thisthinghappened

[thisthinghappened]

An Account of My Year With Orlando

This is not a story that I relish writing down, but the time has come for me to finally do it. I have attempted to simply turn my back to the details of this experience in the hopes that it would fade, but time and time again history has proven that it is not going to just go away, and I need a resource both for my own catharsis as well as something to have to refer people to so that I don't have to keep telling it over and over again.

Almost all of the names in this story have been changed to protect absolutely everyone. The only name unchanged is that of my accuser, Orlando. There are racial epithets and other hate speech used without censorship in this story when directly quoting the individuals who used them, which can be triggering, or be an unintentional microaggression. There are upsetting depictions of abuse and violence.

Somewhere in the range of eleven years ago I first moved to Philadelphia from New York City. I'd just come off of doing a television show for the LOGO network. I moved here on a whim, living briefly in a hotel while I searched for a room to rent. I found one in a brownstone in West Philadelphia.

The home was owned by a blind musician named Orlando in his early 30's. He lived there with his 21 year old girlfriend Katie, also his caretaker. He was an odd character with a lot of loud opinions. At first it seemed like it might be entertaining to live with such a quirky guy. I also formed a fast bond with Katie, an intellectual who was really only a few years younger than I.

However it became clear that something was a bit off with Orlando. He was extremely demanding of everyone around him, and had some questionable feelings about women and minorities that made me uncomfortable, so after living there only a few months, I moved out to my own apartment. I stayed in touch with Katie from afar but 6-7 odd years passed and that was that.

...until I found myself renting an apartment where the landlord let the water get turned off, and the city refused to turn it back on. I had also fallen ill, and wasn't making any money to move into a new place. So I reached out to Katie to find out if Orlando happened to have any rooms for rent. She said he did.

I went to meet with him, and the first thing he did was hug me and then exclaim: “Oh! You got fat.” Really, I should listen to the warnings the universe gives me, but I was desperate.

Orlando explained his current situation to me. Hold onto your butts, by the way, because this is where things immediately begin to devolve into a chaotic bit of insanity that gets worse and worse literally every day.

Orlando said that he and Katie had stopped being in a romantic relationship years earlier, but she continued to live with him as his caretaker. He explained, however, that over the last year she had stolen/embezzled nearly ten thousand dollars from him. She was in charge of his finances entirely, and there was a bank account in his name as well as one in both of their names.

In addition, he had just moved a 19 year old girl from the Caribbean to be his girlfriend and new caretaker; but he said that he was afraid of her, and that she seemed volatile and he feared it could blow up at any minute.

Thus it was that I moved in a few weeks before Christmas of that year. It had become clear that Katie had devolved into alcoholism, getting drunk every single day and barely holding down a part time job. She had unquestionably utilized household funds for a variety of personal things, but Orlando admitted that after they broke up he had offered her ten thousand dollars to do with as she pleased, so whether or not these funds were appropriated or accepted was questionable.

What was not in question is that Katie had let the ball drop on paying the mortgage for the home, which had fallen into arrears by nearly a year. One of the responsibilities Orlando passed to me was to get his mortgage situation back in order. I offered to help as best I could, but being that I have never had a mortgage and also am not an accountant, I had no real clue what to do.

I made Orlando sign a document outlining my responsibilities as well as our personal arrangement. It was clear he expected me to be a live-in caretaker on numerous levels, a full time job for which payment would far surpass the cost of renting one room in a six bedroom home. He wanted me to cook, clean, run errands, help with his personal and romantic life (more on that below,) and essentially be on call 24/7 for whatever whim may come up at any given moment.

Our agreement, of which I have provided a scan at the link below, stipulated among other things:

sign documents on his behalf

authorize checks on his behalf and deposit them into his bank account

use his debit card to pay household bills, withdraw cash, pay for Katie's gas (she often ran errands for him,) and any other use at my discretion

use his bank account to pay for things for myself including my World of Warcraft account, my mobile phone bill (he demanded I get a plan on his account so he could always reach me,) my web hosting, my personal fees for various online services like Amazon or eBay

to open and manage eBay/Paypal accounts in his name for selling items of his own that he wanted to get rid of

to withdraw or otherwise utilize $500 cash from his bank account/debit card as payment for my personal services throughout the month as well as the waiver of a rent payment

to use his bank account to deposit and withdraw my own money and access that money at will, rather than open my own bank account

Link to document is here:

http://imgur.com/a/g02G0

Last names have been redacted.

Orlando signed this agreement in the presence of the 19 year old girlfriend who read it aloud to him to make sure he understood it's contents. It's important to note here that even if she had not been present to read it to him, being blind does not absolve one from being obligated to honor a contract one has signed. It is up to the party who is blind to make sure they understand what they are signing before signing it.

I made sure to get this agreement in writing because it was clear that Orlando had put Katie through the wringer, and I didn't want to end up in the same position she was in, being accused of defrauding him after working for him for a length of time. Note that despite this allegation she continued living with him. He used the threat of having her arrested to keep her there.

After living in the house for just a few weeks it became clear that Orlando was being honest about his situation with the new girlfriend, though they were equally to blame for the violent nature of their relationship. She drank heavily, and every day there was a new blow-up over something minor. One occasion saw them arguing over the fact that she bought ranch dressing, resulting in the dressing bottle being swung around the kitchen with a lid, dressing splattering all over the walls/artwork/decor and ceiling.

The Christmas holiday came, and I was on a brief vacation that involved house/pet sitting for a friend. Orlando knew to only call me in an emergency, and the girlfriend was to take care of him for those few days. On Christmas Eve/Morning, Orlando called me to say that this girlfriend had accompanied him to a dinner party where she got extremely drunk. This lead to a fight during the cab ride home, and he alleged that she had physically assaulted him on the porch. As a result the police were called and she was thrown out into the street, leaving him with no one to take care of him for the Christmas holiday.

Despite the Jerry-Springer like circumstances around the situation, I gave up my holiday to return home and take care of Orlando. A dear friend who does not celebrate Christmas, Patricia, came over to keep me company. Orlando aggressively hit on her for the duration of his visit which was very uncomfortable.

Eventually Orlando informed us that a warrant had been issued for the arrest of his girlfriend, which we took on face value, though we never saw or hear from her again. He began aggressively pursing her by stalking her on the internet. Any information he had been given during their brief relationship about her relatives was used to track them down and call them, leaving aggressive and explicit messages about her sexual history and personal life. It was a gleeful act of revenge on his part, something he considered justice.

As time moved forward, it became clear that this was a very serious pattern for Orlando. He would, with my help, post ads on Craigslist seeking the companionship of women. These women would agree to come to the home, and he would IMMEDIATELY fall 'in love' with them. He would ask them to move in right away, becoming aggressively possessive and controlling straight out of the gate. Inevitably these women would see him for what he was and call it off, asking him to leave them alone.

He would not. Sometimes he would accuse them of breaking the law, saying that by agreeing to be his romantic partner they had entered into a “contract” with him that they were now violating. Sometimes he would accuse them of moral failings, because how could they leave a blind man to be alone and fend for himself in the world? Sometimes he would slut shame them. No matter what though he would find a way to aggressively pursue these women beyond their consent, always finding excuses as to why this was okay.

There was also a disturbing racial component to these situations. The women were often black women, whom he referred to as his “little nigs”. When using racial slurs of this nature, he justified it in different ways. “It's okay because I'm Latino,” or “I go to an all black church so I'm an honorary nigger.” Instances of questionable feelings around a variety of minority groups often came up. Orlando watched a documentary about the Holocaust and developed a theory that the only reason six million Jewish people died is because “those kikes were weak. If it were me I would have fought back and been shot waiting in line for the ovens.”

I could not begin to recount to you the countless women Orlando engaged over the year long period in which I worked for/lived with him. He would have me cook them romantic dinners, or help him buy them gifts.

One instance that stands out involved a platonic woman friend he had who made the mistake of mentioning she had a single friend she had. This friend of his explicitly told him setting them up wasn't a good idea and to please leave it alone, but she made the mistake of mentioning this woman's name. Thus Orlando had me find contact info for the friend-of-a-friend (without my knowing why,) and then stalked this woman by calling her suggesting they become romantic. When the full situation came to light (and his own friend cut him off forever,) he justified it to me as such: “Why should I deprive myself of an opportunity to potentially find my soulmate just because someone else asks me not to contact this woman?”

Entitlement around everything, but particularly access to women, was a constant theme. If a person was a woman, Orlando would pursue her romantically and always find justification for why it was okay. No amount of being told to stop would prevent his pursuit. One such woman documented the exchange on her web log, which can be viewed at this link:

http://annafromcraigslist.tumblr.com/tagged/orlando-fiol

There is also an accounting of his interactions with women in the polyamory community, seen here:

http://alt.polyamory.narkive.com/bVR9QdAt/orlando-fiol-is-a-creepy-creepy-stalker-if-you-already-knew-that-skip-reading-this-post.5

Another thing which was a constant was the coming and going of tenants. Orlando  had one long-term tenant, an older woman named Doris, who managed to avoid all of this conflict by simply not engaging in the household. Of the five bedrooms available, Doris lived in one, Katie and I occupied two more, which left two bedrooms available for rent.

Inevitably it was my job to find people to rent these rooms, usually younger college students or people who were otherwise desperate for somewhere to live. The rental of these rooms plus money Orlando was receiving for a research grant from a college were his only source of income.

Generally women who rented a room would leave in two months at best because of the creepy sexual vibe Orlando put out to them. Men would leave once it became apparent that they were not simply going to be allowed to rent a room, but in fact would constantly be called upon to assist him with whatever he demanded. One man moved out after Orlando broke the lock on his bedroom door to let himself inside because he wouldn't come help Orlando with something. A woman fled after just one month and then sued Orlando for her deposit and rent money back. This revolving door of tenants was constant, and became doubly desperate after some months when the grant money was discontinued.

It became clear that Orlando was not bringing in enough income to sustain his lifestyle. Shortly after I moved in, his mortgage was sold from one bank to another. I had worked out an agreement with the first bank for him to make some sort of a payment on his back-due mortgage, and in so doing they would take the remainder of the debt and apply it to the back end of his entire mortgage without penalty, allowing him to get out of arrears and start moving forward making normal payments. However the new bank refused to acknowledge or honor this agreement, and it became clear that he would need a colossal amount of funds all at once to prevent repossession by the bank.

I explained this to him numerous times, and conveyed to him that he needed someone more experienced to handle the mortgage situation because I was at a loss to fix it. He told me that he would have his mother, who lived in New York, handle the mortgage moving forward, and thus I left it in their capable hands. As letters from the bank continued to roll in month after month, it was clear that no one was actually doing this, but it was out of my hands. I was having enough trouble helping him to keep current with his normal bills.

You must understand that Orlando had absolutely no sense of money. For all practical points and purposes, he was bringing in around $1,000 a month from tenants, which barely would have covered the mortgage, let alone electricity, internet, groceries, prescriptions and doctor's co-pays, the $500 a month he had promised me, car gas for Katie, and then the money he was expending trying to woo various women. He was in arrears with so many different bills, and frequently his bank account would go into the negative by nearly $1,000 overdraft just to keep the lights on.

Around six months into this situation, it was clear that Orlando was getting worse. He met a woman who he got engaged to after a few weeks. She had several children of her own and he began talking about moving them into the house. Katie and I kept explaining to him that this was an impossible situation. If he moved a woman and her children into the house, there would be no rooms to rent and he would literally have no income. He was insistent, and the woman did begin to live part time in the house. He demanded that she be bought a ring, and even paid to have it inscribed. This woman remained for some months until we finally convinced him it was an untenable relationship, and then he went back to posting on Craigslist to find new women.

