My submission to the Belmopan Magistrate Court on 27 July 2026

Content Preview: discussion of corrupt carceral legal systems, gender-based violence, and systemic injustice

I sat down to write this document on an afternoon in late July, knowing full well that the deeply insecure man who would read it had already made up his mind to protect my abuser. And my abuser sat in court slumped over, bored on the screen -- a coward hiding behind his attorney and the archaic colonial laws of Belize. Belmopan Magistrate David Edmund had told me on 22 July that he wouldn't look at my 112 page Affidavit of evidence, and in fact instructed the opposing counsel not to respond to the evidence either. My former counsel had refused to submit the Affidavit even though I instructed her to 4 times in writing. I saw Magistrate Edmunds smirk as he instructed me to complete a homework assignment of legal arguments designed to dangle homelessness and destitution in front of me like a poisoned leash.

And, I wrote it anyway. Because I am a Lionheart.

There is liberation in speaking my truth-- it is one of the ways of expression to get an energy out of the body tissues and fascia where it otherwise might linger and cause inflammation. I needed to say it. For myself. For the record. For the women who will come after me who will find themselves in that same courtroom, sitting in that same chair, watching that same magistrate smirk at their fear.

Well, I raised the bar. Pun intended. The judge intended for me to beg for scraps of safety from men who have already told me my life and safety don't matter. Instead I wrote a declaration: I have seen what you are doing. I have weighed you in the balance and you have been found wanting.* I will not submit. I am not asking for your permission to be safe. I am already saving myself. I am using my power. And I am not afraid of you.

I come from a line of witnesses. Women in my maternal family line have had eye diseases leading to blindness for four generations. I feel this is connected to our spiritual gifting in my bones. I believe it is why I was born with a Gemini Sun in the 8th house and a Scorpio Ascendant conjunct Pluto, with Venus in Gemini fueling my need to write and speak and make art with my Pisces Moon. I believe that an inability or unwillingness to honor that role (of the witness) is one cause of an intergenerational pattern of blindness in my family from glaucoma. The body having never expressed the years trauma that the eyes have seen. I imagine this started during enslavement where being a witness who expressed and spoke truth to power as I am doing here could cost a woman torture, her life, torture or selling of her children, and brutal sexual exploitation.

Everything we see is energy coming into our eyes. The witness must expel that energy somehow. They must name what they have seen—whether through writing, speaking, art, music, or some other means. If they don't, the energy stays. It builds up into pressure that destroys the retina, the tear glands, and the nerves behind the eye.

However, my ancestors are celebrating me. And they are getting their eyesight back. I am writing. I am speaking. I am claiming my gifting as a witness. Magistrate David Edmund sees me as a victim seeking sympathy or rescue, but my reply is from a Wild Woman who has seen that the system is designed to entrap, broke myself free, and is refusing to stay silent about what happened to me.

Below is a link to my submission to the Belmopan Magistrate Court. It is 8 pages long. It is dense with legal citations like references to the Belize Domestic Violence Act and the Married Persons (Protection) Act. It is, on its surface, a response to three questions the Court asked me about spousal maintenance, occupation orders, and protection orders. But on a deeper level, it is a record of institutional failure--or perhaps institutional success for the long gone European colonizer. It is a prophetic insight into how the colonial system is designed to protect abusers, especially those with wealth and family connections, the same people who wrote these laws. My reflection to the court is an exposure of the systemic architecture of abuse—not just by one man, but a man within a corrupt legal system that shields him.

And it is, unmistakably, an act of self-liberation.

I wrote this document from a safe-house after I had already left Belize, after I had already reported the Respondent to the U.S. Department of State and Homeland Security. I had already taken my safety into my own hands because the Court refused to offer legal protection. I expect the Magistrate will likely retaliate and dismiss my case with prejudice. I am also burning a bridge to Belize that originally I had planned to cross again. However, my sacrifice was worth it, because I believe the truth deserves to be documented, even if the it means angering people who believe themselves to be more powerful than I am. This is not my first time in this position, of speaking truth to power. Ultimately, I believe that Belize's failures of human rights need to be exposed in a public way in order for change to become possible. This is not unique to Belize, it is true of all corrupt government systems. A similar public exposure is happening in my own country, with the Epstein files, in France with Gisèle Pelicot's case, with the Motherless website, etc.

I am no longer under the jurisdiction of the Belmopan Magistrate Court. I have taken every reasonable step to protect myself. Now I want to speak up for myself, and in service to a community of countless women and femmes who experience injustice and continued post-separation abuse aided by family courts around the world.

