WALLS OF SILENCE
Surviving Don Klyberg
Like go away. It's literally just because I'm in my office quietly minding my business.
The above statement was created back on August 7th at 4:58 PM. It’s now August 11th at 2:26 AM. The lung infection from 2023 has been at its worst these last two days. I find it hard to get to sleep, and I wake coughing and expelling fluids. So, I figure I could work on this website until my body simply quits—hopefully managing to get at least a few hours of rest.
Four days is how long it has taken me to regather my health, refocus, and carve out the time to get back to this work. If there had been actual work being conducted, it probably wouldn’t have struck a nerve as it did in hour eight—but there was nothing he was working on. The grass was already cut, and the hedges were already trimmed. Not only that, Rick Newmann had never spent so much attention on the tiny patch of land by the parking lot entrance until I put white-out film over the windows, where his surveillance cameras are pointed directly into.
However, it’s been extremely warm in Minnesota the last several weeks, and there’s no air conditioning—so even with a fan, I have to open the window for the room to be at all bearable.
As soon as the window was open, here comes Newmann like a moth to a flame—constantly going back and forth on the tiny patches of land that flank the parking lot entrance for hours, paying special attention to the plot of land kitty-corner to this window’s visual sightline.
If I move from the corner where the computer is to enter, exit, or move about the room, Newmann is in my eye line, I’m in his—and his camera is pointed into my unit at all times.
Noise harassment has been a specialty not only of Newmann but also of Sarah Doe, Newmann’s violent, inebriated, alleged on-again, off-again girlfriend. It began within the first week or so that I moved in. I wouldn’t answer the door or respond to Sarah Doe’s text messages because I never gave her my phone number—she got it from rental documents housed in Rick Newmann’s apartment, which doubles as a rental office.
I certainly never invited her to my home—in fact, quite the contrary. I agreed to pay an extra $50 a month for this disgusting unit (not knowing Newmann would spitefully prevent me from fixing it up on my own dime) rather than taking the ‘so-called’ upgraded unit above Newmann’s house. This was to keep Newmann and Doe from having any reason to engage with me socially or learn my daily habits—I could just tell these were the type of people who would take any information they could find and make the most of it as factor that bonds us to social interaction for better or worse. Besides, I knew I couldn’t sleep with the thought of Newmann living under me after the inappropriateness and awkwardness of previous interactions.
Anyway, while Newmann responded by scratching the name out of my mailbox and refusing to enforce the noise restrictions in the lease. Sarah doe decided to be that noise. She'd wait to the wee hours of the morning to use the washer and dryer that were directly under my apartment only jolting me out of my sleep which is not good for preventing Chiari Malformation headaches.
Sometime later, especially during the grooming period that lasted from December 2023 to July 2024, Newmann would turn on his lawnmower and just run it without using it during the few months my brand-new television was functional—before his roaches. When I put music on the echo as I cleaned or cooked, he would do it again so I have to raise my volume higher and higher just to do what I'm doing without his continued instruction stopping what I am doing in my own home—constantly demanding my attention like a real sicko through these outburst, whilst I ignore unsolicited text message on private number where he addresses me by inappropriate pet names as a form of humiliation and control, not flattery in his grooming process. His actions are unapologetically screaming you will give me your undivided attention and perform as I say—something that there is no possibility of ever happening.
Clearly, I just want him to leave me alone and stay away; I want to leave so it'll be over.
During several of these months, he also had my grill—stolen “while hot”—sitting on the hood of his truck parked outside my bedroom window. I mean, just everywhere, clearly perturbed by witnessing any enjoyment that does not include him.
Now, it’s the opposite. It’s become such a dark and nasty place, and I’ve become so medically debilitated that I’m rarely outside the unit. That often means having the echo on so I don’t have to have my peace disturbed by the activity happening all around me with the other residents—so I can hear myself think. On days that I take a break from the echo (usually working on some cerebral task), here comes—Newmann—with the noise harassment.
