Women Behind Bars

Speaker 1: Oh, Mama, Mama, lay the land to rest. And when I die, paint the sky and moon upon my breast.

Speaker 2: Look at you, Amita. You look great. You know that?

Speaker 3: I do?

Speaker 2: Yeah, you look beautiful. There's a lot of things that I look forward to doing, just the little things. You know, a lot of times I'll just watch her sleep, and she doesn't know it. I'll just stare at her, you know, and all kinds of thoughts go through my mind. And you just— you wonder, where did you go wrong? What happened? I think I was about 9 or 10 when I first seen my mother shoot drugs. I was peeping under the door. Because, like, she used to lock us in the room all the time, me and my sister, and I used to always wonder what she was doing. I didn't want to accept it. I was the only child. I wasn't allowed to go out much. My mother hit me a lot.

Speaker 3: My stepfather used to do whatever he wanted.

Speaker 2: This man says, come here, little girl. Let me show you something. He takes me to this room, and in this room There were bottle caps. There was shoelaces, matches, candles. But I didn't know what the hell was going on.

Speaker 4: I started getting high at 13, maybe before that, 12, 13, on anything I could find— acid, Truaniol, Zelavil, Quaaludes, anything— just to get away from myself, from who I was.

Speaker 2: And he put one of those shoelaces on my arm. And he stuck a needle right in my vein on my 14th birthday. And the saddest part about it is that I loved it. I've seen my mother sit and cry after she beat me. I mean, after she beat the hell out of me. I had to take care of my sister. Like, you know, if I didn't feed her, we didn't eat. You know what I'm saying? I'd go out and steal food to feed us. You know, mother used to go and leave us 2 and 3 weeks, and I'd go in a damn shooting gallery, start searching for her. I would track her down, you know, and bring her home. As I was growing up, I stopped crying. Like now, if something really touched me, it's— I can't even cry when I have pain, because I got behind that wall and said, I'm not going to cry no more. It's like I'm still stuck behind it.

Speaker 1: My mother, she OD'd when I was about 13.

Speaker 3: She died.

Speaker 1: But I never knew her. I saw her like 2 times in my life. I grew up in homes from the age of 5 to 18. When they found me, I was in the street, barefooted and eating out of garbage cans. I hate my mother. I hated her for the longest. I was sexually abused. I was raped when I was 5 and then again at age 8. And I was so bitter and angry. I hated the world. But one day, I was talking to my aunt. She told me, Debbie, your father was raped when she was about 13. Her stepfather was her abuser. She was raped. Wanted, you know, that love that she never got as a child, but she didn't know how to do it. So she was caught up in drugs and that lifestyle, too. But at least— but at least now, what I'm saying is, you're fortunate because you can confront your mother. It's like for my daughter. I left my baby. She was 7. I'm serving 12 to 36 years. Those years, I should have been there with my daughter. It's like I feel like history repeating itself, because my mother came to prison. She was a junkie. And now here I am. Where does the cycle stop? To surface the scars of a childhood in a small town. The hurt she pushed inward.

Speaker 4: I can't do this.

Speaker 3: I'm sorry. I cannot. I can't. I can't do this. This is too close.

Speaker 2: My stepfather, he would always say, if you tell anyone, I'm going to kill your mother, and I'm going to hurt you.

Speaker 4: You're going to regret it.

Speaker 3: I told when I was in first grade, and my father said I was lying. The teacher agreed.

Speaker 4: And when I went home that day, I had to chew hot cherry peppers one after the other and hold them in my mouth.

Speaker 3: So I didn't tell anymore. I didn't even hardly talk in school.

Speaker 4: When I finally did tell my mother, my mother told me it was a dream. And I kind of thought, well, maybe it is, you know.

Speaker 2: I started thinking, I wasn't even telling the truth anymore.

Speaker 4: I wasn't sure what was going on.

Speaker 2: I had started running away when I was about 10, because the beatings were getting so severe, and I was afraid my stepfather was going to kill me. When the police would find me and take me into the youth officers, they took me into the same police station where my stepfather worked. They let him take me down into the locker room of the police station. And banged me from locker to locker. And when he brought me upstairs, they all turned their backs like they didn't see or hear anything because he was a fellow policeman.

Speaker 1: Baby, I'm sorry. I love you. I didn't mean to do it. It'll never happen again. But if you weren't such a fucking slut—

Speaker 3: My mother seemed like, you know, she was all for me, her poor baby. Then one night she was in a bar, and I went in the bar to get something from her, and she was drunk. And she turned around and announced to everybody in the bar that I took her man from her, her own child, and that I was a tramp and a slut and everything else that she could think of. So I knew then that I couldn't tell nobody else, not my mother, not my sister, not nobody, because whoever I told, it was going to be my fault.

Speaker 2: I'm sorry.

Speaker 3: You stupid bitch. You'll never be shit.

Speaker 2: I brought you in this world, and I'll take you out.

Speaker 3: Get away from me.

Speaker 4: I can't stand to have you near me.

Speaker 2: I hate you.

Speaker 3: I hate you all.

Speaker 2: I tried telling people what was going on in my life, but some of them, even in the group, they said, well, you must have liked it.

Speaker 3: You stayed there.

Speaker 2: And then the next time I tried to tell, I was in Bellevue Hospital under psychiatric care.

Speaker 3: And I didn't tell until I was much older, because I was afraid to say anything to anybody else.

Speaker 1: Yo, bitch! Didn't I tell you not to leave this fucking house? Didn't I tell you if you left this house, I was going to fuck you up? That's your problem. You're too fucking hard-headed. And I don't want you hanging with them hoes no way.

Speaker 3: I was used to living in fear, you know, never knowing what was going to happen from minute to minute, you know, in my own house. And as strange as it sounds, I was safer in the street, taking those risks, than I was in my own house.

Speaker 1: If you didn't have a gun, you wasn't nobody.

Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2: A gun brought you respect. You know, on the street, if you ain't got a gun, you don't last.

Speaker 3: I used to go on runs with guys. I was the front girl. The police wasn't going to bother them. They felt they was taking their girl out for a ride. You know, they was going to pick up drugs. You know, that was important. You know, I was in demand.

Speaker 2: The police chase me, it's exciting to me. You know what I'm saying? It's how long I can get away from them. It's a lifestyle, and it's exciting, and it's dangerous. And sometimes it's good, and sometimes it's bad. Usually it starts out very good. Because you're not hooked on the drugs, and the men are using you, either to carry the drugs or, I don't know, carry guns or whatever. And then eventually, once you get hooked and once you just start needing more and more, that's when people start pulling away from you.

Speaker 3: Where there was no abuse and everything was perfect, I was a basket case. I would invent crisis, invent conflict, for no apparent reason, because that's when I was comfortable.

Speaker 2: It's just like a game that you play. It might be Russian roulette, but it's a game, and you get used to it. You need it. I've been incarcerated a total of 16 years. And my son is 17, so I've been away from him since he was a year old. I gave him to my mother because I couldn't handle it. And just the last couple of years, I've been able to really sit him down and talk to him. I'm sorry.

Speaker 3: I tried talking to him in a way that nobody ever tried talking to me.

Speaker 1: Hello, Ma?

Speaker 5: Ma?

Speaker 2: And you just want somebody to finally say, look, I love you, and just hold you without wanting to hold you for a reason, holding you without wanting to just feel up on you or try to Take what you're not given. I'd like to work it out with my mother. It'd make me feel a lot better. My mother had me when she was 15, and I can understand the hardship of a mother trying to raise a child without a father. I can understand some things, but she won't talk to me. It's like she can't deal with her own guilt, you know?

Speaker 1: My mother used to do things, and she'd say she done it because she loved me.

Speaker 3: And then when I had my first child, I thought— I said, well, I love my child, but I wasn't acting like a mother.

Speaker 2: I was doing the same things my mother was doing.

Speaker 3: How can you say you love somebody when you don't know what love is? How can you say you're going to give somebody love when you can't get no love yourself?

Speaker 1: People say, I love you, but they're hurting you all the time. And then when you want to love somebody, you don't know whether it's love you're giving them or what. What is love? They say God loves. If God didn't love, we wouldn't be here. But how does a human love? How do they share love, give love? How do they get love?

