Original subtitles

I've never committed a crime in my entire life.

I never thought that a small lie could spin out of control.

Just give us our documents and we will be out of here.

It was just beyond a nightmare.

In the court.

A cage.

A cage is for animals.

Human trafficking?

Are you kidding me?

I couldn't believe that I was looking at 15 years in prison.

It was 1998. I was living in Florida, single again after two failed marriages.

So I had made a decision to just swear off men and marriage

and relationships.

One day I went to the mailbox and there was a letter from my first husband,

Medhat.

I hadn't heard from him or knew his whereabouts or anything for nine years.

And he signed the letter, missing you, love Medhat.

I met Medhat in 1981 when I was 20 years old.

He told me that he was Egyptian.

We just fell in love immediately.

But we were young.

And I wanted to pursue a career as a professional golfer.

And he pursued business.

The world just tore us apart.

So I was divorced from him.

Now it's 17 years later. We're back in touch.

He's in Egypt and I'm in the United States.

And then we started instant messaging and meeting online a couple times a day.

And I feel like I'm falling in love with him again.

So one day we were instant messaging, as we usually do, and he messages, will

you marry me?

I'm thinking, do I really know Medhat?

Is this the right thing to do?

And I remembered that moment at the altar.

And so I emailed back, yes, of course.

And so I'm coming around the corner, and the reality of the situation comes in.

What am I doing?

I've only been in touch on email, only spoken a few times on the phone, and now

I'm going to marry him?

But immediately, when our eyes met, the 15 years that we hadn't

seen each other, it just like was melted away.

And I was nervous, but never for a second did I doubt that I could trust

It was like a fairy tale.

It was just almost like it was too good to be true.

So Medhat and I, you know, we had been married now for a while.

It was great.

It was wonderful.

But I had this desire to be a mother.

But I had been through menopause, and so, you know, I can't have children.

One day, Medhat and I were on the bus together.

And a Muslim lady came on the bus with her baby.

And I just said, I

want to adopt a baby.

And he goes, our whole life will change.

I know that.

But I really want to adopt one.

Then he said, okay, we'll do it.

It never once entered my mind that there would be any kind of a complication or

anything that would go wrong.

Medhat and I, being Christian, we decided to go to the cathedral in Cairo

ask about a doctor.

It takes us into like a huge room.

And I see at the end of the room, the Coptic bishop, they wear this black,

like a dome kind of a hat.

I'm at the threshold of my dream of many, many years.

I was sitting before him, expecting him to ask me difficult, heavy questions.

So you are American?

Is this the interview?

What you think of Egypt?

When is the interview going to start?

But then I hear the official speaking to Medhat.

And I can tell by Medhat's reaction, you know, that it's a go.

Then he said one last thing to Madhav.

Be discreet.

Why?

Why do we have to be discreet? Is there something wrong with what we're doing?

But I just suppressed all of that because I was finally going to have my

I can't believe how naive I was at the time.

I never would have guessed that only a few months later, I wouldn't have been

able to trust anybody.

It was Sunday, March 9, 2008.

It was 4 o 'clock in the afternoon, and the phone rang.

Hello? So Medhat gets on the phone, and he's got a big grin on his face, and he

goes, it's a boy.

We need to go and pick him up at 7 o 'clock.

So it was like, we're parents.

So we got to the address, really beautiful apartment building.

And so she brought us in to see the nun who was going to give us the baby.

I was just antsy. You know, I'm kind of looking around the room, you know,

what's he going to look like?

You know, I hope he's cute.

So a couple minutes later, this girl comes in with this

beautiful.

Beautiful baby boy.

And I remember just looking at him and going, oh, you know, I mean, and I just,

I just took him in my arms and he was just gorgeous.

And it was love at first sight.

I feel his love.

Holding on to her.

I was just floating.

I was just enamored by this little baby boy, my baby.

My life flashed before me all in a split second of all the things I had done in

my life. They were all wonderful things, but in that moment, there was nothing

that compared.

to me holding that little baby in my arms.

And I heard Medhut saying to the nun, where's the

papers? And she said, we don't do the papers.

So I was...

Looking at Matt, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was thinking.

What is this?

What kind of adoption is this?

If this church, why can't she give that we have adopted this

baby?

But there was no way that I was going to leave my baby behind.

So we left the home without any papers, but we left with our little baby.

I should have known then that something was not right.

The first night I didn't sleep, I just watched him.

You know, I was just watching him breathe.

And just stayed awake the whole night.

We get the pampers and the milk and all that stuff, but he still, you know, we

need papers.

