I would like to address and bring to your attention a series of events that have unjustly occurred to my wife and I through 2007- 2010 at the Belle View Condominiums in Alexandria, VA. The cause of this unjustifiable situation lies in a document called a by-law in which a small group of people claim that my wife and I violated a rule set forth by them. My wife and I have been residents of the Belle View Condominiums since October 2005.
The condominium associations, such as the one we live under operate a small government with their own set of rules with no oversight and are positioned to oppress anybody as they please. Such is the case here.
The problem started with our neighbors a married couple the wife being from Sweden. They were the ones who introduced themselves to us when we first moved into our condo. We live right across from each other, each unit door faces each other and are separated by a common area about 8ft. wide. We have renters and we have owners in the buildings. We own our condominium and so do our next-door neighbors. The male occupant, a 60 plus year old retired individual, is a member of the Association’s Board of Directors and is the Association’s Treasurer. The problem here is the creepy behavior displayed by this one individual towards my wife after we decided to end a friendly neighborly relationship with both of them because of them forcing themselves on us to be friends at a level we were not comfortable with. The events began with them regularly knocking on our unit door at different times of the day and night or calling us on the phone.
This pattern continued for days, weeks, and months. Then the events changed. The same individual, the male resident, started displaying increasingly prying behavior towards my wife. The first occurrence of this prying behavior occurred in 2007 with my wife being at home alone. This individual attempted to peep through our kitchen window and then in 2008 he attempted to peep through our living room door window while he was standing outside just in front of the bushes by our balcony. The first occurrence with the kitchen window we reported to the condominium management office. The one involving the living room door we reported to the Fairfax County Police. We were shocked so we drove directly to the Fairfax County Police Department in Mount Vernon and reported the incident to the police officers there.
The officers from the Fairfax County police department suggested we call the Woodburn Mental health unit in Fairfax and get their opinion on our neighbor’s behavior. They said our neighbor’s behavior matched the behavior of voyeurs. In the meanwhile this individual continued to seek unwanted contact with my wife. He kept up his harassment towards my wife by following her down to the basement of our building to stare at her while she did her laundry. On another occasion in 2008 this same individual followed my wife to where she was jogging in the community area to stare at her. We reported the episode to the management office and the Fairfax County Police. We believed all these episodes to be reason enough to have the additional security items installed on our door.

In April 2008 we had an attorney send this individual a, Cease and Desist letter to no avail. He ignored it. After the jogging episode we were actually able to take this man to court on a criminal stalking charge but unfortunately he was not convicted because we did not have enough occurrences for a conviction. I would also like to mention that a board member and a covenant committee member were present in court to protect this man. The door is not the real issue. The man is very bright and witty and he knows how far to go to get away with the abuse but someone needs to put a stop to it.
The behavior of our neighbors and the fact that both had a habit of coming out of their units and standing around the common area to try to listen to not just our conversations but of other dwellers as well, prompted us to install security devices on our door. The security devices were for two reasons, privacy and security from our neighbors and security and peace of mind from the weak building security. The keys to the building get past around too much by other residents in the building especially to non-residents. We have witnessed non-residents using the building keys to gain access to our common area. The security devices we put on our door were very small and did no damage to the door. We installed an extra four-way peephole and a removable wireless motion sensor. We reported all the occurrences of the weird behavior of our neighbors to the management office, the board of directors and the covenants committee, but all our complaints went into deaf ears. We feel we were treated unfairly. We felt the board of directors and the covenants committee all volunteers conjoined in an unfair scheme to protect this one individual. They conspired in an opportunistic way to disgrace my wife and I as productive citizen of the community. In June 2010 we were summoned to court because of the devices on the door and not the actions of this one individual. The board of directors and the covenants committee did not believe us and did not even question our problem. The freedom we though we had in our own home to protect and defend ourselves did not exist. They used the by-laws against us in court. The association made us take the items down regardless of our reasons that I mentioned above and slapped us with a lawsuit and they want us to pay $8, 440 in attorney fees and other undisclosed charges. Since we did not have the money for an attorney we had to defend ourselves at the civil trial and we lost.

We suspect foul play and we believe the board of directors is biased since the individual who caused all are troubles for us is a member of the board of directors and also the treasurer and we believe this individual himself has been using his position on the board of directors to, “push the buttons” against us, not to mention that the board of directors is protecting him. They are hiding behind the, “by-laws” to make us look like criminals, when in fact one of their own has been allowed to harass and bully my spouse and get away with it. We also suspect some form of discrimination towards us, we are both of Hispanic origin and they know it. This is evident by the board’s unwillingness to understand our problem or even investigate the situation and continue to move forward with a lawsuit against us treating us like criminals or like less than second-class citizens.
They have violated our rights. We are convinced that the board of directors and the covenants committee conspired on punishing us severely and letting the cause of this whole unpleasant ordeal walk away free. They are pushing us out of our home or would like for us to move just to satisfy the wishes of revenge of one individual and they are hiding behind the association by-laws to do it. I do not see it any other way.

Please note that this one individual committed all the infractions against my wife not as a member of the board but as a regular citizen just in case he tries to claim immunity because he is a member of the board of directors. We have called the police on this individual several times. We feel our right to protect ourselves and our right to privacy have been violated. We have gone through an immeasurable amount of stress and are still under stress because we don’t know what is going to happen next. We do not perceive ourselves as violators because our situation surfaced out of security and protection from this one individual. There are many people in this community who violate the covenants but they just go unnoticed: such as people with over-sized door knockers installed on their doors; residents who constantly violate pet laws by not cleaning after their pets and we see this by looking out of our window; people that have kicked in their door because they forgot their key; people who keep motor vehicles on the premises that are not registered in the state of Virginia for over a year and a half (our upstairs renters); on-going noise violations not reported by our next door neighbor who receives a barrage of noise from his upstairs neighbor on a nightly basis. He is the same one who has been harassing my wife but he was sure quick to push the buttons against us while allowing his upstairs neighbor get away with noise violations.. What is going on here? Why are we getting punished with such severity? The Belle View Community has its share of violators and some never get caught, or never get penalized like my wife and I did. In a society or in any community like ours the rules should be applied equally among all members, not based on who you know, or who you like, or who you are, all should be treated equally.