In the Spider's Web
Page 16
Once, on impulse, Christy kissed her in view of a corrections officer. Both women were placed in Segregation, “the hole.” When they got out of the hole, a different corrections officer told Caitlin that if the officers don’t see anything that indicates an intimate relationship between inmates, and don’t hear anything about it from other inmates, then they can ignore it. But when someone flaunts it, she has to expect consequences. Caitlin’s and Christy’s friendship endured, but their hope of living together in the same room ended.
For several years Caitlin had talked about appealing to the governor for clemency. She had delayed because she was afraid of being turned down. She remembered how devastated she had been when her appeal for resentencing was rejected. Still, she had not given up on the idea of clemency and had even researched attorneys who specialized in clemency appeals.
Now, however, she decided not to pursue it. She would serve the rest of her time, much as she hated being in prison. “You have no idea what it’s like,” she said. If she behaved well, she could be paroled in eight years. Christy would get out in nine. In the year between their release dates, Caitlin planned to get a job and an apartment and establish herself so that when Christy got out, Caitlin could help her with her transition to life on the outside.
AFTERWORD
In the Spider’s Web is the second of three books concerned with my experience and the experiences of children I knew when I was a rehabilitation counselor in the institution I call Ash Meadow. The first book, the bulk of the journal I kept during my years there, was published under the title Paranoia & Heartbreak: Fifteen Years in a Juvenile Facility. Readers of that book will have recognized several of the characters encountered in In the Spider’s Web.
Readers of this book who have not read Paranoia & Heartbreak may want to know more about Norah Joines whom I have mentioned in Spider’s Web; her life is treated more fully in the former book. Also, she is included in my personal essay, “Days with the Thugs,” in the essay collection, How I Learned That I Could Push the Button. She is not named in that essay, but is described as a “gang kid” and one of my favorites of the kids I had known in Ash Meadow.
My aim in these books has been to depict, as accurately as I can, incarcerated children not as living their lives apart from the mainstream of American society, but as an adjunct to it, perhaps even a necessary adjunct. Certainly the unhappiness in their lives is an American creation, in the same way that the contentment in other people’s lives is.
GLOSSARY
ART: Aggression Replacement Training.
Black Gangster Disciples: a gang.
Bloods: a gang.
Committing Offense group: see CO group.
CO group: Committing Offense group. A group attended by staff and residents wherein one resident disclosed the details and repercussions of the crime he was convicted of. In Wolf Cottage, the resident was required to do his CO group before attaining his Level A, the first level.
CPS: Child Protective Services
Craft room: a room in each cottage designated for the teaching and practicing of crafts such as beadwork and leatherwork. The craft room was also used for facilitating small treatment groups.
Crips: a gang.
DBT: Dialectical Behavior Therapy.
DOC: Department of Corrections. The state agency that oversees the adult prison and parole systems.
Guardian ad Litem: in the juvenile justice context, a person appointed by the court to advocate for the best interests of the child.
Intermittent: a substitute for counselors or security officers on vacation or sick leave, or who filled in when a permanent position was vacant.
Level: a position in a hierarchy—the level system—that, upon attaining it by good behavior and progress in treatment, rewarded residents with specific privileges. In Wolf Cottage, there were three levels above that of Tables: A, B, and C, C being the highest.
MAYSI: Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument. Questionnaire given to all residents within thirty days of being assigned to a cottage. When completed, it provides an idea of the emotional state of the resident.
OD: Officer of the Day. The OD was responsible for specific administrative duties in the absence of other administrators, i.e., after business hours, on weekends and holidays.
Officer of the Day: see OD.
Off program: see OP.
OP: off program. A resident’s confinement to his room for having committed behavioral misdeeds.
PTSD: Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.
Resident: a prisoner.
Set: a subset of a gang. In this sense, a gang may be regarded as an aggregation of sets.
Sherm: a marijuana or tobacco cigarette soaked in formaldehyde, allowed to dry, then smoked. Also called “wet.”
SPL: Suicide Prevention Level. For most of my time at Ash Meadow, there were three levels of SPL: I, II, and III. A resident on SPL I required constant observation, a counselor with him at every moment. A resident on SPL II required a counselor to observe him every five minutes, and a resident on SPL III, every fifteen minutes. Later in my tenure, a fourth level, SPL IV, was added. Now SPL I’s, II’s, and III’s required the observing counselor to log on the resident under watch every five, ten, or fifteen minutes, respectively; a resident on SPL IV did not require special logging, only a heightened awareness by staff as to where the resident was at any time and what he was doing.
Tables: one of the most restrictive of cottage punishments. On Tables status, a resident was required to spend all of his free time sitting silently and alone at a table in the dining room, while residents not on Tables were permitted to watch television in the living room, talk with other residents, or go outside. Residents new to Wolf Cottage were required to spend their first week on Tables.
Zone: Each cottage at Ash Meadow had four “zones,” or corridors, radiating out from the living room, dining room, and kitchen, which were located centrally. Zones were numbered 1 through 4. From the front door, facing into the cottage, Zone 1 was to the immediate left. Then, counting clockwise, there were zones 2, 3, and 4. As the cottages were rectangular in shape, Zones 1 and 2 were located to the left of the common areas, Zones 3 and 4 to the right. Each zone had four bedrooms, each room having a unique number in the cottage. Zone 1 was composed of Rooms 1 through 4; Zone 2, Rooms 5 through 8, and so on. Each zone had one bathroom, or “head,” shared by the residents of that zone.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Ash Meadow Staff
Dr. Bergeron—Psychiatrist
Bernie—Wolf Cottage counselor.
Bill—Security officer.
Boyd—Fox Cottage counselor.
