I am NOT OP, this is a repost.

Trigger Warning: Domestic violence, trafficking

Mood Spoiler: really sad and bleak

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Link to the original post posted on r/RBI 3 month ago

I believe my neighbor next door may have been sold/used for citizenship

Not sure if this was the best sub for this, figured Legal Advice wouldn’t be the best. So here goes

This is in Oakland , CA in the East San Francisco Bay Area.

I have a next door neighbor who moved into the apartment next door to mine in June 2021 and has been a major nuisance. She’s schizophrenic and is constantly screaming, banging, smoking and loitering around the complex playing her music and singing loudly or screaming/talking at no one. She looks very unkempt constantly and mentally unwell based on her hygiene.

I’m definitely empathetic to those with mental illness but have had to make a couple reports to our property manager asking if any action can be taken because she lives next door and it’s made the living situation tense for me and my partner and somewhat difficult to focus while working from home. Every time he’s said they “will talk to her and her husband”, and the situation gets very very marginally better for a small interval, but goes back to being just as bad very swiftly, so we’ve kinda given up and learned to live with it.

Here’s the thing with the “husband”.

We were confused what husband the property manager was even referring to because when they first moved in, we saw a dude maybe once, but then never again, at least for months. Eventually I started to notice a guy would come around maybe once every 1 or 2 weeks, get packages, then be gone almost as soon as he arrived. Whenever he was here, the woman was usually quiet and not being disruptive as usual.

I saw this guy’s name once or twice on packages and a very close friend and I thought something might definitely be fishy with the situation so we did some digging on the internet, and here’s the deal:

He was born in India and according to FB, studied engineering at a couple colleges there, then most recently studied at a university in San Jose, CA. So at some point he immigrated to the US from India. He’s listed as single on FB, and there’s no trace of the “wife” anywhere on any of his socials.

Strangely, a people search showed that he lives in Sunnyvale (near San Jose), but the apartment where the woman lives next to us is in Oakland, CA, about a 60 minute drive north.

I recently read a comment on a post about family secrets, in which someone mentioned that their uncle “sold” their schizophrenic aunt (his daughter) to someone outside the country so they could get citizenship, and everything kinda clicked for me.

Their living space is very sparse and empty when I get glances inside and it seems almost like this man might just be “storing” her there, but otherwise living, working and probably dating elsewhere.

If my suspicions are correct, It makes me wonder about the legality (and morality of course) of a clearly mentally unsound individual having been potentially goaded or somehow forced/sold into a marriage like this for the sake of someone else’s citizenship. I can’t really think of many other scenarios this could be, unless I’m missing something.

I’m not sure if and/or how I should/would go about reporting this anonymously in a way that would prevent retaliation, do any of you fine folk have any other thoughts or opinions on the matter of IF and/or whether I should do anything?

EDIT: Just to clear some things up because I a seeing a couple misunderstandings about the situation and even some people calling me a Karen (for fuck's sake) --- If nothing bad is going on, I'm not trying to get a vulnerable person kicked out of their home. I've learned to live with the neighbor's shenanigans at this point and while it's annoying, they're the least of my worries as to my reason for posting this.

I'm worried about the potential deterioration of her mental health in isolation and the current stark/bare living situation she's in, if she's not being properly cared for. She is not mentally stable enough to be independent/self-caring from what I've seen over the last 6-7 months.

I know some people with schizophrenia can manage it with therapy and medication and live largely uninterrupted lives. That is NOT this individual. I'm talking like alone all day, sleeping on what looks like a twin mattress in the living room, screaming/crying at the bathroom mirror on the other side of the wall about killing children/being alone and unloved/random vitriolic insults at nothing/no one. If she is better off being treated by mental healthcare professionals, then anyone I decide to potentially report this to can decide what's best for this situation better than I can.

