuse's assistance, tried again and got legal representation, first from Zion and then from legal advocate Bobby George of Thoreau, N.M. But each eventually withdrew, defeated by the complexities of her situation and the logistical difficulty of enforcing court-ordered solutions.
Zion, who was court appointed to Linda's case on Nov. 13, 2009, said he became frustrated with the domestic violence protection process because it lacks the "means of proper implementation."
"Those problems are particularly severe in the Nageezi area," he noted. "It has become a jurisdictional 'no man's land' for a long time because of its distance from Navajo Nation agency towns and jurisdictional confusion."
Linda and Hesuse went again to Shiprock DNA, which assigned attorney Kimberly Y. Schooley, but she later withdrew citing a conflict of interest.
On Social Services' radar
The Begay family was on the radar of tribal social workers for at least two years before Linda took the kids and left Wallace, according to a March 31, 2009, letter to Linda from DSS social worker Cindy M. Morgan.
Morgan wrote to inform Linda where the children were living after the tribe took custody, and said DSS needed to meet with Linda to discuss "permanency planning" because her case had been open for nearly two years.
Efforts to reach Linda at her trailer or by leaving messages had been fruitless, Morgan wrote, and the children's caretakers reported that Linda had not visited any of the children in the five months since they had been removed from her custody.
What Linda did not know was that the agency was so upset with her it had obtained a bench warrant for her arrest. In explaining her decision to grant the request, Judge Toledo cited Linda's failure to appear for a Dec. 11, 2008, custody hearing, and stated further that she had not complied with directives to get counseling and other services, and maintain contact with Social Services.
Linda said she skipped the custody hearing on advice from her former legal advocate, Esther Keeswood, who had told her it would be rescheduled.
Linda, however, did show up for her meeting with her DSS case manager, Morgan, on April 8, 2009, where she was served with the arrest warrant and briefly jailed.
Ben Stoner of Farmington, a pastor who has known Linda and her family for 10 years, expressed his outrage over her treatment in a May 28, 2009, letter to the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission.
"Crownpoint Social Services misled Mrs. (Linda) Begay into signing guardianship papers for her two young children behind closed doors, with no judge, with no interpreter, and no legal assistance, while she was incarcerated in the Crownpoint police department."
In contrast to the impression she had apparently made on DSS, Stoner said he had always known Linda to be a loving and conscientious parent. Recently, she said she sees her older two children regularly, adding that she has difficulty when she tries to visit the other two, who are with another caretaker.
Following her detention, Linda delivered a written appeal for help to then DSS Director Cora Maxx-Phillips, who is now a staff assistant to President Ben Shelly.
Copies of the statement went to then President Shirley, Vikki Shirley and the Human Rights Commission.
"The Navajo Nation Social Services has discriminated against me and my children...the Navajo social services continue the court on me through this mean prosecutor (Crownpoint District Prosecutor Jenny) Becenti all because the social services hear hearsay, gossips and false allegations and use my children against me by threaten them. And they are forced to lied on me," Linda wrote.
In Linda's perception, the Social Services case plan for her family boils down to "'... the Navajo Nation pulls a bunch of 'you must do this or else you'll lose your kids forever.'"
She will never, she says, trust anyone in the Crownpoint DSS office again.
Before the Shirley administration ended, Maxx-Phillips told the Navajo Times that she was investigating Linda's allegation of deception and coercion by DSS. Since then the Times has made numerous efforts by phone and in person to follow up with Maxx-Phillips, but she never responded.
On March 29, President Ben Shelly's spokeswoman Charmaine Jackson extended an invitation to Linda "to visit or submit a letter of request to the OPVP Constituent Services Offices of the Shelly-Jim Administration at: 928-871-6352 or 7000. We will review and process her request formally."
On May 4, Linda said she didn't understand what Jackson was saying. "I don't know what they want," she said.
In November, the Office of the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico accepted Linda's domestic violence case on referral from Navajo Nation criminal investigator Samantha Yazzie, who looked into Linda's allegations that she had reported Wallace's abuse to law enforcement officials in Crownpoint, Bloomfield and Farmington for years but no one had ever conducted an investigation.
FBI public information officer Frank Fisher declined to comment on the case because it's under investigation.
Yazzie, who does volunteer work with disabled citizens, also conferred with DSS officials and Linda's case is now being handled by the Shiprock office, where a caseworker is assisting her to obtain housing and a job in Farmington, the first steps towards reuniting with her children.