"We are in God's hands because we do not find justice among men." This is how José Fernández, a Cuban father whose son (stepson, but he has raised him since he was a year and a half old, and to him, he is his son) has been imprisoned in the Santiaguito jail in Mexico for over a year, expresses his despair.
José Fernández's son has been in prison for 17 months after he requested a family judge to allow him to visit the child he had with a Mexican woman from whom he separated. Following the divorce, she accused him of sexual abuse.
It all started when Néstor Damián Gámez González went to a courthouse in Toluca to demand that his ex-wife allow him to see their child. His ex-wife attacked him and his mother, who was left injured and had to be taken to the hospital. Following this altercation, which went viral in Mexico, the mother of Néstor Damián Gámez's child filed a complaint against him for sexual abuse.
At that time, he was legally employed as a manager at a Coppel store branch in Mexico. Nevertheless, the judge believed that as a foreigner he might flee, and given the seriousness of the accusation, he ordered his detention without any evidence against him beyond the claims of his ex-wife, and without considering his residence in Mexico and stable employment in the country as ties.
Just this Tuesday, Néstor Damián Gámez has reached 17 months in detention. Once incarcerated, the judge handling his case opened another file for attempted extortion. Amidst all this, what was supposed to be preventive detention has turned into indefinite imprisonment, with no date set for the trial. There has been a proposal for the Cuban to plead guilty to sexual abuse and serve a few more months in prison before being released, but he maintains his innocence and has rejected the deal.
Instead, he has formed an association to confront the cartel of the Judiciary in Mexico and demand fair justice. He is supported by 63 other inmates who, like him, claim to be imprisoned for fabricated charges and false files.
Néstor Damián Gámez's stepfather decided to leave Mexico, despite holding Mexican citizenship, and enter the United States, where he works to pay the weekly extortion fees demanded to keep his son alive in prison, as well as the costs of legal defense. His wife and Néstor Damián’s mother remains in Mexico, in hiding, out of fear for her life, worried they might kill her to eliminate a witness against her former daughter-in-law, the same person who attacked her in the courts of Toluca and has accused her son of sexual abuse.
The family, which left Cuba in search of a better future, has been broken for two years.
Filed under:
