Genocide Survivor's Medical and Legal Fund

My mother has just been diagnosed with breast cancer and the timing of my family's stressors must be some sort of cosmic irony.

(I will edit this later but at the moment, this just needs to be published ASAP.)

This comes in a time where we were already financially stressed and just lost a legal case against a house flipper that capped our sewer line (or her plumber did so, as was claimed in court) and got away with it. The deadline for appealing the case was nearing when we got the news of my mother a few days ago. We need to hire a lawyer to help us with our case and my mother needs surgery as soon as possible, neither of which we currently have the funds for, even with medical insurance.

My mother's life is the first priority but unfortunately our situation is not a "handle one thing at a time" scenario. 

Feel free to read the lawsuit side of things below but as I'm in a hurry to post this, some details are missing or may be inaccurate. I will add to or correct things as soon as possible or as I'm reminded. I'm trying to be as factual as possible to the best of my abilities, but I'm aware my bias will be present in my tone. 

Warning: Graphic Violence Mentioned

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Destroyed Property and Capped Sewer Line

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June 2022, a house flipper bought the property behind our house and capped our utility sewer line that had been there for over 60 years with only two days of a weekend's notice to remove our property from hers. This is after the flipper destroyed the fence on our side of the property line and cut down our trees, citing her survey, which was incorrect. When the the fence damage first happened, my father approached her to discuss the damage and asked her to avoid the retaining wall that remained, while informing her that our sewer line went through her property. Any attempt to negotiate that first day was denied. My dad offered to have it moved out of the way of any of her construction plans if she gave us a couple weeks, but she said it needed to go and that we were trespassing. The next day my parents ran into her at the family house after presenting my brother with a notice of tresspass and a warning we needed to remove our property in 48 hours (on a weekend). My dad offered to get his survey. She refused to see it and left after my mom told her that there were stakes marking the property line. Those were the only two face-to-face conversations my parents had with the flipper. There was no yelling by either side. Later in court, her lawyer said we had shouting matches and described our actions as the most animosity he had ever seen in his career, and he had worked on murder trials. 

(Graphic description following)

My mother found those words particularily insulting and painful because when she was 13-years-old (she has no way of knowing for sure what her age was) she watched people executed by having their throats slit by palm leaves because the soldiers didn't want to waste bullets.

City records show that the house flipper received the permit to work on the sewer 2 days after she (or someone who worked for her) did the work. The house flipper went on vacation immediately after and left my family home with no sewer for 4 weeks because she was not available to be served the injunction. The city continued to bill my parents for the unused sewer service during this time. My parents sued for damages and, more importantly, emotional distress. However, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress suits do not seem to be taken seriously in our town. The narrative was painted that our case was a nuisance suit. We lost our suit and the judge awarded the defendant the counter-suit of Trespassing. 

We lost the case last month because my father, no matter how well-meaning, is not a lawyer who knows how to play the game and navigate court procedure. However, my parents are appealing.

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Why My Family Pursued a Lawsuit We Were Told We Could Never Win With Our Town's Demographics

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I have seen my mother cry more these last 19 months than I have my entire life.

My mother was 12 years old when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975. Her family suffered four years of hell, then two years of purgatory in a refugee camp before being sponsored to come to America in 1982. The stories my mother has told me are horrifying. She watched her 4-year-old little sister starve to death, one of the most painful long-suffering ways to die.

The Khmer Rouge forced my mother and other children to dig and turn human fecal matter into fertilizer with no tools.

This was just one thing that happened, but it's the most relevant at the moment.

The capping of my family's sewer line sent my mother into a spiral of PTSD that she had managed to live with, hanging by a thread up to that point by gardening in our backyard. My mother has not touched her garden since. She is unable to look at our back fence or the neighbor's house anymore, much less get close enough to water her plants. Nearly all of the plants she meticulously cared for are dead or dying and sadly, my mother's mental state has always been reflected in the care of her plants. Or perhaps, she finds peace in reflecting their state.