Speaker 3: It's hard. It's hard. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1: It's hard. From out of Left Hand Canyon comes a cougar from the south, with a hawkboned way of walking and a very nasty mouth, with eyes like jagged glass and a barbed wire attitude. And he don't do much talking, guess he isn't in the mood. Ooh, mama, mama, lay the land to rest. And when I die, paint the sky and moon upon my brow. He's headed for the Northland. No one can say just where. He's got a score to settle with the moon and desert bear. Fur will fly on that jagged eye. They lay that bear to rest. I am that moon and desert bear. But the cougar is the best. Oh, mama, mama, lay the lamb to rest. And when I die, paint the sky and moon upon my brow. Ready or not, here I come.

Speaker 4: You can't hide.

Speaker 1: Gonna find you and take it slowly. Ready or not, here I come. You can't hide. Gonna find you. I want you and make you want me. Yeah.

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Speaker 4: When I first got to prison, I thought my life was over. I felt like I was a failure, that there was probably nothing left in my life to live I also felt anger. I felt a lot of hurt because of not being understood. I felt hurt because of my children that were now taken away from me. I felt like everything that I had thought, Was right and good was destroyed. I'd always believed in a criminal justice system that worked. I believed that if you were right and you defended yourself, that that was understood. I found out it wasn't. I found out that it's who has the money. I found out it's. Whether you're a man or a woman, I found out that it's how they want to play the court game when you go through the system. And you've been here? I've been in prison for 9 years now, almost 9 years. It's been a long time. And I've watched my children grow up. My youngest one, I've been away from him longer than I was ever with him. I'm thankful that they're all well and that they're okay. I'm thankful that I still have their love and their support. I'm thankful that whether the court system understood or whether anybody else That in the system understood. My son understood.

Speaker 3: I live one day at a time.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 3: I found it easier for me to do. And that's how I've coped all these years.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 3: I've had a lot of bad incidents, but I keep going. I've had surgeries since I've been here. I've lost my mother. To cancer. I've lost my only brother. And I don't see my kids too much anymore. And when I left, they was small. Now they all grown up, you know? And I hardly ever see them. And that's a hard thing to deal with.

Speaker 1: It is.

Speaker 3: So, as I said, I just take one day at a time. And you force yourself to go on. Some days it's hard, you know, but you force yourself to do it, because you know you got to do it. There are strict rules, and if you don't do it, there's a penalty. So you find yourself doing it. Sometimes you don't know how yourself, you know? And you keep believing that somebody's going to come along and believe in justice, and that you're going to get another chance. And I feel I deserve another chance.

Speaker 2: I'm going to ask you a question.

Speaker 3: I don't feel I should be put away for life without parole, to rot, for something that I couldn't keep from doing. If I wanted to do it, I could have did it a long time ago, but I had no plans of doing it.

Speaker 2: You know, had I had somewhere to go, I wouldn't be here, and he'd still be alive. I know there's something that every battered woman has to somehow deal with, the fact that she did take a life, although even after all this time, it's so hard for me to believe. It's like I know I did. I'm sitting here. Yeah. How can I? I'm such an easygoing, compassionate person. How could I have possibly been capable of this? Couldn't nobody have ever told me. I would have told them they was crazy. As people always say, I could never do that. But if you was in a predicament to where Your life or your children's life was at stake, what would you do? You couldn't turn to nobody. There was nowhere to go. And at that split moment, you don't have time to think. How would you protect your child, yourself?

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: You know, it's just— you don't think about it. You react. It's human nature to protect yourself.

Speaker 5: I think you live every day in prison with the hopes that this appeal will get you out or the next appeal will get you out. And at the time that I came to prison, they had told me that I would probably do from 7 to 10 years in prison. So I also believed that. Then later on, they told me that, you know, lifers were doing from 10 to 15 years. So I believed that. Now I've done 16 years, and I have no idea what's expected, what they want me to do. I've done everything that I can do while I've been in prison. I haven't gotten any trouble. I've worked a job. I went to school. I got counseling.

Speaker 4: I've done everything that I can think of so that I can leave, and I still have no idea when that day will come.

Speaker 5: You know, I seen the parole board about a month ago, and his words to me were. Maybe when you've got 20 years in. So it's like it doesn't end. Every time you get close to what they say that you should do, it's like they move it, they add more years on, and they add more years on. And they can do that because you're doing life. You don't know what to think, and you don't know what to hope for. You don't know sometimes what to go on for.

Speaker 2: I came from a very abusive family.

Speaker 4: And what happened when you were 7?

Speaker 2: I was, um, Sent to my stepfather's sister. And, um, I got raped by his brother.

Speaker 4: And did you try to tell your mother?

Speaker 2: No, actually, I'm not the one that told them.

Speaker 1: My—

Speaker 2: I had a younger sister that was staying with his mother, who lived just up the street from his sister. And I had spent the night one night, and we were staying in the same room when— I guess you'd call him my uncle, because he was— my mother was married to him, his brother, whatever.

Speaker 1: He was your uncle?

Speaker 2: But he came in the room, and he raped me. And in the process, my sister had woke up. She's the one that told my stepfather's mother, who in turn told my mother and my stepfather, which they didn't take it too well. They—

Speaker 4: Whew.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 4: It's lip color.

Speaker 2: I said that I lied. And then they took me home. Great family I have. They took me home, and they beat me for it. And they said it was my fault. So it didn't turn out too good.

Speaker 3: No.

Speaker 2: But at 7, you know, I didn't know no better. Little did I know I married the man who's been an image of my stepfather— attitude, his looks. Only difference was, he was smaller built than my husband was. I did love him, though. I really did. It's ironic.

Speaker 4: What was the age difference?

Speaker 2: Oh, it was— he was 32, and I was 16 and a half. First time I left him. God, was it the first time I left him that I took his guns? God, I was so scared of him.

Speaker 4: You took his guns because you were afraid what?

Speaker 2: God, I was afraid he was going to kill me if he ever found them. Had he threatened you with that gun? Yeah. Yeah. Me and other people, too. Yeah.

Speaker 3: How?

Speaker 2: Who, me or them?

Speaker 3: You.

Speaker 2: Me? Yeah, he'd pull it out and point it in my face. A loaded gun? Yeah. And what'd he say? He said he wouldn't feel nothing about taking me out the Before that, you know, before he started living with me—

Speaker 3: he had always lived with me, and he was my boyfriend. Before that, though, he killed his mother's boyfriend before, and they kept him in jail almost— I think it's almost 11 or 12 months. And his mother witnessed against the man that was dead and said that he tried to attack him first. And he was in jail for 11 months. So, when he went to court, they acquitted him. And to be truthful, I think he had a deep— some kind of deep sickness. And I don't think it started with me. I think it goes way back, you know, because sometimes he used to talk about how his mother used to beat him. So, I don't know. It might have been something in me that reminded him of his mother.

Speaker 4: I'm sorry.

Speaker 3: And maybe he was feeling good. You know, he was thinking that he was getting revenge with her, too. Sometimes I would think that. Because sometimes he would mention how she used to beat him. And he said, she can't beat me no more. Because he used to beat her, too.

Speaker 4: I moved from California back to Michigan after I had been with my husband for 3 years. And I knew the situation was not getting any better. It was getting worse. I had to get away. He wouldn't leave me alone. I tried to separate from him. He had moved out of the home and was living with another woman, but still coming in in the night, grabbing me out, beating me up, controlling my life. And so I moved. I came all the way back here hoping to get away from him.

Speaker 5: When Jon thought we were going to leave, that's when he took the alternator off my car. He took the phone off the wall. He took the money that I had. I became like a prisoner. So whatever was going on with Jon on the outside at that time, I had no, no contact with the outside. I was more or less— I was stuck there in Washington and trying to find a way to get out. I wanted to get out. I wanted to come home. I wanted to get back to Michigan. And he was determined that I wasn't going anywhere, that we weren't leaving. Had it not been for the help of a friend of his, I would have— I don't know how I would have gotten out of Washington.

Speaker 4: By the time my husband caught up with me here and moved back in with me, I had no control. I no longer had keys to my home. I no longer had keys to the car. I couldn't go anywhere by myself. Except to work? Except to work. And even at work, My husband would call me 2 or 3 times a night to check to see if I was there. He would stop by to check to see if I was where I was supposed to be. He watched the amount of time it took me to get home from work at night. He clocked the mileage on the car. He had total control of my life. And I was threatened over and over again that if I ever tried to leave, Like I did when I left California, that he would find me again and he would kill me.

