Highlights

o Fundamental flaws in the judicial system; a case that hinges on character
o How the judicial system manifests as anti-community and anti-family
o Montgomery County, Maryland: large urban jurisdiction with a typically
   disconnected government and judiciary
o The prosecutorial mind-set – vengeful, heartless and purely punitive
o The acute lack of trust in communities and society
o The devastating effect on families when one family member is punished
o Character analysis based on the personal approach; affecting the outcome
o The vast superiority of spirit to letter, conscience to technicality, in law
o The testimony of family as community
o The burden of raising an autistic child
o The general non-livability of modern condo developments and the importance
   of green space access
o How the CCA program could avert tragedies

Section 5
Case Study

5.1 Overview and background

The circumstances described in the following paragraphs show how the CCA program could have made a difference in the outcome of a somewhat unique episode that took place in Bethesda, Maryland in 1998. A court action initiated by the office of the state's attorney resulted in the incarceration a local woman for five years. It's apparent to even the casual observer that the state erred in its prosecution of this person and the jury erred in finding her guilty. But verdict aside, the episode brings out fundamental shortcomings in our social structure, and illustrates the generally irresponsible approach that is taken by the people whom we charge to handle situations like this – police, prosecutors, judges – an approach that is purely punitive and reactive, rather than educational and preventive, and that produces no positive outcome for any party – not for the plaintiff, nor the defendant, nor the community or the state. The case shows how important it is to first of all have a community that is worthy of the name, and to furthermore have someone in the community who is (a) impeccably trustworthy and (b) has developed his powers of perception to a degree that he or she can read a community member's character and offer accurate testimony about it.

The case is that of Mrs. Sandra C. Villacis of North Bethesda, an Ecuadoran immigrant. There are strong indications that we simply got it wrong; that a bad deal was handed out to a good person. As it turned out, many other people besides the accused suffered for the error, including the state and the municipality itself – Montgomery County – the taxpayers of whom had to pay for the adjudication of the case (which took more than a year), and for the five year incarceration of the defendant, while depriving themselves of the benefits that the defendant might have bestowed on the community, in particular with regard to the upbringing of a disabled child, had she not been sent to prison. Not only did Mrs. Villacis get a raw deal, but an equally bad deal was inflicted on several members of her family who were not even accused of a crime, including her husband, two children, mother, mother-in-law, father, siblings and in-laws. At least ten people were seriously hurt – materially, emotionally – by the state's actions in this case. We're talking about a long-term, permanent impact on all of their lives, and conceivably it could have all been avoided had there been some degree of community conscience, some element of responsible, citizen-to-citizen outreach in the locale where these people resided.

As of this writing **, Mrs. Villacis is facing deportation in the spring of 2005 upon her release from prison. She is a legal resident, but not a citizen. Given the circumstances of the case, and all that she and her family have endured, it's clear that special dispensation should be considered in the forthcoming U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS – formerly the INS) action; that the government should as a minimum refrain from sending her back to Ecuador. However, there is apparently very little wiggle room from a legal standpoint in this regard. Federal law requires that a non-citizen convicted of a felony be expelled from the country. It's a perfect example of how lawyers and civil servants are bound with steel chains to the letter of the law, no matter how absurd or unjust the outcome may be, while being totally insensible to the spirit of the law, which is to say, the human intelligence from which the law arises.

5.2 A personal approach

You will note that there is a distinctly personal tone to the following narrative; that the reporter's own views are strongly in evidence. This does not mean that the arguments are invalid. On the contrary – and this is a key point – it is the personal approach, the human side of situations such as those described here, that has been missing in our judicial system and indeed, in our society. Missing for a long time, actually. Without the human element, without the conscience that enlightened citizenship should display, the technical, impersonal treatment that our lawyers and judges employ has no foundation; it's utterly without merit. And this includes the constitutional foundation that many of those folks are fond of falling back on. That great and holy platform also dissolves into worthless non-substance without the underpinnings of human conscience. The argument that "no one is above the law" is only true IF the citizens for whom and by whom the law is formulated are sufficiently evolved in their consciousness such that the law truly reflects the highest human qualities (or, if you will, the highest divine qualities, for humans are made in a divine image). Otherwise, the techno-legalistic, letter-of-the-law mind-set is nothing more than pettiness and vengeful cruelty. Without conscience nothing we do in the legal arena has any validity. That's how superior spirit is to letter; how superior conscience is to technicality. And that is what this case, and what the CCA program is about.

So your patience and indulgence are requested in reviewing the arguments that follow – arguments that have been intentionally constructed to express a human view – conscious and conscientious – on the part of a passerby who happened on the scene of an ongoing family tragedy, and who could not help but react to the heartless inhumanity of the situation, and could not help but want to lend a helping hand and sympathetic voice as a friendly and concerned citizen.