My sister, who was a minor when this happened, has sensory issues and worked at a fast-food restaurant. She had a specific ritual for cleaning her uniform and herself because she couldn't stand the smell of grease following her around. Being unable to clean herself or her clothing in her specific way sent her into severe anxiety, which led to her quitting her job.

My brother was taking medicine at the time that caused diarrhea. He could not wait until someone could drive him to a gas station that was open at 1 in the morning when we were still in a pandemic, so he went in our own backyard, listening to birds, and feeling humiliated.

My father was so stressed about the immediate situation that he almost made a deadly mistake at his job and requested to be taken off the schedule for safety reasons. He did not work for next 18 months. He put all his focus in to fighting the case pro se because we could not afford a lawyer that could take us the whole way. Because of this, my mother had become the primary earner. However, my father was unable to take his ADHD medication because of the high blood pressure caused by the situation. He was not able to remain organized enough to manage the procedure that ultimately disadvantaged us enough to lose the case.

Throughout this, my mother's consistant nightmares became worse. She went to the emergency room early on when the situation began because she thought she was having a heart attack. She was informed it was a panic attack, which she never had before. I suspect she wasn't even sure panic attacks were real until then.

She was devestated that her son had to relieve himself in our backyard like a dog. She couldn't believe that after everything she went through to come to this country, someone in a civilized society could deny her family basic hygiene, make her feel unsafe in her own home, and get away with it.

I suspect the stress of the last 19 months may have had a part in my mother developing cancer.

As I said, my mother urgent medical concerns take priority but my family can't ignore our other problems.

Addendum 1: Our sewer line went back through someone else's property because it would have to go uphill to connect to the city system in the front like everyone else's. A previous owner of our house did the work allegedly with permisssion from the previous owner of the house behind us. The line was allegedly serviced a few times so it seems highly unlikely that the owner of the other property didn't know about the line. 20 years ago when my parents bought the house, the city was doing some work on our street updating the system and my dad asked if our line was being updated. He was told that wasn't necessary because we already had a perfectly fine line already going back to the other street. My father asked if it could be moved to the front but was told it was impossible because of the incline. During this suit, my family has been told to put in a sewage pump at mostly our own expense. Besides any offer to settle being small enough to be insulting, given my mother's trauma, my family does not want there to be a day when the pump fails because the Texas power grid has an unstable winter one day and we are forced to deal with raw human sewage backing up in our house. An electric pump will never be as reliable as simple gravity. 

Addendum 2: We have several home improvement projects that have been in progress for a while as well as an Airstream Trailer that was being restored and two cars we were working on when we could. It was mostly my father handling these projects. With all his attention going toward the lawsuit, and myself and my siblings either working or in school, these projects were put on the back burner. A few weeks ago, the city code compliance officers came by our house and wrote a warning for everything they could see, including a fence between our front and back lawn that we temporarily lifted off its posts to allow access to things like a wheelbarrow (for example). They first that we couldn't put up a fence without a permit. Then, when informed that it wasn't a new fence and that we had only lifted the fence off the posts to move stuff between the back and front yards, they said we couldn't fix it without a permit or be charged a fine of $500. We were given four days to fix everything noted, including removing the inoperable vehicles. These are probably legitimate complaints, but after not being a problem to the city for well over year, the timing of the visit after losing the case and during when my father needed to be drafting the appeal was stressful. My father was out of town at the time and would not home for a few days.

When I asked the officers if someone complained and if I could know who it was, they said they didn't know anything about that and just received a call and were told to come to our house. I found the timing and circumstances suspicious, but that is just my opinion. I can't accuse the city officials of collusion and retaliation without any proof and I'm not. I can only say how it appeared to me, especially with the house flipper being granted a permit for work that had been done two days before the date it was approved. 

I think a few days later was when my mom had her tissue biopsy.