Dawn Wilson Is Free - But Is Her Story
True?
December 15 - Mill Valley
We've got the Dan Rather Blues. For nearly
two years now, we've been supporting the cause of San Diego's
Dawn Wilson, who was arrested in Ensenada for having bought large
quantities of prescription drugs without a prescription. She
was sentenced to five years in a Mexican prison, which in the
States would be an unusually harsh sentence. Wilson also claimed
that the Mexican police stole her credit cards and made numerous
charges against them. As we usually mentioned in the Latitude
reports, we based our support for Wilson primarily on the word
of Terry Kennedy, an old cruising friend from Mexico who was
planning to marry her.
The 49-year-old Wilson, who is from San Diego but who spent a
lot of time on boats in Baja, was incarcerated in a Mexican prison
for 17 months, then locked up in the U.S. for three months before
she was released, with considerable fanfare, last Friday. Wilson's
case got quite a bit of support from sailors, journalists, and
Congressman Bob Filner's office in San Diego.
The glow of her release hadn't yet faded when we got a disturbing
phone call yesterday from Neil Wilson of San Diego, an old acquaintance
from the sailing world, who we didn't know was Dawn's brother.
There are six Wilson offspring, four brothers and two sisters,
all of whom live in Southern California. According to Neil, his
sister has a long history of problems with alcohol and drugs,
she wasn't telling the whole truth about what happened in Ensenada,
and the whole family has been stressed about her release rather
than her incarceration. His message to us was simple: our family
wished this whole mess would have just faded away, but please
don't encourage anyone to give Dawn more money.
Then we got a copy of a letter written by Joel Wilson, another
brother, to Congressman Filner's office. Among other things,
the letter asserted that Dawn "has a long-standing history
of drug and alcohol abuse, and stealing from her family."
Further - and we've had to edit this for spelling and grammatical
reasons - "It's been appalling that only one side of this
story has been told in the media, and by your office, without
any further investigation for the truth. The one-sided portrayal
is an embarassment to the media and to the taxpaying public that
has supported Dawn. She has been made out to be a victim, when
the true victims have been American taxpayers, her family, and
former friends."
We at Latitude feel slimed, for somebody obviously isn't
telling the whole truth. Given the problems with records in Mexico,
we doubt it would be possible to ever determine the complete
truth. Our position is this: Dawn apparently has had some problems
in the past with alcohol and perhaps drugs - something Terry
Kennedy admits - but we don't think she belonged in a Mexican
prison for five years. (Wilson admitted she made a mistake by
buying the prescription drugs without a prescription.) So we're
glad she's out. On the other hand, we're not sure she'd be number
one on our list of charities. But we do wish her good luck.
What of the incindiary charge that after arresting her, the Mexican
police used her credit cards? We'll probably never know if that
was true or not. A member of the Wilson family told us that Dawn
gave the cards and PIN numbers to a fellow substance abuser,
and that person made the charges. What we do know for sure is
that if the accusation was true, it wouldn't be the first time
a North American cruiser wrongly put the blame on Mexicans for
a serious crime. You might remember that the skipper of the Canadian-based
TLC claimed that he'd been attacked by panga fishermen,
saying they'd slit his throat and drove his boat up on the beach.
Subsequent evidence overwhelmingly indicated that he'd slit his
own throat and drove his boat ashore.
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