The background of this observer is that of an author and independent community activist. I spent ten years working in grass roots outreach in a high crime area of Prince George's County, Maryland and became a de facto neighborhood manager in the Westchester area of Camp Springs, a residential subdivision of 550 homes, five miles south of Washington, D.C. I've written a book that reports on this outreach activity. It outlines an alternative approach to crime prevention and a new form of community government called "Garden Zone Management". The CCA program took shape as a logical extension of the Garden Zone Management philosophy.

Let me begin by stating that I've never met Mrs. Villacis. We've never corresponded, nor even spoken on the phone. But as you will see, it is not necessary that I should have met this woman. It's also important to note that this observer is not receiving any payment or compensation from either Mrs. Villacis or her family for his support in this matter. And that's how it should be with a Community Conscience Advocate. A CCA may draw a salary or stipend from some source for his general service – possibly from the community, or the municipality, or both – but there would not be any money specifically tendered for his or her participation in an individual case. Let it also be clear that this observer is neither a lawyer nor a paralegal, and has limited experience in legal matters. The advice that is offered here is not based on statutory considerations, but on humanitarian ones. However, that does not imply that lawyers should be excluded from working as CCAs. These days it would be unusual for a working lawyer to possess the qualities of developed consciousness that a CCA ought to display, since most people with truly refined sensibilities would have given up the law profession long before in utter frustration and disgust. Nevertheless, if you could find a lawyer who was tough enough but also enlightened to some degree, he or she might be useful to the program, for we do need to make the system of law more open, more accessible and less intimidating to ordinary citizens. A "user friendly" legal system is one of the implicit goals of the CCA program. Finally, let it be clear that this reporter is not running for office, belongs to no political party or lobbying group (apart from promoting this program), and has no friends in high places from whom he can request a favor, or to whom he owes a favor. He is very much a politically neutral observer.

Though the specifics of this case are rather unique, and the parties involved have experienced some truly tragic circumstances, the injustice that they suffered was actually not that unusual. I could describe several other cases where individuals received equally bad treatment from police, prosecutors, judges and government officials. Decent people who had done nothing wrong, yet who were arrested, confined against their will, barred from their own homes, forcefully separated from their families and/or ignored by the social service agencies who were supposed to be supporting them. (Two examples are given here: www.SpiritualNeighborhood.org/cs/homeless.htm.) We could also discuss cases where very serious crimes, and even deaths, could have been prevented had there been any responsible government leadership in the communities where they occurred. I'm talking about teens shooting guns at other teens, unsuspecting residents mugged and shot walking home from the metro station, neighbors' kids killed gangland style over drugs, others given lengthy prison terms for preventable offenses – actions that responsible adults should have been able to foresee had they taken an interest. Some of these cases are described in my book. Many of them involved people that I knew personally. And in every case we see an illustration of how our local government leaders, including the justice system, are failing us in fundamental ways. Failing through their lack of involvement, their lack of compassion, their remote, disconnected posture and their cold, by-the-book, reaction-based handling of situations such as these. These sorts of events, with varying degrees of human tragedy and injustice, have been occurring, and are continuing to occur, in thousands of communities across the country. But who is speaking up about them? Who is crying foul? Unfortunately, most of us can't be bothered. It's not our job, not our mission, not our family or our kid, so it has nothing to do with me. Sad though it is, that's the general social attitude these days. And that's the reason that the government is the way it is. We citizens either can't or won't take an interest, so they don't either. We don't demand anything of them, so they don't respond. When the community begins to take more responsibility for its own, to become more self-governing, in the best and highest sense, then the nominal government, the representatives that we put into office, will follow our lead. This is what is meant by bottom-up government.

5.3 Contrasting views – the key issue of character

In brief, the case we're discussing involved the death of a young girl whom Mrs. Villacis was baby-sitting at her home in North Bethesda, Maryland. The state argued that Villacis abused the girl. It brought charges against her to that effect in May 1999, about eight months after the fact. Villacis said the child's death was accidental – that it occurred while the girl was playing with her own two daughters. The case went to trial in early 2000. The only witnesses to the accident were Villacis's daughters, who were four and six-years-old at the time. The younger daughter is autistic and doesn't speak. The older daughter described in court how the girl tripped while they were running and hit her head on a doorjamb. The prosecution argued that the girl had been beaten by Mrs. Villacis over a period of time, and that this abuse eventually brought about brain damage and death.

It's a stark contrast. From one perspective we have a loving, caring young mother who looked after a neighbor's three-year-old as if she were her own. From the other we have a bizarre person who is actually capable of taking a human life – and not just any human, but the life of a child. On one hand we have a tragic accident, the death of a young girl that just happened to occur while she was in the custody of a neighbor. On the other we have a truly dangerous woman, someone who could abuse a child for months, and then one day actually kill the girl out of .... what? Rage? Psychosis? It had to be some obviously aberrant behavioral condition. There is an enormous gulf between these two perspectives – a chasm that seems quite impossible to bridge.