I believe the timing is right. Jupiter is in Leo, transiting my Midheaven, the house of public reputation, vocation, and contribution. Venus in Gemini in my 8th house is sextile that transit. Uranus is in Gemini, trine Pluto in Aquarius, shifting collective consciousness around how we speak about and reveal the rot in our human societal underbelly. The 8th house is a Plutonian house about issues of death, power, rebirth, and transformation. My Gemini 8th house is ruled by Mercury, located in the sign of Cancer, conjunct my Mars in my 9th house of philosophy, ideas, immigration, and long-distance travel. The sign of Cancer is the sign of home, body, the mother, and what we move to protect. I am making a choice to be loud because I believe this quality of time is asking me to speak up about what I have witnessed in Belize. What I have lived. The universe is literally supporting my voice on these topics.

While it might first appear so, this is not an act of revenge or bitterness. It is a call for public safety, and for accountability of these patterns in our legal institutions. Perhaps some Belizeans would say the U.S. is no better, and that might be true, but the bar-- as the saying goes-- is in Hell. Women deserve better than hellish legal structures in every country, and for that matter -- so do abusive men! I am sharing this document because silence is what allows abuse to continue. I have a moral obligation to warn others. I am also a writer, and this is what good writers often do: bear witness, tell the truth, and trust that the truth will find its people.

If you choose to read the full submission, you will find an account of the evidence the Court refused to consider, a lethality assessment showing I answered "YES" to 7 of 11 questions (meaning the Respondent posed a significant risk of homicide); a record of the Respondent's ongoing coercive control even after the Court accepted his undertaking to "leave her alone"; a naming of the institutional misogyny embedded in the Magistrate Family Court— a Magistrate who stated to my legal counsel he believes women are applying for protection orders "to get the house to themselves"; and a declaration that I am no longer relying on that Court to protect me, I am protecting myself.

While I do not hold any hope the system will be convicted to change, I still wrote it because I believe the truth holds power, even when the people who hear it refuse to act with integrity. I know there are women in Belize who will find themselves in that same courtroom, sitting in that same chair, watching that same magistrate smirk at their fear. Roles like judgeships draw in narcissists like flies to honey. My ex has many of these tendencies too, and ultimately that was his downfall in selecting me. I am not one to go quietly, I prefer to go down in flames and rise from my own ashes as the Emergent Phoenix.

I also hope any survivor of abuse who has been through similar injustices and encounters my writing will see: you are not crazy. You are not imagining the rot. The system is corrupt and dishonest. And you are not alone.

I write it because I believe that one day, the truth we speak to power now will be the foundation of something more just; perhaps a world where women's (and children's) lives and safety matter more than wealthy, predatory men's contrived reputations. I don't know when that day will come, but I know I want to be part of making it come sooner. Together, we have the power to do that by demanding it with the gifts and power we claim.

What would you do if you found yourself in such a situation? What would you want someone to do alongside you, and about this situation on your behalf (with consent)? Then get curious and seek consent to do what you are able to on behalf of your own, or someone else's pursuit of justice. This is how we change things. We must stop waiting for the system to protect us, and create change we want to see by protecting each other and holding abusive men and corrupt people in these long abusive colonial systems accountable.

If you want to read the full submission, you can find it here: Link to PDF

*Footnote:

In the Old Testament Book of Daniel (Chapter 5), King Belshazzar of Babylon hosts a lavish feast, using sacred vessels plundered from the Jerusalem temple to drink wine and praise idols. Immediately, a disembodied hand appears and writes on the palace wall. None of the king's wise men can interpret the writing until the prophet Daniel is summoned. Daniel reads the inscription—Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin—and interprets it as divine judgment: God has numbered Belshazzar's days, weighed him in the balances, and found him wanting; his kingdom will be divided and given to the Medes and Persians. That very night, Belshazzar is killed and his kingdom falls.

Because I am a modern witch and Wild Woman, this inscription is a spell I am casting over the men represented in this writing. I plan to ritualize it on the Full Moon with moon water I made during the most recent Sagittarius full moon, which just so happens to be the 29th of July.

No its not a curse, but a sacred request to Mother Earth and the Lilith Moon for cosmic justice and protection. When someone has shown no desire to grow or change from their harmful abusive behaviors, they sometimes need the universe to offer them (and others they may harm by extension) a hard reset and chance to try again in another timeline with different circumstances.

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