Orlando became more and more abusive towards me specifically. It had already devolved to the point where I was more or less a live in indentured servant. As I had no income, I had no way to save up money and move out. If I attempted to get any free time or have any kind of a life, Orlando would violently berate me for “abandoning” him or otherwise not being there for him; always framed as his being a desperate blind man who could not do for himself. Orlando did not leave the house for any reason other than the very rare musical performance (once a month at best.) He refused to even fill his own water bottle, screaming out for me to come get it and refill it at the sink when it was empty.

The various incidents that unfolded during the last three or four months I lived with him could fill a novel. One that stands out was an evening in which Katie was helping me prepare Orlando's dinner in the kitchen, and we had an ipod on shuffle. Orlando happened to come into the kitchen while the comedy song “Short Dick Man” was playing. It's a fairly harmless song in which the vocalist sings “Eeeny weenie tiny little short dick man.” It may not be grand opera, but it's hardly offensive. Orlando demanded we turn it off and went on a screaming tirade about how the song was discriminatory against men with small penises, and it should be banned and the singer should be arrested for hate crimes. He then went on a triade asking “How would you like it if I wrote a song and the words were “Kill all the gays! Kill all the fags! Protect the children! Murder the queers!” This chant/singing went on for some minutes and he proceeded to goose-step while Nazi saluting. It was his attempt at making some kind of point, but it was bone chilling.

In the last month that I lived with Orlando, my friends had all become extremely concerned for my well being. My mental health was clearly taking a toll. They all described it as a kind of Stockholm Syndrome. What had started as me posting humorous if disturbing stories on my social media about what went on in the house turned into frightening accounts that had them worried. I finally told Orlando it was time for me to move on, which got him extremely upset.

He moved a homeless woman into the house to be his live-in maid/caretaker, and was abusive to her from the start. It devolved quickly and frighteningly. In one instance, she bought him a new water bottle that was glass instead of metal. He was so enraged that he threw it at her head, narrowly missing her as it shattered on the wall behind her.

Katie, meanwhile, had devolved so badly that she was starting to commit crimes for thrill. She recounted that her current boyfriend (also an alcoholic with whom she drank) had her be the getaway driver when he went to his former place of employment, broke in and robbed the cash register. I found myself desperately trying to help he break free from a lengthy period of emotional abuse while also trying to extract myself from the situation.

One of my closest friends and her partner were moving into a new apartment, and they extracted me from the situation and moved me into their spare room for a temporary arrangement in which I would be safe.

For the first month that I moved out I continued to try and help Orlando from afar as he phased in yet another girlfriend, this time moving a woman in with her son. However this woman took an interest in his finances immediately, and as they went over the last year of transactions in his bank account, she convinced him that I had stolen from him. The magic number? Ten thousand dollars over the course of a year, an identical accusation that he had made toward Katie.

Around this same time the bank finally sued over the unpaid mortgage, which Orlando also blamed on me. Suddenly my worst fears started unfolding. Orlando accused me of fraud, of stealing his identity to use his bank account and debit card of the last year. He accused me of grand larceny, and began ruthlessly stalking me in emails, calls, texts and internet posts. Anything he could find to try and paint me as a criminal was fair game. He said that I opened a phone line on his account without his permission, something he DEMANDED that I do. He said that I got an internet connection installed in the house without permission, something he also demanded because the third floor tenants had trouble with the existing connection. Literally anything that could be fodder for an accusation, or any of his own failing that he could blame on me, came out.

My friends gathered around me to try and protect me. I went into therapy. I cut off all ties with Orlando. Katie had made arrangements to go and live with her parents in another state. We agreed that for our mutual protection we would cut ties forever, because that way if he found one of us he couldn't use it to his advantage to find both of us.

And find me he did. As the past 2-3 years have gone by, Orlando has repeatedly “found” me again and again and stalked and harassed me. It is a pattern I witnessed him devolve into with countless others in his life. He will forget about certain people until something triggers a memory of them, and because he is bored, it becomes a project to hunt them down and try to mess with their lives.

For six months I moved to another state to be with a man I'd met, and he found me there, calling and leaving frightening voice mails. This happened lots of times in various places I lived. However the absolute worst was an incident that still has me suffering from PTSD.