What is the key issue on which this matter rests? What point overrides all other factual and circumstantial information, that in fact blows away every other consideration? What is it that we don't know that would settle this question in a heartbeat?

The character of the woman. Who can offer testimony about the character of Sandra Villacis? Who knows her personality, her habits, her heart?

5.4 Affecting the outcome

We do not live in ideal times. America is not a utopian society. The proverbial "village" that people imagine when they talk about "a village to raise a child" – that entity doesn't exist in this day and age. If it did, and if it had the structure that a true community ought to have, then the elders of the village (you may substitute "CCAs" for "elders", for that's the direction that this argument is going to take) – and in an ideal setting, there would certainly be such folks – those elders would have known already what the truth was in this case. There wouldn't have been any need for an investigation, or criminal charges, or courts and lawyers. They would have known quite well what kind of person Mrs. Villacis was, what kind of character she had, and what she was capable of. And if she were in fact a violent, psychotic woman, the death of the child would not have occurred. It would have been prevented in fact. Because the elders and the other responsible community members would have known better than to leave children – including her own – in the custody of such a person. How would they have arrived at this knowledge? Because they would have made it their business, their duty, to get to know not just her, but everyone in the community. Not in a nosy, intrusive way, not like gossiping rumor mongers, not like threatening detectives or investigators, but as friendly, concerned neighbors; as people who were committed to the community, and who took a parental role in the management of it – including the care and upbringing of the neighborhood children.

There are several points to note here:

(1) Judging character is an acquired skill. It can't be done capriciously. There are many examples of prominent individuals, from entertainers to politicians to clergymen, who have had thousands or even millions of admirers, where the followers were totally confused about the supposed good character of the person they admired. Think Michael Jackson or Jim Jones, or even a recent president. People make up their minds about their guy without sufficient information or understanding. Consider the millions of Germans who supported Hitler or the millions of Chinese who were beguiled by Chairman Mao. It's mass delusion, and Americans are by no means immune to it. The inability to discern character is a symptom of our age. Most people fail to develop this ability, mainly because they get no training for it. Nothing in our education system addresses this aspect of individual development.

(2) Just as we delude ourselves about the good character of prominent entertainers and politicians without really knowing much about them, so we also make ill informed decisions about the people around us – neighbors, acquaintances – and don't take the trouble to understand them beyond our initial impression. Judging a person's character takes time and takes personal interaction. The amount of time it takes varies depending on the people and the circumstances involved. With some folks it may require months or even years of getting to know the person before the full character is revealed.

(3) To judge character you must yourself be a person of character. This is the tricky part, the part that most of us don't get. Though the word "character" is quite commonly used, people have very different ideas about what it means. How exactly does one develop into a person of character? What is the process? When and where does that process take place? How do you recognize it? How do you measure it? It's a deep topic – one that extends into spiritual territory. The thing to realize is that character is not one quality, one observation, one good or bad deed. It's an entire spectrum of qualities melded together into a person's individuality; an infinite continuum of emotions, behaviors, feelings, ideas. It's non-material and non-physical. Both the observer and one observed are spiritual entities, and the character observation takes place on the spiritual plane.

But here's the key point: Assume that you are a person of character, that you have the requisite skills, and that you are able to take the time, however long it may be, to personally get to know someone – a neighbor, say. During that time ... while you are forming a picture of the person in question ... while your opinion about his or her character is solidifying ... while all of this is going on ... you are affecting that other person's character. His character changes over time as you interact with him. It grows. You, as the concerned friend and neighbor are actually helping to form that person – his mind, his heart – by merely showing an interest in his or her development. In a sense you become responsible for that person. And indeed, this implies that your own character grows over time through this interaction. This is where most of the supposed character experts – psychiatrists, criminal profilers and such – fail in their methodology. You can't determine a person's mind from a static, disconnected position. It's not sufficient to pass judgment from a witness stand, or even from a psychiatrist's couch. You can't observe a person from afar, as if he were a separate object, and expect a meaningful result. It's like archeologists who examine the ruins of a dead civilization and think they understand the rituals that the ancient people practiced. To analyze human behavior you must go beyond purely objective methods. It means that you as the observer have to participate in the observation, and in so doing, you play a part in determining the outcome.

5.5 A flawed system

Getting back to Sandra Villacis. In her case, and in millions of other criminal cases, none of this took place. There was no one who took an interest, no one who took responsibility. There was no village, no community, no skill acquired, no time spent. Villacis lived like 99% of America lives – as an isolated, anonymous person in an anonymous, disinterested world. Then one day she has this terrible tragedy take place, and the system tries to play catch up. The judge, jury and prosecutors try to determine in a two week trial what no one had bothered to determine in the seven years that the woman had lived here. They too, these judges and lawyers, live in just the same fashion – anonymous and disconnected from life in the neighborhoods of Maryland's cities and counties. They appear out of nowhere, and in a matter of days change the course of a person's life, and then disappear again, leaving her and her family to fend for themselves as best they can – disgraced, in debt and worst of all, split apart. What worse separation can there be than a mother from her children? It's a cruel way to go about managing a community, and a society.

