Forget You Had a Daughter - Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton (31 page)

All the prisoners lived on top of each other within foot-thick-plus walls of stone. Despite a difference in construction material, they reminded me of the gerbil cage my brother had made for my pets one Christmas.They also brought to mind the experiments scien- tists perform on rats in laboratories, where they allow the population to grow to see what happens when too many are placed in a confined area for too long.The results are devastating in a lab, and equally devastating when it is people who are forced to live so close together for a prolonged period of time. Here, reality was skewed.

How do people behave in prison? Well, it didn’t take long to realise that groups, both prisoners and officers, were bad, often leading to brutality and rarely leading to passivity. Brutality counts on the certainty that time will heal bruises.

Boredom drives prisoners to ever more pornographic and degrading treatment of themselves and other prisoners. Prisoners suffered from emotional disturbance, uncontrollable crying and uncoordinated fury. Simple things like gossip turned vicious with sometimes-terrible consequences. There were frequent bouts of terrible self-mutilation; frenzied lesbian circles and violence were the norm.An arbitrary division of oppressors and oppressed exists before long, within a framework of punishments and privileges.

Years ago British prisons were full of inmates smoking cannabis and, according to prison lore, many of the officers used to turn a blind eye to it all. Many of them said that when the inmates were smoking cannabis the wings were calm and relatively quiet and overall a landing full of stoned prisoners made their jobs a whole lot easier.

In
1996
all prisons in England and Wales were told to start carrying out mandatory drug tests (MDTs) and a prisoner had to provide a urine sample, every four weeks, at least.The penalties for a positive drug test are severe, regardless of the drug being used. Cannabis traces stay within a person’s system for up to
28
days, while traces of heroin are washed out in just a couple of days.

Post-
1996
most prisoners stopped smoking cannabis and turned to heroin, because the chances of them giving a positive test were greatly reduced. If someone got a package of heroin on a Friday, smoked it all over the weekend and didn’t get a test until Wednesday they would be in the clear. But if they had been smoking cannabis for two days they would not be clear for about a month.

I have met women who came into prison having taken nothing more than a bit of hash in the evenings but who developed a taste

for heroin inside. Upon their release they joined the ranks of heroin addicts. Tobacco and phone cards were once the main commodities in prison; now it is heroin. While a lump of hash lasts a prisoner a fair length of time, a small wrap of heroin doesn’t last very long and the frenzy people get into trying to get more of the stuff is horrendous. Heroin in prison is expensive and many inmates develop huge debts, which they cannot pay off, and the violence that has resulted from the use of heroin in prisons is terrible. Durham was no different.

For months I appealed the move to Durham. I wrote to Home Office ministers and the ombudsman, and spoke to security offi- cers, governors and guards, but none of them would listen to me. Every one of them was convinced I had been up to something in Foston Hall and the frustration drove me round the bend. Self- harming and suicide attempts are commonplace on H-wing and I began wishing I were brave enough to have a go.

One woman left an almost tangible legacy. She had been so determined to kill herself that one night after lock-in she lay face down on the floor with her knees bent and her feet up behind her back. She had ripped a sheet into a rope and tied one end around her ankles and put the other end around her neck.Then she slowly pulled her legs straight and suffocated herself.They said it proba- bly took at least
10
minutes for that woman to die. Every minute she must have wondered if she was doing the right thing. At the time she probably was.

I started looking at doorknobs and anything else I could hang myself from; I just didn’t want to do all this any more.They were killing me. I felt as though I was being microwaved from the inside out.

I had carried a card for years that was printed with the words: ‘The truth defends itself. Only lies need defending all the time.’ In Durham I threw the card away because I no longer believed those stupid words. Maybe the truthful approach was not the best way to

get through life. Despite my stupid mistake, I didn’t want to live a dishonest life, but maybe it would be easier for me if I did.

While the cell area of Durham resembled a cupboard, out on the wing we fared little better, as there was nowhere to go and little to do. Everybody watched everybody else and mostly I just sat looking at my surroundings, amazed that a place like this still existed.

The exercise yard for H-wing inhabitants was a triangular area of tarmac, roughly
20
paces by
11
paces by
14
paces. Penned in by two parallel fences and two walls of the prison, between the fences a dog and his handler would pace backwards and forwards whenever we were out there for our
20
minutes of fresh air. If the weather was deemed ‘inclement’ then no one got out that day at all.

Boredom set in.When boredom set in, self-mutilation was not far behind. It was not a major issue on H-wing – it was a competi- tion. Women would use anything they could find to open their flesh. Some bent a phone card in half to produce a sharp enough edge to slice through muscle; others rubbed their arm with a new scouring pad for a few hours.You’d be amazed how much skin comes away.

One woman broke a plate during lunch one day and opened her throat from just inside the jugular to just inside on the other side with the sharp edge.The following afternoon her friend did the same. A few days later the first woman slashed her arms open from elbow to wrist and the same afternoon the friend gouged out such a groove on the inside of her leg that the doctor thought he would have to amputate. Self-harming is very common among women prisoners; it is usually to do with control, so those who do such things normally know what they are doing, and don’t usually die. The madness of H-wing was infectious. Many times I thought,
I am in a fucking nuthouse
.

A woman I had always considered one of the better-adjusted individuals filled two flasks with boiling water and, behind a

closed door, took off her shirt and poured the lot over herself. Her skin melted away in sheets.

That was the sort of thing that happened regularly and people just got on with their lives. Everyone stopped caring. I stopped caring. I couldn’t give a rat’s arse who was winning the mutilation marathon.
Fuck them, fuck them all.
The staff stopped caring, because the madness had become normal.They would, of course, go through all the motions, fill in the forms, sound conciliatory, but really, deep down, no one cared. No one gave it a second thought. Ripped flesh? Pass me a teabag. Gouged eyes? What’s on the telly? Sliced from tit to tendon? One lump or two?

