Today, from Los Angeles where we took refuge after fleeing Bali ahead of a death threat, my children and I requested the Indonesian National Police Commission in Jakarta to provide us protection from a Bali "Law Mafia".

For over twenty years Bali was my home, but the real Island of the Gods has a darker side than that portrayed in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love. In the real Bali, both foreigners and Indonesians are often targets for organized fraud.

This is an amazing true tale of Bali involving false identities and false documents, deceptive Hindu ceremonies, family betrayals, collusive legal proceedings and suspected corruption throughout the legal system stretching back over two decades.

Along the way, our family was systematically destroyed in a careful scheme intended to strip my children and me of all our assets and of the children's birthrights. But a process which apparently worked in hundreds of earlier cases spun disasterously out of control as I realized just days before my final opportunity for appeal that I had been set up and betrayed by my own attorneys.

Reports to the Bali police proved useless, however, and since 2005 the police have either shut down without reason or left uninvestigated six cases covering four different suspected frauds. Apparent police obstruction only highlights a larger pattern of collusion involving judges, prosecutors, attorneys, government officials and private citizens.

With new attorneys I eventually found some success as the Supreme Court of Indonesia ruled that the documents behind our case were false and acquired contrary to law.

But in the meantime, five years of unraveling plans resulted in my children's mother abandoning and renouncing her children on the advice of her own attorney, while the assets which were the apparent motive for the project remain mired in seemingly endless legal proceedings.

Bali lives under a plague of corruption, but for many people, Balinese or foreign visitor alike, stories like this are better covered up and ignored. Bali depends on tourism, and the Eat Pray Love view of the Island of the Gods is essential to the health of the industry.

My purpose with this website is not to blacken the image of Bali, but to form a practical tool and source of information as I try to protect myself and my children against those who have turned the promise and beauty of Bali into a smokescreen for deceit. In doing so, I hope and believe that my family's struggle agains a Bali "Law Mafia" will contribute to a better society for everyone in Indonesia.

25 July 2010