Speaker 3: I was at work, and he came out there with this little small bicycle chain, right? Because tonight they're arresting him. But they got him for drunken disorder. So I was sitting in the office with some more women, my coworkers, and he told them to leave. And they heard him cursing and saw this chain. They went and called the police. So when they come— police come back, they asked me what happened. I told them, you know, and even one of the bosses. But yet— Well, they saw he hit me in the back with the bicycle chain. So what they did, they took him away, and they took him to the county jail in Mason. And he called me that next day and asked me to come and get him out. For $125, I could have— I could have got him out if I wanted to, but I felt 10 days might help him cool down. And he would call just about every other day, and I would tell him, you ain't going to come back when you get out? And he said he was. And believe it or not, on the end of the 10 days, I saw him get out of a police car. Somebody dropped him off, I guess, from the jail that was coming through that way.

Speaker 5: My husband had gotten in trouble not too long before that, and the real police came. Well, they just turned him over to the military, because he was military property. So, at this time, I thought, since I went to the military police, I was talking to the right people. But that was a big mistake.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5: I should have went and, you know, went right downtown into the police station there. But I didn't do that. I thought the military would handle the problem. And I was in for a big surprise.

Speaker 2: I knew from my childhood abuse that calling the police didn't do any good. We used to call them when my stepfather used to abuse us and my mother. And from that, I remembered that The pain was inflicted even more because all the police would ever say is that it's a family affair and they couldn't interfere. So no sooner did they leave, the beatings would start again. So to prevent it from happening when I was married, I, I just didn't call them.

Speaker 4: When they were called, they didn't do anything. Sometimes they responded, sometimes they didn't even show up. If they did, all they did was take him outside, talk to him for a while, send him back in the house, tell him to be a good boy. Then I'm in worse trouble now because the police has been called, so I'm going to get a worse beating now that they've been there. It eventually got to the point where all the phones in my home were stripped out. There was no communication, no way to call the police. Simply because my efforts and my oldest son's efforts to contact them.

Speaker 5: My father-in-law had done the same thing to his daughter, I found out later on. His 15-year-old daughter pressed charges against him for a rape he committed on her. The way that— I don't know exactly what happened when I know that was under investigation by the police in Oakland County, but I don't think they ever did anything about that, either.

Speaker 4: Other times, did the police come to the door when you called?

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3: They come.

Speaker 4: And what did they tell you?

Speaker 3: They talked to me, and they tell me, leave. Go someplace and spend the night until he cools off.

Speaker 2: Even though it was your house?

Speaker 3: They knew this. I told them he wasn't on the lease. They said, go someplace to spend the night. So I changed the locks 1 or 2 times, and he kicked the door down, just kept kicking the door in. I had to pay for that, too, so— finally, he convinced me he wasn't going to do it no more. So then I just gave him the key, because I'd paid for the door 2 or 3 times before. And I gave him the key again. He said he's going to change, and I believe that he's going to. And sometimes he would, you know, like sometimes for a month or sometimes 2 months. But he would always go back to the same thing, always. And silly as it sounds, when you really love a person, you keep thinking they're going to change.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 3: And they encourage you to think that they're going to change. So I believed him. I guess that would be hard to understand, you know, but I really believed him. But I know now, at this late date, that once a person hits you or starts some kind of abuse, whether it's mentally or physically, they don't change. It continues on. But I didn't know that then.

Speaker 4: There was a difference In everything that happened to me the whole week prior to the incident where my husband was killed, I think I had finally reached a point where I was breaking down completely. I've always thought that I could be in control, and I finally reached a point in my life where I knew there was no control left. It seemed like everything was just building up. And to explain it in a term maybe you can understand is that I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride, and I knew that the ride was going to crash, but I couldn't get off. There was no way to get off the ride. And I was living in a state of constant fear and paranoia. I was scared to be out of the house. I was scared to be in the house. I would hurry to work to get away from home. I would hurry to get back home to make sure my children were okay. The particular evening— ooh— the particular evening that my husband died, he had harassed me all day at work. He was drunk. I could feel the fear and the tension building up inside of me.

Speaker 1: What did you do?

Speaker 4: I was shaking. I was a nervous wreck all night at work. My coworkers asked me a couple times what they could do to help me. There was nothing they could do. I had to go to my children. I had to go to him. The one thing that you always feel inside you is that somehow you have to help him. You have to make a difference. That you can change everything if you can just be the right person. When we got home, he was angry at his boss that day, and I was trying to calm him down, trying to reason with him, and his anger just kept building to the point where he started throwing stuff around the house. And of course, the next thing, it I did something stupid, so he slaps me. I try to get away. He grabs me and starts slamming me around downstairs. He throws chairs at me. This is the point that I went upstairs to get away from him. When I went upstairs to get away from him, he followed me upstairs and continued beating me, continued throwing me around the bedroom, slapping me, using his fists on me.

Speaker 5: I'm sorry.

Speaker 4: Throwing me back downstairs. I was expecting him to come back downstairs after me, but he didn't. And I could hear him cussing and throwing stuff around upstairs, and I was trying to listen to see what he was doing. And all the time I'm thinking, I hope he doesn't go back in with the boys. And then it was quiet. It was quiet. And I just sat there for a long time and I really don't know how long I sat there. Because at this time, I'm just— it's like I'm there, but I'm not there. If you've ever been in a swimming pool and you dive underwater and you hear the roaring in your ears, this is what it was like. It's like I was there, but I wasn't. And all I can tell you is that I was so scared. I was so scared inside. And I just, I had to get away. I just wanted to get away so bad. And I knew if I tried to wake the kids up and get them out and it woke him up, that it would all start all over again. When I went back upstairs, I know I had reached a decision in my mind that I wasn't going to take anymore. I couldn't, I couldn't take it. And so I did pick up a piece of heavy metal I took a car part that was stored in the pantry by where I was sitting in the dining room, within my mind that if he comes after me, I'm going to use it. But when I went upstairs, he was laying down on the bed, and he was quiet. And so I put the car part that I took upstairs with me, I put it down by the foot of my bed, at the side of my bed, and I just very easily, very gently And you were afraid? I was afraid. I laid down on my side of the bed because I thought if I can just lay here and not disturb him. But when I laid down on the bed, whether he was asleep or whether he was awake reaching for me consciously, whether he was going to hurt me, I don't know. But in my mind, he was going to hurt me because when he rolled over and grabbed me, that's when my mind just I guess you would say snapped. I ran around to the other side of the bed and I slammed him in the head with the car part. And at this point, my husband always kept a large butcher knife in between the mattresses on his side of the bed. He kept knives everywhere. He kept knives between the mattress and the bed. He kept knives underneath the front seat of the car. He kept knives underneath the sofa. Always saying for protection, for defense, but the only person I ever seen him use them against was me. Anyway, this knife is sitting between the mattresses with the knife handle on his side of the bed, and when I struck him with the metal car part, his hand come flying over the side of the bed. And again, whether in my mind or whether in reality, his hand was going for the knife I'll never know. But in my mind, he was going for the knife. So I grabbed the knife first, and I slashed his throat with it. And it's this point that the blood and everything that's happening finally hits me, because I can remember across from the bed, on the other side of the bedroom, on the closet wall is a full-length mirror. And I remember looking up and seeing myself in that mirror. And it was like, how can I be there if I'm here? And all of a sudden, I realized I had done something really wrong. You know, I've hurt him. Now, in my mind at this time, even though I can see the blood everywhere, I can see the injuries, I I still am so full of fear, and this man has filled me with such a fear of him that nothing can be done to protect me from him, that no matter what happens, he'll always get me. That in my mind then, I'm still thinking, now he's really going to hurt me. Now he's going to kill me.

Speaker 2: Hey, um, He was gone for a long time. And he came in from wherever he was and just went on a rampage. And it was like— picked my daughter up and he threw her. And it was like I just had a flashback of my own childhood. And I can— I can't imagine. I remember thinking, I can't let her go through this like I did. I just, I couldn't. I couldn't see her going through the pain, the agony and abuse that I went through. And it was like, it was so unbelievable. It was like I wasn't me anymore.

Speaker 6: What happened?

Speaker 2: It was like I was somebody different. And it was like I have to stop you before you hurt anybody else. Not thinking that I would take the man's life. All I just knew is I had to stop him from hurting him.

Speaker 4: What?

Speaker 2: Unfortunately, I took his life in the process.

Speaker 4: Was that the first time he'd ever hurt her?