The two women who had been ripping themselves to bits later slit their throats and no one really cared.All it meant to us was that we all got locked in because the guards had to take them out to hospital; we were overtime and money. The paperwork, said the officers, was ‘a bastard’.

I was on the telephone one day and a woman fell to the ground at my feet, jerking and convulsing in an epileptic fit.Thick, runny blood was pouring out from somewhere on her face, and I just moved over slightly and carried on with my conversation. I actu- ally felt like kicking her for interrupting me.
Don’t take a fit in front of me, in fact, don’t take one at all because we’ll all just be locked in for the night, thank you.

I had lost all sympathy, and I no longer cared. Blood and fits and fires and self-harming and women sliced in two were simply slight inconveniences.
Your Honour, this is prison life.
They trimmed your fat to the heart in Durham.

14
October
1998

Dear Mum and Dad

Today I began a two-week stretch of solitary confinement, I shall be locked in
23
hours a day for the next
14
days, and so I won’t be able to phone you. A lass set fire to her cell and then bit an officer on the chest the other day and she got three days behind her door.

So, I hear you wondering what my crime is… well, worse than arson or assault, I’ve got a bad back… I really don’t care any more though…

Sandra

I found myself in solitary confinement. My crime? I had trapped a nerve in my back while competing in a triathlon for charity in Holloway and the injury had flared up when I got to Durham. I had been limping for nearly a year but the doctor in Durham said the job I had been given on the wing (I was a painter and I was turning the place from bubble-gum pink to pale green), was sup- posedly making the back problem worse.The doctor ordered that I be placed on ‘cell-rest’. So, I began a two-week stretch of solitary, which meant being locked up for
23
hours every day, for the next
14
days.

Dear Mum and Dad

In here alone I find my mood swings extreme. I don’t want them to ever open the door again. I would prefer to do the rest of my time totally alone, just emerging for a wash and a flask of hot water.

Solitary was a relief and I felt as though I had been granted a holiday. I no longer needed to come out of the cell, and no longer had to do anything because there was nothing to do. No one could speak to me and I didn’t have to speak with anyone. I sat in that cell for two weeks, retreating into my own world with my two lovebirds.The birds were the only things I cared about.

When I finally got off solitary I had to pretend that I was OK, but I was desperately unhappy that I had to be with other prison- ers. The rule in prison is not to let anyone know how you are really feeling and the best way of doing that is to laugh and pretend you are fine.The Thais were right, I suppose, crying does make you feel worse and self-pity does no good, so you may as well smile.

November
1998

Dear Mum and Dad

These people are indeed mad… I am beyond anger… surrounded by evil; it is not the inmates I fear but the staff. Because I neither kick-off nor kiss-ass they don’t seem to know what I’m about.They are trying to kill me, slowly from the soul outwards. My head is totally shattered… I’d be up for a lobotomy if they were still allowed to perform them.

Sandra

My mum and dad thought I was going to kill myself because I giggled when I phoned them. I had tried to keep my head together and not let my parents know how bad I was feeling there, but they figured things out for themselves and were almost expecting an official letter arriving to tell them I had been found hanging. They resolved to do something about my imprisonment.

We had all believed that the Foreign Office would agree to support my pardon when the time came to submit it, but when I got to the UK and asked for official support I was sent an official letter saying they could not because there were no ‘compassionate or humanitarian’ grounds to do so.

Up until this point my parents had taken the advice of the gov- ernment and kept their profiles low. For years they had barely said two words to the media but after the response from the Foreign Office they lost their faith in the hitherto-great British establish- ment. Did I mind if they ‘went public’? they asked me. I most certainly did mind.The last thing I wanted was my family parad- ing themselves in public for my cause: I wanted them to just get on with their own lives.

My parents had firmly believed that the British government would support two upstanding, law-abiding members of middle- class society in their times of need. When this was denied them, they resolved to come out fighting.

The Foreign Office had supported so many others; I wrote to Prime Minister Tony Blair asking him why all the others had been helped and why would he not help my parents. My lawyer and Liberal Democrat MP Malcolm Bruce had had a meeting with Baroness Symons. The government refused to give in to quiet negotiations. Essentially they told us all to fuck off.

My dad always made go-carts, seesaws and sledges when we were children, and built and mended things around our house. After more than five years of adhering to government advice, he decided to fix things himself. He had had enough. Although it would have pained them to admit it, they knew I deserved to be in prison, but the idea of my having to serve at least
11
more years and possibly almost
20
was just too much for them.

So my mum and dad decided to go public. One day my mum told me that I should try and watch the early morning programme,
Kilroy
, on television. Every morning, at
9
.
00
am, for a week, I watched
Kilroy
. When the show they were appearing on finally came on, I almost died. They were right there, airing all their dirty laundry on the BBC, trying to help their stupid daughter. Another time, shortly after
Kilroy
, the door of my cell banged loudly and a guard told me to turn on
GMTV
, and there they were again. This time they were being filmed from their own living-room. I hated it. It was as though they were there in Durham with me, keeping vigil.

Soon they were in newspapers and posing for the cameras. Gradually, the momentum gathered. They did radio interviews, magazines, television and as many papers as would grant them column inches. They wrote thousands of letters to MPs, MSPs, MEPs, church ministers, bishops and archbishops. Not only did they campaign, costing them thousands of pounds, but they continued to send parcels and clothes in to me as well. Despite my reservations about the campaign, it

seemed to be having some effect. The media had taken notice. Gradually the politicians were looking at my case. Secretly, I kept my fingers crossed.