Prison Reform

“My childhood ended early. I was sexually abused by two family members until the age of eleven. It happened every time I went to stay at my grandmother’s house. I didn’t feel like I could tell my mother or father. West Indian culture is a little different. We didn’t really talk like that. People wondered why I didn't act like a kid. They were always asking why I never smiled. I was angry all the time. I got suspended from school in 9th grade for fighting, because somebody touched my breast in the stairwell. The voices started later-- the Christmas after my father was murdered. I take injections for them today. But back then I didn’t see them as voices. I used to call them my friends. I really thought people were talking to me. They had different personalities. They always said bad things, like: ‘It’s not worth being alive.’ Or ‘Go ahead and kill yourself.’”

“One day I stole my neighbor’s benefit check out of the mailbox, and she came looking for it. I was in my mid-twenties, and by that time the voices were very strong. They were screaming at me to do bad things. They were telling me to protect myself. That I was in danger. So I went downstairs to the woman’s apartment where she lived with her ten-year-old daughter. I can’t remember this or I won’t sleep tonight. I kept vomiting while it happened. I didn’t sleep for two weeks. The woman and her daughter kept coming back to life and I would see them everywhere. One time I opened the shower curtain and the woman was standing there and I screamed. The detectives questioned me but they let me go. They didn’t suspect me. I went to Jamaica and lived for two years and nobody looked for me. But the images were always in my head. I couldn’t take it anymore. I went to the American embassy, and I told them: ‘I’ve committed a murder.’”

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