Speaker 2: Oh, physically? He used to try to have sex with her. And it was like I was reliving my whole childhood all over through her. And I just couldn't let him do it to her. I had to stop him. So I did. I don't know. I don't— it just seemed like something snapped inside of me. And I seen the gun. And I walked upstairs. And I shot him. And the next thing I remember, we was in the kitchen, and he was coming flying at me. And then he was at my feet. And what happened next? And I turned around, and I picked Monique up from the couch. And I always had a little bag ready for if we ever went anywhere. And I picked it up, and I left, and I went to my mother. I didn't think he was dead. I really didn't. Because my mother sent me back to the house, and I was so scared to go in there. I walked to the door and I remember I called his name out, and I just knew he was going to come jumping out from somewhere. And when I came through and I got in the living room and I seen him on the floor, I remember I screamed and I ran. And I ran across the street and I kept looking back over my shoulder because I was I was expecting him to walk up behind me at any time. And I was pounding on the door. And I just kept looking back over my shoulder. And I didn't get no answer. So I remember I went back. I went to the next house. And it was like I was running, but it was like my feet wasn't going fast enough for me. And I knocked on the door, and they answered the door. And then the police came, and that's when And they told me he was dead.

Speaker 3: There was a rule in our house. If somebody stayed out all night, there was no oral sex down here. Like I said, I've always been paranoid to do these, always. And he knew this. And he know that I don't do that when he go someplace and don't come in. OK. This night, he was determined I do that. And I told him, I said, you know we don't do that when somebody stay out. And he hadn't been there, you know. I don't know what he had been doing, but I was not going to take no chance.

Speaker 1: OK.

Speaker 3: I laid back on the bed. I'm thinking that he's going to do real sex again, right? On my dresser, there was a letter opener. It was made like wood. My baby daughter had made it in 4-H, right? It was about that long and real sharp on the end. My name was carved in it. Her name was carved in it. And there was scissors on his dresser. They never go out that room for nothing. And they only be used to cut his hair and trim his beards. And that was my job. I always did it. And that butcher knife, the police know it'd be hidden various places in the house. I had it in the clothes closet, under the sofa, any place except the kitchen. And the reason for that was I knew he had killed his mother's boyfriend with that butcher knife. And I never kept a butcher knife in that kitchen, only the little small knives. And you had a knife in the kitchen? Always. So I had it in the bedroom, and I had plenty of Michigan State bags, and I had it in the bag. And after a while, he crawled up about midways on me. He began to pin me down, used to put his penis in my mouth. And I remember him striking me one time, and he wretched on that Dressing for them scissors. I remember this. And I remember reaching and getting that butcher knife. And I remember hitting him as I got up. But as strange as it seemed, I thought I hit— was— stabbed him in the head. I really thought that. But then, when the autopsy report come out, they said all the stabs was in his chest. And I don't remember too much as to what was going on at that time. What do you remember? In fact, I don't believe nobody really do believe they remember what was happening when they was stabbing somebody. I just can't believe that. I remember getting to the door, standing up, holding the doorknob. And he must have been on his knees, because he bit my leg. And I remember hitting him again, getting out the door. And I remember going down the stairways. And I fell someplace, because I messed up my right leg. I don't know if I fell on the stairways. I don't know if I fell going down the steps, or outside. I don't know where. I really don't know. I just remember running. And I only had on my underclothes. I remember that. It was really storming that night. I remember that. I ran someplace. I don't know where. They said it was about 3 football fields from where I lived, in some old duplexes. And I could have swore up and down, I really thought he was still after me. I really thought that. And when I found out he wasn't, after they read the reports and stuff, I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't put that together.

Speaker 2: I'm sorry. They arrested me in March, and my trial started in October.

Speaker 4: And your cellmate?

Speaker 2: Oh, Francine Hughes, she— oh, wow. She came in a day or two after I did. Just 7 and a half months in the same jail, same cell. It was strange. You just sit down and have nice talks.

Speaker 3: Did you?

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Just to talk about what we went through, how there was nobody to go to. Only difference The only difference in our cases was I was abused as a child and she wasn't. But other than that, that and the fact that I shot my husband and she burned hers, I was married, she wasn't. Other than that, it was really identical. And it was like, after all this time, now I have somebody that I can talk to that could understand what I was feeling, what I was going through. We comfort each other. I had the same judge. Her trial was set before mine. It was election year. She had felony murder and first-degree murder. And the judge told her he was going to find her guilty. Of one or two charges. So they pushed her trial back and pushed mine ahead of hers. And here I sit, and she's home. Yeah. One out of God knows how many of us.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: She got lucky. She really did. Yeah, she was. I'm still glad that one of us got lucky. I got lucky. I'm still alive.

Speaker 5: After being in the county jail for going on 3 years, I— I just wanted it to be over with at that point. I couldn't see my kids, you know, for probably— I didn't see my kids for a year and a half when I first went to the county jail. And then the only reason I got a visit was because my eldest son's counselor called the sheriff and told him my son was having problems and my kids needed to see him. My daughter was having nightmares. She thought that I was dead.

Speaker 4: I had a court-appointed attorney. And was that a man? It was a man. He was also known as one of the wheeler-dealers in the courtroom. He never really listened to what I would ask him to do. He would always tell me, I know what I'm doing. Let me handle it. When I would question something as far as something the prosecution would bring up and I would try to counteract what they were saying to show my side of it, he would make statements like, it's best to let them just forget about it and we'll leave it alone. He kept telling me over and over again in the courtroom because at different times during the testimonies, especially my son When my oldest son took the stand, I broke down and I was crying. He kept telling me, don't cry, it makes you look guilty. I wasn't trying to prove that I hadn't committed the crime. I was trying to get them to understand why I had committed the crime.

Speaker 3: The judge picked the jury himself. He didn't allow my attorney to do that. The attorney wrote questions to be submitted, and he refused to answer the questions. The judge picked the jury, and he said that he was happy with the picking of the jury. The judge picked the jury himself in my case. It was an all-white jury, and I don't feel it was a jury of my peers, you know, because these people was all from upper class, you know. I live middle class, but these people are upper class. And I think it should have been some color, Spanish, Mexican, or something, anything, you know. And I feel if the judge gonna pick the jury, he should have asked a few questions about culture. What did they know about that culture? But he didn't do it.

Speaker 4: Did you testify on your own behalf?

Speaker 2: No.

Speaker 4: So the jury never heard you?

Speaker 3: No.

Speaker 4: Was there testimony about his abuse of you?

Speaker 2: My husband?

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Oh God, no. The closest that it came was that my mother told, told him that, um, I used to talk to her about problems that I was having with my husband. That was the closest we came there. Yeah. No testimony about beatings? No.

Speaker 4: Injuries?

Speaker 2: No.

Speaker 4: I believe they fail women. I believe they fail women not only in their lack of knowledge to domestic violence, but in their judgmental attitude towards women who make a mistake. It's accepted in our society that men will be men and boys will be boys, and if they make a mistake, well, slap their hands and it's okay. But if a woman makes a mistake, She's a fallen woman. She needs to be thrown away. She needs to be locked up and forgotten.

Speaker 2: Welcome to the world of prison systems. You put your bladder on hold. Everything's put on hold. I'll tell you when to go to the bathroom. I'll tell you when to sleep, when to eat, when to wake up, how to think, how to feel. When to cry, how to function. Be a robot for me, please. Oh yeah, how to dress, what to eat. How does it feel to eat whenever whatever you want whenever you want? Can imagine. What's your own? This is God. Remember all that? God.

Speaker 4: In my housing unit, I live in cubicles, which is simply wall dividers. And there's 2 beds in each cubicle area. So I have 1 roommate. The cubicles, you don't have any doorways or anything, so anybody walking up and down the hallway or anything, it's all open. Doctors in and out at any time.

Speaker 2: Privacy? You don't have none. You have no dignity, no privacy, no nothing. They strip you of everything, even your self-esteem. You're no longer a person. You're a number. If we didn't call each other by our first names, I think we'd forget who we really was. Yeah. It's like, who are you? Oh, Allen 150376.

Speaker 4: There's no— as we said before, there's no privacy. There's 41 women in my unit. We share a shower with 2 showerheads and 6 sinks in the bathroom and 5 bathroom stalls.

Speaker 3: I make, on average, $4.32 a day whenever I work. But like I said, right now we're only averaging 1 day a week, sometimes 2 days.

Speaker 4: So it's pretty hard to make enough money for your—

Speaker 3: To survive.

Speaker 4: —living necessities.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 3: And it's a strange thing about people on the outside. They think that everything is provided to you free in prison. But that's not true. We have a store here, and the store costs us just like the ones on the streets. I compare it with the newspaper. And if you don't have funds, you ain't going to have anything.