Before we could even sit down and discuss it, like what should we do,

a family member...

gave us the phone number of another nun that we could call that could help get

the paper.

Her name was Teresa.

Okay. Knowing what I know now, I wish we had just thrown that number away.

But we didn't, and we headed to this nun Teresa's orphanage.

When we got to the house, the first thing that caught my attention was this

chain with a big padlock.

It's an orphan house.

Why a chain with a padlock?

She opened the door, and she was dressed like a nun.

I can't put my finger on it, but I just...

It just wasn't that comfortable with her.

And so she said, I know a doctor who will write a note saying that he

the baby and we can take this letter to the health office and they will issue

you a birth certificate.

It says that you are mother and you are father.

When I heard that, I felt sick, physically sick.

Is this an illegal adoption?

I would have never imagined that in order for me to keep my baby,

I would have to lie on a birth certificate.

I never even imagined that I was capable of doing that.

But I just, I had bonded with my baby.

And I was sure that that would be the last lie that I would ever have to tell.

We agreed, okay, we'll do it.

We waited two or three days, and then Medhat went and picked up the birth

certificate.

Medhat's name was on as the father, and I was on as the mother, and we named him

Marco.

Even though it wasn't the truth, I felt reassured knowing that this was, in

fact, a legal government document that gave me right to be, you know,

that I'm his mother.

At that point, I was just like, I am never going to lie on any

document or anything ever again.

But I was wrong.

I love being a mother. I loved it.

I had waited 46 years.

for this moment, and I wanted to just take it all in.

I saw Medhut in a new light.

He was just a great father.

Life couldn't get any better.

One day after we got home from the beach, I checked my emails, and I had

an email from my sister.

My mother had cancer.

I have to, you know, I was just like, I have to go.

Now we had had Marco for six months. Why don't I take Marco with me so my mother

can meet her grandson?

But Marco needs a visa so he can travel with me to the United States.

So Medhat and Marco and I went to the American Embassy for me to get Marco's

visa.

Number four, please.

I came to the window, and he said... Can I see your paperwork, please? Sure.

Thank you.

So I was picturing getting to New York, and there I was with Marco, and

picturing that my mother would be so happy to meet him.

He came back.

Are you American? And I said, yes.

I'm sorry, we're not going to be able to issue a visa for your son. Your son has

to travel on an American passport.

We just need you to fill out this application.

So he hands me the application.

And I saw a place that I have to sign that I am his

birth mother.

It literally scared me to death.

I have to lie in front of the embassy official.

I had already said I am never going to lie on

any document ever again.

Right then, had I just walked out, maybe everything would have been different.

But instead...

I just lost it. I don't have time for that. I need to travel with Avita. I

have time to go through the application process.

And he told me, please sit down for a minute.

I sat down, and I was crying.

I guess it might have seemed like desperation.

People weren't noticing.

There was like a... A paranoia that started to rise up in me.

What must they be thinking of me?

Why is she so out of control?

Susan Hagloff?

So he called me back to the window.

What am I going to do?

I had to be with my mother.

I had to be with her.

also being a new mother to Marco, I couldn't be separated from him.

I decided to do it.

I just hope that he accepts the document and no more questions will be

asked.

The next morning we wake up and the phone rings.

And Medhat answers the phone.

Hello? And it's the American Embassy.

We need one more thing.

We need a note from your doctor verifying that

he delivered the baby.

What is going on?

They don't believe us.

And I'm realizing now that I'm in something.

I had to lie again.

So I'm getting in deeper and deeper and

deeper.

I knew that we had to call Teresa.

But there was something about that woman that just made my skin

crawl.

So Medhat and Marco and I go back to Teresa's.

Teresa said, I'm going to help you.

Medhat and I will go and get the letter, and you stay here with Marco.

We come back in one hour.

That next morning, Medhat and I brought the letter to the embassy.

As nervous, scared as I was, there was still that shred

of hope.

We were going to go there, and they're going to give us the passport.

We dropped it off at the desk, and I felt...

All of a sudden, there was a mood change.

Do you have any pictures of when you were pregnant?

Pictures?

I can do the documents, but there's no physical way that I can provide pictures

of me when I was pregnant.

I was suffocating.

I was enclosed, and I was in a trap, and I just got angry.

You know what?

I want to cancel the application. Just give me my papers back, okay? And he

says... Meet me upstairs.

And I was looking at Matt Hutton, and I'm thinking, what is going on here?

And he said... Okay, look, we know that child's not yours. If you try to leave

the country with that baby, you're going to be charged with kidnapping.