And it's obviously flawed, this system of ours, with regard to the crucial issue of character determination. After all, consider the kind of setting you have in a courtroom trial – with these deeply adversarial parties, the prosecution and the defense, going at each other in front of a group that isn't even allowed to speak. Not only that, but a group of strangers who can't speak – strangers to each other, strangers to the lawyers, and strangers to the accused. Who acts this way in the real world? Where do you find such behavior in real communities? Real neighborhoods? Real families? You limit the poor woman to a few minutes of testimony, to be badgered by an aggressive, unsympathetic people's representative, in this alien environment that she's never experienced before, in front of strangers who've never met her, and who will never see her again. She's completely removed from her natural surroundings, having to adjust and ad-lib her behavior to compensate for this foreign venue. Clearly anything she says or does in this forced setting is going to be unnatural and out of character, regardless of how guilty or innocent she is.

It's hard to imagine how any meaningful determination can result from this contrivance. Truthfully, if anyone's character should be called into question in such a proceeding, it is that of the jurists who convene these courts (in this case, the Montgomery Circuit Court, Judge Paul H. Weinstein presiding) and the prosecutors who exercise them (in this case, Deputy State's Attorney Katherine Winfree). The lawyers make up their minds before the trial even starts. In the Villacis case they had in excess of sixteen months to fixate their preconceptions. They've already decided that a crime was committed, that the woman was a "monster", and they're out to exact retribution from whomever they can, in whatever way they can. Whose purpose are they serving with such measures and with such a mind-set? Whose interest are they representing? They're on some kind of wrong-headed mission, and it's clear that they are just as confused in their thinking about character as the mixed-up followers of the various charismatic figures that we referred to above. This is hardly the way to go about the critical assessment of character, on which the fate of a human being rests, and these are not the kinds of people you want making that assessment.

5.6 Family as community

What we need in such a case is a sanity check. Granted, we don't have a community or a village. We don't have any elders to consult (and we don't yet have a CCA program in place). But surely someone must have known this lady. She didn't just drop from the sky. Isn't there anyone who can tell us something about her, who can give us a clue about the kind of person she was?

Yes there is – her family.

Sandra Villacis was a daughter, a sister, a wife and a mother. Here in this country she has a husband, a mother, a mother-in-law,

two daughters, and sister and brother-in-law – all living either with her, or very nearby. In Ecuador she has a father, two brothers, two sisters and other relatives. The information that these folks can provide about Sandra's character is invaluable. The relationships they had with her, the way she brought up her children, how she behaved with others – all sorts of revealing details about her character can be inferred from knowing how she fit within this family structure. It's not a community in the strict sense, but it is light years better than the information you get from a judge and jury. Can there be bias expressed by these folks? Of course. But there is bias everywhere. The prosecution was biased. The jurors could be biased. The judge may be biased. Moreover, the bias could go both ways. Every family has its issues, its conflicts, its petty jealousies and so forth. But a good judge of character can filter through all of that. The better you know the family, the better you are able to form an accurate picture.

Here is where this observer's own input to the case becomes relevant. Through an odd turn of events I have arrived in a position where I can offer some evidence about Sandra Villacis's character. Not by having direct interaction with her, but by virtue of becoming a family member of sorts myself. It happens that I rented a basement room in the house where the Villacis family resides in Aspen Hill: including Sandra's husband Edwin Patricio Villacis, their two daughters, and Sandra's mother Maria Rebeca Andrade. I found the place because a good friend of mine is a friend of Edwin's mom, Mrs. Carmen Pazniño. I had met Mrs. Pazniño before. She cared for the invalid wife of a neighbor of mine in Camp Springs, Maryland. I had heard something about her daughter-in-law's situation, but did not know her son, grandchildren, or in-laws until I moved here. I've lived here for several months and I share parts of the house with these folks – including the kitchen and dining area. We chat and eat together quite often. I speak a bit of Spanish, and I converse with Doña Rebeca (who doesn't know English) and her 13-year-old granddaughter, Iliana (who does). Sandra's other daughter, Jessica, the autistic one, still doesn't speak. According to Edwin, Jessie had started saying a few words when her mother was home and was working with her, but she regressed during the five years that Sandra has been in prison.

