Most people never get to go to an event about prison. I went to two in one week.
The first was a phone-a-thon to ex cons. It felt like a worthwhile use of my time and I would recommend doing something similar if you are depressed, angry, or frightened about some issue. Like oh, let’s say … a presidential election.
Two nights later was an event I organized at my workplace, the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT), and co-sponsored by Jewish Community Action. It sounds complicated, I know. What does torture in foreign countries have to do with prisons in Minnesota?
A lot, it turns out.
It was a small event, just 18 of us, but to us Jews the number 18 is a mystical one symbolizing “chai,” the Hebrew word for life.
I was a little concerned that the topic might be a tough one for Vince, my son, who had actually experienced some of the things we would discuss. My childhood friend whose son is in prison came, and I was worried it might add to her worries.
Our first speaker was a CVT psychotherapist who described quite viscerally how trauma happens and what its effects are. She had us close our eyes and imagine a baby. Assuming he has a loving parent who holds him and meets his needs, he learns to trust people and look to them for help in times of need.
Trauma happens to almost everyone, eventually. It could include abuse and neglect in childhood, a serious illness, the death of a loved one, or a car accident. Normally, we turn to other humans for comfort.
Torture is intentionally perpetrated by one human being against another under “color of law.” In other words, it’s authorized or at least there’s a “wink and a nod” from some type of government official.
Usually, there is no one to turn to for comfort because you are locked in a cell. Your torturers may have your family locked up too; in fact one of the most common forms of torture is to force someone to watch or listen to a loved one being tortured.
Much of the abuse that takes place in US prisons every day—assaults, rapes, solitary confinement—would likely be legally ruled as torture if we ever investigated it fully, in my opinion.
Torture destroys trust. Rebuilding trust is at the core of recovery.
The second speaker was a CVT volunteer who is a practitioner of Rolfing Structural Integration. I don’t know jack about rolfing, but she does it for our clients for free and it helps them. She talked about the physical fallout of trauma, which starts in the brain. When someone feels threatened, the first thing they do is look for other humans for help, as the psychotherapist had said. If they are being threatened by those other humans, the right side of their brains “light up” and they go into flight or fight mode like an animal. I think we’ve all heard about that, right? What I didn’t know is that the left side of the brain shuts down. That’s the organizing, verbal, and thinking side of the brain.
And so people who have been tortured, for example, cannot put into words what happened. On the witness stand they come off as not very believable.
One thing I also didn’t know which I found fascinating was that people kept in small spaces actually stop being able to see beyond the parameters of that space. Someone kept in solitary for a certain length of time, when they get out, cannot see farther than six feet in front of their face. They regain their vision eventually, but!
Vince was the third speaker. He and I read excerpts from blog posts he wrote in solitary, where he was kept after being transferred to Moose Lake—because they didn’t have a regular cell ready. They told him it would be temporary. How long would you assume “temporary” meant? Six days, as it turned out. He described the cell and his experience in great detail. I felt myself getting outraged again. We haven’t talked about it, but I wonder if it raised feelings for him too.
Breaking Free 