Redemption (30 page)

Going Public

n January 2002, we got word from Governor Holden’s office. He had seen my clemency petition already. Ellen and Mike came in person to deliver the news. We went to one of the private visiting rooms just for attorneys. It was tiny, and their presence overwhelmed me that day.

Mike spoke first. “Holden’s people said they just got into office, and they hope to win reelection. That could mean seven and a half years before they consider our case.”

I knew this was how it worked. I kept listening.

“His advisory board says the only way he’ll be able to release you, Stacey, is if you get public support behind you.”

Ellen interrupted Mike. “That means you have to go public.”

I didn’t have to think hard about that one. I immediately said, “But I can’t!”

“You have to,” Mike said, pretty much ignoring me. “Look, the best thing we have going for you is you. When people hear you and see you, they believe you. The only way we can get you out of here is by you helping you. All you have to do is be yourself.”

They might as well have told me I needed to sprout wings and fly to Mars. “I don’t want to do it,” I said. No way was I speaking more than I already had about what I’d been through. I was ashamed and afraid of my past. I thought they were crazy. “I can’t do it,” I added. I had spent most of my life building walls around myself for protection. It was one thing to let a few people in through Outreach. It was a whole different story to tell thousands of people—maybe more—about my story.

I viewed Mike as my protector. He promised me he would be very careful in handling requests to speak to me. He told me I could do it because he wouldn’t let any reporter hurt me.

I thought to myself,
But I’d be opening myself up to this huge amount of pain. How can you protect me from that?

I wasn’t myself during that meeting. I felt cold, shivery, and withdrawn. They didn’t quite understand what they were asking me to do. But if they thought it was my only way out, I knew I needed to at least consider what they were saying.

“How would we do it?”

“We don’t know,” Ellen said. “We’re going to look into it.”

By the time they left, I had said yes, I would go public with my story if that’s what it took. I felt nauseous the rest of the day. In my heart, I knew what had happened on that July 4. I knew what choices I had made, and I knew they were wrong. I knew I had to stand behind my actions and why I had taken them. I committed one of the worst crimes a person could commit—I took the life of someone in my family. Most people couldn’t even begin to fathom why a teenage girl would do that. I did it because I was sexually abused, and I didn’t know if I wanted to say that out loud to anyone ever again. Speaking it, would I be able to live with myself? I’d be opening myself up to so many questions. Was I prepared to answer them?

I just wasn’t emotionally ready. It had been ten years since the crime. I fought my demons every step of the way. In prison, people would ask me, “Would you do it again?” I feared that question. What was the right answer? Back then, I would’ve said, “Yes, I’d do it again to protect my sister.” But a small part of my conscience was rising up and saying, “Wait, maybe I wouldn’t have.”

It’s funny how life works. Shortly after that conversation with Mike and Ellen, a reporter from
Glamour
magazine called Mike. She had found me on FreeStaceyLannert.org, and she wanted to travel from New York City to Vandalia to do an interview.

Mike called me, prodding me to do it.

I said no.

He prodded me some more.

I said yes.

Next thing I knew, I was sitting across the table from a reporter, Kristen Kemp, and two cameramen in the private visiting room. I told her as much as I could. I told her what I had written in the clemency package. I told her about how Dad killed Christy’s cat Buttercup right in front of us. It was hard. I couldn’t warm up. I couldn’t believe I was giving information that would end up in a national magazine.

Kristen interviewed me slowly; we talked several times after the first big interview in person. She was patient. She wrote a story that wasn’t slanted for me or against me—she told the story straight down the line. But one thing was clear: she believed me.

God works in strange ways, and as painful as it was, I knew I had done the right thing. After the
Glamour
article came out, Montel Williams called.

Pressing

ontel wants me to do what?” I asked Ellen on the collect phone.

“They’re going to interview you from prison and do a live satellite interview on the show.” Ellen sounded eager. She wanted me to do it, but only with the best intentions.

“No,” I said. I hadn’t experienced much fallout from the
Glamour
article. It wasn’t like offenders read fashion magazines. My mother and sister had seen it, and they approved, though uncomfortably. The article included details about their lives, too.

