Category Archives: rape

Bad Willie

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VINCE

We’re sitting in treatment in a windowless room, when all hell breaks loose.  We know the clouds were darker than usual when we came here.  The chemical dependency building is about 150 feet away from the barracks.  We march over.

It sounds as if a million woodpeckers are searching the corrugated metal roof for their dinner.  It’s deafening.  I know it’s a hail storm, but others don’t because they can’t see it.

Our counselor leaves the room briefly and comes right back, to tell us we can go look outside.  And what I see is cool as hell.  The ground is covered in what looks like those 1 cent white mint-flavored gum balls and golf balls.  The ground is being bombarded by these in the millions.  It’s been only two minutes since I heard the first one hit the roof, and already they’re three inches deep.

Accompanying the hail is a rain so heavy that it, too, appears white and forms a wall that blocks our view of everything else.  It’s beautiful.  I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.

Ten minutes later…heavy rain continues.  Something tells me I’m going to be very busy tomorrow on Restorative Justice Work Crew.  If there’s any damage from the storm such as downed trees or even flooding, we’ll be there to clear debris, make sandbags, and do whatever else we can to help.  I’ll write more after treatment.  (Treatment is really boring today.)

—

Back in the barracks.  I can see out of a window again!

The sun is out, the ground is still covered with hail, but it’s melting and creating fog, so it looks like the hail is slowly crawling its way back up to the clouds.

—

The hailstorm nearly wiped out our entire crop.  Over four acres, no, maybe six acres…dang.  I don’t recall.  But it destroyed a lot of organic matter.  It also caused some minor flooding in Willow River so today myself and eight others swept and shoveled all of the sand and dirt left on Main Street.  Six hours of sand removal.  Ugh.

It was another exhausting day.  As it turned out, wet sand is just as heavy as cement.  Who knew.  I’m happy that this day is over.  69 days and a wake up.

[ANNE: There’s been a lot of buzz lately about Obama’s clemency program.  As of this writing, he has commuted the sentences of 68 prisoners, some of whom had been sentenced to life in prison for nonviolent drug offenses.

As I understand it, the program is only available to federal prisoners.  I don’t know the total pool of prisoners who were eligible, but 30,000 applied.  So 68 were granted clemency out of 30,000…and that doesn’t take into account prisoners like Vince, who are not federal prisoners.

Well, the intention is good, and it’s a start and just one part of the overall momentum to reform drug and sentencing laws.

What they are really afraid of on the Democratic side is another Willie Horton.  He’s the prisoner who was furloughed for a weekend while serving a life sentence for murder.  He decided to spend his weekend committing assault, armed robbery, and rape.  The incident torpedoed the presidential campaign of Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis.  Such an incident couldn’t be pinned on Hillary Clinton, but it would feed into the Republican narrative that Democrats are weak, and soft on crime.

California Dreaming

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ANNE

And then Kermit changed his mind. He just wasn’t ready to get married. It was too late for me to keep my job or housing. He mailed me a check to carry me over for a month.

—

So Vince and I never moved to California. Instead, we moved into a friend’s unheated attic that winter until we could get a foothold and start over. Then we moved again, and that didn’t work out, so we moved again. Vince changed schools three times that year. I started working as a freelance writer so I could say I was self employed instead of unemployed. Also because I was too depressed to get out of bed, so woodenly depressed that I wasn’t thinking about Vince. Facing the impact of my behavior on him would have produced such massive guilt that it would have pushed me over the edge.

—

But wait, there’s more!

I went back to Kermit, after months of him apologizing, begging, wooing, and having massive bouquets of flowers delivered to my door.

And so Kermit and Vince and I flew back and forth, and the hurled Coke can turned into me being hurled—hurled, punched, kicked, and strangled. Once, in the course of strangling me, Kermit broke his own thumb. I can still see him standing over me, as I choked and gasped my way back to consciousness. “You bitch! Look what you did—you broke my thumb!”

—

A few years ago I had an x-ray for some reason, and the doctor asked me about my old neck injury. “Looks like you had a pretty significant injury,” he said. I had no idea what it could be, until a few days later it dawned on me that this was probably from the time Kermit had tried to strangle me.

—

The only ones who knew what was really going on were the St. Paul Police, St. Paul Fire Department, and Vince.

Kermit and I went camping in the Grand Canyon, where he beat me black and blue in our tent (but only where clothing would cover the bruises; he never hit me in the face). I escaped to the car, locked myself in, and shivered through the night. Back in St. Paul, I went to the police, who photographed my bruises. They couldn’t do anything because Kermit was in another state, but I thought telling others would keep me from going back to him.

When I tried to cut it off, Kermit would call 911, say he was my doctor, and tell them he feared I was having seizures. Would they go to my house right away and check on me, breaking down the door if necessary? I would hear banging on the door at 3 am, and find firefighters with axes posed to smash down the door.

I kept flying out to see him, spending money I didn’t have. That’s right, Kermit never paid. One of his recurring accusations was that I was a gold digger, so although he made at least 10 times what I did, he never paid for my tickets. He did fly Vince out for the World Series, and they drove up to Oakland in a limo. He bought Vince an A’s hat and jacket and full collection of baseball cards. Vince was in thrall to him.

Kermit and I took a road trip to Napa and visited vineyards. He bought expensive bottles of wine for his “collection” Which never made it back because he drained them all.   He told me he had access to drugs he could use to kill me if I tried to leave him, and no one would ever be able to figure it out because, after all, he was a genius.

