Little Pink House_ A True Story of Defiance and Courage - Jeff Benedict [150]
The NLDC did not bother mentioning that Susette had purchased the house in 2004—right after the Connecticut Supreme Court had ruled that the city could seize her home in Fort Trumbull. She had never even moved into the Old Lyme house. Once the U.S. Supreme Court accepted her appeal, she had abandoned any thought of occupying it. She had only purchased it as a last option in case she was evicted. And to qualify for the mortgage, she claimed the Old Lyme house would be her primary residence, which it would have been if the city had taken her home in New London.
None of that mattered to the NLDC now. “Certainly the Institute for Justice has used her as a poster child of someone who is losing her home,” Michael Joplin told the press. “While we know she lives part-time in Old Lyme and basically told her bank that that’s her full-time residence.”
Goebel went harder at Susette. “The part that disturbs me is the lie that is told when she stands in front of the house and claims it as her home and says, ‘I’m never going to leave my castle,’ when she signed a piece of paper that she is living elsewhere,” he said. “I do not like the lie that was told and the lie that the Institute for Justice perpetuated around the country when she clearly didn’t live there. If she did, she lied to the mortgage company. Either way, she was not a good woman during that period.”
A reporter assigned to do a story on the NLDC’s charges went to Susette’s house to get her reaction. After Susette confirmed that she never had lived in Old Lyme, the reporter warned her that Goebel had been “very unkind” in his statements about her.
The following morning Susette got the newspaper. When she read the words “she lied” and “not a good woman,” Susette stopped reading. It was bad enough that the NLDC was taking her home. Now they were after her dignity and her reputation too.
“That guy is a real jerk,” she said.
When Kathleen Mitchell read Goebel’s statements, she knew they had to hurt. She called Susette to try to buoy her up.
“I don’t give a shit what he says,” Susette said.
But Mitchell knew she did care. Beneath Susette’s hard-edge exterior she had a compassionate heart. She hadn’t gone into nursing to get rich. She hadn’t abandoned Tim LeBlanc when an accident turned him from a lover to a patient. And she had never gotten paid a dime to lead the fight in Fort Trumbull. She didn’t deserve to be smeared by the agency that resented her for trying to stop them from seizing her home. Mitchell said that Goebel had gone too far.
“I know what he was trying to do,” Susette said. “Instead of taking so much time to try and make me look dirty, why not just tell the truth?”
“Let’s go get him,” Mitchell said.
It was a Sunday afternoon, and Dave Goebel had family and friends over for a backyard cookout. All of a sudden, it sounded like a parade passing by out front. But it wasn’t a holiday. Goebel checked to see the source of the commotion. In front of his house he spotted Mitchell and Susette, who was holding a sign that read, “Goebel Minister of Propaganda.” Members of the Fort Trumbull coalition and nurses who worked with Susette at the hospital marched behind them on the sidewalk. Pounding on makeshift drums that Mitchell had made out of empty cat-litter containers, many protestors had their own signs: “It’s abuse and the abuser lives here” and “‘She is not a good woman,’ said the man who kicked the woman when she is down.”
All together, they started chanting: “Dave is a bad man. Dave is a bad man.”
As the crowd swelled, Susette spotted an authentic military Humvee coming down Goebel’s street. Painted in camouflage, the oversize vehicle bellowed smoke from the rear exhaust. The driver had on a World War II military helmet and was puffing on a big cigar.