Crimwife (4 page)

But to the criminal and his friends, this is all part of a day’s work. Doing earns, or rorts, is their way of making money. Life is full of opportunities to have everything you want, but there are barriers in the way. For the law-abiding citizen, these barriers may consist of taxes or interest rates. For the criminal community, it’s more likely to be DNA, CCTV cameras or an overly eager security guard. Jail is an occupational hazard. And these guys have wives and girlfriends like anyone else.

Then there are the crimwives who deal with the crime in industries that are part of the Australian cultural landscape. The building trade and used-car dealing both have their shady sides. We presume that where there is a white collar there’ll usually be some crime. And wherever we can, we allow our sports heroes to go unpunished, as long as they can put the ball across the line.

Sherry is married to an inmate who was convicted of drug charges. His family has been involved with horseracing for generations. In this industry, the only semi-sport which gets itself a public holiday in Victoria each November, criminal activity is more rife than at Long Bay Jail on buy-up day. It would be a straightforward mafia if the gee-gees didn’t provide a loose veil. Extortion, bribery, robbery, violence and drugs are a way of life for such families and not considered any more shameful than a saw is to a carpenter. But even the enormous amount of money that is at their disposal was not able to save Sherry’s husband from jail for drug possession and distribution. This does not mean change is imminent, however. His work in the family business and his family itself are his entire life. When released, he will get straight back to what is expected of him, and Sherry will too. There’s no leaving these situations, anyway, unless someone like Sherry breaks off all contact with her own family too.

The group of crimwives that gets the most furrowed brows and media attention is the Met While Incarcerateds, or MWIs as they are known online. There are many ways to become an MWI. Yet, apart from the women who deliberately seek out inmates – and they are in the minority in Australia – the most intriguing MWIs are the ones who took up a role to help inmates or society from a position of authority: pastoral, legal, medical or even punitive care.

The MWIs have already broken down many of their social inhibitions about jail before a relationship begins. Whether they meet their inmate as a pen pal, a pastor, a prison officer, psychologist or a friend of a friend, they have actively decided that they will associate themselves with jail and its contents. As soon as an individual makes contact with a jail, in writing or in person, through employment or otherwise, they are subject to some or all of the same risks, scrutiny and authorities as inmates. And so, without realising it, they become a part of the inmates’ world. Whether their intent is to help an inmate, pray for him, visit him or punish him, they are willing to participate in his world. And thus, the first of the social barriers is broken down.

There are many stories of women who meet their beau while innocently visiting a brother or a friend in jail. Somehow they wind up talking to another inmate, and the romance begins. They, too, have taken on the notion that one inmate is worth visiting, so the others can be seen in a kinder light too.

Apart from those who take the job only to punish criminals, whom they see as objects, most MWIs enter the system with the belief that inmates are still human. Somewhere along the line, an inmate may become so human that he gains the MWI’s affections, and then it’s decision time for the MWI. Love may have been the last thing they were looking for when they first contacted the institution, but when it happens, they face the same decision as the women who knew their partner on the outside: will the social stigma of loving someone in jail hold me back from this relationship?

If the answer is no, the MWI crimwife is born.

Anyone who is taken in by a con artist is often presumed to be weak in nature, stupid, desperate or naïve. Those who claim they’ve found love with an inmate are believed to suffer the worst of these character flaws, given that they were introduced to their love with the express understanding that he was a con man who was not worthy of living among us.

More recent research, however, states that manipulators often choose to target individuals because of the strengths they possess. Dr Bruce Tulloch from the NSW Corrective Services Academy, who is a practising psychologist in NSW jails, has published a document for staff with strategies to avoid being manipulated by the offenders in their charge. His work is also very useful in explaining how any of us can be manipulated in other situations where there’s a skilful operator involved. There are plenty of smooth criminals out there, and only a handful get locked up.

Tulloch argues that a good manipulator can use any interaction to get his way. Whether the inmate is acting in a friendly, helpful, needy or aggressive way, it isn’t always easy – or possible – to pick the genuine from the contrived. Tulloch identifies the risk factors for being manipulated as they relate to situation, personality, attitude or vulnerability.

The situational factors include the risk that direct work with inmates presents, particularly if the worker is from a helping profession, such as counselling or nursing. This work involves ongoing and personal contact, often in a role that values compassion. Merely holding a position of power in the jail can make someone a target.

People’s personalities can also leave them open to manipulation. Tulloch describes the caring personality, which is more forgiving and believes in the rights of humanity, as an easier target. Ethical people are chosen too, because they are less likely than those with fewer scruples to believe that someone is going to deceive them. Problem-solvers and those who find achievement important can be at risk. Their determination to find a solution and see the best outcomes for their clients can be used against them when a manipulator plays the victim.

Rule-breakers and independent thinkers are easily recognisable to manipulators as useful. People who view themselves as leaders are more likely to disregard rules or procedures. Those who avoid confrontation are also at great risk, as well as passive personalities, peacemakers and those who don’t like to say no or are too polite to do so.

If the MWI meets a decent manipulator, it may be their respectful manner, diligence and determination to do a good job that is their undoing, rather than desperation or stupidity.

*

Even if an infatuation develops, there is still the nagging question: why do crimwives stay in such a relationship? We know plenty about criminals and what makes them tick, but we rarely consider the motivations of those who support them. There’s a mixed range of opinions.