What?

When I heard the word kidnapping...

You know, I looked over at Medhat and I just felt like a lump in my throat.

Kidnapping? No, no, no, no, no. What's he saying?

That is our child. I may have lied on the application, but I'm certainly not a

kidnapper. Just, you know what, this is over. Just give me my documents. I'm not

going to give you your documents back.

Give me my papers.

Give me my papers.

You'll be charged with kidnapping.

I felt like I was being attacked.

Just give us our documents. And finally, he said, okay.

And I was just witnessing through the glass this hive of

people at one death.

Maybe they weren't going to cancel the application.

Maybe they weren't going to give us our documents back.

Those people were doing something.

With regard to us, I couldn't figure out what it was.

You know, and I'm just trembling.

There was one lady, I felt like she was looking at me with, like, pity.

Like, you don't know what's going on.

He gives us a paper, and he says, we need to go to a lawyer.

And Medhat and I get outside of that embassy, almost like hyperventilating,

wondering, what does this paper say?

Okay, they're basically saying that if we don't have pictures, we have to

DNA evidence.

I cannot provide pictures.

I cannot provide DNA evidence.

I'm not his real mother.

But after reading this document, a relief come over us that after 90

days, if we don't actually submit DNA evidence, we will get our documents

and our case will be considered abandoned.

I'm thinking, thank God.

I traveled alone to be with my mother, and Marco stays with MedHut.

The surgery was a success, and they removed all of the cancer.

She's recuperating. She's doing good.

So we were all so happy about that.

I got back to Cairo, and we just felt like now we could move forward with our

life.

So we were looking forward to having our first Christmas with Marcos.

So I had just...

Finished putting up the Christmas lights.

One, two, three. And all of a sudden we hear, bam, bam, bam.

Really loud.

And it was like, who's that?

Is that your brother?

Medhat goes to the door.

Is that your uncle?

Medhat comes back in.

And he looks over at me.

And he goes, it's the police.

I was shaking.

I got Marco and wrapped him up in his little blanket.

I felt very intimidated and vulnerable.

They loaded us into a metal car.

It was very dark and smoky.

I'm getting more and more concerned.

Did the embassy tell them I'm a kidnapper or something?

They start walking us into this police station, and it was as if the walls, it

was like we were going through a maze.

And they took MedHut.

They told me, you know.

I hear, I hear these raised voices,

constant yelling, and maybe I even heard slamming on the table.

I said, where's Medhat? What are you doing with him?

And they just, they just looked at me like, and I thought to myself,

are they going to torture him?

It just terrified me.

Then they brought me into this room.

It was dark.

They were all on their cell phones.

And all I could hear was Susan Haglock.

Susan Haglock. And I was just like...

It's petrified.

I was sitting right in front of this desk, in front of this man, and they

start telling me, That is not your baby.

This is my baby.

And I looked over and I saw our documents from the embassy.

This is not a court. I want a lawyer. There's going to be a...

A cord or something, isn't there? And the guy goes, this is the cord.

And then Marco started crying.

And so I stood up with him.

And the man says, sit down.

And I go, but he's crying.

And he goes, sit down.

And he goes, I know that is not your son.

And I go, how do you know that?

And he goes, because you can't give it suck.

And then the guy at the desk said to one of the guys,

like, go take the baby.

So a man came over, and he was going to try to

take Marco out of my arms.

And I said, you can't take my baby.

You can't take my baby.

And so the man at the desk, I saw him. Then he looked at the guy and was like,

don't take the baby.

And he goes.

If these are false documents, you're going to be in bars with trouble.

You're looking at 7 to 15 years

in prison if those documents are not real.

My mind couldn't even comprehend what he was saying.

7 to 15.

18 years in prison.

You all right? No, not all right at all. He had a stroke and he's ready for

surgery. You bring him back to me, please.

Fatty's the head of our family. We'd be lost without him.

What do I do?

They took me back out of the room.

At this point, I don't know where Met Hut is.

Right at the bottom of the stairs, there was a big black metal door.

I don't know what's on the other side of that door.

I didn't know if it was just like a solitary confinement.

Bam, and a clang, and a...

As I'm going into the cell, I realize they're probably going to

take him from me.

I had to start accepting that in my mind.

I just was thanking God that I had the opportunity

to...

to be a mother.

A few minutes later,

you can hear, you know, the padlock open and from the outside,

one of the police officers looks over to me

and he goes, give the baby to him.

I had kind of

Started to make myself detach.

You know what I mean?

So that I wouldn't totally just fall apart.