Don’t get me wrong—Newmann has done worse. But you’ll never know, until it happens to you, how distressing it is to be observed so closely—when someone, fully aware that you do not want their attention, constantly goes out of their way to confrontationally inform you that they’re watching you so closely that they try to pair their activities with yours based on observation alone. And it’s only to be destructive, because they’ll literally do anything to get a reaction. Plus, it’s so dangerous because catching even the slightest reaction from you is all this individual needs to take that tiny spark and stretch it until it reaches a dangerous, life-threatening point. They get satisfaction from that—and then they begin again.
Why can he begin again? Because there’s a criminal system of fraud and corruption systematically putting little Black girls and single women in proximity to predators like Newmann, and wasting any amount of taxpayer resources to keep them in that holding pattern—until the environment chews them up and spits them out. While I’d rather not even be in the environment, I thank God that He created me in a way that leaves a bad taste in the mouths of environments I have no business being in to begin with.
I am going to need intensive counseling when (if) I make it out of here. I don't even know if that is possible, because it can be of no benefit if I cannot openly process the actual long-term trauma of systemic racism and legal abuse that fueled the acts against me—like any other person who survived a war or violent attack, left with the permanent scar of trauma.
Make no mistake about it: this a war that I am surviving; one I never enlisted to fight and am barred from bringing weapons of protection to. It is nonstop mental strength and physical hustle to survive, fueled by hope to be left alone with justice long enough to actually, one day, live.
I am not the only one, and it’s not my problem—it’s America’s problem. In this particular moment, it’s the state of Minnesota’s problem. It’s my prayer that when all is said and done, my bravery and my willingness to transparently document what so many of us are experiencing and feeling—but few are expressing because it’s not safe—sparks something within humanity. That it recognizes the burdensome influence it has placed on Black Americans this entire time.
That it’s not right.
It’s not honorable or integral.
It’s not a show of strength.
It’s a show of dependence—one that is nothing short of pathetic.
And it is not without measurable, medical injury—something the field of psychology must confront.
You know, sometimes it feels like the reason I cannot have a safe space to process and heal my wounds as a victim of systemic racism is because doing so might open the door for the majority to begin healing their own wounds—and their behaviors—around racism.
This constant, unwanted co-dependence.
Rick Newmann is a symptom of that—he’s not his own moment in my photo. He's the child of it—the system—that says I'm entitled to any and every part of you.
You look at me, and you perform to my demands, whatever they may be.
You don't have the privilege to tell me no.
And then there's the entire structure that upholds this entitlement.
Take, for example, the public service of the City Inspector, who passed the property inspection without requiring a single repair. Or the public service of the city police, who refused to take a report or respond to my animal control call once they identified the demographic of the caller—yet broke into my apartment while I was sleeping, five months later, simply because a white man who never sees or hears from me called and said, “I haven’t seen or heard from her.” Or the Housing Authority, a federally funded public service entrusted with eliminating slums, who had the audacity to tell both the City Inspector and then me that “there’s nothing we can do” about a slum or a slumlord —as if I’m a fool that doesn't know the specific step by step procedure they're required to do. All of these systems, these “services,” do nothing but reiterate Rick Newmann—a sexual predator—in his belief and his behavior:
You perform as the man demands from you, no matter what that demand may be. You don’t have the privilege of saying no.
And as I lose what I have independently accomplished, and all that I need to flourish drifts further and further from reach—because of the actions of these surrounding societal and environmental forces—
a millionaire on a Mexican island enjoys a life of luxury, sustained by my modest income flowing directly into his bank account. There are that many versions of me in the state of Minnesota and maybe beyond. And he doesn’t even have to pretend to follow Minnesota law.
No inspection requirements. No compliance with Minnesota state law. No consequences. No accountability.
These specific individuals, abusing the power of their employment positions, create these environments to begin with—and then are systematically entitled to shape my reality within the very environment they have created.
These are people who can be stopped. These are actions that can be reversed. At any point, enforcing regulations against each of these businesses and the specific actors involved could make all of this disappear.
Yet, while I suffer the consequences of this victimization, the broader society—uninvolved in this environment—proclaims that my condition is my fault. They do not proclaim crimes are committed against me. That removes the critical thinking prompt to recognize that I did access the law, just as they would. In 2025, in so-called liberal Minnesota. Mmm, pathetic.
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