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Hello, my Name is Adam Goodman, and this group of blogs you are looking at has been my way of trying to get my life back together since the Polish judicial system saw fit to involve me in a bit of sadistic fun and games known as police corruption; Polish style.

For more than 10 months in 2002, I was held in Poland without my passport and made to stand trial for a crime I did not commit. During this time, I lost my money, my time, my credibility and my good name all of which I had spent the better part of my life building up. I suffered unending depression, had my name slandered and was never even allowed to defend myself. What should have been to any reasonable thinking person’s eyes a completely ridiculous and outrageous prosecution was turned into a festival of doubletalk and insanity. What they did wasn’t right, it wasn’t fare and it wasn’t necessary.

And so, because all of my accusers; the police, the prosecutors, the judges and even my own attorneys took such pride and pleasure in their actions, I thought I really ought to do the same in return. After all, what goes around comes around. And so these pages represent my best efforts to return the favor. Of course, I do not have the luxury of officially accepted lies; I am only able to use hard facts here. But nevertheless, I think I make do.

Have a look and see for yourself. And, if in the end you agree with me, give me a hand and help me spread the word. Let’s make what these people did as public as possible so that perhaps things like this will never happen again.

Welcome to the Being Had Blog.

I’ve broken down this OVERVIEW PAGE into eight sections:
(This is also a chronological history, in its way.)

1. How all of this got started
2. The case
3. The Book
4. The Blog
5. Life in Belarus
6. The Future

So please read on. I think this is all pretty interesting stuff. Here is what The BEING HAD Bog is all about.

Part 1: How all of this got started


In February of 2002, I went for a visit to my grandmother’s hometown of Pinsk, Belarus. I had visited before and amongst other things, was hoping to find some old friends and see how they were getting along. While there I met a lady I liked, started a relationship with her and decided to stay another month. During this next 30 days, it became apparent that the relationship might be serious. So, as a means of financing my stay and supporting the relationship I had the idea to make a little local bicycle business. This is at the time what I did. I was also at the time, working on a Russian language theatrical play (My avocation) with the intention of perhaps presenting it at the local theatre. On April 6th, I left for Warsaw for a week to arrange a small loan from the states and to get a new visa. On my last day in Warsaw, May 15th 2002, about an hour after getting my passport stamped and my train ticket back, a guy drove his car into me and pinned me with it to a bus.

Well, as a lifetime biker and a former New York City bike messenger, I took offence to what I saw as an attempt on my life and punched the guy in the mouth as a way of expressing my anger over his driving. When he responded oddly to the situation, that is to say that he not only did not apologize but rather responded as if it was me who had attacked him; I took off on my bike towards the police station in the hopes of having this guy removed from my life. The guy followed me to the police station in his car and, unfortunately for me the driver, one Mr. Tomas Zaremba, just happened to be an off duty cop. We were both taken to the police station
Well, as he had the ear of his fellow policemen, they listened to him and threw me into a cell for two days. And, to make matters more interesting, he also decided to say that I had arbitrarily attacked him, wrecked his pristine car with my bare hands and shattered several of his teeth. He claimed some $750 in damages which I would of course be obliged to pay.

The case was turned over to a public prosecutor named Stanislaw Wiesniakowski. Wiesniakowski read what was written in the statements, took interviews from both of us and despite obvious discrepancies that clearly indicated Zaremba was lying, decided to side with the cop anyway and sent the case to be prosecuted. I was charged with the crimes of attacking Zaremba and his car and causing damages in the amount of 3000 zlotys. I plead not guilty.

In the place of a three-month temporary incarceration (The time to wait for a trial) I was offered bail of $1000. However, when I returned to pay this money, I was informed that my passport, which was being held while I got the money, was to be kept permanently instead. I was now prohibited from leaving Poland. The business, my girlfriend and the play, would all just have to sit and wait along with me.

Part 2: The Case

People always asked me why I didn’t just pay the cop. Well, I didn’t for a couple of really good reasons. Firstly, I didn’t do it. Secondly, I did not have the money to simply give him. If I did, my proposed business and my plan of staying with Tatyana in Belarus would be at an end. Thirdly, agreeing to pay him also meant agreeing that I had committed a ridiculously arbitrary and violent act and that I had done so from a bike would forever ruin my reputation as well as my name. It just wasn’t worth it. So, I told them to stick it. And, because I would not capitulate, they agreed that I needed to be taught additional lessons about life in Poland. And, as I no longer had my passport, I was a captive audience for the classes.

The original case that was brought to the prosecutor’s office was made up of the following items:

1. Two statements made by Zaremba.
2. Three photos taken by him of his car at the police station that day.
3. The statement of the arresting officer
4. My statements to the desk and to the prosecutor
5. An official police inspection report of the car
6. A doctor’s examination report.
Here are a couple of the pictures of the car taken that day:


Zaremba's Car. Looks like a ton of damage, right?