A popular television show would be entirely different. TV reached more people. Everyone where I lived would not only see me on TV, they’d be glued to my episode. It was too much for me to bear.

“No,” I repeated.

“You can’t say no, Stacey,” Ellen said. “Unless you want to stay in prison forever. Then go ahead and say no.”

Mike called with the same spiel. He got me to say I’d think about it.

I reread
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
that night. It’s a fast book that I devoured time and again. I thought, if Maya Angelou can go public about her abuse by writing this book, I should find the strength to do it, too. I thought about Oprah Winfrey, who was outspoken about a family member who sexually abused her. She had helped so many people by being honest. I drew inspiration from those women. If they could do it, so could I.

The next day, I agreed to do the show. I was so nervous that I slept less soundly than usual for weeks until the TV crew showed up in January 2002 with their mikes and wires and cameras and questions. Under many security restrictions, Montel and I were put in a dark room while his crew worked in the background. He made me feel like he really cared, and he focused just on me. Instead of asking me things in chronological order, he would come back and forth to different topics, making it easier for me. It was overwhelming to have him there. But it felt good to tell him everything, just everything—more than I’d told
Glamour
. I got it all out, and I cried. The experience was very hard. I tried not to be embarrassed at what I’d said. And I tried even harder not to be embarrassed at the spectacle I had caused at the prison. I did not like to draw attention to myself.

After the interview, Montel’s producers contacted my mom and District Attorney Bob McCulloch. God help me when I thought about what those two might say. At this time Detective Tom Schulte was speaking out, too. The man who had taken my confession was going public saying (a) I was abused and (b) the punishment did not fit the crime. I wondered where he had been all those years, but that didn’t matter. He was there now, and I was thankful.

Five agonizing months went by until
Montel
aired. In the meantime, I did an interview with the show
Primetime Live
. All of this was happening to me so quickly and by God’s grace—without my being proactive. Kristen had found me in a Google search. Her
Glamour
piece led to national TV shows. It was surreal how things had happened, and how fast they happened. I was a nobody before January 2002.

On May 7, 2002, the episode of
Montel
aired. That day, I had two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, and two hours in the evening that I could walk in the yard for recreation. I stayed outside all day with my Walkman on. I knew the time was getting close to 4 p.m., airtime, and I thought that when I went back inside, my life would be different from then on. I had made it through the magazine interview, but now people I knew and didn’t know were going to see me. They were going to hear my story. I expected to be treated differently.

I was embarrassed and ashamed when I walked into the housing unit around four o’clock. I had to come in because it was almost count time, or else I would’ve stayed far away. I held my head down, but I could hear that every single TV set was on. As I walked down the hallways to get to my room, I saw my face on the screens. It just hurt so much because those people were going to know in detail what I had let happen to me. They could use my vulnerabilities against me. It was dangerous to be so vulnerable there. After the show, no one said anything to me about it. I stayed nervous.

The next morning, a few people mentioned that they saw me on
Montel
. I didn’t know how to answer, so I just nodded and put my head back down. I went to rec to work out. I was teaching classes by this time—I was certified in prison—and I really enjoyed helping others reach their goals. Exercising got me through that time. I did whatever I could to keep my mind off the publicity.

I wondered how on earth I’d let Ellen and Mike talk me into it.

A few days later, I was sitting at a table in the dayroom for mail call. We had to be there, but I wasn’t concerned about it. I rarely received mail. The officer called “Stacey Lannert” over and over again. I kept getting up to pick up my letters—I must’ve stood up twenty-five times. The mail was from names I didn’t recognize. I sat down and opened the first letter:

“Hello. My name is Sharon. I saw you, and I went through the same thing. Thank you for telling your story. Now I might be able to tell mine.”

The next letter was almost the same: “Thank you for telling your story. I have one that I need to share one day. Love, Michele.”

A special woman named Kristi Knotts contacted me and put up an online petition that eventually gathered more than ten thousand signatures on my behalf. A man from Australia, Graham McAllister also saw the show, and he offered to take over my Web site, FreeStaceyLannert.org, when Ellen became overwhelmed with it. I couldn’t believe the support I received—from total strangers. Jean Hensley Besner was inspired to start her own movement in Canada, gathering signatures and getting nuns to pray for me.

All that time, I thought I was doing something just for me because I wanted to go home. I needed publicity and public support to get myself out of prison. I didn’t realize that I was actually doing something much bigger. Because I’d gone through so much and lived to tell about it, I could make a difference in people’s lives. The letters that came for days and days made it okay for me to be me for the first time in my life. Maybe my speaking out really did help people become more aware and less ashamed of sexual abuse. That was a new and empowering thought. I started to think that we could all stop being victims and start being victors. It was enlightening. The encouragements I’d read in my
Courage to Heal Workbook
were finally making sense and coming true for me. I was shocked at this transformation. I didn’t have to be embarrassed anymore. The whole world knew the real me. Even the prisoners were supportive; not one person gave me any trouble about what I’d said on TV.

For the first time, I had nothing to hide, and I started to feel a sense of freedom.

Puppy Love

had high hopes for my clemency package. I still had a few years to wait. Holden wouldn’t be leaving office until 2004, and that was only if he didn’t get reelected. I had to find constructive, healthy, and happy ways to pass the long days of prison.

But I was still me. I stuck to my own handful of friends—by this time, our group included Sabrina, who was at Vandalia for a while before her release. I was introverted mostly—except when I was teaching step classes or volunteering to lead bingo or take pictures for the photo committee. If I didn’t get too close to others, they couldn’t leave me, hurt me, or worse, die on me.

Then there was all this talk about the dogs. One of the prisons in the state of Washington had a service dog program where inmates trained canines to help homebound people become more independent. Janet Cole, the founder of Canine Helpers Allow More Possibilities (C.H.A.M.P.), called Vandalia to see if the women and the facility would be interested in letting her come. The director of training, Mary Ruth, would be coming in, too.

Dogs? Most of the women—like me—craved love and companionship. Many of them—like me—were also dog fanatics. Of course we were interested! But I was cynical. There was a lot of paperwork and red tape to go through. In prison, things get messed up really quickly for the dumbest reasons. Surprisingly, prison officials thought bringing C.H.A.M.P. onto our campus was a good idea.

In July, the first strong, friendly dogs arrived. I was interested, but I didn’t trust the program. It was too good to be true. I was afraid that if I got involved, it would be taken away. I didn’t know if I could handle the heartbreak of losing another dog. All it would take to get C.H.A.M.P. kicked out was one person breaking one rule. But I watched Janet and Mary work from afar. They were amazingly kind and patient. Mary was truly a dog whisperer. And the dogs were going to help people in need. Everything about the program appealed to me.

The first two dogs at the prison were golden retriever puppies named Finders and Keepers. My friend Jennifer started training Finders and brought him over to me in the yard. I petted him and looked into his happy eyes. They were the first dogs to stay with inmates twenty-four hours a day for training. I thought,
Okay, that’s it. I gotta do this. I gotta give it a shot
. I had a hard shell around my heart, and I would have to take the chance that it would crack.

I had to fill out an application to see if Janet and her trainers were interested in me. They liked my application, which included many recommendations, and brought me in for an interview. They convinced me to quit my great job at the rec center. I was hired along with eleven other women—many of them my friends. Four people already had their own dogs. I got the fifth dog right after I was hired.

Before I could get a dog, they had to train me. I even had to spend time in a wheelchair, so I would understand what our clients’ lives were like. I dedicated myself to the program and to my dog, a beautiful white lab named Tory. He and his crate moved into my cell. I had to move the table out of our room, and I put him underneath the window. My roommates didn’t mind—they loved the dog. He was with me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. He went everywhere with me. If I went to work out, Tory came, too. If I was teaching aerobics classes, he’d lie down and wait for me. Sometimes, just for fun, I’d tell him to get up because he knew how to follow some of the class moves. He could side pass while I did the grapevine, and everyone liked that. Tory could walk forward to a count of four, then walk back. He’d stay by my side doing aerobics until I told him to lie down.

