Espe’s 27th Birthday
Espe Mathilde
— Espe Mathilde—
Is her name,
Born in the Springtime
March 23rd
Of the 94th year….
(Since this was written Espe and Jameson have changed names and gender identity. Espe is Phoenix with they pronouns, and Jameson is Rafael. They may also have a new last name---Mellifera. Manon is now Mica, or maybe Beau, and uses he/they pronouns. Phoenix and Rafael a live in Portland with Nica Mellifera in a polyamorous relationship. Rafael has said that Phoenix is not his wife.)
Does Espe realize that we have been trying to contact her since November 2017, a month before the email cancelling their trip to visit us a week before they were to visit at Christmas?Have the messages, texts, that we and a few others received really been from Espe? I question whether Espe receives the phone calls that my mom believes she makes to her--- that it’s Espe who answers and not Jameson (Espe’s spouse). My mom has said things like, she didn’t sound like Espe at first, or that maybe Espe had a cold when she spoke with her.
When I met with Jameson’s mom, Denise, in February 2017 before the wedding she seemed guarded. I spoke candidly with Denise and questioned Espe and Jameson's decision to marry when neither had steady jobs, and were not self-supporting. I said a long engagement would be more practical while they established themselves in careers, or entered a graduate program as Espe had said she wanted to do. I said they would have more money in a few years to have any kind of wedding they wanted, a more fantastic wedding if they liked.
I could see no benefit to Espe from an early marriage, especially since Scott and I were still sending rent for Espe to Jameson’s PayPal account “callmejelly”.
Today I believe that Denise Ortiz, Jameson’s mom, along with Jameson, and with her other children, including Sam of @pantsofsam (a male stripper or nude model who was living in LA), arranged to isolate Espe, to lessen her inhibitions to using drugs by first feeding her "legal" drugs, illegally prescribed, and by encouraging her to pursue a form of soft porn, theatrical teasing, outside the safety of SLC's community. I believe that they also conspired to involve Manon, and Michelle (Manon's girlfriend at the time), and that they have, and are, trying to involve another sibling, claiming that experimenting with non-additive illegal drugs is safe and "enlightening".
Could they have begun their campaign to exploit and manipulate my children when Jameson visited us in 2013, and he (Alisa) spent so much time at our house, alone with them, when they were 14 and 15, and still in high school? I was sitting in the hospital with Espe all day every day. Did Jameson undermine my children's trust in me by questioning my motives, or my intentions? and making it appear to be the kind of questioning that many young people have of their parents? Only-- Jameson was the one questioning me, and I was not his parent. Did Jameson introduce pornography to them, or persuade them to watch, as he had encouraged Espe to do when they were rooming together at SLC their first year?
Could Jameson's and Denise's behavior with my children be considered "grooming"?
When I contacted Denise about Espe and Jameson in 2020, after we found out how they had been living, this is what I received in reply:
Emailed to me from Denise Ortiz<This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Thu, Mar 5, 2020, 1:21 PM
to me, Samuel
Please do not contact me again. I am aware of situations regarding Jameson and Espe. I do not need to hear your spin of things, especially since I have first hand experience with your lies and misrepresentations. I hope you respect my wishes. There is no need for further communications. I will be blocking you so that I do not have to receive or read you lies.
In this email Denise said she was aware of what had been happening to Espe, of their “situations”, so she is aware that Jameson is marketing Espe in BDSM pornography that promotes rape culture, and that Espe was hospitalized following a tour to all the major cities in the US in September 2019. I do not know much about their "situations", but I have not misrepresented anything I have discovered.
I last spoke to Denise at Izzy’s Traverse City Lake House in July 2017. Either Jameson or Denise were always around Espe, "protecting" her. Espe rarely spoke--Jameson or Denise usually spoke for her. Together, they managed to manipulate Izzy into believing that Espe was okay, and to further isolate Espe from her parents.
Jameson also took Espe's last name, and this too has confused anyone who may wonder about his past and current connections to his family, and their involvement in "trafficking" Espe. Jameson also uses the tag @bisextrous among many others to mislead and confuse everyone, so that his actions are not apparent online.
I have not spoken to Jameson’s father, Samuel, since the rehearsal dinner before the wedding in May 2017. He is a psychology professor at St. Johns University in NYC. He and Denise are divorced, and he has remarried. Because he has not responded to the two letters I have written to him, it appears that he is unconcerned that his son is marketing his wife, our daughter, online, and that his son, Jameson, has taken Espe's dreams, ambitions, and personality, everything and everyone she loved, and twisted them to his financial gain and his vindictive desire for control and power over others. Only a very cruel person could do what he has done, without any apparent feeling of kindness toward, or empathy with her pain, her siblings' pain, and her family's. Could some of the mind games that Jameson is playing with Espe and with our family have originated from his dad, his knowledge of psychology?
I don’t know who else to contact. I read on Twitter that my daughter was lonely—She told a story about inviting friends who did not come in the one conversation I have had with her since the email demanding no contact and blocking me from every way of connecting with her. This phone conversation took place in July 2018 from Izzy's house. She phoned Scott, and said she could not unblock my phone number (probably because Jameson owns the phone account and has me blocked). It seems that Espe and Manon have been deliberately isolated from friends and family by Jameson (aka Alisa Ortiz), and Denise Ortiz of Shirley, Long Island.