"He was throwing his bike at my bumper". That was his testimony to the prosecutor.


These are his photos. Those are his fingers.

I was however not allowed to know any of this or even hear what Zaremba had said about me for eight weeks. I also was not allowed any contact with an attorney nor any information about what was happening. After said eight week “discovery process”, I was invited to a meeting at the prosecutor’s office to read the above files. At that time, using only the photographs and evidence in front of me, I pointed out that aside from the fact that the cop had changed his story, the one he came up with did not hold water. The damage was old, the case was crap and doctor’s report clearly stated that he had no broken teeth. However, rather than agreeing to the logic in front of us, an attorney I had never met made his own complaint about the case, a complaint having nothing to do with the evidence I had submitted and the discovery process was continued for another six weeks. In theory at least, this attorney was my defender, Mr. Wojciech Tomczyk.

I never actually met Tomczyk until the day before an August 30th meeting. He had never said r done anything to prepare me for the meeting and in fact had even refused to tell me that Zaremba was to give testimony there. During that meeting Zaremba gave a third testimony and turned in a document which was said to have an expert opinion that stated only that the damages to the car might have been done by a hand. I was not permitted to read any other part of this document.

After this meeting, I was told by Tomczyk’s staff that though everyone pretty much agreed that Zaremba was a lair, that I should plead guilty. I refused and Tomczyk against my express demand that there be no more time wasting complaints, did so anyway. When I showed copies of my letter demanding that he revoke said document to all parties concerned including the US Embassy, I was told that the point was mute: The prosecutor had already decided to pursue the case to trial, the original justification for which stated that the case relied on the evidence submitted as well as the testimony of Zaremba as well as at least one other witness. On these grounds, the court agreed to hear the case.

Tomczyk had actually quit as my attorney though I was of course not notified about this until about a week before the October 31st trial date. By this time I had prepared a 92 page written report detailing the discrepancies in Zaremba’s story, the lies and the lack of any meaningful evidence. The report was of course ignored and I was assigned to a new attorney Mr. Marcin Borus, who worked as an associate of Sylwester Pieckowski at the offices of Altheimer & Gray.

On October 31st I gave testimony to the court. I spoke for perhaps 2 hours though I was not allowed at that time to show any evidences that I had accumulated or make any accusations towards Zaremba or his case. At the conclusion of this day, as we had run out of time, I was informed that there would be no more than one day per month that this trial would be heard.

The trial eventually went six sessions (and of course six months), including one court date in which nothing happened at all because the translator decided not to come. The conclusion was I am sure one you would not find surprising and was arrived at even though:

1. None of the statements made by Zaremba in court matched any of his previous statements or were in some cases, even physically possible.
2. The photos Zaremba took of his car did nothing but prove that the damages were old.
3. The officer who made the arrest refused officially to verify that he had ever made any such statement or that he even remembered anything of the day.
4. My statements were the only ones that made any sense. I even added to them by writing 5 essays and a 92 page report outlining why Zaremba’s case was crap.
5. The damages in the official inspection of the car did not match those in the eventual official estimate of damages.
6. The doctor’s report clearly showed that there were no broken teeth.

Part 3. The Book.

When I finally got my passport back, some 10 months after it was taken I returned to Belarus to try and pick up the pieces with Tatyana. Of course, my situation was much different now than it had been a year earlier. Gone was people’s trust and respect for me. My Belarusian partners of course after seeing that even after the wait that there was to be no bike shop no longer trusted my word, I was refused jobs even to teach my language and of course I was broke. The theatre even refused to put any real effort into the play due to, I suppose the scandal. In other words, by the time I got back I was broke, ruined and half out of my head from the experience.

So, all things being equal I decided to tell my story in the hopes of both exposing Poland for what they had done and hopefully, regaining some recourses so that I might actually finish what I had started a year earlier. The original draft of the book took about four months to write and this included the catastrophic loss of the first 80,000 words when the computer at the internet café ( (where I had been working my own notebook computer was of course stolen in Poland) broke down. But, you know, what can you do? I wrote it all again.

After this I spent several months trying unsuccessfully to find a literary agent for the project. Some people listened. Other’s read my draft. No one was buying. But after all of that work, even though it appeared that I was not going to be paid for it, I thought it was sort of waste not to at least have people hear about what happened to me. So I turned, at the suggestion of a friend to the blogger. The blogger was a lifesaver for someone who didn’t even have the money for a domain name and, after one simply test blog to see if I could do it; I put the whole book up there. What the hell, at least it was out there.

Part 4: The blog.

