'I began to live only in prison': the story of a victim of domestic violence

For most people, jail time is the worst thing that can happen in life. But if the atmosphere of violence reigns in the family - as is usually the case in the lives of most women prisoners - then the attitude towards prison changes somewhat.

Sitting in the dock while awaiting sentence, Lilly Lewis was surprised to find herself bursting with laughter. The reason for this was incomprehensible to her. It was not a nervous laugh, and her situation could hardly be called particularly cheerful. Lawyer Lilly said she faces at least eight years behind bars, says BBC.

But for some reason it seemed to her that what was happening around was not really, not seriously, but like someone's sophisticated prank. Every time the prosecutor approached her, holding onto the lapels of her jacket for solidity, she had a strong feeling that the whole trial was some kind of theater of absurdity.

The other accused sitting next to Lilly was crying. “I'm scared,” she said, sobbing. Lilly tried to calm her down, but could not understand what she was afraid of.

At liberty, Lilly is accustomed to being shouted at, beaten and insulted. She was a victim of domestic violence, as was 57% of other female prisoners (according to the Prison Reform Trust). She went through alcohol and drug addiction and tried to commit suicide several times.

In prison, her former men could not reach her - neither the one who beat and raped her, nor the one who threatened her with a gun, nor the one who manipulated her using her addiction to alcohol and drugs, and ended up with her too in the dock.

The guardianship authorities have already taken away her children, and the pain of separation tormented her day and night. What else was she to lose?

Just send me to jail, she thought. "I'm ready, take me away already."

The moment came when Lilly stood up to hear her verdict. She was wearing black trousers, a cheap orange sweater, and a fake top of her hair. Her own hair had thinned - in the exhausting anticipation of the end of the trial and the sentencing, she had acquired the habit of pulling it out one by one.

The verdict was accusatory, and she first appeared in the chamber. She was sitting there in a gray prison uniform and thought that it would not be difficult for her to get used to the local routine. It's almost like school, she told herself.

“Seven years,” the judge told her. She was accused of conspiracy to cheat. The term was reduced because during the trial she admitted her guilt.

Lilly kept smiling. Well, at least not eight, she thought. For her exemplary behavior, she had a chance to be released ahead of schedule - that is, in three and a half years.

I can do it, she told herself. "It's doable."

Then she was taken in a prison van to the place of her sentence. Other inmates called the female guard “Miss”. “Is it still far, miss? I should go to the toilet, miss. " Lilly promised herself not to speak so ingratiatingly.

She thought about her four children and what it was like for them to stay so long without a mother.

"What's next? She thought. - When will I be given a prison uniform? What kind of work will they give me in prison? "

Lilly felt funny again, and this time she again did not understand why she was laughing. Sitting in the van, Lilly found herself turning to God with a sense of gratitude. “You gave me so much time. How can I dispose of them now? ”She thought.

Lilly was born in 1971 in the Wirral area in the English county of Merseyside. She was the youngest in the family, for everyone she was a baby - the middle sister was seven years older. The father was from Ghana and the mother was white. There were no other blended children in Lilly's elementary school.

All her childhood, she felt different from others. She had almost no friends at school.

Once, when she was seven years old, Lilly ran to the playground. There were a few girls there. They stood in a semicircle and sang:

Where did your mom go? Where did your mom go? She is very, very far.

The girls looked at Lilly and laughed. They knew something that she did not know.

On the same day, she asked her mother what the girls had in mind.

And then, for the first time, Mom said to Lilly that she was adopted. She said it as if she and her husband had chosen a girl like some kind of doll in a store. When they brought her home, she smelled so horrible that they had to throw away her clothes.

Lilly wanted to know about her biological mother, but her mother told her: "She didn't need you." The biological mother was given the opportunity to say goodbye to her daughter, but she did not use it. Nothing was known about her own father.

Lily tried to make sense of it. She did not understand why her parents refused her. She wanted to find out why she smelled so badly of her. Lilly tried to look like a doll, thinking that if you are the most beautiful doll on the shelf, you will be chosen. Most of all she was afraid that they would again give up on her.

Later, reflecting on those years, Lilly realized that her emotional development had stopped since then. The fear of being abandoned or left alone haunted her all her life. From the age of 15 she became addicted to alcohol and when she started drinking, she could no longer stop. She had a whole series of boyfriends who changed one after another. “I was pretty promiscuous in my relationships and believed that this is love. When someone started caring for me, it seemed to me that they loved me, that I was needed ”. When her boyfriends beat her, she thought it was also an act of love.

The guards took Lilly to the wing of the women's prison, where the newly arrived prisoners were held. She was led down a long corridor under the ground. There was a low ceiling, and the walls were painted yellow. From time to time they heard the door slam behind them: bang, bang, bang.

This seems like the final road before execution, she thought.

She was brought into the cell. She looked at the bars on the windows, the steel toilet in the corner. Even compared to the pre-trial cells in the police station or with the prison in which she spent the weekend before sentencing, the situation here was too Spartan.

I'm definitely in prison now, she told herself.

A week later, Lilly was transferred to another wing. There she got a cellmate - a woman who periodically tried to injure herself. Lilly looked out the window. It was March, and it was piercingly cold outside. She saw several prisoners in red robes, all cropped like a boy, walking in the snow. These women reminded Lilly of prisoners of war. This scene could just as well have taken place somewhere in Siberia.

Lilly was assigned a job at the prison center for the newly arrived inmates she was supposed to meet. Many of them were heroin addicts. Sometimes on the way, they defecated under themselves, some vomited, so they had to be immediately taken to the shower. Very nervous, they said, "We need our medicines." That is what they called methadone, a substitute for heroin. They cried and shook as they waited for their dose.

Other prisoners had obvious mental disorders. One wound her hair on her fingers so fiercely that it looked like she had dreadlocks on her head, interspersed with bald spots. Another constantly sucked the edge of the pillowcase and spoke in the baby’s tongue. Lilly could not believe that in 2018, such people were sent to a regular prison. They need to be kept where specialists could do them, she thought.

Pretty quickly she managed to fit into the measured flow of prison life. After some time, she was assigned to clean the wing. There was no time to miss. She did not distinguish between the days of the week and sometimes forgot what the month is now. The only important date for her was the date of her release, but there were still years before her.

She never cried because of her sentence. Even before the countdown began, she knew that she would have to rely only on herself. No one will come to visit her. The children were taken away from her, and her contacts with them were very limited. To think about how children grow up without a mother, she was desperately bitter.

In all other respects, her affairs went perfectly. She no longer drank or took drugs. At the very beginning of her prison term she was suffering from overweight, but now she began to go to the gym daily, and porridge, eggs and fish appeared in her diet. She began to read books on personal growth and make lists of things for which she feels grateful. She decided to get additional education and managed to pass all exams. She felt that she could fix her life.

After serving the first six months in prison, Lilly wrote a letter to the judge who sentenced her, gratefully for, as she put it, the time given.

“According to my observations, the majority of prisoners do not benefit from prison, but it was able to change me for the better,” she wrote.

Lilly clearly understood that the existing prison system contributes little to correcting women who have fallen into it. It seemed as if no one would encourage women to take a shower, and some prisoners did not bathe. Women were actively encouraged to study mathematics and literature for exams and qualifications, but no one told them about the need to care for themselves. Drugs in prison were more active than outside. In some prison blocks, prisoners were not allowed to leave their 19 cells for hours per day.

She knew a woman who ended up in prison suffering from alcoholism. Since there was no alcohol, she became addicted to opioids. Another inmate told her that she was already serving her 32nd term, and in general, the women with whom Lilly met, went to prison for a short time, but often. “The prisoners have no correctional program at all. What's the point in changing something if they are serving a short sentence, ”says Lilly.

Lilly decided that, to the best of her ability, she would help those who are in prison difficult.

There was a pregnant woman who barely ate, and Lilly begged her to eat at least a little. She volunteered for the Samaritans charity to provide emotional support to other prisoners. She taught those who could not read to read. She also became a mentor for two young criminals.

She wanted to go to an open prison as soon as possible. There she would be free to move around the territory and even get one-day vacation at will.

But at that time she was behind closed doors surrounded by women with heavy narcotic withdrawals. On New Year's Eve, she heard an ambulance drive up to the prison because someone from the prisoners was trying to commit suicide. For the rest of the night, Lilly heard the sirens howl, because suicide attempts continued.

The more Lilly communicated with women in prison, the more she understood that many of them were united by one common quality: like herself, in the past they became victims of domestic violence, but none of them turned for help.

“Women are very afraid to talk about what happened to them, because they know that guardianship services will inevitably intervene in the case, and in the end they will lose their children,” she says.

Violence has been present in Lilly's life since adolescence. A significant part of her adult life she dressed well, was confident and sociable. She had her own business, besides she worked as a specialist in several companies. Therefore, it is clear that they believed her when asked where her bruises came from, she replied that she slipped and fell. No one had any idea that every evening she had to drown out the pain of alcohol and drugs.

She had one roommate, she recalls (let's call him Michael). At that time she was in late pregnancy. Once he grabbed her by the throat and threw her down the stairs, she says. Childbirth began a few hours after that. A month and a half later, he began to beat her regularly. Once he began to beat her so violently that the neighbors heard this and called the police.

Lilly's daughter Issy, who was then in elementary school, ran out to the arriving policemen, saying: “Please help! My mom is dead. "

According to Lilly, Michael not only beat her, but also raped her regularly. “If he wanted sex, he got it,” she says. After each attack, he said that he repented and asked for forgiveness. “I didn't feel like a victim at all. I thought it was just my life like that, ”she recalls.

When he was jailed for assault, she found herself a new man - this time a bouncer who was part of a criminal gang. “Since he didn't beat me physically, I didn't feel like it was violence,” she recalls. But he repeatedly pointed a pistol at her and threatened to shoot her. She burst into tears only once - when the barrel of the gun got tangled in her hair and ruined her styling. He left her soon after she gave birth to a son from him.

Then a man appeared in her life, who later became one of the defendants in her criminal case.

To numb the pain, she constantly drank. Having become her lover, he regularly pumped her up with alcohol - for example, he could wake her up in the morning by bringing a glass of wine to bed. Sometimes he disappeared for a long time without warning, and each time before his return she fell into depression.

She worked from home, although often she was too drunk during the day to perform her duties normally. The cohabitant had access to her laptop and email.

“I couldn't even imagine that he would forward all my correspondence to his friends,” she says. They then called the company's customers and dragged them into fraudulent schemes.

Lilly agreed to open a bank account and open a company in her own name. At that time she already guessed that something was wrong, but it was much easier for her to close her eyes to it - after all, no one died because of this, no one was shot at, so it did not look like a crime.

Lilly loved him, but the last straw for her was the incident when he offered to "smoke herbs" Issy, who was then 14 years old. The relationship ended. Lilly went to the police and told about the fraudulent scheme. He was arrested, but she knew that sooner or later they would come for her too. And so it happened: she was charged, after which she was released on bail pending trial. She knew that she was facing a long term.

Then the police attacked her previous bouncer, the father of her son. Two days later, guardianship services took away her children.

From that moment on, Lilly's life flew downhill.

“I was just getting drunk. Every week I was arrested and put under lock and key, ”she recalls. Lilly tried five times to commit suicide, and twice she was forcibly placed in a psychiatric hospital. After another suicide attempt, she imagined what suffering she would cause the children if the attempt was successful. This was a turning point for her.

“Then I just decided that I was just facing some trials. You just need to start going through them. "

Previously, Lilly was placed in a women's crisis center, where they tried to help her give up alcohol and drug addiction, but each time she broke down. Now she was determined not to use anything else. “I thought: God, I'm much stronger. I will succeed. And then I gathered my will into a fist, ”she says.

For the first time in her adult life, she managed to completely give up alcohol and drugs. Six months remained before the trial. However, the feeling that she finally managed to change her life for the better, came only when she heard her sentence and found out the time she was to spend in captivity.

It was a bright June day. The sun's rays beat on the open doors of the paddy wagon. From her seat in the car, Lilly saw the inmates tending the flower beds. It was decided to send her to an open prison - what she had been waiting for.

She quickly realized that in the 20 months she spent in a closed prison, she had adapted to the system. She really wanted to walk around the territory without restrictions, to go to a local coffee shop, but at that moment she felt insecure. She promised herself never to call the guards "sir" or "miss" again, but now it was strange for her to hear prisoners refer to them by their first names.

Suddenly she thought that no one needed her.

In another prison she had her own role. When she helped prisoners who were in even worse situations than hers, she felt needed. But what should she do now?

After the trial, Lilly thought every day about people affected by her actions. They testified in court how she deceived their trust and stole the accumulated funds. It was this part of the trial that seemed the most natural to her, making her experience mental agony.

“Of course, I am very sorry that they lost their cost, but something more happened. I reflect on what they have lost in themselves. I am bitter because it is my personal fault, ”she says.

Lilly walked through the center of York, where, on the eve of Christmas, every store glittered with lights of garlands. It was raining, but she was walking slowly, absorbing everything she saw and heard. This was the first day of her program to adapt to life in society. It seemed to her that she was looking at the street with new eyes. The heart was so light. Everything seemed to sparkle.

She walked along the road almost at random. “I beg your pardon,” she said to everyone who came across her on the way. But her awkwardness overshadowed the feeling of great joy.

She went to one store and bought a pink umbrella, in another - grapes. She stopped a store clerk to ask about something, but did not know how to start a conversation. The phrase "would you be kind" flew out of her head completely.

Then Lilly sat in a cafe, sipping hot chocolate with marshmallows. She could not believe that it cost her almost four pounds. She did not have to think about money before. A drunken man fell in the cafe and told Lilly that she was pretty. Other visitors looked disapprovingly at him, but Lilly thanked him. She was pleased that someone had noticed her presence.

Before returning to prison, she repeated in her head, like a mantra: “I love life. I love life. I love life ”.

Then she was allowed to leave the prison for internship. She burst into tears when she was invited to a Christmas party in one of the organizations. She became a mentor for children and teenagers who violated the law. Lilly thought she could help them make the right choice with their example.

The relationship between her and Issy is closer than ever before. “If a woman is in a relationship with a rapist and is often brutally beaten, it is sometimes difficult for her to think about her children, because all they think about is how to survive,” says Issy, now 18. She found it difficult when her mother was sent to prison. Now they have the opportunity to restore family ties. Sometimes Lilly is allowed to stay overnight in Issy's apartment, and then they sit for hours on the couch, talking and feeling the joy of each other's presence.

Lilly goes to a psychologist to try to put in the past the horrors of the violence she experienced. She was taught what controlling behavior is and how to recognize it. She also shared her childhood experiences, in particular, describing the feeling of abandonment that she experienced when she learned that her dad and mom were not her family. They promised to help her find biological parents.

Finally, she could get answers to the questions she had asked herself since childhood.

She was informed that her mother had died, and her father was still alive. Shortly before that, he had become a widow, and through the funeral home she learned his address. She wrote to him that she was not angry at him and would not try to contact him, if he did not want it, she only extends her hand.

Three months later, he called her. He spoke with a faint Jamaican accent. As it turned out, he was working just 10 minutes' walk from Lilly's school, in a plant adjacent to another plant where Lilly's adoptive mother worked.

He told Lilly that her biological mother also lived with a man who treated her poorly. He himself met her when her husband was in prison, and they had a short romance. She was white and horrified when she realized that she was pregnant. It was unthinkable for her to keep a mulatto child.

“She was, like me, depressed,” says Lilly. - She did everything to make her husband happy. I had it too, I did it all my life ”. Lilly listened and regretted that she could no longer protect her biological mother.

Her first meeting with her father took place in his car. She asked if she could take his hand. She told him everything that happened to her - about fraud, addiction to alcohol and drugs, about the cruel men with whom she lived, perceiving their despotism and violence as a kind of perverse manifestation of love. He cried and told her that he was very sorry for everything. Then, when she called him, he said that she was an amazing person, and he had fatherly love for her.

She wanted to hear these words all her life.

Lilly sits in a mall with a cup of coffee. She has a lunch break. None of the others can imagine that this concentrated, well-dressed woman will return to the prison cell in the evening.

Until the end of the term is still far away. However, her work with juvenile delinquents fills her life with meaning. She has a great relationship with her daughter Issy.

But above all, she found what she had been looking for all her life - self-respect.

“I never liked myself,” she says with a smile. "Now I am quite pleased with myself."

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