Speaker 4: We have to look after ourselves in here. You have to be careful with your diet. You have to be careful with a lot of things to make sure that you You keep yourself in a halfway healthy condition because you know that if you don't, they're not going to help you if you get sick. You learn to leave a lot of the food alone.

Speaker 2: Why?

Speaker 4: Because it's not that healthy for you. It is a lot of starch. It's a lot of— Foods that are not beneficial to you. It's more or less a diet of food to fill you up, but not really to be of nutritious value.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: You learn to buy what items you can, if you're fortunate enough to have an income to be able to do so, to buy what items you can off the commissary to help yourself. You just go from day to day trying to get by the best way you can and to try to help one another also. So you buy a lot of your food? You have to buy a lot of your food here. As I said, a lot of the food that they serve on the menu is— we've had a lot of instances of spoiled meat.

Speaker 2: You better watch what you eat. Because they'd be finding parts of mice in the food. I eat from the commissary. I don't eat from the kitchen.

Speaker 3: So—

Speaker 2: So you buy your own food? Oh, yeah. And pay for it? Yep, we buy it. Because the food in the kitchen is unsafe?

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: You're eating something, and then all of a sudden you see this long little tail in there, or a head, and it's like, oh my God. Worms in the vegetables. Oh God. They put the plates on top of this counter. The flies sit in it. Bugs crawl in it. Ew. But let somebody important come down here. Hey, you would think that we was having steak and eggs. Everything is spotless. Everything. The best to their ability, that is. They feed you a good meal. They won't let them put the plates up there. They wait. Everything is covered. They make sure the food is— I think they go out and buy it the day that they come. And don't get sick. If you get sick, You in trouble, because you're not going to see nobody. If you fall out, they look at you and walk over you. One girl died. She had an asthma attack, and the officer walked over her and kept on walking and said, oh, she must have been using drugs. And she died.

Speaker 5: I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: One woman had a heart attack. She was pounding on the door. She was telling them that she had chest pains. And they told her just to lay down and go to sleep. And then she was still having them in the morning. They called a clinic. She died. She had a heart attack.

Speaker 1: I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: Another girl had stomach cancer. They told her she had an ulcer. She went home and died 2 weeks later.

Speaker 4: I've seen women really suffer. I have personally suffered with a gallbladder that was full of stones and ready to rupture, and they kept putting me on hold to take me out to the hospital. I dropped down to 113 pounds. I was having gallbladder attacks back to back, and all they would do was put me on clear liquid diets, bed rest, and give me visceral injections every 6 hours. I went on like that for probably 3, 4 months before they finally got me out. And the only reason that they took me out then was because I had people on the outside that contacted the warden. to get me out to get the medical treatment. I was already jaundiced. The doctor that examined me at Foot Hospital said he didn't understand how I was still alive, that the gallbladder hadn't ruptured and killed me.

Speaker 5: I'm really glad that I have dentures, because I wouldn't want— we haven't had a dentist here in so long that the last time I needed my dentures relined, I put a kite in. And after a year of waiting, I put in another kite, and they wrote me a note saying, you've been very patient, can you be patient, you know, a little longer? It took me 2 years to get my dentures relined. When I was over there to get them relined, I said, should I put my kite in now for my next realignment? At the time, we all laughed, but, you know, it's now 2 years later, and I can't get in to get my I mean, don't you?

Speaker 4: It's— it's— yeah. I escape in books.

Speaker 5: I'm a book nut. I'll read anything and everything, anything that will help me escape from here.

Speaker 4: How is the library here?

Speaker 5: Well, the library's OK if you like romance novels. We have a tremendous amount of romance here, you know? But you can only do that so many times. Novels tend to repeat theirself.

Speaker 4: Are there programs?

Speaker 2: A few. Not many, but a few.

Speaker 4: Not many choices. No. And in the men's system, they have dental programs, they have all kinds of carpentry programs, maintenance programs, electrician's programs. They can come out of there as dental assistants. They can come out of there as almost anything they want to. College degrees, master's degrees? Any kind of degree that they want in the paralegal system, or like I said, in the dental programs, or engineering. Women have one-degree program. You can come out with a degree in liberal arts. You can come out with computer certification. You can come out with—

Speaker 2: Cleaning.

Speaker 6: Maintenance.

Speaker 4: Well, it's maintenance There's a program, but it's just an apprenticeship. It's not even a degree program. You can come out with a certificate in horticulture.

Speaker 5: Most of these type of things are in areas that aren't useful to people getting out of prison. They don't— if you take horticulture or— I'm trying to think of some of the other— building maintenance, My information processing. None of these things are anything that I can get out of here and get a job probably that pays much more than minimum wage.

Speaker 4: There's also the issue of the power and control again. I have a right not to be treated like an animal. I have a right not to be spoken to like I'm a 3-year-old child. I have a right not to be humiliated and put down in front of other women. But yet, because of the different personalities of the officers involved, many times I feel like I'm right back in the same situation as I was in with my husband, because they treat me the same way. They treat me like I don't have a brain in my head. They treat me like they have total control over me, and whatever they tell me to do, I have to do.

Speaker 1: I have a right not to be humiliated and put down in front of other women.

Speaker 4: That I have to cater to their wants and their whims because I'm a female.

Speaker 3: So you've seen a lot of sexual harassment around here?

Speaker 2: Oh God, yeah. It happens a lot. It happens now. It does. It happens now. I see a lot of it. I went through some of it. And you really pay for it because it's— The situation of, I'm in control and this is what I want, and if you don't do it like this, well, this is what I'm able to do to you.

Speaker 5: When Mad Dog would walk into my room and walk up behind me and lay his arm over my shoulder and down onto my breast, it was probably the most unnerving sensation. This guy used to give me the creeps so bad that when he worked in my unit, I would do everything that I could to stay out of my room, because I didn't want to get caught alone. And I can remember calling my sister on the phone one day and saying, talk to me. Just talk to me, because I was that upset that I needed— I just— I needed to hear somebody's voice, you know? And what did she say? That I could talk to, you know, who cared, because there wasn't anywhere else I could go with it.

Speaker 2: Then when they shake you down, oh, how humiliating. Oh my God. You have to stand with your hands out like this, you know, and then they take and they go down the arms, and then they decide they want to come this way, and instead of going down like This, like they're supposed to do. And I'm like, ew! You know? So they have their fun at our expense. Decide they want to shake you down, they go down your legs and then come back up between them and say, whoop! You know?

Speaker 4: And if you complain?

Speaker 2: You get harassed. They decide they want to write you up on any and every little thing. You know, don't have no intelligence, God, you're really in trouble. Put a lawsuit in or a grievance, you know, they really harass you real bad. They come in and tear your room all up and then tell you to fix it, and you got a certain amount of time to fix it after they tore it all up. It's humiliating and degrading. They might take something out of the desk and put it on top, because you're only allowed 4 items on top. They might put an extra one on top, call you off the yard or wherever you are. What's this doing here? Well, it wasn't there. Well, it is now.

Speaker 4: If you file agreements, You know that there's probably going to be retaliation.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 4: You know that if you brief an issue on an officer, that that officer is probably going to find other ways to harass you. He is going to find other ways to make things difficult for you. And you just have to be willing to pay the consequences.

Speaker 5: If I was to go to administration and tell a guard— or tell them that a guard had touched me in the wrong way or did something to me, the response I would get from them would be really negative. They wouldn't like me for doing it.

Speaker 2: And when we get upset and cry and things, they automatically think the worst. They go to the most extreme measures. And those are? They handcuff them to the bed, call the clinic to give them a shot, you know, bum-rush them, 3 or 4 officers run in and grab them by the arms and legs and Throw them on the ground. I had one incident where a sergeant— all the girl asked him was why was she going to Max. And he just went to hollering at her, and she was trying to get away from him. She walked out the door. He ran out after her, threw her on the ground, face down in the mud, and had his knee in her back.

Speaker 5: And?

Speaker 2: Oh, God. That was horrifying. They literally dragged her to Max. I mean, dragged her, handcuffed her and dragged her to Max.

Speaker 5: If I get a write-up in my file, a major write-up, or if anyone does, it could cost them time. You know, if they accumulate a certain amount of write-ups, that means they have to stay in prison longer. They could get a flog for that. They accumulate a certain amount of write-ups, and they can end up in segregation. There's a cost, you know, and it can be a high cost.

