Hi friend, I hope you are doing well, keeping safe and healthy. Today I would like to talk about a case that shocked me to my core but, since it involves children, I wanted to give you a heads-up before moving forward, so, if violence against that demographic is something you’d rather not hear about please click out of this post and look after yourself.

Last week, by mere happenchance while watching a random Mexican showbiz interview talk show, I heard for the very first time the name Paulette. Paulette? I thought to myself, who is Paulette and why is she being mentioned like that? So casually, yet, with a somber tone of voice… should I know about her? No, of course not, after all, the interviewer and the interviewee only mentioned the name and nothing else, but again, the mood in the room did change by that single name and those present seemed to agree with their silence. Paulette. Yes.

My gut feeling was right about Paulette, but my heart was not ready for everything I found online, on YouTube, and on the book ‘Paulette, Lo que no se dijo’ by journalist Martin Moreno.

Paulette was the four-year old daughter of Lisette Farah and Mauricio Gebara (a well-to-do couple with connections with the Mexican government thanks to Mauricio’s dad) & the sister of seven-year old Lisette Gebara Farah (the first born daughter shared the mother’s first name). This big sister, Lisette, was known by the live-in nannies, sisters Erika and Martha, for displaying aggressive behavior supposedly out of jealousy toward Paulette for all the attention she was getting from everyone, you see, Paulette was born at six and a half months with both speech and motor disabilities and needed supervision 24 hours a day.

On March 22, 2010 Paulette was reported missing from her high-security luxury home and nine days later (NINE!!) her lifeless body was discovered on her own bed (ON HER OWN BED!!), yes, her corpse was found in the little girl’s bedroom where dozens, hundreds of individuals came and went, where supporting friends and family members spent the night while the “kidnapping” was being investigated, where reporters sat along with the mother giving weird interviews saying her disappearance was to be blamed to UFO’s (not joking, she said that, it’s on tape).

The tragic nature of this event should be enough to make you feel outraged, right? Well, what if I told you that politics [allegedly] played the most important role in the story? Not the death of an innocent child but [allegedly] the Mexican government… Outraged? More like, enraged. Disgusted. Horrified.

This case has been on my mind for the entire week as I could not simply shake off the death of Paulette, of her being manhandled, desecrated, taken, returned like an object and placed in between the mattress and the bed frame, of her terrible demise being the symbol of everything that is wrong with Mexico, that is, that justice toward a victim is nonexistent if the perpetrator is a person in power, or, at least, a person with connections to a person in power. At first, I blamed the potential ineptitude of those officials handling the case (police, detectives, forensics, etc.) but thanks to Moreno’s journalistic effort, I learned that I should have been blaming instead the corruption of those who were clearly meddling in the case, protecting the obvious suspects. To me, Paulette’s case went from a horrible tragedy to an unfortunate instance of [corrupt] politics vs. justice.

It was an ugly image, that of a supposed “kidnapping” at a high-security luxury home with no evidence of forced entry, with no ransom note, or call, nothing at all. It was poor optics, that of an unemotional mother blaming UFO’s and who, on top of everything, happened to spend the weekend in Cabo with her [alleged] lover. And it was certainly in bad taste, that of the unknown true perpetrator(s) returning the little girl—dead for five days, as per autopsy report—nine days after having been taken from her own bed, to her own bed.

The “official” report concluded Paulette got stuck in her bed and her death was ruled an accident, moreover, it stated that had someone noticed her in time, her faith might have been different. Poor parents. Poor nannies. Poor policemen. Poor detectives. Poor forensics. Poor reporters. How embarrassing for them all, maybe “next time” they will have more “common sense” and look in the most conspicuous places, just to be safe.

Well friend, I know that by now you know when I am being facetious and read that last part in my sarcastic tone of voice, I mean, gone for nine days? Found on her own bed? No one noticed the body? No one was held accountable? Sounds good to me. *eye roll*

If you are still interested in Paulette’s case and would like to know the play-by-play of the events, I highly recommend you watch this video which, luckily, you can enjoy with YT’s auto-translate if you do not speak Spanish. Need more content on the subject? Go to Netflix and watch the limited series Historia de un Crimen: La Búsqueda aka The Search for a sobering time.

In Love and Fear,

—Marath