Sybil Saga (part (IV)

As we pulled into the long uphill driveway (with a sign called Hotrod Hill) we were debating on if we should bring the 3 huge binders full of “documentation” we have gathered against Sybil in with us. We figured we might as well. It was a huge house- you couldn’t really tell as most of it was hidden but we knew from the bragging the girls had done throughout the relationship. It felt strange, being on enemy territory…expensive enemy territory and being painfully reminded of the reasons why we lost the first battle. Mark’s sister (Mandy) greeted us at the door with an enormous smile as she hugged me. I thought “oh shit- we’ve got huggers here” but it ended up being just her.

Looking back I can understand a bit why she hugged me. We had had the “coming to Jesus” conversation on the side after we had agreed to meet over the phone where I asked “why in the hell should we trust you and your family?” Pretty much in those exact words. She was understanding of our position and very humble. We e-mailed back and forth prior to the meeting a few times about miscellaneous stuff which also explained the hug- in the process discovering that we had a lot in common. We sat down at the huge dining room, pulled out our first monster binder and started hashing out some of the crap we had been dealing with and trying to get to the bottom of things. Many of our suspicions were confirmed: that she would intentionally dodge our calls (with the girls knowing), bad mouth Norm to them, ask leading and accusatory questions about us, essentially discourage them from going to school and enable the shit out of them. If fact we found out that Sybil had been paying MS to stay home from school and watch the other kids while she would go hang out with her new boyfriend. Made us a little ill to be honest but it wasn’t like we didn’t know what she was capable of but... We also learned that she was accusing Mark of some pretty wicked stuff to include physically abusing MS. None of which we believed an ounce of – we’d been the subject of too many of her allegations that it made it impossible to believe a thing anymore.

At the end of the meeting there were apologies and understandings. We had made the decision to file again but we were going to try it on our own first and pull our attorney in later if needed. I wrote up the motion and the affidavit. Had Norm sign it, I filed it and personally served her myself. Can’t deny I took a bit of pleasure in that. A week or two later she retained an attorney- a “friend” of hers that was a parent of one of MS’s friends. She contacted us to try to “mediate” and hopefully come to an agreement without having to go to court. We laughed and explained to her that there is no way Sybil will agree to anything more than what was currently in place and that she did not understand the concept of ‘compromise’ but we were willing to give it a shot nonetheless. We met with her, she drew up an agreement that her own client wouldn’t sign even after she had verbally agreed. She refused to admit her own client was being unreasonable and started flinging mud which is when we retained our former attorney...and then WWII started.