Letter to Attorney Sample

The Honorable Name Last Name
Attorney
United States Department of Justice
Address
(eg. Main Justice Building, Room 5137
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530)

Dear Attorney Name Last Name,

I am writing you to testify against my brother-in-law, S.S., whose behavior is extremely offensive in relation to my sister and her small child.

I hope it would be possible to launch a legal action against him to protect my poor sister and her only child since they are absolutely defenseless in face of abusive and offensive behavior of S.S. Unfortunately, I am not fully acquainted with legal procedures and norms of the USA but I am confident of the American justice system and I believe in its ability to protect defenseless people in face of abuse and violation of their basic human rights and liberties.

However, I believe it would be important to tell you a few words about my background as well as that of my sister to make the troubles she is currently in absolutely clear for you. I belong to a family which I am honored to belong to. My parents are honest people and they have dedicated their entire lives to grow up their children with moral principles, which are of the utmost importance for us. We are a religious family. My parents have paid a lot of attention to our education in order to assure us a good instruction. They granted us with the possibility to study at private schools, and me and my 2 brothers have graduated from the university. We have had a relatively comfortable life due to their support and their long-term care of us.

In fact, out life used to be almost an idyll, until my sister has got married. I attest that Mr. S. S. met my sister in Iran and made her a proposal in accordance with the tradition of our culture. At the beginning, my parents were not absolutely disposed to give consent to this marriage because of serious reasons. In fact, this marriage raised a number of ethical issues related to our faith and the consent of parents was an essential requirement for marriage according to principles of our faith. My mother opposed desperately to the marriage, which had undermined her health for her physical and psychological forces were totally exhausted. My parents were convinced that a man, who had left his wife and 5 children with nonchalance, would not have been able to give any affection to my sister and his son. Moreover, my parents believed that he could not have had possibility to support them that contradicted to basic cultural and religious norms of our community.

Nevertheless, he has insisted on the marriage for six months. He confirmed that he had already divorced in 2005, and he was just waiting for his documents in order to marry my sister officially. My sister was defending S.S. because he had already fooled her with his lies and promisses that he was in love with her. So, against the opinion of my parents, she was convinced to marry him as he had already played her along creating the illusion of a wonderful life in the USA. Moreover, my sister was convinced that he would be a perfect father to her son she had born in a previous marriage.

In addition, S.S. was always pretending that he was so depressed and had a real intention to begin a new life. He argued that his life with his ex-wife was unbearable for she had repeatedly cheated on him attesting that she was unfaithful to him. My mother did not permit him to come to our house for 6 months. After 6 months my mother (after the insistence of our friends) accepted his request to talk to her.

According the Iranian tradition, he was coming to our house to make the proposal and ask my sister as his future bride. My mother wondered on reasons which made him abandon his family, his wife and five children. He answered that his wife and his oldest daughter were coming back home so late, so he was sure that “they had become just 2 bitches!” At the same time, he attempted to convince my parents that he takes a high social position and stable income. He stated that he was earning $100.000 a month, and he swared for several times that he would provide everything for my sister and her son to maintain high standards of living for them. However, my mother kept refusing from his proposal and she clearly explained him that my sister had already a comfortable house and salary.

In several occasions, I personally spoke to him on phone and I asked him to be honest with my sister and not to take her away from Iran, if he could not treat her in properly as an honorable woman deserved according to our traditions. I knew from my mother that he was calling our home in Iran 2-3 times a day and he was talking on phone to my sister for hours. I knew that he flied for several times to Iran to see my sister. He brought a lot of gifts for her, in order to convince her to marry him. Eventually, he got all documents he needed to marry my sister in Iran and he presented them to the Iranian authorities to get the permission to marry my sister. According to Baha’i religion, which is our family’s faith, he took a recommendation letter from Baha’i institution which had permitted this marriage since he was divorced officially.

