Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: This story probably requires a degree of a trigger warning for serious childhood abuse and possibly violence and is going to sound unreal, but I assure you that everything I’m about to tell you actually happened the way I’m going to recount it. I have told nobody exactly what happened until now, for reasons you’ll see and also because it was such a crazy thing to happen that the few people who I did tell didn’t really know to feel about it or what to do or say so I’ve largely kept this to myself and my therapist.

Last Spring in June I was enrolled in 2 online courses at Queens online, STAM 200 and PSYC 397. I had been trapped in Canada since 2020 during the pandemic and working hard for a full year in school and I needed a break quite badly, and I went to Mexico for a few weeks in late June. I figured I could handle school and some play and would come back refreshed and renewed. Shortly after arrival I experienced an awful home invasion style robbery by 6 gang members with weapons (a shillelagh, 2 pistols, knives, and a Taser) in my hotel who stole practically everything I owned, beat me very badly, and traumatized me profoundly as it brought up a lot of childhood trauma which I had not yet resolved at that time. Worse, after they discovered I hadn’t left the area as I guess they must’ve told me to, the next day 2 of the same gang searched out and found me at another hotel while trying to recover, waited outside for me to exit the building, then physically forced me into an ambulance and kidnapped me. I was beaten further and warned that if I spoke of this to anyone that, no matter where I was, they would find me and kill me. They then dropped me off on the far end of town, with exactly 1 debit card and virtually no clothing or possessions. My laptop was one of the things stolen during the initial robbery and it held all of my Queen’s course and login information and essentially my entire planner and schedule, essentially my ability to plan my life on it. Without my passwords (stored locally on my browser, not a cloud service), and with my physical and brain injuries, my ability to plan and follow through fell apart for several months as I pieced my life back together.

During the robbery I sustained a number of physical injuries including a bad concussion, 3 broken ribs, a badly bruised abdomen, deep lacerations on my chin and shoulder blade, bone bruises to my legs and forearm, a chipped orbital in my right hemisphere which also hemorrhaged inside my eyeball which required medical attention weeks later when it wouldn’t stop bleeding. Physical injuries heal relatively quickly; the psychological trauma I sustained triggered pre-existing severe childhood traumas and layered with the near-death experiences I’d experienced, and it has taken me almost a full year to conquer this and truly move past them. A bit more about my past and what these events triggered: I grew up the scapegoat of an extreme narcissist parent who saw to it that I attend the St. Georges Boys Choir during the days when John Gallienne (convicted serial child sexual predator and pedophile) was our choirmaster and I was abused for much of 7 of the first 12 years of my life. At 51 years old, it’s only the last 3 years or so that the highly effective trauma-specialized therapy which brought about the changes I’ve worked so hard to experience after a lifetime of searching for. I am hoping to bring what I have learned about healing from these terrible things to help others to heal by becoming a CRPO registered psychotherapist once I’m finished with my education.
(Footnote: I don’t ever talk about these things out of a sense of care for the listener, however in this circumstance, despite the robbery and kidnapping being traumatic enough in their own rights, the truth is the impact they had on me weren’t isolated traumas so I feel the need to address prior history.)

I was highly dissociative for months after these events, and had I not been in such an extreme state, I would have withdrawn from the 2 courses before accruing the academic penalties I now face. On the bright side, I have seen a trauma specialist weekly since the event and treated my recovery as seriously as any course I’ve taken, reading many extremely pertinent books, making many notes and reviewing them, watching many documentaries, and forging new friendships with appropriate people. I had to change my diet radically and even took on a very physical job for the last 5 months to get in excellent physical shape and to overcome the profound fears which were holding me back and had caused me to isolate myself, largely due to intrusive and unprocessed memories of these events. I feel strongly that I’m ok to return to studies this Fall semester. Post-grad, I plan to take a Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology once I complete my undergrad psychology BA, and the appearance of 2 F’s on my recent record will appear strongly indicative of a lack of responsibility to graduate school admissions officers. Although in hindsight it’s hard to see how something so glaringly obvious such as withdrawing from courses could slip one’s mind, I assure you that in my condition at the time, a blunder like these is very possible to make and worse. I didn’t even know if I’d ever feel ok to finish school until the last few months, however in a cruelly ironic way I actually believe that the added strain ended up moving me to a point past where I may have gotten had I not had those terrible experiences. This is something that I actually NEED to do; this is where my strongest pathway to self-actualization lies.

Shortly after the robbery, a concerned local heard about the robbery and kidnapping and reported it to the equivalent of the Attorney General of Oaxaca (La Fisgalia General de la Estada de Oaxaca) so I was forced to go in and make a statement, which was extremely unnerving because I felt like these gangsters were very likely affiliated with cartel members and thus probably privy to whatever I told the Fisgalia, so I toned down what happened and told them only what I thought was necessary. At that time I had no recollection of the ambulance abduction so you’ll note it’s not mentioned. I have included a PDF of my statement with my appeal.

In the course of recovering from these events I discovered that this strategic violence is actually a relatively common tactic Mexican street gangs have been using to make money due to the extreme low level of tourism during the lockdown which was still on as covid raged last year: They home invade you to psychologically violate you and strongly establish that nowhere is safe, steal everything you own, and beat you up badly enough terrorize you in order to send you home fast, at which point it’s impossible to press charges or see any justice so they get away with it 100% of the time. I have met 2 different unrelated cases of almost exactly this story happening since then.

When crimes occur to Canadians outside of Canada, there’s no Canadian agency set up to help besides Passport Canada - who I was very grateful expedited my new passport application which allowed me to leave the country. I tried the RCMP, my local MP, CSIS, CSEC, and Interpol and of all those agencies, only Interpol told me for many thousands of USD they’d do an investigation for me. The rest flat-out turned me down with a “sorry that’s out of our jurisdiction, advised to get out of the country ASAP”. As a result I don’t have any further evidence from more familiar agencies to the appeal board that I’m aware of although if the board required it, I could see if my psychotherapist would be willing to write a brief letter to you outlining her general experience with me once I was able to talk these things through with her.

Thank you very much for considering my appeal.

Respectfully yours,
Michael Chown
Student # 03633296