A Letter to a Family Member

August 28, 2022

Dear xxxxxx,

There is a narrative I need to convey to you, because, like many narratives borne of hardship and trial, it is one that matters.

I once knew a young couple -- a man and a woman, mid-twenties, brilliant and hopeful and commencing their professional lives in auspicious ways.  They happened to live together, although they were not married.

This couple lived in a country that suffered from the actions of the secret police, sadly enough.  Certain corrupt groups of these men wielded badges and the public trust without being worthy of the privilege.  Despite an ostensible democracy, these rogue groups of officers believed they were answerable only to themselves and Russian-affiliated organized crime.

While still in college, the young woman was targeted by the secret police without being aware.  An executive at the place of employment for her college internship rather cunningly seduced her, and he did so for pay from the national treasury in his status as an "informant" regarding purported "national security matters."

What was the truth?  The young woman was attractive and she knew someone, also innocent, who was a target of the secret police.  So, these predatory men sought to compromise her for the leverage they could bring to bear on others.

Unbeknownst to her at the time, her seduction by the executive was filmed by the secret police.

Afterwards, these men threatened to ruin her family with that very tape.  They threatened to ruin her career, her father's career, her sibling's careers.  They threatened to distribute the tape online in order to shame and humiliate her without limit -- unless she did everything they told her to do.

What did the secret police then require of this young woman? 

First, they required that she tell lies about others.  Consequential lies.  Lies that mattered.  Lies that could have ruined the lives of many innocents.

Second, they required that she sabotage her boyfriend's barrier contraception, resulting in multiple pregnancies.

Her boyfriend was dismayed by the situation.  To him, her pregnancies were unexplained and disastrously timed.  He felt uneasy about their circumstances, but he was ignorant of the source of their suffering.  In any case, the young woman held her silence regarding the truth.

She and her boyfriend decided to terminate their pregnancies, as agonizing as those choices were.  Yet, those medical procedures were unlawfully filmed and this footage, combined with the unlawful access of her medical records by the secret police, was also used as leverage to condemn and control her.

Beyond this, when she underwent medical procedures, the secret police threatened to infect her with HIV or another serious pathogen if she did not cooperate fully with their demands.

She was trapped, she felt -- coerced and manipulated by malevolent and predatory men who took pleasure in her suffering and that of her partner.

He, too, was trapped, although, not knowing about the films, he could not perceive the full extent of the reasons why.

At times, the secret police tortured the young man and the young woman.  At times, the secret police threatened to have them killed outright.

The young woman was so profoundly terrorized and victimized that she felt she could not tell the truth to anyone about what had happened to her.  

In her distress, she had spoken to her family of having thoughts of suicide.  The young couple, in their despair and isolation, began to argue.  And the secret cause of their suffering remained unspoken between them.

It must be acknowledged the the secret police paid the couple -- both of them -- as "informants"!  In fact, the young woman was rendered quite rich for her escalating prevarications about others.

Yet, this was blood money, earned by implicating innocents of crimes they never committed, and no peace could derive from such gains.

xxxxxx, in the absence of the spoken truth, this couple was doomed to suffering.

How would you have advised them if you could?

What would you have told them about the totalitarianism they had been forced to confront at such a young age?

What would you have recommended regarding their truthful disclosures to one another?

What would you have conveyed to them about the necessity of their truthful disclosures to others?

How would you have recommended that they reclaim a sense of independence, freedom and justice in what was a profoundly unjust situation?

You are an astonishingly wise and centered young xxx, xxxxxx.  I'm certain that your wisdom and fortitude would have served this young couple well.

Tell me what you would have told them, xxxxxxx xxxxx xxx.  Help me to know the words of encouragement they would have wished to hear.

God did not abandon them, xxxxxx.  Nor has he abandoned us.  And we must hold to His benediction, as perhaps they did, despite our grief.

I love you always.

LM