So Baha’i’s delegates in Teheran blessed this marriage. However he had menaced that he was going to take my sister away without any official wedding, if my mother failed to give her consent. Hence, my mother gave consense to this marriage, in order to maintain the honor of the family. After 2 months, he brought my sister and her son in the USA on May, 2006.

However, I noticed that the new family had some serious problems. I attest that I flied to the Sates on November 2006 from Italy to spend thanksgiving holidays there. I wanted to comprehend personally the strange situation in my nephew’s life (at the time he was 11 years old). I had a vague feeling that there was something wrong with this new couple. I got used to communicate with my sister and her son by Yahoo messenger and I watched them via the webcam every day. My nephew had begun to ask me not to turn off the webcam and not to leave him alone. So, I got used to sleep by leaving my webcam on, in case he was doing his homework or playing on his PC. In such a way, he would not feel alone, but it seemed to me that something went terribly wrong in the family of my sister because of such a strange behavior of my nephew, who apparently was afraid of something and needed my support. Every day, he was having lunch and dinner in front of his computer and he was practically living in his room all the time after the school. Then he began to beg me continuously to visit them in the USA that made me extremely concerned with the life of my nephew with Mr. S.S. After that I had the request of toys and clothes for him for he explained me that his new father(S.S.) refused buying toys and clothes for him. Obviously, S.S. failed to provide my nephew with normal conditions of living and he could not be a good father for him. I believe that such a behavior raises a number of legal issues for parents should provide their children with care, products and services essential for their normal life. Moreover, my nephew’s requests to send him toys and clothes were particularly strange because he had not done made such requests when he was in Iran for my family provided all essential things for him. Furthermore, my sister began to ask me for money to buy some gifts for her son which was so strange for his husband’s good salary.

Finally I decided to fly to the USA. I was eager to support my sister and my nephew and to help the new family to get over the first problems in their life as they had been married for just 6 months. At the beginning, I noticed that my sister was extremely pale, depressed and slimmed down. She was gone bald, but she told me it was just for the climate! At first glance, they led a normal life, but at the first night I saw a strange attitude of my sister to me. She came to my room checking on me 3-4 times a night. She justified this behavior by her desire to assure that I was comfortable. However, as I learned later, it was because of confessions of S.S. concerning regular abuses on his ex-girlfriends in the past. So, my sister was just terrified that he could touch me.

In 2-3 days, I realized that I did not have any possibility to speak with my sister just all alone, because he was our shadow and was always with us. He apparently did not want us stay alone just for a second. He was afraid to leave us talking. I was not able to breathe because he was always checking us. When we were in Mall, he was used to appear in front of us. In 2 days, I had noticed the tension in their relations.

S.S. treated my sister as his slave, giving orders and screaming on her and my nephew. In addition, he screamed on me twice as well. He was extremely nervous. When we went to California to pass Thanksgiving holidays, I began to realize everything. He got used to argue with everybody and to scream on everybody he was meeting up. In an occasion, he was going to beat a guy and throw him down from a bridge in Las Vegas, but me and my sister stopped him.

During our journey, I had begun to understand how he was treating my sister. She was always terrified and anxious and trying to be with me. She was always ill and suffered from fever for a lot of times. I prescribed her antibiotics but I did not know about her real infection, which she was hiding from me and for which she was hospitalized different times! She was telling me that she just had flu and was not recovering from that. She was sick and I was not able to understand the cause of the problem. In Las Vegas, I attempted to get two rooms in a Hotel to be far from him. I wanted to comprehend better her situation and what she was hiding from me. Finally, I succeeded to get a room just for us. But unfortunately S.S. changed his room and assured that those 2 rooms were communicating together. He left the door open during the day and checked on us not to let us speak.

Our life became a real nightmare. Once, I increased the volume of T.V. when he was making a shower. I asked my sister to talk to me and explain me her problems. Thus, I learned finally that he was always abusing on her. She explained me that S.S. was a sexual maniac. He was used to force her to do anal sex, tearing her hairs during his sexual assaults. Then she showed me her wrists and ankles which were injured.