The clear impression I've come away with from having had intimate contact with this group is that they are a close and caring family. They are intelligent and loving, and very normal. Not wacked-out, hillbilly trailer trash. Not degenerate drug addicts. Not lowlife thieves or Gypsy con artists. But a polite, hard working, and cohesive Latino-American family that is trying to work their way into a piece of the American dream like everyone else. And they have come together heroically in their support of Sandra. Edwin sold his condo on Crossfield Court to pay legal bills, and now works two jobs to support everyone else. He works a 16 hour day: leaving at 5:00 a.m., and returning at 9:30 p.m. Weekends are taken up with visiting Sandra – which they do every Saturday without fail – plus shopping and errands, paperwork, and spending time with his daughters. He is clearly a loyal husband and devoted father. Sandra's mom, Doña Rebeca came to the U.S. to take care of her granddaughters and has remained here on visas pretty much the entire time that Sandra has been in prison. She cooks for the kids, looks after them while Edwin works, and has essentially given up her own life for the past five years in order to help her daughter's husband and their family. Edwin's mom, Mrs. Pazniño, has also made sacrifices. It is she who actually owns this house where we're living, but she allowed Edwin and his family to move in when his condo was sold, and now Doña Carmen basically lives with her daughter in Silver Spring. Edwin's sister Lourdes has sacrificed as well – taking in their mother to make room for Edwin's family. Dr. Lourdes Villacis, by the way, is a doctor of psychiatry, practicing in D.C. at a children's clinic. It should also be noted that Dr. Villacis's husband Roberto Ramirez is an architect with strong community ties in Maryland. He grew up in Mt. Rainier, and his brother Victor is a delegate to the Maryland house from Prince George's County.

5.7 What ever happened to trust?

Very few people these days have close ties to their communities. Not many show much responsibility towards their fellow citizens. But here within this immigrant Latino family we see unmistakable signs of community consciousness; clear evidence that these people are connected and concerned. But from the point of view of the law none of this matters. They are the family of the accused, and thus they can't be trusted. What we must then ask is, whom do we trust? And what exactly happened to trust? In this age of cameras on school buses, background checks for taxi drivers and armed guards at supermarkets, do government officials think that they are the only ones who can be believed? Do they think they have a monopoly on confidence? Or do even they look askance at themselves, suspicious even of one another? Trust is more valuable than gold. It's one of those aphorisms that everyone knows, but no one seems to grasp. Trust blows away every other security measure. It renders all of the cloak-and-dagger, investigative stuff superfluous. So from the standpoint of simple, neighborly trust, if this extended family knows something about the character of their sister, wife and daughter, and if they are people in whom you know you can have confidence, then we should be very much interested in what they have to say about this matter.

Needless to say, the public servants of the state of Maryland and the county of Montgomery (and now, the faceless, federal bureaucrats who are preparing to deport this lady) made no effort to get to know any of these people as I have – intimately, and in their natural environment. If they had made an effort, and if there had been anyone with a discerning heart among them, they would have seen what I have seen since coming here: There is no way that this family could have had an abusive mother living among them. The very idea is absurd. No one here drinks. No one smokes. No one is loud, unruly or rude. There are no shady characters coming over. No gambling parties. No philandering. No vulgarity. There's no corporal punishment practiced, no threats, no mental abuse, no slapping, punching, beating, starving, confinement. The worst criticism I can make about this family is that they don't eat enough green vegetables, and the girls watch too much television. Edwin is a model father to his kids. Doña Rebeca and Doña Carmen are doting grandmothers. Ilianita is a mature, modest eighth grade honor roll student. The brother, sister and in-laws are all supportive. And everyone shares the burden in caring for Jessie.

5.8 Raising an autistic child

Let's talk for a moment about Jessie. This lively eleven-year-old demands lots of attention. If you've never seen or interacted with an autistic child up close, you can't know what is involved in raising such a child. An autistic kid is a load to handle. I marvel at parents of autistic children who carry this weight year after year. Yet the Villacis family manages the job with unwavering sweetness and love. Everything they do, every activity, invariably must take Jessie into consideration. You can't leave her with other people. You can't go to restaurants. Malls are a challenge. Even an ordinary meal at home becomes complicated. (Try withholding the salt shaker from this girl at the dinner table and see what happens.) Where is the support for these people? Where are the social service agencies? With her mother in jail for five years, and her grandmother, Doña Rebeca, as dedicated as she is, but having no English, and no training in how to teach a kid like this, who from the community has stepped in to help? I have other friends in Maryland – in Howard County to be specific – who are receiving all variety of assistance with their autistic children – from Medicaid to one-on-one therapy at home. One particular lady I can tell you about in Elkridge has 15 to 20 people per week coming to her home to work with her two autistic boys. They do everything from speech therapy to horseback riding. Yet despite all this help she nevertheless had to quit her profession as a research scientist in order to properly raise her kids. She calls it the most challenging job she's ever had. This alone should tell you how important is the role of parents with kids like this. This alone should indicate just how big a burden we put on the Villacis family when we locked up Jessie's mother.