I can’t bring myself to write about how it ended, but it finally did, with an interstate restraining order against him.

Vince knew I had done the right thing but he was crushed to lose his idol. Was it this episode that set Vince on the road to prison—on top of not having a dad, growing up in poverty, having a depressed mom, and being genetically loaded for addiction, compounded by all his bad choices?

Doctor Wonderful

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ANNE

People have asked how Vince can write so well, considering he dropped out of school at 16. First, I read and talked to him from Day One. Second, I got a full scholarship to send him to a Montessori preschool. Then, even though I am such a city person that I break into hives when I pass outside the city limits, I moved to a suburb in order to send him to the highest-ranked public school system in Minnesota.

Vince was 10 when I finally finished my college degree. That enabled me to get a new job that paid $20,000 a year—$20,000!—that seemed like a fortune. I also loved the job, which was at a private university. Vince and I lived in a safe and clean—if vanilla—subsidized housing project. I had pulled myself up by the bootstraps, and the future looked like it would only get better.

Here is where I “mom up” to the episode that really blew us off course and (I think) screwed Vince up.

As I type the words, “And then I met a man…” I feel my palms start sweating and my stomach tighten.

—

Let’s just call the man Kermit, because he was about as short, slippery, and spineless as a frog.

Kermit was originally from California and was finishing his neurosurgery residency in Minnesota. He adored Vince, the poor fatherless boy with the big brown eyes and quick wit, and Vince adored him. Kermit adored me, too, the spunky single mother with blonde hair and great legs who read novels by the pile. He only read medical journals.

Looking back, I guess I fell in love with him because I felt sorry for him. He had been abused by his mother. He told me about it in great detail. I tried to empathize by telling him about my alcoholic father who had beaten my mother in front of me and then committed suicide. He said that wasn’t the same thing at all—since my dad had died so long ago I shouldn’t blame my problems on him. Besides, Kermit would say as he slugged down his fifth rum and coke, you can’t hold an alcoholic accountable for what they do when they’re drunk; they can’t help it. Now, his mother was really abusive, and she didn’t even drink! The Witch was still alive. Becoming a brain surgeon had been his plan to escape from her and never have to ask her or his dad, who was a saint, for anything ever again.

There were a few episodes of foreshadowing, like when he got jealous and hurled a can of Coke against my kitchen wall, and left me to wipe up the mess. Or when a cop pulled him over for erratic driving, and he flashed his hospital ID and told the cop, “You wouldn’t want to throw me in jail, would you officer? I might be the one you need to operate on you if you get shot.” He laughed about it when he told me later.

But then he moved back to California to join a practice there, and begged me to marry him and join him. I said yes.

He was living in a penthouse apartment overlooking the Pacific, but he hired a realtor who started sending me full-color glossy profiles of million-dollar houses. “Just get rid of all your furniture and move out there asap!” he’s say. “You can go shopping wherever you want and buy all new furniture!” He had bought a red Maserati, but he would buy me an SUV—a Mercedes, of course—not a Ford! Vince would go to a private boarding school, and wait—what? When I expressed hesitation, Kermit accused me of not wanting the best for my child.

Alarm bells were going off in my head but I ignored them. My friends and family were beside themselves that I had not only met a man, but a rich one—a doctor! And so I quit my new job, gave notice on the subsidized townhouse, and gave away most of my belongings. We were moving to California! What could possibly go wrong?

Kermit the Rapist

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VINCE

Other than running and doing the tape and playing various indoor competitive sports, I haven’t done any real workout in a month. I went to the gym today with no real intention of doing anything at all, but the weight room was nearly empty so a friend and I went in.

Much to my surprise, my stamina had increased tenfold. I was like the Energizer Bunny. And when I was done, I felt…high. It was an adrenaline rush I think. I probably could have kept going but I didn’t want to burn myself out.

By the time I get to boot camp I have to be able to routinely do sets of 20 pushups. Good ones. Every time we fall out of line, do something out of formation, or screw up in any way, including talking back, we get dropped down. I plan on behaving myself, but it’s good to be prepared.

I may have mentioned before that we have dogs in our unit. The Ruff Start program allows offenders to train rescue dogs for service as companions to the elderly and disabled out in the community.

Last week two of the dog trainers were taken to the hole for blowing each other in their room. I find it odd that they would let sex offenders keep a living animal in a room overnight with them. I’m not implying that there’s any dog fucking going on here…but they sure are given the opportunity.

One of the new dog trainers, I call him Kermit the rapist, has a first degree Criminal Sexual Assault. But just like the rest of the sex offenders, he says it was all just a misunderstanding. Oh, I gave him that name because he has a really high throaty voice, and much like a puppet, his lips never stop flapping. And also he’s a convicted rapist.

[ANNE: In the international development world, we don’t use the word “rape” even though it is used systematically to terrorize and intimidate entire communities. We call it Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, or SGBV. I realize that people are subjected to other acts of sexual violence, like having their breasts cut off. I realize men and boys are violated as well as women and girls. I know that various genders are violated in various ways by various other genders for gender-based motivations. But wasn’t that a boring sentence you just read? I think that by trying to cover all possible bases by using the term SGBV, the whole issue becomes meaningless. The word rape gives me chills. SGBV? Yawn. But maybe that’s just me.]