In Las Vegas, he began to feel unsafe and call her on mobile phones, menacing her that he would rape her as soon as I went back to Italy to give her a good lesson so that she would not be able to sit up. I heard him telling this on phone. He was threatening her that it would be a lesson which she would never have forgotten. On returning home after the journey to California, my sister explained me that she had already told to the members of Bahai’s institution in Frisco and especially Mrs. X about her problems with S.S. So, I contacted Miss Gheisar at 11P.M., after I was assured that I was well hidden in the closet. At that moment, he was screaming on phone speaking with his brother, he was going to kill us. But as my nephew was sleeping in his room, we went to take him in my room and closing my room and then hidden all the night with my sister and her son. Mrs. X explained me that she knew very well about the problems of my sister and that she was abused for a long time and they had already recommended her to go away from her home and leave her husband. Actually, they had written a letter in which they recommended her to go away from her house, taking away her son. They explained that the problem of domestic violence would deteriorate in the course of time and that she and her son were in danger. My sister told me that she had already tried to escape from him twice but she was obliged to come back home because she had just 10 dollars in her pocket. So she was not able to get a taxi and she was not able to call me or go anywhere.

As I was leaving the US in 2 days, I explained my sister that it would be better for her to leave that house with me. She began to cry asking me not to leave them because she was not sure that we were going to see each other next time. I assured her that I would support her.

I was sure that he was going to kill her. So, we decided to escape from their house in the morning, when S.S. had to go to work after the vacation. So, as he left home, we took our personal belongings in a hurry to escape. I called hayedeh, who was one of the women responsible for PТs shelter, to ask about the future way of actions for my sister. She assured me that the police would help my sister. We arranged everything with Miss Gheisar. Diana, who was one of our Baha’i friends, came to bring us to the Police station in P. But within less than 2 hours, while we had been leaving the house, S.S. came back home from work. Diana promptly called the police, which intervened rapidly and arrested him right at the moment when he had already begun to ask us where we were going. The police was warned beforehand by Diana about S.S. So we could arrive to the PТs shelter. He blocked his credit cards immediately and took away my sister’s car, which he had bought with my sister’s money. I stayed with my sister and her son in the Shelter. Finally, I understood what had really happened. I contacted Fariba, his ex-wife, who told me that she was still married with S.S. She explained me that the documents presented to Bahai’s institution, my family and Iranian authorities were fake because of his ability to manage computer systems. Moreover, she explained me that she had been abused for years and he was always abusing their children all the time. This is why she had sent him away from their house.

I stayed about a month in the US, half of it in the Shelter . He did not spend any money on me and when we were going to take a room in the hotel, he used my credit cards. I was his guest but he always asked me for my credit cards.

So, this was my desired vacation in the US to meet my sister after 20 years nightmare she had been living through. But, I was happy to leave the US, because my sister and her son were safe. Now, I am absolutely convinced that he would have killed her, if she had not left that house.

If my sister were married and lived in Iran, he would be stoned to death. Hence, Iranian government allowed my sister to take her son and raise him up honestly for 10 years. Now, my sister has an esthetic saloon that allows her to be independent financially.

Shahram, however, does not belong to our faith anymore and he was repudiated from Bahai’s faith. Together with volunteers of the shelter, I had supported my sister and her son for 2 years financially, because he left them without any money for this period. She did not have a social card and, therefore, she was not able to work. So you could imagine her position. She had no job in a strange country and where she did not know the language that made her escape impossible. Moreover, she could not even start a legal action against him because he constantly terrorized her and treated as a slave. We recommended her to stay in the US and to defend her rights as an abused woman in the US, rather than to return back to Iran, where women’s rights are not respected, especially the women of Bahai faith, which is a religion of minority.

Thus, I hope for the American justice system to protect my sister and restore justice. However, to meet this goal your assistance, as an attorney, is needed.

I appreciate your attention to this important matter.

Sincerely,



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