ARLINGTON — Officials with Sen. Maria Cantwell’s office have started looking into the case of an 88-year-old Arlington man who has been held in a Mexican prison for two weeks.
Meanwhile, the family of Edward Chrisman continues to get nowhere with officials in Mexicali, where he is being held.
Chrisman and his grandson, Gary Chrisman Jr., were arrested Jan. 8 by Mexican police who say the pair tried to pay young girls to pose nude for photos.
Cantwell’s staff will be taking up the matter today, said Ciaran Clayton, a Cantwell spokeswoman.
The Chrisman family maintains the men are innocent and Mexican authorities want to shake the men down for cash. They’re worried Edward Chrisman, a World War II veteran and a devout member of the Arlington Assembly of God Church, won’t survive the ordeal.
A police reporter for La Voz de la Frontera newspaper on Tuesday said he’d been told the men were released. When he heard that they were still in prison, reporter Juan Galvan said the Chrismans’ situation could be getting worse every day.
“What is most likely here is that we are dealing with an act of corruption,” he said in Spanish. “If the police see a way of getting some money out of the situation, this is what they will do.”
Galvan said he was told the men had been freed because Mexican police “didn’t have any proof of the pictures taken in their cameras.”
On Tuesday, a woman in the community affairs office at the Mexican Secretary of Public Security in Baja California, the organization that runs the courts, refused to transfer a reporter’s call to a spokesman and hung up. The phone rang unanswered on subsequent calls.
Chrisman’s family in Yuma has called everyone from Sen. John McCain to the White House looking for help.
“We’re going in circles,” said Shannon Perkins by cell phone as she stood outside the prison in Mexicali on Tuesday. She and her father, Gary Chrisman Sr. — Edward Chrisman’s son and also the father of Gary Chrisman Jr. — have crossed the border every day to work on getting the men released.
So far, the family has paid $3,000 to attorneys and others in the Mexican justice system, all of whom offered resolution in the case.
Edward Chrisman was spending his winter in Yuma, Ariz., when his grandson, Gary Chrisman Jr., invited him along on a trip to get inexpensive dental treatment. Mexican police arrested the men after Gary Chrisman took a photo of two fully clothed young women in a convenience store in Algodones, Mexico.
Edward Chrisman never even went into the store, the family said.
Perkins, who visited her grandfather in prison Saturday, said he’s dehydrated and disoriented. The family fears the tainted water in Mexico may sicken him.
“He collapsed in our arms,” she said. “I don’t think he can handle this at his age.”
According to a Mexican police news Web site that focuses on crimes in the Mexicali area, Mexican police said the men offered young girls 200 pesos to take nude photos.
The site reported that a 47-year-old mother complained to police that the Americans asked her 13-year-old to pose naked. The agents confiscated the camera and took the case to the Public Ministry on charges of child pornography, according to the site.
Galvan said it isn’t unusual for Americans to be arrested and charged with sex crimes in Mexicali, where prostitution is common. Under Mexican law, people are presumed guilty until they can prove their innocence.
“Unfortunately, the law here is not so fair,” he said.
If the police said the Chrismans were released but haven’t actually released them, the pair could be at risk for kidnapping, he said.
An Arlington resident for most of his life, Edward Chrisman is described by family as a religious man who has attended the Assembly of God in Arlington for decades. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He worked as a civil service machinist for the Navy before retiring years ago.
“My grandfather is just a country man,” said Tracy Short of Mukilteo. “He doesn’t usually go very far. This is going to take a toll.”
Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com.
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