With all the help that's available – and it's my understanding that Montgomery is up near the top in terms of counties in Maryland with services for disabled kids – I would like to know who dropped the ball with the Villacis child. At eleven-years-old she is approaching an age beyond which special education will no longer work. Professionals will tell you that there is a window of opportunity available for effective behavioral therapy for such kids, and that the window closes quickly as they get older. Moreover, they also say that the preferred method nowadays is to keep the child at home with the family and the community. They no longer institutionalize kids like Jessie – not in the U.S. they don't. (Ecuador, however, is a different story – see below). They work with them, and in some cases they achieve incredible results.

There's an amazing story that came out of India a year or so ago about a severely autistic teenage boy – Tito Mukhopadhyay – whose tenacious mother Soma worked with him constantly for ten years, teaching him how to communicate by tying a pencil to his hand so he could write letters on a tablet. He progressed to the point that he is now able to converse intelligently with researchers by using a keyboard. And he's not just reciting simple sentences, rather Tito expounds on sophisticated topics about his thoughts, emotions and physical state. His mother reads him Dickens and Shakespeare and teaches him geometry. Tito writes poetry and has even published a book. Does Jessie Villacis have any poetry in her? Could she become an author? What about, could she just be able to communicate with us? Could we get her that far at least?

Having observed this girl myself, my sense is that she is capable of far more than we're seeing from her. But there is no one who can put her to work, to really get something out of her. Her family is loving and kind, but they've perhaps spoiled her with their indulgence. Tito's mother would spend hours on end working with him, day after day, month after month. What she accomplished with the boy was so astonishing that even the experts were incredulous. They've even modeled a new type of therapy after Soma's methods – they call it the "Rapid Prompting Method". Doctors are actually convening conferences on this new technique. It's astoundingly effective, but from what I've seen in the reports, it takes much dedication on the part of the therapist.

This is what Edwin and Sandra ought to have been doing with their daughter for the last five years. But with Edwin working two jobs and Sandra locked up, none of this was possible. Is it too late for Jessie? Hopefully not, but I'd like to suggest that if Sandra is sent back to Ecuador, it would render a permanent setback to Jessie's potential development. In the D.C. area there are hundreds of nonprofit groups and service providers for DD kids that the Villacises can call upon, as well as state and federal resources to which they can apply for monetary assistance. My friend in Elkridge tells me that she has even found university students in the area to work with her kids. Is any of this available in Quito, Ecuador? Well, consider that Ecuador is the 5th poorest nation in South America, with roughly 1/3 of its population living in extreme poverty (in rural areas, it's closer to 90%). According to one report I looked at, the average Ecuadoran lives on $1.86 (US) per day, as measured by the level of annual household consumption. The poorest 10% of Ecuadorans live on 11 cents per day. One out of three public schools has only one teacher. The functional illiteracy rate – less than 3 years of elementary school – is 25% nationally, but as high as 65% in rural areas. Chronic malnutrition affects 45% of children nationally, and 70% of children in indigenous communities in the highlands.

Granted, the Villacis and Andrade families are not among the poorest class, but it's not hard to extrapolate from these figures that Ecuadoran public services are not going to offer anything comparable to the U.S. when it comes to disabled kids. We're talking about a disabled country here. Actually, Edwin did take his girls to Quito to see just what the situation might be for them with regard to schooling and help for Jessie, and as you might expect, he came back disappointed. Autistic kids are lumped together with every other kind of disabled youngster, from the mentally retarded to those with severe physical disabilities. The spectrum of specialized services that we have in the U.S. simply doesn't exist there.

5.9 The livability of condo developments

Getting back to the events of 1998. Can we imagine any scenario that would have kept this tragedy from taking place: the death of the little girl, the prosecution and imprisonment of Sandra Villacis, the resources spent on her investigation and incarceration, and the hardship imposed on her family? Was the Villacises' former home in North Bethesda suitable for the CCA program, and even if it were, would it have made any difference to the outcome of all this?

Crossfield Court in the Bethesda Park development of Montgomery County is a typical arrangement: four-story, multiple-unit apartment condos stretching over several acres, interspersed with grassy common areas and parking lots. There are scores of similar complexes throughout the metro D.C. area, all planned and plotted with more or less the same strategy:

maximize the number of units within a given acreage, facilitate automobile access, and locate the place as close as possible to main roads, shopping, offices and transit lines. In addition to the common areas, most of these complexes have an outdoor swimming pool or a tennis court, amenities that could conceivably enable some interaction among residents. But despite these features, and despite the proximity of the individual housing units, there's actually little about these sorts of dwellings that encourages a person to reach out to his neighbors in a community minded way. There's no common kitchen or dining area. No workshop or garage where you might change your oil or saw a two-by-four. The outdoor commons are sterile – no gardens, no bird feeders, no chicken coops or compost bins. The landscaping around the buildings is of the office park variety – mulched and sculpted to look attractive from a distance, but pretty much lifeless up close. When you come out of your apartment to take a walk, you might as well be walking in a shopping mall, except that there is no roof overhead. Actually, it's more like walking in the parking lot of a shopping mall, there's so much asphalt around you. It's ironic that they call these developments "garden apartments", because there is little about them that resembles any garden that I've seen.

