CHOOSE TO NOT ABUSE
Once
upon a time, never long enough ago, I had said my final goodbye to my little
boy in a small coffin of blue. It wasn’t much larger than the small suitcase I
opened for the guard to inspect for a class of convicts in the Arizona State
Prison in Florence, Arizona. I had promised
both my child and myself that I would do what I could to stop the cycle of
abuse that had taken him from me.
According to ChildLife, a non-profit
charity aiding victims of child abuse, fifty percent of all men and women in
prison were abused as children. Children who experience child abuse and neglect
are nine times more likely to become
involved in criminal activity. Two out of three people in treatment for
drug abuse reported being abused or neglected as children. Child abuse can
begin in the uterus. Exposing an unborn child to drugs, alcohol, or neglecting
prenatal care is child abuse.
The Arizona Department of Corrections
set up The Impact of Crime on its Victims Classes (ICVC) in prisons to help
convicted perpetrators to:
1. understand
the effects of crime on its victims,
2.
acknowledge
that their actions were not choices caused by bad luck that resulted in getting
caught but rather ruinous decisions that caused someone harm,
3.
become
aware of the short and long-term results of crime on its victims,
4.
accept
accountability for the crimes they committed,
5.
learn
how to contribute to a Restorative Justice model – a method of repairing the
harm caused by criminal behavior - and
6.
develop
skills to help prevent future crime and victimization.
That’s why I was asked to speak again.
I am a survivor. I was abused as a child. I was abused as a wife, and I am the
mother of a murdered child.
I
had driven ninety miles at break-neck panic speed. I hadn’t received a ticket
for over twenty years but I looked over my shoulder on this drive. I didn’t
want a police escort to become an unpleasant surprise. I had hoped to be on
time but a detour because of a crash during rush hour traffic caused me to be ten
minutes late.
I
pulled into the dreary and dusty parking lot and was greeted by Caitlin, the Ph.D
candidate in charge of the Impact of Crime on
Victims Class (ICVC). She welcomed me with a hug before we made our way towards
the concrete twelve-foot-high walls, chain link fences, layers of grizzly
barbed-teeth wire, and gates heavy with locks and cables of the Arizona State
Prison Complex. I flinched at the gritty isolation of incarceration. My feet
crunched on broken glass. I had to remember to - breathe.
I knew
prison protocol. Without being told, I lifted up my suitcase for the guard to
inspect, turned over my driver’s license to the security guard, held my hands
over my head, and walked through the body scanner.
Inside
the suitcase, the corrections officer discovered framed photos of my little
son, dishes Adam had used when he had been alive, toys he had played with, and
the belt I had designed with his name engraved in it: ADAM.
When
the officer realized he was touching the remnants of my little boy’s life, he
apologized and reverently replaced everything he had taken out.
Caitlin
escorted me to the classroom. Through the glass door, I was comforted to find a
guard dressed in his brown uniform with black leather holster as I quickly
scanned the room. I counted sixteen convicts. Their prison-issue scrubs formed
an orange glow against the blue, green, red, and yellow mural painted on the
classroom wall. They leaned forward on weary metal folding chairs in a
semi-circle, palms pressed onto knees, waiting for me, quietly rocking their feet
clad in gray socks and open-toed flip-flops to the beat of music heard only by
them. They were old, young, and every age in-between, tattooed or not, white,
Hispanic, Asian, black.
As
I entered the room and arranged for a table to use, the room grew quiet as the
restless fidgeting stopped. The men straightened their backs and looked at me
with anxious, open eyes.
I
don’t know what crime they had committed or why they had been convicted and I didn’t
care. All of them were present to hear my thoughts about how to break the cycle
of abuse that had led half of them to jail.
I
placed the suitcase on a small table in the center of the room. As I unzipped
and opened it, Adam’s Teddy Bear greeted me with his open face, sewn on smile,
and brown button eyes. I settled Teddy onto my left hip where I used to place
Adam and wrapped the bear with my arm. The bear was about the same size Adam
had been when Adam held onto my embrace. A flood of memoires of love and loss
made me catch my breath. Thirty-five years washed away and it felt like
yesterday. I placed my open right hand over the sharp pain of sorrow in my
chest, bent my head, and reminded myself to take another breath. Breathe.
I
made Adam come alive for the men in orange. I allowed them inside the agony of
losing him to a monster who enjoyed beating my disabled son until he suffered
and died. I showed how the word closure
will never apply to a bereaved parent. And then I explained how I was falsely
charged with my son’s murder. Their eyes grew wide. They raised their hands to wipe their faces
dry.
I
took out a few favorite photos of my son and passed them around: Adam wearing
his cowboy boots (the same ones Teddy now wore) looking proud, the framed sketch
an inmate from a previous class had made from a picture, and my favorite of
all, me as a teacher’s aide helping Adam learn how to fit wooden blocks into
the appropriate holes in a board.
I
allowed the inmates to enter my life when I was abused as a child. I fought to
focus my voice behind the grief and terror of the past. The pain always lies
quiet until I open the boxes of memories wrapped in years and layers of
dissociation and denial and the realization that my little boy was murdered. How could that be? But murder
was my reality.
Hugging
Adam’s Teddy bear closer in my arms, I looked deeply into every convict’s eyes before
I said, “Being abused as a child is never an excuse to perpetuate it into
another generation of children. Abuse should never be a part of any child’s
heritage - like blue eyes or brown can be. You can choose to stop abuse one
decision at a time. That first decision can begin now. Please, for the sake of
my little boy and all children everywhere, vow to never, never abuse a child.”
For other stories on how to break the cycle of abuse:
(pencil sketch of Adam by an inmate in
the ICVC class)
********
As Long As I Breathe is
dedicated to:
survivors of emotional, physical, spiritual, or sexual abuse,
those who have had to bury a murdered child,
former members of a religious cult based on misogyny,
children born with Cornelia de Lange Syndrome,
and anyone who was falsely accused of a crime.
********
Joyce A Lefler is a true crime survivor and the author of
From Miracle to Murder: Justice For
Adam.
She is a facilitator for Parents of Murdered Children,
a bereavement counselor, registered nurse,
and an advocate against abuse.
Connect with her:
Website:
Facebook:
Advocacy
project:
Amazon:
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I would love to hear from you. If you have lost a child, if you have been falsely accused, If you are presently in or have recently escaped a controlling misogynistic relationship or religious cult, if you are being abused, you are not alone. I would love to hear from you. Please leave your e-mail address and share your story. Courteous, constructive comments are welcome. All will be monitored before publishing.