We Begged The Judge to Save Ellie.

Below is the full, five page custody statement that I submitted to the court in October of 2021. I hoped that they would recognize the severity of this situation, even if others did not.

Hello,

My name is Zinnia Moreno and I am the niece of Jared Lorenzo, née (Huggins).

I am writing this statement to the court in support of my uncle’s wife, Chrystal Obi, in an honest effort to protect the best interests of their child. I am of the belief that Jared should only be allowed supervised visitation with his daughter at this time, pending both an independent psych evaluation and drug test. His erratic behavior worries me greatly and I believe he needs help for his paranoia and delusions.

While I have never seen my uncle in such a sustained uneven state, he does have a history of lying for sympathy and attention. Approximately ten years ago, while living in his car by choice, he started a YouTube channel about being homeless in order to receive donations. While discussing how his family refused to help, he ignored to mention that multiple relatives had offered him spare rooms to stay in. I was in the car with my mother for several conversations in which she begged him to stay in our guest room and he refused.

Jared also has a documented history of obsessiveness to the detriment of his own health and well-being. He routinely rejects sleep for up to 48 hours, pushing his body to its limit in order to pursue whatever his current obsession is, be it running/exercise, learning a new language, writing, etc.

My uncle’s judgement has always been questionable, yet I never considered him to be cruel or vindictive until recently. As described in my summary of the following phone calls, his erraticism has me worried that he is not fully in touch with reality. I cannot tell if he actually believes the things he is saying about his wife or if he is knowingly lying for financial gain, sympathy, and academic leniency. Regardless, he has fully crossed a line into psychological and emotional abuse, which must be stopped. And as much as it pains me to say this, I see no concern for his daughter in his actions. Rather, he is using her as a prop in his manipulative quest.

On August 29, 2021, I hesitantly reached out to Chrystal Obi to share my knowledge of the disparaging statements and accusations her husband was sharing amongst our family. Though I do not normally consider it my place or desire to intervene in a married couple’s personal affairs, I was concerned for the safety of both my aunt and her child. My uncle had warned several relatives that his wife may reach out to them accusing him of abuse and requested that her calls and texts be ignored. Witnessing Dr. Obi message my mother asking for help and being ignored was incredibly unsettling and moved me to action.

She did not believe me at first, and was shocked that her husband could be saying these things while simultaneously lulling her into a false sense of security. However, I stood by her side and helped her to realize the gravity of day-to-day gaslighting and emotional abuse inflicted upon her by connecting her to domestic violence resources. However, I had not yet heard the accusations myself so I was unable to fully opine about Jared’s state of mind or motivations.

On September 24, 2021, Jared called me with, in his words, a “warning” about Dr. Obi. Jared claimed that Dr. Obi was threatening to tell lies about him in order to sabotage his graduate school education, career opportunities, and, lastly, access to his daughter. He said that she was not the person he thought he had married, and that she had fooled the rest of his family as well. He likened this call to a situation in which someone in fear of their life may mail off a letter with pertinent information in case anything happened to them. He also asked that I not mention any of this not only to his wife, but also other relatives. He admitted that I was not the first in our family to receive this warning, and that others had immediately called his wife and repeated back “verbatim” the things he had said, unknowingly referring to me.

However, my immediate impression of this phone conversation was that it was part of a premediated effort to silence my aunt, should she speak up about her husband’s abuse. And so, I started the attached text message exchange that day requesting additional information from him, in which he insinuated that reaching out to Chrystal myself could endanger their child.

On October 7, 2021, Jared called me with additional warnings. He said that his wife had called multiple friends and relatives with false accusations of physical abuse and aggression in an attempt to destabilize his life and get him kicked out of school. Jared claimed that his wife had hacked his phone, computer, and may have tapped his phone.

Jared was sniffling throughout this phone call and speaking in an accelerated manner. His affect felt both inappropriate and disconcerting. The overly cheerful demeanor with which he spoke did not match the severity of the topic. He was often laughing or swept into a state of elation, jumping back and forth every couple of sentences between descriptions of how he was being terrorized and things that had made him happy during the week. He seemed unable to follow a train of thought through to conclusion.

During this phone call, he not only accused his wife of abusing him, but also all of his siblings.

On October 8, 2021, Jared called with additional startling statements. He claimed that his wife was making up lies while they visited a marriage therapist. He stated that the baby was being purposefully neglected and underfed by both her mother and the nanny. Once again he jumped back and forth between accusations and irrelevant statements. In some moments, he struggled to coherently complete even three consecutive sentences of either. As if he hadn’t opened the call in a frantic, he ended it with chitchat about how much he liked hiking.

On October 10, 2021, I received text messages from Jared letting me know he had purchased a new phone and I should delete his old number. When we spoke by phone afterwards, he expressed a sense of relief that his wife would no longer be able to listen to our phone calls.

“She has been tracking my phone calls, my texts, my credit cards. Now that I’m calling you from a different phone, I can be a little more open but I’m scared.”

On October 12, 2021, I had another phone call with Jared that lasted over an hour. He was again sniffling throughout the call, this time every few seconds. At least six times in this phone call, he requested that I keep everything he said a secret from my mother, aunts and uncles. However, I took many notes.

In this call, Jared revealed that he had reached out to school counselors and advisors in order to get extensions for his assignments/exams due to domestic abuse. He was in the process of now emailing his professors with this request. This was also the first time that he outright accused Dr. Obi of sustained child abuse. And now with absolutely no affect, he alternated between proofreading sentences from the email out loud and delving into even more troubling accusations against his wife and siblings.

When claiming that his wife refuses to speak to or even make eye contact with their child, he ended the sentence by saying, “and that’s why I need to send this email [to my professors] and ask them if they have an alternate date for the final.” As it dawned upon me that he may be once again using accusations for personal gain, in this case academic leniency, I was extremely disappointed.