I just gave him to the man.

I'll never forget that moment inside.

And I can still hear Marco crying.

You know, as they took him, the cry was all the way up the stairs

until I couldn't hear it anymore.

And I was thinking, I can't live like this.

And I just wanted to curl up.

And die.

So days passed.

One night, police officers just took water and just... just

threw water on us.

And it was just... degrading.

It just really...

made me feel just really, really worthless.

So the next day, early in the morning, they open the cell door

and they're going,

Yalla, let's go.

Suzanne, you're going to court.

Then they escort us into the courtroom together and put us

into a cage.

I was looking around and thinking, a cage?

A cage is for animals.

I felt very confused.

You know, of course, I had recognized this Teresa.

But I had no idea who these other people were and why they were putting us

together as some kind of a group.

The lawyers start talking to the judges.

And after the meeting with the judges, our lawyer came, and he

was not looking positive.

I've got bad news.

They have made a gang out of you,

and they are accusing you of human trafficking.

And I looked at Medhat, and I go, human trafficking?

Are you kidding me?

Human trafficking?

That's a horribly serious crime.

The trial lasted nine months.

It's the day of our sentencing.

So Medhat and I, we were holding hands, and we're

just, we're hoping that we're going to hear the word, which means released.

They charged Medhat and I for false documents and they sentenced us

to two years in prison.

Two years.

I couldn't believe that we got sentenced.

At that moment,

The room was just quiet.

I mean, it was noisy, but to me, it was like it was just quiet.

I never in my wildest nightmare would have ever imagined that I

would end up in prison.

You'll never believe.

The dorm I was sent to.

The dorm with the murderers.

Go in, go in.

Where? Go where?

There was no place in... I was just in

shock.

I can't do it.

I'll never survive.

I see this, like, six -foot -two woman,

just like a football player.

She just terrifies me.

There's not enough beds for people.

She rents me her bed, and then she sleeps on the floor next to the bed.

It scared me to fall asleep.

So that night, I just didn't let myself fall asleep.

It's amazing how I adjusted to this new reality.

I would get up in the morning.

And do my Bible reading and my praying.

I prayed. I said, you know, God, just help me. Just help me.

And he was helping me to just get through it.

But there wasn't one day that went by that I didn't think about Marco and

about his well -being.

I had many, many dreams about Marco.

And they were always dreams that I was going to be getting him back.

And one particular dream, I dreamed that I went to the house where he was

staying and he actually came towards me and ran into my arms and I picked him up

and I was holding him.

We spent two years and four days in prison.

The day of our release finally arrived, and I know that I'm going to be

reunited with Methad.

I'm looking around, and I was going, is that Methad?

It was hard to adjust back to normal life.

That first night that we were released, I woke up in the middle of the night

wondering, would we be able to get Marco back?

So we called the lawyer.

He told us where he was.

He told us that he found out that

they had changed his identity and that they had

changed his religion.

I felt like, you know, now I know we don't have a chance

at... fostering him, but there was still something inside of me that I just, I

had to see him.

We were just going to go to the orphanage anonymously.

But we got to the house and it was late, you know, it was eight o 'clock at

night.

We're here and we want to see the kids and, you know, give them a little goodie

bag, you know, with toys and everything.

Oh,

I'm sorry, the kids have already gone upstairs for bed.

Is it possible that I could go up and see them on my own?

And so they thought, well, they said, okay, why don't you just come up?

My heart starts pounding.

I've heard that he's here.

But I don't know for sure.

We go upstairs.

The first room, when I came in, I saw cribs. There was about four

cribs.

Marco is not one of these babies.

I was just picking them up.

Talking to them.

And then all of a sudden,

I see this

little guy come into the room.

And he's coming into the room with like this, I know that voice.

And I just picked him up, and I just held him, and I just kissed him.

And I said, oh, you're a good boy.

But he was healthy.

He looked good.

He was strong.

I could see that he was okay.

But I can't explain just what it was like to just...

scoop him up in my arms and just kiss him and just hold on to him that one

time.

Here, this is for you.

And he ran out of the room and he goes, Mama.

And I said, Oh, are you Mama?

And this nice young girl.

You know, it said yes, and she was very nice.

They were showing me that he was learning English.

So this mama, this girl he called mama, was pointing to him, you know, nose. He

would say nose, and ears, and he'd say ears.

And he was just, it was just a precious, precious moment.

There's a cliche.

For me, this came to life. It is better to have

loved and have lost than to never have loved at all.

Even though I committed a crime, I have to say that it was

worth it to have those nine months to be a mommy.