My time with Tory was just wonderful. It lasted only a year. Tory was such a joy; he taught me as much as I taught him. I learned about patience, pride, and the ability to let go.

He changed my view of forgiveness. I made a ton of mistakes training him. I would say the wrong words, give the wrong hand signals, and send him confusing messages by accident. I would become impatient, frustrated, and upset when he would not perform the way I wanted him to. But I was a softie.

I would give him a command—something he knew darn well—and he would just sit there and stare at me with his big brown eyes, waving his thick tail. I knew he was laughing at me inside. Eventually, I learned to laugh back. I didn’t have the heart to correct him because I loved him and didn’t want to scold him. I let him get away with all kinds of things.

Mary Ruth, the training director, took me aside and said, “You need to be more firm with Tory.”

“I can’t; it hurts me to correct him,” I said.

“I understand that, but you aren’t being fair to him. Tory needs your leadership, not your acceptance. If you do not correct him, you are not leading him. He will not understand why he is being corrected by me for doing the same things you let him do. You are hurting him instead of teaching him,” she explained.

That was a hard one to chew on. I had to step up and be a leader or walk away from Tory. I didn’t know if I could stand the look of betrayal in his eyes when I gave him his first correction. What would happen when I told him to sit and he ignored me, causing me to physically pull up his collar to make him sit? I asked him to sit again, and he ignored me. I did the gentle correction, and he got the message. I reached down slowly and pulled up on his collar so his rear end would go to the ground. His eyes were mad at me:
How dare you punish me
. I was big bad Stacey there for a minute. He wondered where his treats were, and where was the fun Stacey who played with him? I asked him to sit again, and he did it.

Then we played his favorite game, tug-of-war, and all was right in Tory’s world again. Tory forgave me instantly, no strings attached. The stunning realization that this dog could forgive me so easily filled my heart. If this wonderful and simple creature of God had the capacity to forgive me, I had to ask myself,
Who was I
not
to forgive?

I had to ask God to help me forgive my father and myself. God grants forgiveness and forgiveness means freedom. I didn’t have to forget, I just had to cut myself some slack. I needed to show myself loving-kindness and realize that, yes, I made a tragic choice. But finally, after taking a long, hard road, I now knew better.

I loved that dog, and letting him go to his new owner, a handicapped woman named MJ, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. He had grown from an untrained puppy into an excellent service dog. In the morning, he would come out of his crate totally happy and full of energy. He wagged his tail and wiggled his butt. He’d pick up a bone or toy to show it to me. He always snorted. I would miss that snort more than anything else.

He was my heart, my joy, and my serenity. But Tory gave MJ something I didn’t have—freedom. I knew I had done right. I had helped another. Tory also gave her friendship. I tried not to be selfish, because she needed him even more than I did. But when he left, I cried so hard. Mrs. Ruth found me and gave me a big hug. A woman named Nola videotaped Tory’s first meeting with MJ, and their connection was close immediately. It warmed my heart to see them working and bonding together. Still, there was emptiness in my heart that took a long time to subside. This time, though, my heart didn’t harden. And I knew I would be okay.

I agreed to train more dogs. I was good at this job, and I lived for it. I trained numerous dogs during the following years of incarceration, and each one taught me a specific lesson.

For example, Nelson, Tory’s little brother, taught me how to survive graciously. When he was in a puppy home—a volunteer was keeping him—he was attacked and nearly killed by another dog. I took to him immediately, scars and all. I begged the C.H.A.M.P. staff for the opportunity to train him to help me get over the loss of Tory. Nelson not only survived, he thrived. He made me realize I didn’t need to control my future again. Things turn out okay; everything is in God’s hands.

Shadow, like Tory, taught me the power of forgiveness. C.H.A.M.P. rescued him after his owner died. He was a stray, hanging around his master’s home, when a neighbor shot him. Even with a bullet in his leg, he still loved humans. I needed to learn to still love people, and I did.

Thor taught me patience, humor, and acceptance. He was one goofy golden retriever. He liked to play all the time; training him was often futile. Accepting him for who he was—instead of who I wanted him to be—set me free.