Additional notes from this call:

• “When I smile at my child, she [Chrystal] finds it disturbing because she is mentally ill.”

• “Chrystal flew into a rage and threw all my stuff outside because I complimented our daughter. This is a really sick person who is good at pretending she is not.”

• Chrystal has bribed other relatives in amounts up to $3,000 to say things about Jared that make him look bad.

• The only joy that Chrystal feels in this world is to cause her daughter and husband pain and harm.

• “It would be one thing if she was a good mom and took my daughter and broke my heart.

I don’t care about me. This is purely about her mistreating my daughter. She doesn’t like spending time with Ellie. She hates when Ellie gets attention. Chrystal is a sick person, so by taking the kid from me, Ellie won’t get attention. Just to hurt me and Ellie.”

• “Chrystal is a total psychopath. I’d never met one before in my real life, only seen them in movies. I always thought it was unbelievable, so unrealistic. There’s no way someone could be like that. And why would someone go through so much effort just to have their whole life be a lie? [...] Chrystal does not feel love towards her own daughter.”

• “Chrystal does not feel love towards her own child. Ellie is just an inanimate object to her.”

Everything that Jared claimed tied back to an attempt to salvage his scholarship after a quarter of slacking off. He wanted to know if his email to the professors would be convincing. While writing the email, he even threw in the fact that he has untreated ADHD, though Chrystal has spent thousands of dollars hiring him ADHD specialists and he is medicated.

He ended the call by asking, “That letter sounds pretty good, right?”

On October 13th, Jared realized that Chrystal had moved out of their shared home. He called to tell me that the baby had been kidnapped, however requested that I do not say a word of this to my mother, grandmother, or any other relative. He accused both Chrystal’s mother and the child’s nanny of abusing the baby through neglect. He claimed that the baby would be left to sit in a dirty diaper, as they nanny had tried to do before, since he was not there. The baby would be ignored and left in a dark room by herself to cry.

Jared told me he had been awake for 56 hours straight, and that it was Chrystal’s fault. Jared was furious that Chrystal moved out, saying that he only spent at most an hour a day with the baby. “Zinnia, I’m never even there! Why can’t Ellie even have one hour with me? Why take that away from her?”

Jared ended the call by tying it all back to his exam. He talked about how difficult it is for him to study in these conditions, which seemed like a bizarre focus for someone who was actually in fear of their daughter’s safety. And once again, he blamed his lack of success in school on his wife’s sabotage.

On October 14th, approximately 11am, Jared seemed the least coherent out of all the phone calls we’d had so far.

Jared repeatedly yelled about the kidnapping, and how jealous he was that women can just take the child and leave. He said that women will lie for other women, women will support other women no matter what and it is disgusting. He talked about how men do not have equal rights to women, however he was finding support from online forums where others have experienced the same. He described this experience “almost like taking the red pill”, which triggered alarm bells in my mind immediately, in reference to the misogynistic hate forum “The Red Pill.”

Contradicting himself from what he said yesterday, Jared now claimed that he usually spent 20- 30 hours a week with Ellie and was the primary caregiver. He also repeatedly claimed that his daughter was only two months old and Chrystal should have waited until she was a year old if she wanted to break up. He talked extensively about not being allowed to see his daughter.

I talked to Jared on the phone again on October 14th, around 8pm.

He again claimed that the baby was kidnapped and being abused. Jared told me that Chrystal was probably going to pass the baby around to her brothers and uncle so that they could molest her. I was personally horrified at him throwing this around so cavalierly.

He said that since Chrystal doesn’t love her daughter, the only way to “hit her where it hurts” would be to go after her financially. It was an illogical conclusion for anyone who truly felt their kidnapped five-month old daughter was in danger of being raped to draw.

Jared again talked about how he was unable to study due to the kidnapping, which he implored me not to tell anyone about. He said that Chrystal’s abuse throughout the quarter has prevented him from doing well in school. Because of the trauma, he may be unable to financially support himself for the rest of his life and she should have to pay for that. He deserved half of everything, if not more.

Additional quotes:

• “I talked to a lawyer and he was like ‘Hey, try to see her’. Because it shows you want to see your kid. But now that I’ve seen her, I emailed my school. I told them I can’t take finals because somebody took my kid or whatever. And now I’m going to wait to hear back. And instead of tomorrow, probably I can take it next Wednesday or Thursday.”

• “How could you ever take a test if you haven’t slept in three days? And you have someone not tell you where you kid is? Could you imagine? It would be a nightmare.”

• “I just need to get through the next four days of school, then I can fully devote myself to going after her money.”

• "I’m gonna fucking take this lady for fucking everything.”

On October 15th, Jared called to talk about his current state of homelessness, saying that his wife is sending him back to the gutter, in her words. Though he still has the keys to his apartment, he shared that he’s been trying to find emergency shelter on campus and soliciting donations from local churches.

On October 18, Jared called to share that he is extremely behind in school. He said that since Chrystal’s physical abuse ramped up at the beginning of the quarter, he has been unable to study. His wife has purposefully been sabotaging him and would love to win by making him fail these tests. Due to her continued abuse, it is too traumatic for him to go on campus to study in a library or his car. He has nowhere to sleep and nowhere to study, and this is exactly what his wife has been planning for the last six months.

Thank you for reading my account of the interactions I’ve had with my uncle over the past month. I believe not a single one of these accusations, and am quite frankly disgusted by his behavior.

I am extremely proud of Chrystal Obi for leaving this relationship, a decision that I can attest to her not taking lightly.

I hope that Jared finds peace and healing, but that his daughter is not negatively affected along the way.

Sincerely,

Zinnia Moreno

October 19, 2021