By Jarrett Terrill
floridasqueezed@gmail.com
The Cucuy is an ancient North American legend about a phantom-like figure. Unlike the classic American “boogeyman”, the Cucuy presents a moral dilemma for children and parents alike. According to legend, the Cucuy waits behind every shadow and crawls the rooftops of small villages. All children and their parents live in fear of Cucuy because he represents the devil you know as opposed to the one you don’t. Cucuy can only “get you” if you disobey your parents.
Up on the rooftops, Cucuy waits patiently and listens for the sounds of disobedience in the night. He’s much like batman, having his own mobile command of the nighttime landscape; hearing all conversations and aware of every nuance. When a parent gives her child a direct order, Cucuy is listening and his eyes and ears will follow that child long after the parents have ignored them. When they disobey, Cucuy will descend upon them and steal them away into the night.
Children fear the Cucuy because they instinctively know that their own curiosity about life could be the death of them. Parents fear the Cucuy because they know he is a metaphor for a very real threat that has persisted since the dawn of time… The subtle sense of guilt a mother feels when she invokes Cucuy by name is testament to her own complicity in his affairs. Cucuy is a child molester or a human trafficker… and villages around the globe have resigned themselves to hold him up as a keeper of morality.
“Do as you are told and you will be safe from Cucuy,” the parents say – all the while knowing that Cucuy is a hungry beast with little regard for justice or a fair trial. If Cucuy grabs your child in the night, these communities believe it is because you did not raise good children to begin with. They contend that if your child was the type to behave, he or she would not be missing.
It is in this fashion that a village willingly feeds its young to Cucuy. After all, the profession of law enforcement would cease to exist if Cucuy were apprehended quickly. Many careers depend on perpetuating the Cucuy myth and holding communities responsible for their own misfortunes.
It is time for parents, their children and their neighbors all over the world to unite and stand up against this unjust way of framing the issue. We must realize that it does indeed take a village to raise a child and that none should be fed to Cucuy in vain attempts to display moral superiority over our neighbors. We must demand that when Cucuy is spotted, he must be hunted down and locked away for good. No guilt or shame can be placed on children, their concerned guardians or those unfortunate souls who have seen Cucuy in action and wish to testify against him. Cucuy must die first in our minds before his real-life counterparts can see prison time.
My name is Jarrett Terrill and I have seen the Cucuy and his partner. I know where they live and what they look like. I know their names, income levels and who their friends are and how they operate. I have met two men who traffic hardcore, explicit and violent child pornography in which children as young as infants are brutally raped. Over two years ago, I made the decision to turn these men into the authorities – the FBI specifically. I was embraced by the FBI for my Good Samaritan behavior and promised money and justice.
As a confidential informant for the FBI, I penetrated these men’s operation and secured over 30 digital videos of child abuse that was so horrific that I haven’t really slept at night ever since viewing it. From start to finish, I handed the FBI a perfect case with proof beyond all doubt of these men’s guilt. I gave up 5 and a half years of sobriety from drugs and alcohol in my effort to see these men put in prison. I suffer symptoms of what I now believe is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and I am unemployed and in debt.
Money and justice never came and these two real-life monsters are still living freely in my village of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I have been “released” from my CI status with the investigation and cut off from communication with the agents whose responsibility it was to do justice. Case closed.
These men are not stupid and I’m sure that they have figured out who I am and how I got their house raided while they were away on vacation. Because they have financial means far greater than my own, I’ve felt that I’m in danger almost every day since my contact Special Agent stopped taking my calls.
Please help me to advocate that the leadership of South Florida DO SOMETHING and put these men behind bars for the rest of their lives. Your children’s safety could depend on it. These men are quite wealthy and have a team of lawyers… and they just happen to live less than a mile from an elementary school.
I will be presenting my story to the Broward Human Trafficking Coalition at their open meeting at 10AM on March 8, 2011 and leaving myself open to questions at that time. Please join me to seek justice and safety for kids in South Florida. Please also be patient with me because I’m not that great of a public speaker and this takes a lot of courage on my part.