Speaker 2: I got raped in prison, too. Oh, yeah. You don't remember that, Mr. Gage? At the Valley, that big scandal? All them hearings?

Speaker 4: Miss Richardson?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I was 21. Yeah, I was 21. And he was a guard? Well, he was a maintenance worker, but he was a man that came in from, as we would call it, the free world, working for the Department of Corrections. And again, it boiled down to who they was going to believe, him or me. I don't know. To say the least, he came back to work.

Speaker 4: We like to be able to walk up to someone else, and if they're having a bad day or you just know that something's not right, to be able to walk up and give them a hug of reassurance. But you can't do that. It's like You're not allowed to have feelings anymore. You're not allowed to have needs anymore. You're just a shell that's supposed to go through the motions and perform to the expectations of their criteria.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: And that's it. It's like they want you to live in a sterile, isolated world, while at the same time, you're With all these other women, people around you all the time, but yet you're not allowed to reach out to it. You're, you're in a vacuum of their making, an emotional vacuum.

Speaker 5: If I walk up and I put my hand on you and I touch you, that's a ticket. I'm not allowed to do that. You know, there's plenty of times in here when people are hurt and they need comfort, you know. I've read somewhere that animals that lack touch and love, you know, tend to die. But yet we're forced to go years and years, you know, and not supposed to, you know, be able to touch or feel.

Speaker 4: To even be seen combing another woman's hair If they choose to interpret it that way, can be an 033. It's a sexual misconduct. I think when you're in prison, especially in women's prison, I guess, that they feel that that's part of your punishment.

Speaker 3: Right.

Speaker 4: You know, you failed at being a woman, therefore, You failed sexually, so you have no reason to expect that part of your life to be filled anymore. I mean, you have failed, so anything else that you could expect, you don't have a right to that anymore.

Speaker 2: Love relationships in prison are like taboo. Oh, you don't have them. You don't have them. It's not allowed.

Speaker 4: Does it happen anyway?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's a risk that you take, you know, but being a human being, you need that. You know, you need that comfort. You need that love. It's something that is forbidden. When you have it, it's such a secret, you know? And it's so rare. Then if you have it, then it's taken from you. So it's kind of like when you have it, you enjoy it. When it's taken, you grieve. And then you just kind of move on. It's not too often you have it.

Speaker 5: No.

Speaker 2: You're too scared.

Speaker 4: Yeah. For everybody, it's building a network of support in here, which is hard. It's hard to find the people you can trust. It's hard to find the people that you can depend on, especially Especially in a system where they don't want you to have that. They want to keep you separated. They want to keep you in a state of constant movement where you can't feel settled. But you find it. You search it out and you find it for your own survival. You find those close people that you can build your network, your support system around.

Speaker 3: Thank you.

Speaker 4: And you're there for each other. You become mother, father, sister, brother. You become everything for each other because there is nobody else. And you learn to always look to the positive, even when there's nothing but mud surrounding you, because you know that to look to the positive is the only hope you have. Of ever seeing daylight again. And you learn that you just can't give up. You learn that you are your own best friend. You learn that if you can't depend on anybody else, you still depend on yourself. And you learn to love yourself and to forgive yourself and to go on.

Speaker 2: 34 years old. How old will I be when I'm released from prison? I came in as a child and leaving as an— what? Adult, maybe? An older woman? That's a horrifying thought. Every day you think about it. Will I ever leave here? Yes.

Speaker 4: Next message.

Speaker 3: Hello, this is from Los Angeles. My name is Dave. Yeah, I think Free Speech TV is a great concept. I accept. It's very interesting, and I am all for trying to expose the national media conglomerates for liars, for what they are, and to bring an element of truth to the media.

Speaker 2: End of message.

Speaker 4: Next message.

Speaker 2: I don't know how this show got on TV because I never did anything like this, but I think it's fantastic. Thank you very much.

Speaker 3: Bye-bye.

Speaker 4: Next message.

Speaker 3: Yes, my name is Brian. I'm calling from Tampa, Florida. I love this FSTV. It's, it's great. It's showing all the, the presidential candidates, Pat Robertson and all of these candidates. They were just so pathetic, so pathetic. But I love your show.

Speaker 4: Next message.

Speaker 3: Yeah, um, I don't I don't get it. There's this guy crying. He hasn't said a word for like, uh, 10 minutes. It's just, you know, a bunch of crap. I just, I just don't get it. I just, I just don't get it. I just, I just don't get it. I mean, this guy's just crying. Why is he crying? Does he have AIDS? I mean, he's obviously in a bunch of distress. I, I, I just don't understand what you're trying to convey with your message here. You need to be a little bit more clear and direct with what you're trying to say. It says Free Speech TV, but he's not saying a fucking word. I just don't get it. I just don't get it. I just don't understand.

Speaker 2: End of message.

Speaker 3: I was in a crisis center when I was 11.

Speaker 5: And then I went to a group home and 3 different foster homes about 5 times.

Speaker 4: And then—

Speaker 3: I've had a social worker for 4 years.

Speaker 4: I've had counseling for 4 years.

Speaker 3: I've been in a foster home.

Speaker 4: I've been in drug treatment about 4 times.

Speaker 3: I've been in jail once.

Speaker 4: I've been through counseling ever since I—

Speaker 3: ever since I was like 5 years old.

Speaker 2: And now I'm here.

Speaker 3: Everybody's greedy for gain, you know. The world on the outs is all about money and drugs and power.

Speaker 4: I already know what it's like when I get home.

Speaker 2: It's not like this.

Speaker 3: You know, I don't have a— like everybody's always talking about support systems.

Speaker 2: I don't have a support system at home.

Speaker 4: I mean, my mom cares a lot. It's just she's not the most supportive person in the world.

Speaker 1: I'm sorry.

Speaker 4: She's real scared. She doesn't really want me to come home, but that's her only option right now. So she said, we'll try it, and if it doesn't work, I'm out. So we're going to try.

Speaker 1: You have your butt down like you were standing on the— on the slide.

Speaker 3: Then you just start moving your feet.

Speaker 1: It's not funny! You're doing great. You're halfway there.

Speaker 3: Of course, we wouldn't leave you hanging like that for very long because it's not real good for you, but it would be good enough to keep you safe. So what we're going to do is we're going to hook this up.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: Y'all?

Speaker 3: You'll find that the more you lean on this rope and the more you trust it, the steadier it'll be. I don't know any of my friends on the outs who trust adults. I don't know anybody who trusts It's the system or the law. We'll walk on out.

Speaker 4: The only other place I've been, other than St. Croix, is Minneapolis JDC, and they treat you like shit. They treat you like a dog. You know, grab a piece of wall, or we're going to put you back in your cage.

Speaker 3: So walk right back and put your heels right on the edge. There you go. How you doing? Are you still breathing?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 3: OK.

Speaker 4: You got to tell yourself you can do it, not I can't do it.

Speaker 2: I can do it. I've never met a judge or a lawyer or a police officer I could trust.

Speaker 3: They can take you for the smallest stuff. I'm out 15 minutes past curfew, and I get a ticket.

Speaker 4: I end up getting sent away from my house, from my family.

Speaker 5: Yeah, just start moving your feet right on down the wall.

Speaker 3: And you are out of here. That was very nice and steady.

Speaker 2: All right.

Speaker 3: There you go.

Speaker 2: Very good.

Speaker 1: Woo, nice. There you go, Stacy.

Speaker 4: No screaming or anything.

Speaker 3: Are you still with us, Stace?

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Okay. Can I have you— yep, there you go. Plop right there.

Speaker 4: I didn't even scream.

Speaker 1: I know. I'm surprised. Oh, I just let myself go.

Speaker 2: You're doing a nice job.

Speaker 1: Ah! OK. Goodbye, everyone! Don't miss me! Woo!

Speaker 3: I've only had one other student that's ever got straight A's, and you ended up with straight A's.

Speaker 1: Hey!

Speaker 3: Christina's a very capable student. Yeah, the transcripts for her coming here, Right. There are D's and F's, you know. She's fully capable. Challenge yourself.

Speaker 4: I'd like to also talk about areas where you're going to need some more support. What are some worries or concerns that you might have?

Speaker 2: Getting along with my stepdad, I think, is a big one.

Speaker 3: Have you made any progress in the past 3 months?

Speaker 2: Not very much.

