Wife Recounts Nicaraguan Abduction : Tattered Ending for Dream Voyage

As they sailed from Nicaragua under tattered sails with no engine power, Leo and Dolores LaJeunesse could not yet celebrate their release after 18 days of captivity in August.

“For the entire time we were in sight of the Nicaraguan shore,” Dolores LaJeunesse said, “we kept looking over our shoulders. We didn’t believe they would let us go. I still thought they would lob a shell at us. It was a fear we both had but didn’t voice to each other until recently.”

Their emotions remained frayed even when they reached friendlier waters.

“We should have been elated, but we really weren’t,” she said. “We just sighed a big sigh of relief. Then we realized how tired and debilitated we were.”

She talked about the couple’s harrowing experience at the hands of the Sandinista government during a telephone conversation from Cristobal, Panama, where she and her husband are staying on board their 60-foot ketch as they make repairs.

Leo LaJeunesse, 53, a former associate dean at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, and Dolores LaJeunesse, also 53, a former dance instructor, had spent five years sailing and were returning to Costa Mesa “to get back to the real world and get back to work,” she said.

As they went between Little Corn Island and Big Corn Island about 50 miles off Nicaragua’s coast on the Caribbean Sea in early August, the engine on their twin-masted boat, the Wahine, froze. Eight days of heavy winds already had blown out their three sails, Dolores LaJeunesse said.

So they anchored just off Big Corn Island to repair the sails, she said. They barely got one sail sewn by Aug. 6 when a boat approached, apparently to offer help. Though the LaJeunesses protested that they did not need help, the Nicaraguans on the boat simply smiled and said, “No problem,” and promised to fix the engine at Big Corn Island.

But the couple’s boat was taken instead to a military boat on the island, and four Nicaraguans with guns, one with a bazooka-type weapon, appeared, she said. Her husband was taken to immigration officials, where he was interrogated and forced to turn over their passports and to pay a $25 fee for entering the country. Their boat was searched, and immigration officials confiscated a number of items, including binoculars, a shotgun and a .22-caliber rifle that Leo LaJeunesse had possessed since he was 12.

For the next three days, the LaJeunesses argued with immigration officials on the island, saying they did not want any help in fixing their sails or engine and that they wanted to leave. The officials insisted that the couple be towed to Bluefields on the mainland, refusing to allow them to make any telephone calls or to contact the U.S. Embassy in Managua, which the couple demanded daily. On Aug. 9, they agreed to go to the mainland.

‘Mental Harassment’

“I felt we would disappear half way over; we both felt that way,” Dolores LaJeunesse said. “We cried.”

Nicaraguan marines returned the items taken from them, including the $25 check-in fee, but not their passports, and tied the Wahine to a dock seven miles across the bay from Bluefields, she said.

That was the only semblance of a kind act during 18 days of “mental harassment,” Dolores LaJeunesse said.

“It was very degrading because they deny your self-worth and your dignity,” she said. “And when you lose that, it’s very difficult to overcome the depression.”

They were allowed to call a daughter in Minnesota on Aug. 10, but the connection was bad, she said. They also spent $26 to send a written message to their daughter, she said, but the Nicaraguans never forwarded it.

However, their daughter, Gwen Swanson, called U.S. officials, and the State Department contacted the U.S. Embassy in Managua the same day, according to an embassy report. But embassy personnel, denied permission to visit the couple, repeatedly were told by Nicaraguan officials that the LaJeunesses had voluntarily entered the port to make repairs, the report said.

Gun-Running Accusation

It wasn’t until they reached Panama that they were shown a Managua newspaper story that accused them of being American gun runners.

When they arrived at the Bluefields port, the couple at first refused to leave the Wahine, she said, but her husband was tricked into going to Bluefields on Aug. 10, the same day as the telephone call, when authorities said he would see immigration officials there. He never returned that day and she heard nothing until late afternoon the next day when guards told her she had to join her husband.

In Bluefields, they were held under house arrest at the Hotel Cueto, “the foulest smelling, most horrible place I have ever had the misfortune to be in,” she said.

“Lee was interrogated five times and was fingerprinted,” Dolores LaJeunesse said. “They kept asking me why we were invading Nicaragua.”

She said she also was fingerprinted and had to sign a written statement prepared by Nicaraguans. “I asked if i could read it before I signed it. The official just shrugged and walked out of room. I knew enough of the language to see that the document was basically what we had said,” she said.

Told daily that they would meet immigration officials in a few hours or the next morning, the couple waited on the hotel veranda. No one ever came, and they finally were sent back to their boat on Aug. 15.

When they returned, the LaJeunesses found the boat had been ransacked and that the guns, clothing and other property had been stolen again. They were held the rest of the time on their boat, which guards entered at will day or night, Dolores LaJeunesse said.

The next day, with Dolores LaJeunesse sick in the boat’s cabin with a high fever and intestinal disorders, an immigration official argued heatedly with Leo LaJeunesse outside that the couple had to return to Bluefields. He even aimed a gun at her husband’s head, she said, and she yelled to let the official come in and see for himself how sick she was. The couple was allowed to remain on board.

“It seemed like they were nothing but a bunch of big kids running around with guns,” she said. “That was scary because we knew they didn’t know how to use the guns properly.”

Forced to Pay Fees

All the while, authorities “extorted” money from them, she said, by charging them for everything from the hotel room--$311 for four nights--to docking fees. They even had to pay for meals of their guards, who followed them everywhere while they were in Bluefields.

After they made daily demands to contact the U.S. Embassy, immigration authorities finally gave them the telephone number in Managua and let Leo LaJeunesse go to an office where long-distance calls are made.

“He tried to get through for days, but couldn’t,” his wife said. “Then some young man who came to place a call himself (on Aug. 22) saw the number he was calling and overheard him trying to reach the U.S. Embassy. He said we had the wrong number. His father used to work at the embassy, so he knew the number and gave it to us.”

The new number worked, and Leo LaJeunesse was able to tell U.S. officials for the first time that they were being held against their will. An embassy report indicates officials began applying pressure with numerous objections and two formal letters of protest.

Captors’ Attitude Changes

Soon the plight of the LaJeunesses was in newspapers and on television stations across the nation. They did not know about the press coverage, which they now believe helped to free them, but they noticed a change in their captors’ attitude.

“We were just very sure that if we did not have people rooting for us, we’d still be there,” Dolores LaJeunesse said.

Suddenly, they were told on Aug. 24 that they could leave anytime they wanted, she said.

Within a few hours, they were given their passports and allowed to sail under power of two sails, the second of which they had been able to repair themselves while in captivity. A last attempt by Nicaraguans to get $200 more from the LaJeunesses, however, failed, she said, when her husband insisted he had only $15. They took the money from him before returning their passports.

Five days later, on a still sea in sight of Panama, the LaJeunesses radioed shore to let the embassy know they were safe.

$4,500 Towing Bill

While their lives were out of danger, however, their near-empty pocketbooks became prey. While on the radio, an American voice from a commercial vessel broke in to say he was in the area and would tow them in. Several days later, they received a towing bill for $4,500, Dolores LaJeunesse said.

After several days of arguments, the bill was reduced to $1,000, which the LaJeunesses had to borrow from friends.

The couple have not decided yet whether to sell the boat or sail it back to Costa Mesa. Leo LaJeunesse has fixed the engine and is working on the rest of the boat, which his wife said was turned into a shambles by improper docking procedures and what they believed to be intentional acts of vandalism by the Nicaraguans, including the failure to stop a barge from scrapping against the boat.

“It all sounds funny now when we talk about it, but it sure wasn’t funny when we were going through it,” she said.