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 Americas & Beyond | May 2008 
Brenda Martin Recounts Ordeal
 Michele Mandel - The Toronto Sun
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| | Brenda Martin and her mother Marjorie Bletcher talk about Martin's ordeal at Bletcher's home in Trenton yesterday. (Pete Fisher/Sun Media) | | |
Reunion with her daughter - who spent more than two years in a Mexican prison - is best Mother's Day gift she could ever envision.
Trenton - It is a mother and child reunion that has made this the best Mother's Day she could ever imagine.
After more than two years of longing and worrying while her daughter Brenda Martin languished on fraud charges in a Mexican prison, Marjorie Bletcher was beaming yesterday as they spent her first full day of freedom together in the sunshine on her back deck.
"Just having her home is the best present. It's so long in coming," sighed Bletcher, 69. "I never gave up but it just seemed like every time I got my hopes up, they got dashed. But I didn't dare lose hope because if I did, I knew it would never happen. Negative thoughts bring negative results."
But as thrilled as she is to finally be home and reunited with her mother, Martin, 51, is determined not to let her relief deter her from the next battle that lies ahead.
"I'm going to the world court to appeal my case, if they will hear it," she vowed yesterday in her first sit down print interview since her release on full parole Friday night from Grand Valley prison in Kitchener.
"This conviction is corrupt to the core. I need to clear my name."
Still dressed in the white clothes that she had to wear throughout her imprisonment in Guadalajara, Martin appeared as tiny and thin as she has on TV these many months begging publicly for her release. But already, after just a few hours of true liberty in her mom's home, with a celebratory dinner of pizza and her first good night's sleep in years in her mother's plush queen bed, she is no longer the broken, emotionally fragile woman she was.
"All the hostility left my body for some reason," Martin said, pulling her white shawl around her frail shoulders. "I was so calm last night. It was surreal. It was so surreal."
'LOST LOOK IN HER EYES'
Her mother has seen the transformation as well.
"On TV, I just saw how much weight she had lost. I just worried. I saw that her spirit was lost and she wasn't the vibrant Brenda I knew. She had that lost look in her eyes and that really bothered me."
"She's changed since she's been home. I can't get over how serene she is."
And yet when she begins to speak about these last two years, two months and 22 days, Martin's new serenity is sorely tested.
"I was beaten, I was threatened, I was robbed, I was discriminated against by guards and other inmates," she said, the calm in her voice slipping away. "As an innocent person, I was psychologically assaulted constantly."
After serving more than two years without trial, Martin was convicted in Mexico last month of profiting from an Internet scam run in that country by her former boss, Alyn Waage. Sentenced to five years in jail and ordered to pay a $3,500 fine, Martin was transferred last week to the Kitchener prison after a groundswell of public support pushed the Conservative government to act on her behalf.
"My thanks have to go to the Canadian public and the media - without them, this would never have happened," she said. "Please, please make sure you say that."
As she has all along, Martin steadfastly maintains that she is innocent and knew nothing of Waage's fraud scheme, which bilked 15,000 investors out of nearly $60 million US. She insists the $10,000 she invested unknowingly in his fraudulent company was her severance pay after she was fired as his chef in 2001.
In February, 2006, five years after Waage's arrest, Martin was back in Mexico working as a caterer when she was duped into meeting a man who said he wanted to hire her for his mother's 60th birthday party. Instead, he turned out to be a Mexican federale who took her into custody. "I wasn't arrested, I was kidnapped from my home."
Martin was initially told she was going to have to give yet another statement about her former boss to a federal judge and she'd be returned home. Instead, she was taken to a maximum security prison where she spent the night on the floor of a squalid 3x4-metre cell with 15 other inmates.
"I was so frightened I would have done anything to get out of there," she recalled.
Without an English translator or an opportunity to call any Canadian officials, she says she was forced to sign some document. The next thing she knew, she was charged with money laundering and held without trial in Puente Grande prison.
10-YEAR SENTENCE
Although Waage, who is serving a 10-year sentence in the U.S., did come to Martin's defence, she is bitter that she will be considered a convicted felon still on parole long after his release from jail.
"How is that possible?" she demanded. "Can anybody answer that question?"
Martin also wants to know why Waage's Mexican bodyguard, who was arrested on the same charges, spent just 15 days in jail while she was left to rot for two years.
"Brenda, you can't be bitter," her mother cautioned.
To which her daughter could only reply, "Some bitterness and anger have to be part of me right now."
But there is healing as well.
Martin is weaning herself off the anti-anxiety medications she desperately needed through her ordeal and is determined to seek counselling. "I'm very optimistic about my future but it will take some time to get over the psychological trauma."
In the meantime, she will happily celebrate Mother's Day with the woman she calls her hero, who fought so valiantly for her freedom while never letting on that she was facing her own battle - with cancer.
"I'm going to cook dinner for my mother," Martin promised. "I'll see what she has in the freezer, maybe a nice roast pork with potatoes and all the trimmings. I'm a chef and mom likes it when I cook, don't you mom?"
"I love it," Bletcher smiled.
"And I'll clean up, too," Martin added with a laugh, "but only because it's Mother's Day." |
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