I don’t know who to trust. Maybe it's not Jameson and his family. So I contacted Carolyn Eastman (the mother of Manon’s girlfriend) while we were in Portland looking for Espe. She sent messages to me that said “Michelle says they are okay.” and “They are afraid of you.” and she was “home with her sweetie” when I texted, disturbing her. By the time I received these texts from her, we had called the police for a “well-check” on Espe.
Jameson has threatened us (Scott and me) that we will never see Espe again if we don’t go through him. He published a letter on Facebook after we attempted to reach Espe through her friends because we believed that she was depressed and maybe suicidal. He said that we were not to try to use friends to contact her—that we were harassing her friends.
Similar confusing things have happened with Manon too.
At the end of Manon’s letter, typed and left in our mailbox, breaking off contact, was an addendum, also typed, which demanded that I send Manon’s stock certificates to her Reed mailbox. I sent the certificates by a same day service along with her car keys (I had returned her car to her at her house.) In a complaint alleging abuse (to forbid her parents access to Reed’s campus) written to Reed security, Manon said that we had left her car without keys and she could not move it until a week later when the keys arrived. I left a letter in Manon’s mailbox explaining that the keys were sent to the Reed mailbox specified in the typed letter. If Manon did not get the letter, or the car keys, for over a week, who did?
In one letter among many accusations, Jameson said that I said I did not want Espe to "negatively influence" Manon. And that my words had hurt Espe. I did not say this. I had a conversation with Espe about pornography when Espe returned home from college. Maybe Jameson (Alisa), who was staying with us, overheard our conversation or chose to misinterpret Espe's description of the conversation. Maybe he thought I was being critical of him because he (Alisa) was watching porn, and Espe was talking about it. I said that Manon had her own peer group in school with whom to discuss these things. If I said "negative influence" I would have applied these words to Jameson's influence in sharing his love of pornography with my high school children. I would not and could not have applied "negative influence" to Espe. Espe was a loving and caring sister. Only someone with bad intentions could have persuaded Espe to believe that her mother would say or intend anything hurtful to her, to make it seem as if I were attacking her.
When Jameson started writing to us, I tried to find truth in some of his less incredible accusations. I was looking for answers. It did not occur to me until much later that I was only hearing from Jameson who said I should figure it out and remember all the times I had hurt Espe. Espe did not say these things. ---So I went through all the letters and texts. I wanted to know why Espe had broken off contact with us. I wanted to know how I had hurt Espe. I could not believe that Espe was insane or that Jameson was a monster. To this day I have not heard Espe or Mica make the same incredible accusations that Jameson made in his letters. I have only heard Jameson saying that Espe would say this or that. Jameson interrupts every attempt to communicate with either Espe or Mica.
I and my family have been ripped apart, traumatized, and devastated by the loss of Espe and Manon. There is no explanation. Manon has said nothing. Espe has said I did not pay her bills but I could not respond because I am blocked. I have a difficult time believing that anyone could have orchestrated all this. That anyone could have deliberately chosen to use Espe and Manon for selfish personal financial gain, and mercilessly hurt them and their family so much.
Michelle (once Manon’s girlfriend) once said that Jameson was “marvelous”. It seems we have all been misled and used by him. Somehow, by smearing their parents and questioning the beliefs of their parents, and playing on their natural desire to be different, independent, and less inhibited than their parents, and by promising love, Jameson and his family may have gained my children’s trust, and abused them. Or maybe they have threatened them with hurt to me or to other family members, and they are afraid to say anything.
Since we welcomed Alisa Ortiz (now Jameson E. Semrau) into our lives, Espe and Manon seem to have lost themselves, friends, and family. I and my family, siblings, cousins, grandparents have suffered. We have all lost a “mostly loving and happy family” as Espe once said, and we have all acquired a reticence to share what little we do know. Izzy (paternal grandmother) questions “Who to believe?” and my mother is afraid she will not receive another phone call if she calls more than a couple of times during the year. (But then Izzy also says that I’m like a mother cat crying when her kittens cross the road, implying that what is happening is not as bad as it seems.)
I have lost the only reality I knew, one that had my children in it, and I have been thrown into an unbelievably cruel world in which I watch all around me tortured and I can’t stop it.
That’s why I’m writing. I can't continue to be afraid that I'll further alienate Espe and Manon, or that I will inadvertently hurt friends and family; or that those hurting Espe and Manon will maybe hurt them more if I publicly question what is happening, or involve others.
How do they get Espe and Manon to continue to cooperate? by threatening exposure? threatening to hurt those they love? Or do they use cult-like persuasion with years of cruel manipulation and lies, camouflaging Espe and Manon, hiding who they were before they were a part of what is happening now, changing their reality? Are drugs involved?
To look at instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok posts, who would believe that Jameson or anyone could be so calculating and merciless with Espe and Manon and their family, and who would believe that Espe and Manon are not okay. Who would believe that we are all leading double lives?
I am creating this blog varabyways.joomla.com, to write about our story. (And I started another, varabyways.org in 2021.) I hope to build a bridge for Espe and Manon. They may not know that they have family, friends, who love them anyway they are or anyway they want to be, and a mother who would welcome them into her life anytime. I love and miss my children. I hope Espe has had a wonderful birthday.
Please read my blog varabyways.joomla.com for more about this story. And if you can, help build a bridge for Espe and Manon to reconnect with their family.
