Got destroyed by the system, a family need help to start again

My name is Tiwi. I am Indonesian married to American man. Since about 13 months ago, my family have been living a very difficult life. We were betrayed by the system in this country and we need your help to fix the damage and start over from whatever left of us. English is not my native language, so please forgive the grammar and wording errors I made.

It was all started in February 2015 when my father in law and my husband decided to do something about their Indonesian business partners that had misused the company for their own benefits from the beginning. I helped them fought their rights through the legal system, but our crooked lawyers combined with some corrupt government personnel that took bribe from the Indonesian partners managed to stop our efforts. They even aided the Indonesian partners to turn the table and made us the guilty ones. Those people terrorize and intimidate our lives until we gave up. We are defeated and destroyed before the war. We are helpless, hopeless. It seems impossible for us to get justice without money. So we gave up. My father in law and my husband lost the company that they had successfully built from the scratch and were kicked out of it without a dime with no proper legal process.

It didn’t stop there. Government then unfairly deported both my father in law and my husband. My husband could come back in right away since he has wife and children here, but they put red stamp on my father in law’s passport and enlist him on rejected list. We lost everything. Money, livelihoods, friendships and credibility. We seek help and protection from US embassy, police, government, NGO and media, but apparently our case is not ‘significant enough’ to get help from either of them. We were alone in this. The case died with my father in law being away since he is the key witness in our case.

Now we try to keep ourselves under the radar. We are afraid to make any move that might risk our safety. We are very vulnerable. Especially my husband as foreigner. I can’t even put any names or picture here to protect him from more terror and intimidation from those evil people.

Now we got damage control difficulties. We made huge mistake in the beginning of this case. We hired the wrong lawyers. Crooked lawyers that said the right things at the right time but didn't deliver. They convinced us to put everything for this case. He promised us that we would win the case in a two months. We put not only all of our money, but money we borrowed from our friends and family to help the case. Yes, we were naïve (read: stupid) back then. We still regret the day we handed over the money to them. Never crossed our mind that we will be betrayed by our lawyer. That time, everything seemed so positive. We were confident that we would find justice on our side because we did nothing wrong, unlike the Indonesian partners that had broken every law there is. Never thought we would fall apart like this and the worst part is, we were dragging people down with us. Friends and family that lent us money to help us fight were going down with us.

The lost is massive and irreplaceable. We are working so hard to pay them back. But my father in law still stranded in Louisiana with no job and living under his friend’s mercy and my husband’s new job doesn’t pay much to enable us to pay them all installments and interests. We hardly have anything left to pay bills and put food on the table after paying few installments, let alone paying everybody

We don’t mind to live with low standard of life, in fact, we already got used to it. What is bothering us most is the guilt. Some of our friends really need their money back because their life really count on that money. The fact that we are unable to help them and knowing that their lives are falling apart because of our stupid mistakes, is killing us. They really don’t deserve it. All they did is helping us when we need it, and let alone serving them the same courtesy they gave us, we failed to keep our promise to pay their money back. It breaks my heart to think that helping us might be their biggest regret.

We tried to look for debt consolidation agency, but here, we need to have something for collateral to get help, and we have none. We could and allowed to announce bankruptcy but that won’t help our friends.. And really we don’t want to run from this, my husband and I are staying in this country, merely for that reason, nothing else. We just need more time to find a way to pay everybody we owed money to.

We accept the defeat. This case had taught us a lot about humility. My father in law and my husband were very well respected among their working and social circle before this happened. It is very disheartening to see and hear how the same people think less of them now. But there is nothing we can do about it but moving on. Fix the damage and start over. And we need your help to fix the damage we caused. We need your help to safe our friends from the mistakes we made. It's not fair for them to carry our burden.

The total amount of the debt we have is really high. About USD 120,000. The amount we need to pay our friends back is USD 55,000. The rest is bank loans. We don't worry about the bank loans at the time. Our priority is our friends' money. I know it’s a very big amount and we won’t get it all from this cause, but any amount of money will help us since we don’t have any. Like I wrote before, I can’t put any detail information here, like names or photos or documents since it will put us in risk, but if you live in Jakarta or know someone in Jakarta and interested to know us more or want to give us some pointers, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will be gladly to provide you all information we have.

We really need your help. My father in law and my husband will be angry with me once they find out I begged people for money. But I see no other option for us. Most people we know have turned their back on us and the rest are unable to help or simply don’t care which is understandable considering how bad our liability at the time. So please help us. We don’t know how or when we could pay it back to those who need it but we will.

If you are interested to know more about our case or if you are foreign investors or expatriates who is going to work with Indonesia Company, we may have some useful pointers for you to prevent what happened to us happen to you. Please send email to: [email protected]. We will provide the information for free.

Thank you for reading this until the end. Please put us in your prayers because we will put you in ours. God bless you all.

Best regards,

Tiwi