Speaker 4: A lot of the parents have been through the mill with, you know, worrying about their daughters and not knowing what to do. And so when they bring them here or the court sends them here, they know that for 3 months they're going to be okay. So for them, I think that's a huge relief that they're here and that we're going to take care of them for a while and hopefully teach them to take care of themselves. I just want her to keep I'm doing this work, which also—

Speaker 3: The only time I ever really cried was at my mom's funeral. Now it's just like, it's just It's just me and my dad. They're going to be so frustrated at home, because my dad's sick, and I have to take care of my dad. I had to watch my mom die, and I don't want to go home and have to watch my dad die, too. I get in trouble. I purposely get in trouble in school, so Anytime, you know, somebody called me a name, I was right in their face, because everybody watched. I mean, they loved to watch me fight, you know? They loved it. They egged me on. I'll be 18 in 9 months, and I can't just go out and pound anybody I want to, because I'll be sitting in probably Shakopee. Nice old jail. Yeah. That's what I want to do for the rest of my life. Out here, it's me. I'm trying to figure out things for myself.

Speaker 1: Could I pass the toilet, please?

Speaker 3: This is what I did on solo.

Speaker 1: I had this stick, and it was up on. This is what I did.

Speaker 3: Can I show them what I did?

Speaker 4: Okay. I'd love to see another demonstration.

Speaker 1: This is like a log I was standing on, right? That's what I did. And then I was standing on this tree, and I was singing Shadow Hoochie Knows Every Song. I was doing. I looked around like this, and I looked at Emily, who's standing there like, oh, my God! I laughed so hard my cheekbones hurt.

Speaker 3: I hated being out there.

Speaker 2: The last day was the hardest. It was like, get me out of here.

Speaker 3: It made me face that my mom was gone, you know, and I was never going to see her again. And that was, like, the hardest part out there for me.

Speaker 2: My room is kind of like a Solo thing, solo site. Sometimes. Um, put a lock on my door, maybe. That might work.

Speaker 3: Till my door gets busted down again. Yeah.

Speaker 6: When I had that thing with my dad and he was mad, I was scared that, you know, he would come. And then I sat here and I thought, and Marge told me too, that there's no way he could come, you know, because I was protected Now, when he gets mad at my mom and I'm on the outs, you know, there's lots of ways that he can come and get me. Doing things on my own was always the hardest way to do it.

Speaker 3: And I always need someone there with me because— I don't know, I need someone there to show me that there's a positive side to it.

Speaker 2: I've always liked the person I was, but I just didn't like some of the things I did.

Speaker 3: I did. Somebody would say something, I'd beat them up.

Speaker 2: And just because I was mad, I'd have to bring everybody else down with me, you know?

Speaker 4: But I know I don't have to do that here.

Speaker 3: And here it's okay to say, you know—

Speaker 2: I mean, here I have to face reality, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Out there, I just kind of ran circles around everything, and I really didn't get to the point and get— you know.

Speaker 4: But here I did.

Speaker 3: And I guess I feel more comfortable facing reality than running away from it.

Speaker 1: I'm sorry.

Speaker 3: I'd like to welcome everybody to the graduation of the Cougars. All the parents, relatives, everybody. I never thought this day would come. Oh my God. Okay. Yeah. When I first came to camp, I had this hard-ass attitude that no one was going to see who the real me was. Haha, boy was I wrong. And this is going to be the hardest for me. This one's for my dad.

Speaker 1: Whoa.

Speaker 3: OK. It's been 3 months. I hope you'll see that something has been done to me. I've changed for the good and can only get better.

Speaker 4: Adnan!

Speaker 1: I know it's been tough.

Speaker 3: You've been up to here, and you've had enough. Well, today I come home. And I hope things change. I know to me it'll be real strange. I love you, Dad, and hope you see just how much you really mean to me.

Speaker 1: If anything's wrong, have no fear, for I am home, Dad. Your daughter's here. Thank you.

Speaker 4: You're watching Free Speech TV.

Speaker 3: Email us at fstv@fstv.org.

Speaker 1: Yo he respirado mucho viento y agua de mar he olido. Y es de antiguo el aire frío. Es pegajoso el gratiento y mi oreja escucha aún siento. Es un frío que la hiere cuando los vientos se cierren. Quiero aprender el Silencio desde mis poros, sentencio. Al morirme, que me entierren. Cuando muera, que me entierren. Me entierren en la tierra en que nací, en la tierra en que crecí, pues quiero darle a mi tierra sin regatearle una perra lo que ella me ha dado a mí.

Speaker 2: ¡Viva el pueblo!

Speaker 6: I remember one particular incident in my childhood that I'll never forget, and that was my first encounter with racism. And I'm very light-skinned, and when I was young, I was a blonde, and everybody thought I was an American child until I opened my mouth. And I couldn't speak any English, and I had a younger brother, and my mother took us shopping to this department store.

Speaker 1: I'm a white girl.

Speaker 6: store where most Latinos would shop, but no one spoke Spanish in there. So my mother was buying me these really pretty dresses, and the lady at the store was asking my mother if she was going to pay cash or put it on layaway, or, you know, what they usually ask. And my mother did not understand. She was handing her the money, part of the money, and trying to fill out the paper for, you know, for the layaway. And the lady stands and tells the people that were in line, You know, look at these dirty people, you know, and can't even speak the language. Why do they bother, you know, shopping at our store? And she just went on and on. And I was young. You know, I had just been like 3 or 4 months here. But I had picked up enough English, I knew it wasn't good. I knew it was negative. So I looked at her and I looked at my mother. My mother was like very emotional. And my mother's like, she doesn't understand what this woman is doing. She understood that this woman was insulting her, and she didn't understand why they didn't want her money. It was like, you know, all you want is money. Here, here's what you want, is the money. And my little brother was crying, because it was a big scene. And I turned to my mother, and I said to her, don't you worry, Ma. I'm going to learn good English. They're not going to know I'm even from anywhere else. And I'm going to teach them all a lesson. And my mother said that at that time she had no idea what I was talking about.

Speaker 4: In order to get some background as to our experiences, I think it's important to go back to 1898, to the military invasion, and look into General Miles' proclamation. He stated in his proclamation that the people of the Philippines that Puerto Ricans were lazy, dirty savages, uncivilized, ignorant. And this is an attitude, and it is a hatred that has— did not exist just at that particular historical moment, but affects Puerto Ricans in our nation and Puerto Ricans here in the United States.

Speaker 6: I came to this country a little older than Lucy. Lucy was only 2. I was 11 when I arrived here. I have a lot of memories. Most of the memories I have of my childhood are from the island. So I have— certainly my heart was there at a very young age, so I could certainly identify with the traumatizing experience of coming here and being rejected. Now, my family's decision to come here was more based on bringing us all together. I have 2 brothers and a sister, and at the time we were dispersed all over the island in different relatives' homes. I lived at my maternal grandmother's house, and my mother was quite upset that we were being raised by different people, not by her. My mother went to Puerto Rico, and she said, we're all leaving. And I hid in some neighbor's house. And, I mean, we went through this whole thing where we'd all refused. You know, we— I'd been here. I had been here when I was 5.

Speaker 4: You had a feeling for this country.

Speaker 6: Oh, I'd had very bad experiences. I was put in kindergarten. I couldn't speak English. And I had, like, these horrible nightmares About being trapped in this school where I didn't understand what anybody was saying to me. And my mother was forcing me every day to go to this school, so she sent us back. But when I arrived and I was 11, I remember it like it was just yesterday. It was 1965, '66, end of '65, beginning of '66. And I went to school and I spoke no English. My older sister did. She had been here a while.

Speaker 2: And what did you do?

Speaker 6: And, you know, I refused. I was a straight-A student in Puerto Rico, and when I got here, I was flunking. I was going to be thrown out. My mother could not believe it. She says, how could you do this to me? It was like a personal, you know, thing with her. And I changed.

Speaker 4: From the moment I can remember, my mother never accepted the role that this society She was very dissatisfied just being a housewife. She loved us dearly, but my mother wanted more. My mother, under very difficult conditions— because my mother was a very sickly woman, and she had 5 children to take care of, because my father was working so many hours just to make ends meet— my mother would take care of us, and she would things at home, take care of us. And she'd go— this was like 1957— she would go— she went to the YMCA, one of the YMCAs in Chicago, because she wanted her 8th grade diploma.