Yet despite its cookie cutter layout, the Bethesda Park complex does actually have something that might recommend it to a prospective CCA: there is unusually good access to connected green space (see Section 4.2). There's a wooded area adjacent to the development that merges directly into Rock Creek Park – a 15 mile strip of parkland that stretches from the heart of D.C. north into the Maryland suburbs. It has a paved bicycle path running its length, which is not ideal, and it's bordered by busy urban streets, so it's not exactly quiet, but given how huge and densely developed the Washington metro area has become in recent years, it is rather amazing that a park this size has been spared from the developer's ax. Bethesda Park possesses the rare combination of being within walking distance to shopping malls and metro stations on one side, while maintaining intimate contact with a wooded stream valley on the other. And it's not just a city park, but a bona fide nature preserve that runs without interruption to the distant countryside. You can't ask for much more in the way of green space access in such a heavily urbanized area. There are walking paths that lead from the back of the apartments into the woods and eventually to the bike trail. Whether people are taking advantage of this wonderful access is not clear, but someone should be pointing out to them how lucky they are to have it. If you go even 1/2 mile in the other direction towards Rockville Pike, where the malls and plazas are located, the woodland access is lost, and so is the livability. Yet I'm willing to bet that the newer apartment condos along the Pike are much more expensive than the $200,000 or so that you pay for a two-bedroom unit in Bethesda Park. Those tall luxury apartments and neatly laid out townhouses may look attractive, but they don't qualify for CCA. There's no connected green space. Actually, there's very little green space period; the environment is purely urban. It's not livable, and it can't be made livable without some radical restructuring.

5.10 Preventing tragedies

But how would having a walking trail and wooded sanctuary outside her door have helped Sandra Villacis? What does any of this have to do with the tragedy that befell her?

The answer is simple – such an area would have attracted spiritually advanced people, including potential CCAs. Spiritually advanced residents create a spiritually advanced community. As it is, we can see in hindsight that Sandra and Edwin must have possessed some degree of discrimination in their taste for housing, since they selected that particular area to live. Something about it must have struck a responsive chord. Maybe the trees communicated with them somehow; whispered something on a deeper level. Moreover, if there had been a CCA program there, the couple would have had to qualify for residence in that development. Not just qualify financially, but spiritually, behaviorally. Qualifying would have furthermore meant that they were committed to the program, and to the area. Committed as lifetime residents, and lifetime members of a community family. Presumably this would mean that they gave at least tacit support to the idea that the residents took responsibility for maintaining the nearby green space. They would have subsequently had some educational exposure (from the CCA and others) to the benefits of the location, the spiritual advantages of woodland access. One might easily imagine Sandra outside with her kids playing in the park instead of running around the apartment. Of course, it's also possible that the young girl who died might have struck her head on a tree or a rock instead of a doorjamb, but only God controls those kinds of things. Finally, with a CCA in place in that development, and perhaps with other CCAs at other locations in the county (assuming there exist others that are suitable), the Montgomery governmental leaders would have been made aware before this even happened that they had a vengeful prosecutor on their hands. In which case the behavior of the prosecutor could have been swayed in a more compassionate direction. Either that, or she could have been switched to a different job. At the very least, the county government, and the district attorney's office, would have been sensitive to the fact that there were folks in the community with greater discernment (i.e., the CCAs), with whom they ought to confer before pursuing a case like this.

Even if one believed that Mrs. Villacis had some sort of split personality – a sweet soccer mom one moment, and a monstrous killer the next – and even if you believe that all of these intelligent, responsible family members who had years of intimate contact with her somehow overlooked this characteristic, it is still possible to imagine a more positive outcome from all of this had there been a CCA program in place. For example, could there not have been a nursery or daycare area at Bethesda Park, where mothers of preschoolers left their kids during the day? It is certainly something that a CCA would have tried to organize – say, with some stay-at-home moms who took turns looking after not just their own kids, but all of the kids in the development, freeing up time for mothers who wanted to work, run errands, meditate, etc. And wouldn't those moms have thus come to know Sandra Villacis pretty well? Ideally the women would have been enlightened to some extent, with a deeper intuitive understanding of other people, and thus would have spotted any strange behavior, and in so doing, averted more serious abuses. As it was, the Villacises' neighbor never noticed anything wrong with Sandra's treatment of her child over the months that her daughter was being cared for, and according to reports from a mutual acquaintance, now says she regrets what the prosecutors did (they pressured her into pressing charges) – this even after the investigation, the trial and the guilty verdict. Finally, we see that Sandra Villacis did indeed display basic, neighborly responsibility, simply by the fact that she connected with the neighbor, and made herself available for baby-sitting. Just that behavior alone is a positive indicator. Getting together with other moms – it is natural, normal behavior on the part of a normal mother – a simple, straight-forward example of community mindedness and higher character development.

