34 She is emotionally affected by seeing the grief and physical deterioration of her grandparents, especially her grandmother who still cries for a daughter who should not have died before her. She is also affected by seeing the way her aunt Helen has suffered, as she not only had to identify her mother’s body and suffer much physical and psychological stress, but also the difficulties placed by the judiciary in the search for justice. After her mother’s death, justice is an inherent search in her family. She feels indignant that the State, which should protect them, killed her mother, as it was not merely a member of the State who just decided to kill her, but rather that the murder came from the Presidential Security Department of the Presidential General Staff of the State of Guatemala, and her country, especially the courts, have done absolutely nothing for due and prompt justice. She thinks of her mother every day, especially of the way she was murdered, of the pain of the 27 knife wounds she suffered, and of how she must have felt lying alone on the street. This makes her feel very indignant and angry. Her mother was murdered for political reasons, specifically because she was investigating the institutional policies of the State with respect to the internally displaced population groups. In a book that she published, she clearly stated how the army massacred those populations within the country. This was inconvenient for the Army and they saw her mother as a threat. What little progress there has been in her mother’s case has not been out of true goodwill of the State, but rather through the efforts of her aunt, Helen Mack Chang, who was first the private prosecutor under the former Criminal Court and afterwards took on the role of “querellante adhesiva” or private accuser in the trial against the accessories. On the contrary, the State has done everything possible to obstruct the case; they murdered the policeman who was carrying out the investigation and who identified Noel de Jesús Beteta as the direct perpetrator; they have filed numerous amparo remedies and other remedies, exceeding the terms to decide on them; and her family, the case attorneys, the AVANCSO staff and that of the Myrna Mack Foundation have suffered threats and acts of intimidation. The fact that they are constantly threatened and living in a state of insecurity affects both her and the rest of her family emotionally. The family has all the time been trying to take security measures, to be careful whom they talk to on the phone and who approaches them, among other measures, to avoid another fact like what happened to her mother, and this is an overly heavy emotional burden. The search for justice has also affected her family financially. In her case, due to the need to spend time on the trials, she turned down job offers because she could not commit to complete presence or stability. In August, for example, she turned down two offers because of the oral trial in September. Over the last five years she has spent roughly four hours a week on the case, depending on whether it was active or adjourned. During the oral trial she spent all her time on the case, starting at nine a.m. when the hearings began until they ended, then going to the office to prepare the case. In 1999 she went to a psychologist who recommended two appointments per week and that she join a support group, but this was very difficult financially, as she became pregnant with her second child and she had to interrupt the therapy.