Around a year ago (this is being written mid-2017 by the way,) he seems to have met a woman and become “engaged”. I am not going to name this woman because even though she has played a role in his harassment of me ever since, I don't blame her for taking the word of someone she seems to care about. Be that as it may, she is active in social media and she saw a post I put up on a “Freecycle” style page. There was an address attached to this post – not my address – and later that day the two apparently drove by together and called me from outside. I got a 3 minute voicemail while they were there: “Come to the window, fucker...”

She also posted a lengthy message on that page detailing all of the accusations Orlando has made against me, and claiming there was a warrant out for my arrest. The posts were deleted and she was removed from the group, but I also left the group for my own safety. A day or two later, a group of men showed up at that address dressed in SWAT gear. A man who is a friend of mine and lives on the first floor apartment there came to the door, where these men dressed as police officers here to arrest me. Because I had gotten the voicemail I had let this man know of the potential that Orlando may continue to show up at the address thinking I lived there. This man also happens to be fairly anti-police, and is extremely educated on his rights and how to deal with them. He denied any knowledge of who I am and demanded to see a warrant and asked what the charges were. These men pushed their way into his apartment, refused to show any such warrant or give badge numbers. They mocked his clothing and nail polish, and eventually they left, leaving him pretty shaken up. He texted me to let me know this had happened, and said he was absolutely certain that they were not real police officers and that Orlando had sent them there to intimidate me (or worse.) No “police” have returned to that address since.

At this point I was living in complete terror. Friends were sheltering me from the situation by keeping me distracted, but no one knew what to do. Was there really a warrant out for my arrest? If there was, what exactly would I do? How does an able person sit down with the police and say “I know a blind man has told you I stole from him and such, but I swear it isn't true, and here's a contract he signed with me, and please don't lock me up?” I was fearful that I would be put behind bars regardless of the truth, where no one would be able to bail me out, because this is how the system works. You get locked up until you go to trial unless you can afford bail, and for major fraud charges, well...bail is not insignificant.

After a few months passed, a dear friend convinced me to go to the police and ask if there was in fact a warrant for my arrest. She promised that if I got locked up, she would post the bail and we would take it from there. So despite the fact that I was terrified, I did just that.

There was no warrant, and (of course) no record of the police being sent to arrest me.

I moved ahead with my life, and it did finally seem like a lengthy period of time passed where I did not hear from Orlando or anyone connected with him. I actually found out in early 2017 that he and his fiance had moved away to another state, and I truly thought perhaps this chapter of my life was behind me.

But now in June of 2017, the fiance has resurfaced in yet another social media page in which I was formerly active. (She was able to see my posts because I left the group, but people continued to reference my name which was no longer linked to a profile and thus visible despite having blocked her.) Though I am told this post only stayed up for 30 minutes or so, it apparently got very ugly. People from that group reached out to another group in which I was actively a member, and the admins removed me and blocked me (who can blame them?) In many ways this speaks to my fears expressed above: Who would question accusations from a disabled person about being taken advantage of?

That's why I'm writing this lengthy story today. 11 pages, and it easily could be 11 more. It seems like Orlando is never, ever going to let me live my life in peace, and although he can't really use social media (Facebook is not friendly to software that reads aloud to the blind,) his fiance, for however long they are together, is going to be acting as his mouthpiece and come after me time and time again.

This is my story, and I hope one day it will stop haunting me. This man has hurt countless people in his life, causing them grief and often abusing them while simultaneously making them feel sympathy for him. I don't know how long I can reiterate my lack of guilt every time he (or she) finds me and hurls these accusations, so I am putting this online to be referenced the next time it happens.

- James B, June 5th, 2017 Sub-note: If you have been sent to this link, please don’t redistribute it to others. Please do not attempt to intervene and contact Orlando or his fiance on my behalf. Engaging him is the same thing as antagonizing him, no matter how you approach, and not only will it simply stir the pot and have him coming after me again with renewed interest and aggression, he will also start to come after you.