However, I'm highly doubtful that someone in the mental health situation I described above is better off living alone in a small apt., with no job and no one to talk to, smoking all day and (I think, based on whiskey bottles that have been smashed from the balcony into the parking lot) drinking, while someone who could be taking advantage of her AFAIK is there 2 to 3 times a month and taking advantage of her for citizenship or anything else. I am as progressive as they come and the immigration aspect of this in and of itself is not my concern in the slightest, my concern is if there is what amounts to trafficking, abuse, neglect, etc. happening.

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UPDATE posted 5 days ago

Link to update

[UPDATE] I believe my neighbor next door may have been sold/used for citizenship

This is in Oakland , CA in the East San Francisco Bay Area.

So ... I was correct in my assessment and this sad story appears to have resolved itself. Even though this is unfortunately a terrible situation all around I can't help feeling a bit vindicated after the abuse I received from a number of commenters on the original post, as well as from the asshole I had to block who decided to post 3 comments calling me an awful Karen bitch who needs to mind their own business and even DM'ed me to continue harassing me.

Last night I received word from the property manager that my next door neighbor would be moving out at the end of the month. The manager intimated to me that this neighbor's husband was from India (as I'd found out online), knew she was schizophrenic and unstable when he married her (as I thought), did it entirely for the green card (as I presumed), and regularly got violently drunk and abused her (as I regularly heard through the walls).

They had a big, violent fight (think domestic abuse so loud it could be heard across the street) a couple weeks ago and the husband has not been back since. He is annulling their marriage, will stop paying their rent, and is moving back to India because he was not in the US long enough to become a citizen.

This husband was barely ever home here with her, and when he was gone her unstable behavior escalated and escalated progressively to the point where a little over a month ago, the neighbor with schizophrenia was scream-crying and wailing in the park from midnight onward for two hours, then came back to her apt., proceeded to make full-on atomic levels of noise in the way of banging, slamming and making the smoke alarm go off multiple times (all at 2 AM) until her downstairs neighbors came up angry as all fuck and yelled at her that she needed to be quiet.

Our schizophrenic neighbor proceeded to call her the N-word (something the property manager told me she has done before to children at the park across from our apt. complex) and ramble on nonsensically (I randomly heard her mention 'white-boy Leonardo DiCaprio' at some point???).

While it shouldn't be necessary to include, since it's never OK to call someone a slur (and especially that slur with a "hard R") - for context: neighbor is white, her downstairs neighbor and our property manager are black, and the kids in the park are black.

The property manager was there for that whole fight and tried to dispel it, telling downstairs neighbor that our next-door neighbor can't help it, it's not her talking etc., until everyone quieted down and settled in.

The thing is ... the property manager is right. This woman can't control her behavior or what she says. She clearly needs better care for her illness, and she isn't getting it while shut up in an apartment alone, living self-destructively as someone's ticket to a green card. She needs to be back where she has access to her medication and a support network for this mental illness (property manager mentioned that neighbor is from Georgia and "left her meds there").

I hope she gets the help she needs, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not just relieved to hear that she will not be here injecting strenuous disturbances and anxiety into my partner's and my daily lives. Maybe this makes me atrocious for feeling that way, but we have a life to live ourselves and not enough resources to move in this economy.

In any case, I wanted to give this update after a number of self-righteous comments on my previous post had me doubting that pursuing anything was the right thing to do. The people who told me I was being xenophobic/nosey/intrusive for my assessment that someone who happens to be an immigrant might be (correction: is/was) taking advantage of and abusing a vulnerable, mentally ill individual kind of makes me sick in hindsight.

I didn't end up reaching out to Homeland Security or any Mental Health/Adult Protective Services because the commenters saying I was being xenophobic got to me, and the process for getting in contact with Adult Protective Services in Oakland was byzantine and seemed underfunded (what a surprise). Regardless, both of these individuals are now moving on from their toxic relationship.

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Note to Mods or anyone else: I know there is a rule that very sensitive or grim content can be removed. Understandable if this reaches that bar. Let me know if that's the case and remove.