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: OK, my mother only had 2nd grade in— only went up to 2nd grade in Puerto Rico, and my father's 2nd year in high school. But my mother wanted to study. My mother was always a woman who who was curious about her environment. She got her 8th grade diploma, and she went on to getting her GED. And today my mother has a college degree. She has always been community-oriented, very— I would say very comfortable being with people and working with people. What was it like for you So I would say that, yes, as a woman, my mother has been a very important example in my life.

Speaker 6: My mother is, is like totally the opposite of Josefina. My mother was someone who met my, my dad very young and was molded by him. And the experience my dad had in the military totally altered his personality. He is a totally different individual than what he was prior to, to to the military experience. And my dad, in fact, you know, was hospitalized for years because of the trauma that he experienced. And my mother was a passive housewife, a passive mother. My mother spent most of our growing-up years hiding us from my dad and his violence, because my dad turned into a very violent, very vicious He hated everything around him, including his family, but he stayed there. And my mother was like the calming effect in our home. And my mother was the one who taught us about love, the one who taught us about not being prejudiced. My dad would come in, and he— my dad, you know, would rant and rave about whatever, and my mother would say, don't listen to the man. He knows not what he's talking about. What was your mother like? Nobody says, this is the way it is. And my mother was very quiet. She was very, very low-key. But she instructed us, all of us, on, you know, how we should always be, you know, human. We should always treat people as individuals, and we should care about everyone around us, that we should not, you know, be led into not caring or have, you know, these—

Speaker 2: Prejudices.

Speaker 6: These false illusions that because we have, no one else need have. And my mother, in that sense, was very, very important in my life.

Speaker 3: And she is.

Speaker 2: And she still is.

Speaker 6: She is just like— she has no personality. It really saddens me. And I talk to Lucy a lot about that, because my mother was my father's stepping stone. It was like my dad just used her, you know, as this whipping individual in the house. And then her, when we grew up, she had no other purpose. She was like, okay, so now what? You know, kind of thing. And it's very sad because it happens to so many. And my mother has been in this country 35 years, and my mother does not speak one word of English. And to her, that means a lot. To her, that means I've never given in to staying here.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 6: It's like, I will always have a home. Somewhere else. And she goes, and she'll, she'll stay a year, and she'll come back. But to her, it means a lot. She's very proud. She always taught me to be very proud. You know, we never spoke English in the house, even though my father spoke some English, and my younger brother picked it up really fast. We— she would not listen to us if we spoke to her in English. She would turn and say, I don't understand. And that's how we kept our language. So my mother was like the soft and individual who told us, you'll do with your life whatever you want, but I think you should know that there are some things that are acceptable inside of you. And she said, as long as you can live with what you feel inside, it's going to be okay. She said, if it doesn't feel right to you from the inside out, she says, then you don't— don't do it, okay? And that's what I guided myself with when I got involved When I was 15, 16, 17, when I did, when I went to the university, when I did everything, I always remembered that I felt that I was a good person, and I felt that I wasn't doing any harm. I felt good, and that I was trying to do good. So it was okay, regardless of, you know, the different labels that people placed on you. That was very important, not in terms of politics, not that my mother taught me politics, taught me about, you know, the politics that today, you know, have become a part of me, but that my mother taught me the basics. She taught me about my history in Puerto Rico. She taught me about my nationality. She taught me about being the person that I am, not someone else. And those are very important things, you know, when you're developing.

Speaker 7: To become a political person, a Puerto Rican revolutionary woman, is not something that happens It's a process, like all revolutionary politics. I, I see myself as an only child raised in East Harlem, New York City, by 2 Puerto Rican parents, working-class people. I had advantages, yes, because I was an only child, and that in itself provided me to be able to have a little more than most of the kids in my neighborhood didn't have. I'm wondering, But within that realm, my parents were able to maintain within me a certain essence of who I was. An example of that is I, I went to private schools, and I faced a lot of racism in the Catholic school system. But, but more than that, I was involved in show business, and that in itself was an exposure for me because I began to see different elements of society. I wasn't aware of it then.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 7: Now that I'm older, I can reflect back and see how my parents' influence in me gave me basic— the essence of that I am a Puerto Rican living in a different— in a society that is very racist.

Speaker 4: Were your parents at all political themselves?

Speaker 2: No.

Speaker 4: What was their approach to even politics?

Speaker 7: Basically, my father came to this country at 17, and at that time, he had been involved in the Puerto Rican nationalist movement. My mother was born and raised in New York City. But they had a sense of not political revolutionary, but a sense of community concern, so that they were very much involved in the community. So that in itself sort of gave me a responsibility. I mean, we had a choice to move out, and we chose not to, because my parents always felt that we had something to contribute to that community itself. As I grew older and I lost them, at a very early age, my father at 15, my mother at 20. I also knew that I had to get an education, number one, if I was just going to survive.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 7: And then I decided that I wanted to contribute and work in the community. So I did that by working as a community organizer. And I thought there was the advent of the anti-poverty programs, and I thought that that was going to be the answer. And it all sounded very beautiful— maximum feasible Participation of the poor. Well, this is it. Here we're going to bring about some change. And I learned early on, by the time I was 20, that that wasn't the answer, because the programs in itself were not creating self-sufficiency. They were creating— people became dependent on a system that wasn't doing anything for them. Then in that realm, I got involved in politics, electoral politics. And I thought, well, maybe if we had more Puerto Ricans In elected official positions, that would change. I found that to be a fallacy. Then I had to make a determination, what was I going to do with my life professionally to earn a living? And I thought, well, television was going to be the answer. I could create positive images of our people. Well, I shortly learned that that in itself— media, all aspects of our society— are controlled by one system. In that process, though, I feel that I've We contributed to a certain extent, given the limitations of media, given the limitations of who we are working in that kind of a realm.

Speaker 6: I think that as you talk to each and everyone, you will get to see that we represent a broad sector of the Puerto Rican nation. I was born in Puerto Rico, and I was brought to the United States by my parents. who were forced to migrate as a consequence of the—

Speaker 4: well, to survive, basically.

Speaker 6: To alleviate all of the plight of unemployment, about 32,000 Puerto Ricans were forced to leave the island. It was around this time also that the United States government moved in and acquired most of the arable land of the Puerto Rican people.

Speaker 4: So they could settle in with military bases. As prisoners of war, we represent the strategy that will liberate our people. And we have to do our utmost to disseminate our message and to do what is possible that I hope that the armed struggle grows in our country and that Puerto Rico sees its final victory.

Speaker 6: We're living proof that there is an armed movement out there. We're living proof that Puerto Ricans are not submissive and docile and stupid and ignorant and dirty, okay? You know, we have challenged that. We're living proof of that. And we're not the first generation. And we won't be the last. You know, and that's what it's all about. And that's why they strike out at us. You know, we look like we're harmless. And they'll tell us, you girls look harmless, okay? But they know that we're committed to something that we'll give our lives to. There's very few Americans in this country that'll give their lives for this country, let alone living in another country, would they give up, you know, all the niceties of middle-class life. And you're not alone. You know, and we— I've been to college. Lucy's been to college. They know we can all have, you know, these nice little jobs and the nice little house. We're human. I have a daughter that I haven't seen in 6 years. Lucy has a son that she was away from the whole time she was in clandestinity. We feel we're mothers, we're human. But we feel that when you believe something, you should live your life as that belief. I think that's what we're doing. Proof of what you believe, and if coming to prison means that we believe that our country should be independent, must be independent, and will be independent, we'll come to jail, and we're here.

Speaker 1: Despierta, oriqueño, que han dado la señal. Despierta de este sueño. Es hora de luchar. Arde el llama patriótico, arde tu corazón. ¿Quién no será simpático del ruido del cañón? Nosotros queremos la libertad, nuestro machete nos la dará.

Speaker 7: Vámonos.

Speaker 1: Vámonos por ingenio, vámonos ya, que nos espera ansiosa, ansiosa la libertad, la libertad, la libertad, la libertad.

Speaker 6: ¡Trae libertad!

Speaker 1: ¡Despierta, puertorriqueño, que han dado la señal! ¡Despierta de este sueño, es hora de luchar! ¡Arde el llama del patriótico, arde tu corazón! Él no será simpático del ruido del cañón. Nosotros queremos la libertad, nuestro machete nos la dará. Vámonos por Ingenio, vámonos ya. Llenos de fe ansiosa. Ansiosa la libertad, la libertad, la libertad, la libertad, la libertad. ¡Viva Puerto Rico libre y socialista!

Speaker 2: ¡Que viva!

Speaker 1: ¡Que viva Don Juan Antonio Corretjer!

Speaker 2: ¡Que viva!