[This article contains descriptions of physical and sexual assault.]
The scarlet letter in prison is any conviction related to child sexual abuse (CSA). People aren’t judged for other convictions, no matter how serious or violent; murder convictions even mean a certain amount of respect.
In the struggle to find community in prison, those with CSA convictions are lone soldiers. They are universally targeted by gang-affiliated prisoners, and ostracized by everyone else for fear of being viewed as a sympathizer. This includes staff.
Albert*, three years into a 40-year sentence for CSA, was visibly shaking during our discussion. He stayed keenly aware of people walking around our table in the pod, afraid they would hear what he was saying.
The day he arrived at his current living unit, he was approached in his cell by three gang-affiliated prisoners who attempted to extort him. They had a lot of his personal info, like the names of his family members, and wanted $50 a week for protection against others who might want to beat him and take his “manhood.” He swung at one of them, and woke up in medical with several broken ribs and a “messed-up head.”
He told staff about the threats, but they sent him back to the same cell that same night. He recalled an officer telling him: That’s prison. Get ready to fuck or fight.
Later that night the same three men came into his cell again. Armed with shanks, they put him on his knees while one of them took out his penis and put it in Albert’s mouth. But instead of forcing Albert to perform oral sex, they took a photo using a contraband cell phone and left—telling him that if he ever resisted again, the photo would be sent to his family.
“I had already caused my family such shame,” Albert said. “I didn’t know what I’d do if I had to explain that pic to my kids.”
He called his wife, and they agreed to pay the protection fee. This went on for about two years, until the fee was raised. Albert refused, got beat, tried to request protective custody but was turned away, went on suicide watch instead and then was sent right back to general population.
“I don’t expect to live much longer,” he said. “I don’t have the stomach to kill myself, but it looks like I won’t have to at this place.”
Albert says his wife will probably leave him soon. He feels his family gradually pulling away, accepting that he won’t be coming home. They’ve stopped visiting and rarely take his calls, and he doesn’t blame them. He sees himself as a burden.
“I put myself in this war zone, but I’m scared,” he said. “So scared my guts shake most of the time.”
Before the days of contraband cell phones, gang-affiliated prisoners preyed upon people with CSA convictions the exact same way—they just got the information from staff. If your conviction has the word “child” in it, you enter prison with a target on your back knowing no one will help. Albert has recently found a bit of solace in the church community, but doesn’t want to get his hopes up that it will last.
Marty’s hair, beard and clothes are unwashed. This is a common defense strategy among those who are trying to avoid assault.
Marty*, also in prison for CSA, never knew his dad. His mom was just 14 when he was born. He thinks he was around 9 when his uncle and his mom’s boyfriends began raping him. At 12, he was sent into a foster home.
“I thought I’d finally be safe,” he said, “but I was so wrong.”
The sexual abuse continued in foster care. Twice he had to be treated for sexually transmitted infections. At 14 he ran away, and then lived mostly in homeless encampments until he entered the prison system at 21. The night he arrived, three men came into his cell with shanks and gang-raped him.
“Hit me in the head, dazed me,” he recalled. “All I could hear was them saying, Fresh meat. Like I was their hunting prize.”
The next time someone came into his cell, a few days later, Marty had a shank of his own and hit his assailant in the neck. The man died.
“I was crazy crying, waiting on the guards to get him off me,” he said. “[But] I knew then, no one would ever hurt me again … people know I’m half-crazy and will kill any motherfucker that comes at me wrong.”
He spent the next few years in maximum security and worked his way back down to general population, where he’s now been for most of the 14 years he’s served so far. He has 46 to go.
Marty lives in a state of constant rage. He spends his days hoping someone will come at him to start a fight, so he can “destroy them.” Despite his reputation now, the fear of being raped has never left him. He copes by isolating himself, owning nothing of value and maintaining a deliberately unkempt appearance. His hair, beard and clothes are unwashed. This is a common defense strategy among those who are trying to avoid assault.
“Being clean is a welcome sign to rape. If you want to get me, you got to get past my smell first,” he said. “I look like I feel inside: disgusting.”
Nearly everyone facing CSA charges takes a plea deal.
At the end of March, Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill expanding the circumstances under which the state could pursue the death penalty in child rape cases. One of them is if the defendant is on the sex offender registry. This will make it even easier to pressure people into the kinds of plea deals that nearly everyone facing CSA charges takes, partly to avoid the pain and humiliation of a trial for themselves and their families.
Albert was told that if he didn’t take a plea deal for 40 years, the state would ask for 75 years.
“I was not going to be alive for decades in prison,” he said. “So 75 or 40, it really didn’t matter.”
Marty pled for 60 years after being told that if he went to trial, the state would ask for 210 years. His lawyer told him that a 60-year sentence could be reduced if the laws ever changed, but that there was basically nothing he could do if he was sentenced to hundreds of years by a jury.
In my three decades in prison, and many articles about painful subjects, these were some of the most difficult conversations I’ve ever had. It reminded me of right after 9/11 happened, when suddenly it was normal for everyone to be talking about torture as an option to use on those who might have information. Some people were openly in favor of torture, by whatever means got results, while others thought only certain interrogation methods were appropriate.
When people hear that someone has a CSA conviction, that’s all they need to know to dismiss the person’s humanity. From other prisoners, I hear: “I don’t care what happens to those bastards”; “They’re just disgusting perverts”; “They’ve got to be sick in the head”; “I can see how someone may need to kill somebody, but I could never imagine hurting a kid.”
One in four people on the sex offender registry was a juvenile when they were convicted. Often people who sexually abuse children have similar abuse in their own backgrounds. But we seem to only care about victims when we’re trying to put people in prison.
Marty says he deserves to be in prison. But he finds it strange that the system wanted to “nail me to the cross” for doing the same thing others had done to him the whole time he was growing up. The system had never cared when it was happening to him.
Names have been changed
Image (cropped) via North Dakota Legislative Branch