Report From the Weekend
The wedding with all its energy, the Saturday morning prayer breakfast, and the Sunday service were all standard fare. Just a busy weekend for a minister.
But the prison visit yesterday moved me deeply. J. is a distant relative. Something of a cousin, but we were never close. She’s in her mid 30s now. When she was about 30, she was a science teacher and had an affair with a boy from the school. Statutory Rape. She was deeply disturbed at the time and dealing with some complex issues that I won't go into.
She deserves to be punished. We cannot let schoolteachers compromise our trust in this way. And what she did deserves to be called rape. Her charge is officially listed as sexual assault on a minor, which doesn’t exactly reflect the nature of what happened. It has a pedophile ring to it that doesn’t quite fit, but “this is her reality,” as she said. She is a convicted sex offender, and that label will follow her forever.
She is serving hard time in a Texas prison. Five years with no possibility of parole. I will make no comment about what she deserves. I don’t know her well enough to say. This is her sentence and there is no getting around it.
I hadn't seen J. in a few years. When she came into the visitation room yesterday, I was shocked at how “hard” she looked. She’s done three years on her five, but the marks on her face look like fifteen.
I have nothing to say about the details of our visit. I listened to her for two hours and held her hand when she cried. I heard stories about life in a Texas prison that shocked me. I know prison life is tough; we all know that. I think we also know that many times it is much tougher than the inmates deserve. There are many people, like my cousin, who are not street wise and are simply thrown to the wolves.
I’m not sure what J. deserves. I cannot make that call. She certainly deserved to be stopped, fired, and punished in some way.
I left there yesterday knowing only one thing for sure. She does not deserve what is happening to her every day behind those bars. She has not been seriously assaulted so far, but that threat hangs over her head every day. The real damage comes from being dehumanized daily in needless ways.
Life in a Texas prison is death by a thousand cuts.
J. is smart, educated, repentant, and highly motivated to get out and rebuild some kind of life for herself. She has to use every possible resource she has, mental and physical, to avoid being beaten, raped, or harmed in some way. This is a startling new reality for her, but in spite of how terrible that sounds, her biggest fear is the guards. This is a privately operated prison in a small town. The guards make slightly above minimum wage, and in many cases, are just a step or two away from prison themselves. They are angry, resentful, and have terrible power to punish.
It’s a jungle in there, and it takes everything she has to avoid being eaten alive doing her five.
Now imagine how she would fare if, like so many inmates, she was uneducated, abused throughout her childhood, and had no hope for any better life outside.
8:46:20 AM 
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