Cami—Wolf Cottage counselor.
Casey—Intermittent.
Celia Barney—Associate Superintendent.
Charlie Patterson—Wolf Cottage counselor.
Clara Beam—Associate Superintendent.
Cory—Security officer.
Dick—Wolf Cottage counselor.
Don Martino—Associate Superintendent.
Doug—Serpent Cottage counselor.
Ed Horgan—Chaplain.
Ernest—Wolf Cottage counselor.
Farleigh—Intermittent.
Frank—Wolf Cottage counselor.
Ian—Recreation Department staff.
Jan—Wolf Cottage Director.
Jenny—Serpent Cottage Director.
Jerry—Wolf Cottage counselor. The author.
Julius—Wolf Cottage counselor.
Karin—Serpent Cottage counselor.
Tim King—Wolf Cottage counselor.
Larisse—Caitlin’s guardian ad litem.
Layton—Wolf Cottage Supervisor
Maggie—Wolf Cottage counselor.
Margareta—Wolf Cottage counselor.
Newt Smith—Chief of Security.
Dick Teale—Wolf Cottage counselor.
Trent—Serpent Cottage counselor.
Dr. Williams—Chief of Psychiatric Services
Residents
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Ahmed Williams
Angie
Birdie Forrest
Caitlin Weber
Carl
Carmen Young
Charles Burns
Christopher
Daniel Bragg
Derek
Donita
Durell
Jacob
Jaime
James Johnson
Jasmine Nunn
Jazz
Jeremiah Court
Johnny Graves
Kenny
Kyla Nelson
Lani Hyatt
Michael Reichert
Oscar
Paula
Peter Kasser
Renaldo Tarr
Sonia
Tessa
Trace Austin
Walter
Other Persons Known to the Author or to Residents
Christy—Caitlin Weber’s friend at Washington Corrections Center for Women.
Darlene—Liaison between Washington Correction Center for Women and Ash Meadow.
Deborah Kasser—Peter Kasser’s mother.
Jerry Jonas—Victim of murder by Linda Weber, Caitlin Weber, Sonia, Walter, Lucas York, and Kelly Parrish.
Johnny Wren—Poet.
Kelly Parrish—Participant in the murder of Jerry Jonas.
Linda Weber—Caitlin Weber’s mother; participant in the murder of Jerry Jonas.
Lucas York—Participant in the murder of Jerry Jonas.
Marie Nunn—Jasmine Nunn’s mother.
Martin Lyons—Former resident of Ash Meadow.
Norah Joines—Former resident of Ash Meadow.
Robert—Daniel Bragg’s brother.
Todd Jonas—Jerry Jonas’ son.
Willie Bolles—Former resident of Ash Meadow.
JEROME GOLD is the author of fifteen books, including The Moral Life of Soldiers, Sergeant Dickinson, a novel based in part on his experience in the Vietnam War, and Paranoia & Heartbreak: Fifteen Years in a Juvenile Facility, a memoir based on the years he spent as a juvenile rehabilitation counselor in a prison for children. He has lived in or near Seattle, Washington for more than half his life.
*Information about his abuse of women comes from Jonas’ arrest record. Several months after I became Caitlin’s case manager, someone put a copy of it in my inbox in Wolf Cottage. I never learned who.
*I had copied these photographs from Ernst Friedrich’s book, War against War!, The Real Comet Press, Seattle, Washington 1987.
*As Caitlin’s case manager, I was required to read her outgoing mail.
*In the years since this hearing, I have told Caitlin’s story to a number of women. Most professed not to understand the relationship between Caitlin’s emotional make-up, her dependency on her mother, and her participation in the murder. Occasionally I have met someone who did understand. Almost invariably, she herself had been the victim of her own mother’s violence. One woman told me, “I was so afraid of my mother, I would have done anything to please her. If she had told me to kill somebody, I would have done it.”
*Nearly a decade earlier, the Washington Supreme Court prohibited execution of anyone under the age of eighteen.
†The state was represented by a two-man prosecution team. However, Caitlin, Sonia, and Caitlin’s father all alluded to a particular member of that team. Thus, I have also. “The prosecutor” refers to that person.
*I have written this paragraph in the first person to convey what was in my mind—or, more accurately, what dominated my emotions—as I tried to come to terms with the beating of James Johnson and my role in it. I was not the young lieutenant who shot one of his own soldiers, but I had thought about him often, and the circumstance he found himself in. Sometimes, reading a scene in a novel that, however indirectly, related to the lieutenant’s situation, I would suddenly see the child and the woman and Maurice St. Pierre not through my friend’s eyes, but as though I were seeing them with my own, as if I were revisiting an experience in my own history contained in my own memory. I could feel “again” the rage I felt toward St. Pierre, recall “again” the adrenalin rush through my body, taste it “again” as it filled my mouth. It was not my memory, but it may as well have been.
I am not unique. Oliver Sacks, in his book Uncle Tungsten, described the burning of a German thermite bomb that landed behind his family’s London house during the Blitz. It was “hissing and sputtering” when water was thrown on it, and “melting its own casing and throwing blobs and jets of molten metal in all directions.” He described it as he had seen it. But, although he believed he had seen it, he hadn’t. It was not until after Uncle Tungsten was published that he learned he had not been present during the incident, but had been away with his brother. Another brother who had, with their father, tried to extinguish the burning bomb, had written them afterward, a “very vivid, dramatic letter.” “Clearly,” Sacks writes, “I…must have constructed the scene in my mind, from David’s words, and then appropriated it, and taken it for a memory of my own” (Oliver Sacks, “Speak, Memory,” The New York Review of Books, February 21, 2013: p. 19).