The BEING HAD Blog is made up of 20 separate pages all of which are linked together, the HOMEPAGE serving as the hub for the whole group. Of those pages, 10 relate directly to the case and 5 are pages devoted to some literature I have written which have some connection to all of this including of the course the book page. Almost all of these are permanent pages (I do not post there). I do contribute on a (semi) daily bases to both the “BEING HAD Times, a news, culture and current events page devoted to Belarus and Eastern Europe and to the BEINGHAD- The Story page, my personal blog which dates back to the beginning. If you do scroll back to the very first blogs at the “The Story” page, you will see some rather redundant entries. At the time, all I was interested in was keeping the fire burning and the anger alive. Now and again I would spread out a bit and write about different things, but really what I was interested in was making sure that there was a candle in the window for people to know that I was still here and still demanding to be heard.

At the moment, I am trying to be a bit more diverse and interesting to read. And though my subject matter has become somewhat eclectic, it all relates to “the life” in some way. Either ours or those around us.

Part 5: Life in Belarus

What is it like living in Lukashenka’s world? Well I have had as good a taste of it as it is possible to have had. By the summer of 2004 we had completely run out of money and it looked as though it was going to be time to leave after all. And to tell you the truth, writing about the same thing over and over again had me close to cracking up. So I quit blogging, left the book up there for all to see and actually set out to try and make some money in Europe. It was a mistake and it was an expensive one and I ended up coming back to try one more time.

But fate is indeed fickle and God decided at this very moment to bless us with the beginning of a new arrival, my daughter Anya. And, a more beautiful thing could not have happened and a more unfortunate time. Hoping to improve our lot, we invested basically almost all of what we had in what we thought was the most productive investment available to us: A small dacha farm we named “The Big Apple”. And so we went to work at subsistence farming to try and get by. And as odd as that thought may seem, it was and is the Belarusian way.

All through the summer of 2004 I worked with hand tools and a dolly trying to keep our land together. And for several months, when money was too low for me to even stay in town, I moved out to the village and worked alone in the field, the only food I had to eat was that which came straight off the field. It was indeed an amazing experience.

Why didn’t I start to work in Belarus? I tried. I tried as hard as I could. I gave speeches at the school on English and politics and business. I worked at the bike school helping but the bike teams. I taught English privately. But it was never enough. And the real reason it wasn’t was because I never regained that “face” I lost during the Polish episode, I never regained people’s trust or found I was in a position to do anything about. I never got my vindication or received any reparations.

Why didn’t I go back to the states? I wanted to. I would have. In fact I tried as hard as I could to find a job somewhere, but it just never happened. And when things really got bad, because there wasn’t any way to communicate with the world except by computer, because there wasn’t even enough money to pay for the internet time after a while we didn’t even do this. Tatyana was expecting, working at her job and making $75 a month and I was providing the bean, potatoes, cabbage and beets. Yes, occasionally there were chances and I did do all I could to maximize them, but inevitably things just refused to work out. It was like someone was trying to make sure that I never found my way back into the world.

In the fall and spring of 2005 we had some god fortune. Some money came by way of my family. And though there wasn’t really enough to set us right, there was enough to at least allow for some instruments for the farm, which improved life immeasurably. And then a very good friend found a way to get me a computer to work on which was perhaps the greatest gift I have every received. Being free of the internet café, I went back to work on trying to make something good out of this situation. I made a re-edit on the book and began the sketches for what I hope will be a second about what life has really been like in Belarus. I also took up blogging again though this time I have allowed myself a greater range of freedom insofar as what sort of things I put up on the sight. Writing about “The life” here has become interesting again. It was the right choice to make and I both have enjoyed much more the experience of creating the posts as well as the reactions of my readers.


Part 6: The future.

At the moment I am still plugging away. And it seems as though I have begun to make some headway. We need some support though, badly, and this has sort of become my main ambition. I am hoping to find a publisher for the second book and for some other things I have written along the way. I am also expanding my contacts with the media and with other’s who have an interest in both Belarus’ well being and with bettering life in the region. I have also started to accept some advertising on the site and I do most defiantly accept donations to the cause. But basically, there is nothing that can be done without you, my readers because there is absolutely no reason to try if nobody cares.

I believe I have grown since I have started this and the blog has grown right along with me. I think the information is much more accessible now and the scope of the subject matter much broader. But in the end it is all about truth and understanding and fairness. Things it seems we can never get enough of in this world. So, you know, whatever it takes to get the job done is what I always say. I take some pride in this work. And I am glad to have done it.

So, in the end I suppose it is only a matter of believing in the old adage: Every dog has his day. If this is true, I am long over do. But still, at least as of the moment, I am still here.

For more general information about the BEING HAD blog, I have an “FAQ”. page. Or, you can head over to today’s blog, or perhaps you can even check out the news site or read a chapter of the book. Or perhaps you want to have a look at the case gallery over at the HOMEPAHE. In any case, there’s a lot to see.

And be sure to let me know what you think about all of this by writing to me at:

beinghad_mail@yahoo.com

Thanks for reading me.

Adam Goodman
Monday, September 19, 2005