What I learned from three ex-cons
I’m a journalist. Most days, that looks like a nerdy millennial sitting in a cubicle with a phone jammed between her ear and collarbone, asking questions and frantically typing things people tell her while trying to sound calm and intelligent. I go to meetings, I sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and I write like mad to meet deadlines.
Most of the time.
Some days are completely different. Some days I don’t touch my desk at all because I’m out at interviews 70 kilometers away and starving because I forgot to book time for lunch. Some days, a Pope gets elected and I have to drop everything to find a Catholic priest to interview. And some days, I find myself in a basement with a voice recorder and three former sex offenders.
Days like those, I wonder how this introvert ever got into journalism.
The interview was about a program that helps people with sex crimes on their records get a life after finishing their sentences. The program helps them get jobs, gives emotional support, keeps them accountable, etc.
Here’s what I learned from three ex-cons.
They eventually get out
Sex offenders don’t stay in prison forever.
They get out and they have to go on eating and sleeping and going to work like the rest of us. One of the guys I met had done 12 years behind bars. How do you explain that gap in the resume?
Another one of the guys said men who were in for homicide and armed robbery treated him as the scum of the earth. It was as if all they had done was nothing compared to his crimes. Maybe it was true. He still got out, though, and he still has to eat.
They are less likely to reoffend if they seek help
An optional program out there for released offenders apparently lowers recidivism (reoffending) rates by 80 per cent. Accountability and a bit of extra help writing a resume or finding a halfway house literally helps these guys stay away from the disaster train that got them into the whole mess.
The program takes a lot of work for the ex-offenders. If they don’t kill the thoughts and fantasies that keep popping up in their heads, it is possible that nothing but bars can keep them away from destroying the lives of people around them.
No kid dreams of being a convict when he grows up
Or, at least, I haven’t met any. But I have met a lot of broken people.
Here’s the thing. These three men did terrible things, irreparably damaging the lives of their victims and the family and friends of those victims. People living in their communities lost nights of sleep and worried about walking home after dark. Society shivered, locked these men up, and said: “We do not tolerate this.”
The convicts told me as much. All three of them told me how sorry they felt for their victims and to all of the people affected and how they would like to make up for it if they could. That’s why they’re in a program. They want to change their lives, clean up their thoughts, and make good choices.
Then, they told me about their past lives.
One of them was physically and sexually abused as a child. The mom of another committed suicide when he was 18 and he has struggled with wanting to kill himself since. The third was disowned by all of his friends and family when he was arrested, then ostracized in both prison and the media.
One and all, they were isolated, abandoned, abused, and felt this program was the only place they had to turn. When everyone else abandoned them, a little meeting in a church basement gave them the will to live. In their little accountability groups, they experienced real love for the first time.
I watched three grown men cry that day.
Heck, if I’d been sexually abused as a child and watched my mom kill herself when I was 18, I’d be pretty messed up, too.
Total perspective shift
Have you seen the film Dead Man Walking? (If not, where were you in 1995?)
That chilling and heartbreaking movie is based on the true story of a nun who befriends men on death row. The plot revolves around Sister Helen meeting Matthew Poncelet, a man accused of murdering a pair of young lovers in the woods. Here’s a piece of that movie:
Sister Helen: You are a son of God.
Matthew Poncelet: [in tears] Thank you. I’ve never been called a son of God before. [laughs slightly]. I’ve been called a son of a you-know-what plenty of times, but I’ve never been called a son of God.
This isn’t about whether Poncelet is guilty or not. (I’ll let you watch the movie to find out). This isn’t a post about jail sentences or the death penalty or anything political. This encounter was, for me, a total perspective shift. Those people we call the scum of the earth—well, they are scum. They’re also human beings who were often abused, unloved, and abandoned.
Talk about out of my comfort zone.