The most common view is that such women are narcissists who revel in the thrill and excitement of notoriety. This is the old-school gangster’s moll who thinks she is glamorous by proxy. Being with a criminal can heighten the self-esteem of the woman involved. She can live vicariously through his dangerous behaviour and status. These women do exist, often moving from inmate to inmate, which can be a dangerous existence fuelled by the hope and excitement that is part of their fantasy. I remember huge bikies in visits rooms with a couple of girls at a time seated at their table. Jimmy told me that the girls are rotated weekly, as part of their loyalty to the motorcycle club. These women manage to benefit financially and in status from the criminal lifestyle without letting its realities get in their way.

The Empress of the Underworld, Judy Moran, has been represented as the stereotypical narcissist, who flaunts the riches of a crime matriarch and thrives on media attention. In her autobiography,
My Story
, Moran skims so lightly over her husband’s and sons’ criminal activities that the reader might not notice the multitude of slayings that take place around her. Yet, in her casual overview of her arch-nemesis Roberta Williams, she notes:

they say that imitation is the highest form of flattery and I believe that is all Roberta could ever hope to be – a very poor imitation. One day Mark pointed Roberta out to me at a local football game. Apparently she had been admiring my car the week before – a cherry-red BMW. And there she was, the very next week, sitting in her own cherry-red BMW.

This is not the average woman’s dilemma.

The author of
Dream Lovers
, Jacquelynne Willcox Bailey, suggests that many MWIs have “rescuer” personalities, which is why they are perfect candidates for inmate dating. Rescuers are women who believe that men will change if they get enough love. While there is an overabundance of believers in this mythology in the outside world, Willcox Bailey argues that jail represents, to some women, the ultimate opportunity to provide the nurture, kindness and hope that men in obvious need may never have had. She outlines different combinations of personality traits in these women, “crude categories” that defined her interviewees:

There were the
saviours
, who gave God or fate credit for the relationship, and who claimed that they had a calming effect on their partner. Similar to them were the
martyrs
, who devoted their energy and time to their husband’s cause. Then there were the
sufferers for love
, who made grand claims of a great love and passion that could not be put asunder, even by a prison life sentence. And of course there were the
power freaks
, who believed they could transform their man by manipulating him with rewards and punishments.

But these categories pathologise the women, when so many of them are merely in ordinary relationships set in unusual circumstances. The categories also don’t allow for the idea that the lifestyle may suit the couple in more ways than one.

Or maybe the crimwife is just waiting for her moment to run. While it may be relatively easy to become involved with a criminal, becoming uninvolved is a lot more complicated. And where the criminal is violent, jealous, abusing drugs and alcohol, mentally ill or all of the above, resistance can be futile.

There are crimwives who are motivated by a straightforward fear of violence, which can date from before he went inside. The lively university grad who works at my corner store tells me a horror story of being a crimwife. When he beat her so badly that he went to jail, she was forced to visit or risk another beating when he got out. Her motives were at the other extreme of star-crossed lovers.

As dressed up and willing to comment as Judy Moran appears, she tells another side to the story in her memoir. In the chapter titled “Bashings and Bruisings,” Moran writes:

Over the years I learnt that if I upset Lewis, I would pay. I’ve lost count of the times he belted me. Sometimes it would be a meal not cooked to his liking, or my comments at his behaviour, or some imagined slight. I was expected to carry on as though nothing had happened, keeping the house, cooking the meals and even cooking for all his mates as they played cards and chatted while I was working in the kitchen, standing there for all of them to see – black and blue from my husband’s beatings.

Her home life is telling about her loyalties to her family as well as her options for escape:

[One] night I was beaten so severely I ended up in the Royal Melbourne Hospital where the medical staff called the police. The police told me I was lucky to be alive, and they wanted to charge Lewis with attempted murder ... I just couldn’t. Because of the life we lived and the people we mixed with, the thought of me having Lewis charged by the police was unthinkable. Because many of the people we mixed with lived outside of the law, trust among those we knew was a vital commodity. For me to be the one to break that trust was not an option.

I did leave, many many times. But Lewis always found me and brought me back. At first I came home because I believed his apologies. But always it would happen again. And later when I’d leave, he’d go to my friends’ or Mum’s place and threaten them. So I’d go home because to leave him was more frightening than to stay.

Perhaps Judy Moran’s own imprisonment in domestic violence led to her acceptance of her lot in life, and then it became her identity.

It is also entirely possible to perpetrate domestic violence from jail. Domestic violence encompasses various forms of power and control, such as emotional, financial or psychological threats and intimidation. As Liz O’Keefe, from the South Australian Partners of Prisoners Program, noted in a paper presented to the Australian Institute of Criminology’s
Women in Corrections
conference in 2000:

A prisoner does this by remote control. He can dictate her movements, friendships and finances by emotional blackmail, by threats of violence to her or to harm himself and through manipulation and coercion.

These women partners are very much “victims of crime,” imprisoned both physically and mentally by the actions of their partners. This imprisonment impinges on all aspects of their lives.

The woman who has known his violence on the outside knows what will be expected of her when he is inside and also knows that whatever she does for him will never be enough. If he is in jail because of the violence in their relationship, he will use every charm he first courted her with to win her back. Even those who are not in jail for violence and were not violent on the outside can become controlling and demanding in jail.

*

What if crimwives are not neatly packaged into the mad, the bad and the sad like the inmates are? What if these relationships are just the same as many others? Apart from the endless problems that jail can bring, the relationship has many of the same aspects. The pair share their struggles, joys, hopes, fears and promises for the future. They must manage money, work and health. There are children to be raised.

Dr Ann Aungles is one of the few experts to acknowledge the normalisation of jail affairs. She says: