Crimwife (13 page)

Once jail is in your life, all bets are off. Restraining orders are a waste of time. If someone is determined to hurt you, they’ll get you. What’s the worst that can happen to them?

“Other couples fight, I know they fight about things way worse than we did,” Jess says. “It was nothing as bad as that. But when you know that all you’re worth is five years’ jail, fighting is so different. Your life is at stake, for real. The worst that most women have to worry about is that he’ll leave them or take the kids. I still think about it and worry that he’ll come back to prove a point, even though we’ve been on good terms now for ages.”

Calling the police never even crossed Jess’s mind.

“One time we’d had a small tiff on the way to work, it was only a little thing and we’d talked afterwards. But then he got a call that the police were after him, so he rang me and started accusing me of calling them, telling me I was going to be sorry and that I was stupid if I thought he couldn’t act from jail. I begged him to believe me, and he said he did. But it was only ever when he cleared those kinds of things up himself that I felt safe again.”

Even if staying silent kept Jess out of trouble, she still feels guilty about it. “What do you do? I knew if I told anyone about it, there would be punishment coming in one way or another. And I knew if I didn’t, nothing would change. But Craig would have laughed at a restraining order. And broken it to show me.”

Jess says that Craig lost interest in her soon after that final beating, because she would cry every time he came over. “I wanted the comfort after what I’d been through, strange I know, but we had been so close. Then when he was there, I’d remember and I needed him to disappear.”

Within a few weeks, he realised Jess wasn’t going to bounce back anytime soon. She thinks he simply grew bored with the reality of the situation. Jess heard from him less and less, which suited her perfectly.

A couple of months later, Jess ran into Craig’s sister and was grateful to hear that Craig had moved in with his ex-girlfriend. They must know what they’re doing, thought Jess, and says she felt freer than she had in a long time. Craig still called, but he sounded as if he’d moved on, leaving Jess relieved and feeling safe for the first time since he had hit her. Finally, she was not afraid.

Then a year later, she got a letter from Craig in jail. He told her that he had rejected the woman he was living with, told her there was no future for them, and she had turned nasty. She had started fighting with him and tried to attack him with a knife. When he defended himself, she got hysterical and called the cops, knowing he was on parole. So there he was, sitting in a cell for no reason at all, because of a bitter, lying woman who had it in for him. Jess learned later that Craig’s girlfriend had been hospitalised. Jess feels responsible for the damage done to her. If she’d put him in jail for her assaults, then this woman would not have been a victim.

“I still wonder what she goes through, what he did to her, if it’s my fault. He tells me – he tells everyone – she was out for revenge, and there’s no confronting him with facts. The police have believed a liar, that’s all he says, and it’s probably what he thinks. At least I didn’t do that. At least he can’t get me for that.”

Lining up at the jail’s front counter are women patiently waiting to deposit whatever money they can spare for their man to buy tobacco and more food. The processing room is filled with women who sit quietly until their number is called for a visit. Some drive for hours to spend the weekend, every weekend, with him.

But in female jails the reverse does not happen. There are few men who will stand in line in the sun to put money into the black hole that is a jail account, who will press redial all day until they confirm their weekly visit is booked, and who will send letters to cheer up the one they love. Almost none.

The pathways to prison are very different for women than they are for men. According to a 2009 Australian Institute of Criminology paper by Lubica Forsythe and Kerryn Adams, men represent 93 per cent of the jail population and are more likely to be convicted of more serious and violent crimes such as car theft, burglary and drug supply. Women are more likely to commit crimes such as shoplifting, fraud and receiving stolen goods.

There are also significant differences between female offenders and women in the wider community. Women in prison are overwhelmingly there because of crimes committed to sustain their substance use. Drugs and alcohol are frequently used by women to self-medicate their mental health issues, which in turn are often related to child abuse and domestic violence.

Vicky has been both a crim and a crimwife for much of her life. Her earliest memories, though, are of crimes being committed against her. She had no memory of the sex acts she was forced to perform when she was four years old until she was seventeen. By that time, she had been doing sex work for a while, earning enough to supply drugs for herself and her girlfriend. After jumping into a client’s car, she spontaneously remembered what had happened when she was four. The brutality came rushing back to her, and she threw up all over the client.

Taking her abuser to court was a big deal. She had grown up in a conservative church with a powerful hierarchy. It was all Vicky had known, until she fled as a teenager to Sydney’s Kings Cross. Taking on one of the congregation’s leaders for the abuse meant taking on the whole church. It was incredibly daunting, but she was determined to make him pay and prevent him from doing it again.

Vicky wanted to do the right thing and was advised to take legal action. She suppressed her dreams of violent revenge and chose to proceed in the way society deemed appropriate. Still, there was one problem. Her abuser was married and had a young daughter. Vicky was tormented that he was trusted with a child’s care, and she approached the mother. She told the woman what her husband had done to Vicky when she was four years old. She begged her to take their daughter to the doctor and have her checked, just in case. Vicky told the mother that if she would take the child to a doctor and keep an eye on her, Vicky would drop the charges against her husband.

The mother refused, so Vicky continued with her court case. Her abuser pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to one hundred hours of community service. After everything she was living with, he received the lightest punishment available, picking up litter for a couple of weeks, remaining free to get on with his life. 

It was after her abuser’s court case, Vicky says, that she developed a total disregard for the law. The system made no sense at all. She tells me she stole a wallet, then had a change of heart and returned the wallet to its owner, but it was too late: she served eighteen months in jail for theft.

Her biological father had given her heroin at twelve. She was already smoking pot, and he’d found it amusing to pass on his own addiction. Years later, she is still angry that a father would do that to his child. Her drug use escalated as she grew up and she was soon living a merry-go-round of drugs, prostitution and theft.

Women tend to be using harder drugs at the time of arrest than men, reporting more heroin use and much less cannabis. Research suggests that more women than men arrive in jail with pre-existing drug problems. Vicky stressed the importance of women’s relationships with their own mothers. If her mother is using and selling drugs, a girl’s primary role model is a drug dealer. Men in jail for drug supply are likely to have more resources than the women who have thieved to pay these men for drugs. A female drug offender was likely desperate at the time of her arrest, whereas the dealer was likely living the good life. Once they’re inside, chances are that the dealer will have family and friends to rely on. When women go to jail, they usually go alone.

After her first relationship ended when she was twenty-two, Vicky met Eileen. Eileen’s way to support their drug habits was by dealing, which kept Vicky off the streets most of the time. Vicky was grateful; she hated sex work. The couple were in and out of jail separately and together over the seven years they were in a relationship. While Vicky was serving a two-year sentence, Eileen fell in love with a man, left Vicky for him, and had a child.

Soon after she finished the two-year stint inside, Vicky met Rosie. They came to an agreement: Vicky would provide them both with a shot of heroin every day, if Rosie would make sure Vicky ate at least one decent meal a day. This arrangement lasted six years. Vicky served three sentences while they were together. She was willing to do more, go further and try harder than Rosie, who had never been locked up. The last time she went, though, Rosie grew tired of the cycle. The absence took its toll, and she no longer had the strength to look after Vicky. Rosie, too, left Vicky for a man, one with a job and an addiction. Feeding two habits is much easier when one person is employed, although Vicky had heard that others had seen Rosie back on the streets, with her boyfriend waiting in the car around the corner.

This time when Vicky got out, things were going to be different. Neither of her former partners would be around. She was older now, thirty-five, and hungry for change.

Vicky did have someone who loved her, but he wasn’t exactly her first choice. Peter had only met Vicky a month before she went inside, but that was enough for him. He became devoted to her, visiting her regularly during the year she was locked up and giving her money. She was a captive audience, but didn’t mind. It was better than no support at all.

Peter didn’t seem to care that their relationship had started as a professional one. He had a good job and was lonely. What good was all that money to him without company? Once Vicky was out, he was happy to give her money for drugs, even though she refused to have sex with him. He didn’t like to see her sick and he knew that without his cash, he would serve no purpose to her. And he needed to feel wanted by someone. Neither of them had known much different when it came to a relationship with the opposite sex. Peter liked the control and convinced himself that a girl he paid to be with could still be a genuine partner. Vicky had known men only as clients or abusers, so Peter served as a happy medium. It was one of the better times she’d had with men.

Vicky also needed Peter’s money to send to Eileen, whom Vicky had started up with again at a time when they were both in together. Eileen had finally been done big time for dealing, and she’d be gone for somewhere between five and nine years. Vicky had promised to wait.

Vicky was still banned from visiting Eileen after bringing in drugs to her. Vicky had handed her the drugs without anyone seeing them, and then Eileen had taken them to the toilet. When Eileen had not returned after a while, Vicky went to check on her. Finding Eileen blue on the floor, Vicky screamed for the screws to come in. In doing so she saved Eileen’s life and lost her visiting privileges. Vicky tells me the other girls called her a dog for asking the screws for help, but she couldn’t let her lover die in front of her in order to stay staunch to the jail greens.

These days, she’s angry at the screws. During her last jail term, she had asked them to move her closer to Eileen. “I’ve spent more time over the years with these people than I have my own family,” she explained. There were a few she trusted, who knew Vicky and her history with Eileen well. “All I wanted was a week, or a couple of days with her before I got out, but they wouldn’t.” It’s a conflicted sense of betrayal that Vicky feels about the screws letting her down, because she was never supposed to trust them in the first place. Despite the drug use in her family, she was not taught to hate authorities, and has always cooperated with them when caught.

But this time, things were going to be different. Peter was keeping her from doing crime to get drugs, but their time together was running out. He was a drinker; he snored and was growing less tolerant of sleeping on her couch. Yet he kept her feeling safer. She had her own place, but Vicky felt very alone. Several times she told me that living in the real world was very different, scarier, than jail. In jail she had been locked in at night, usually with a cell mate, in a wing full of girls, and guarded by officers. She got on well with almost everyone and had girls to watch her back. That wing was surrounded by the impenetrable strength of the prison walls. Nobody could get to her in jail. And locked in a cell, for a woman anyway, is one of the safest places to be.

Outside, her social life resembled all the previous patterns. The battle to get drugs was all-consuming, as it was for everyone she knew. She scraped by, breaking up small deals into smaller deals to sell off when she couldn’t get money from Peter. She wanted to get away from it; when she first got out she was just going to have some fun, and then it was too late. Too many people had her phone number. It was all too easy. And way too hard.

Dropping out of the drug scene was not simple for Vicky, but Peter eventually left, and the money dried up quickly. Vicky spent all her time at home on her own, staying out of trouble. She wanted to go on a methadone program, but, like many addicts, pondered how she would afford the daily dose. While $8 a day is nothing compared with a drug habit, it becomes a lot for people who, sobering up, need to buy food and pay their bills again.

After four long months, Vicky’s ban on visiting was lifted, and she was permitted to see Eileen. The jail would allow only a box visit, but Vicky was thrilled. She booked the next available time slot.

When I next see Vicky, she’s full of energy and hope. She tells me that she hasn’t used drugs for two weeks and is proud of herself. She says she’s realised she couldn’t afford to keep going the way she was, and does not want to go back to jail.

I wish her good luck with the visit, but she doesn’t answer my text asking how it went. Days later I get one, telling me she’s helping Rosie’s sick mum and that she’ll call me later. She never does.

You can blame it on institutionalisation, lack of support, or leopards and spots, chickens and eggs. Or you can put it down to coincidence that ten days after her visit with Eileen, Vicky was back in jail for a break-and-enter. Even though Vicky was emphatic that history wouldn’t repeat itself this time, maybe being trapped in the same place as the one you love is freer than being out of prison and alone.