Regardless of the guilt or innocence of Sandra Villacis, the fact that this case went to trial and was successfully prosecuted does not mean success. On the contrary, it means failure – failure of the system, failure of the civic leadership, and failure of the community. The family of the child who died was punished by the heartbreak of her death, but then the authorities multiplied that heartbreak with their punishment of the Villacis family. We can only speculate about what sort of previous karma was attached to each of these families to bring about such a brutal series of events, but whatever it was, our heavy-handed, reactionary response only compounded the suffering. Worse than that, the state's actions in this case, as in most other criminal cases, serve to reinforce whatever impulse there might be in people to strike out at others. If Sandra Villacis had indeed been the monster that the prosecutors made her out to be, it would have been at least partly due to the punishment-based mode of governing that we use. The attitude and behavior of our governmental leaders and judicial officials has set the standard for all of us to emulate: punish, hurt, get revenge. The people in power force the less powerful to bend to their will. I'm good, you're bad, I'm strong, you're weak, you screwed-up, I hurt you, tough luck ... it's the perfect model for abuse.

Judges, prosecutors and lawyers may think they are ethical and responsible, and perhaps some of them are, but just because they've studied a code of conduct does not mean they have developed an innate sense of that code. Just because they can recite the rules does not mean that the rules are written on their hearts. Knowing the code does not give you the internal sense of fairness and compassion, and the deeper, non-codified qualities of being human – including the critical ability to discern another person's character. Indeed, the cold formalities of courtroom proceedings preclude there being any kind of natural, human interchange that could bring out the truth in a case like this. The forced, artificial environment encourages deception, and discourages genuine, forthright cooperation. That's what the entire functioning of our judicial system has come down to – deception and obfuscation. And that's why we need a CCA program – to introduce a balancing element of clarity, and above all, of trust to such proceedings – indeed, to prevent the very necessity of such proceedings. To avert tragedies rather than compound them.

As of this writing Mrs. Villacis is facing almost certain deportation upon release from prison. When the federal authorities deport her, the family will still be split up. The daughters will have to go where their mother and grandmother go. Sandra will no doubt have to get a job in Ecuador to support their household there. Edwin has no choice but to stay here and work. Young Ilianita would be yanked from an American school system to an Ecuadoran one with unknown consequences. And Jessie would most likely be sentenced to a life as a "vegetable", to use Tito Mukhopadhyay's term. It's clearly an outcome that benefits no one.

To summarize: We the people of Maryland, as represented by the Office of the State's Attorney in Montgomery County, under the auspices of the Montgomery Circuit Court, have taken it upon ourselves to ruin the life of a young Latina mother, and in so doing have devastated a number of other lives, including that of an autistic child. Based on everything I have seen, our decision to do so was founded on an erroneous, indeed nonexistent, analysis of the key aspect of the case: the character of the accused. My own conclusions, which contradict that of the state, were derived from a far more credible analysis and much clearer thought process. You may question my credentials, but what you have from this observer that counts more than credentials are trustworthiness, compassionate instincts and a developed consciousness. The justice system, as we currently operate it, places little value on such elements as these, because we as a community and as a society don't demand it. We don't demand it, because we have lost our collective ability to fathom the depth of such human qualities. I suggest that we need a long-term plan that aims at recovering those qualities, because they are latent in every one of us. We all have the potential to develop a compassionate heart and discerning mind; to realize our full potential as children of a divine creator. The purpose of the CCA program is to encourage and facilitate that development, to re-enliven the qualities emerging from human consciousness that form the very basis of justice and civic responsibility.

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For an example of a real-world application of the CCA approach and a more thorough discussion of the topics raised in this paper, see: Managing the Spiritual Neighborhood; How to Restore the Conscience of America's Communities: A Grass Roots Approach, eBook online at: http://www.spiritualneighborhood.org/guidebook.htm

** Update: Sandra Villacis was deported to Ecuador the last week of June, 2005. She had served her entire five year prison term at the Maryland State prison in Jessup, plus an extra two months in federal custody waiting to be deported. Her lawyer was unsuccessful in petitioning prosecutors to allow Mrs. Villacis to come home to Bethesda to be with her family while awaiting deportation. She never admitted any guilt in this matter, even though an admission of guilt could have earned her an early release on parole. According to U.S. law she will not be allowed to re-enter the United States ever again. As expected, her two daughters, Jessie and Ilianita were sent to Ecuador to live their mother. Sandra's husband Edwin has to remain here and work.