TORTURE IN THE AMERICAN GULAG

Sexual Assault Of Prisoners In The U.S.A. Is Being Grossly Exacerbated By
The 'War On Drugs'

Sigmund Freud and the Wright brothers were contemporaries at the
turn-of-the-century. In the field of aeronautics, we have placed men on the
moon and brought them back alive three decades ago. Yet in the field of
psychology, we've hardly scratched the surface in understanding the human
mind. Just one example of misplaced values is the way the wealthiest and
most powerful nation in the world treats its prisoners.

One of the most unique gardens in the world is located in northern
California and though few people visit, the garden is well tended.

Scattered among the flowers and bushes are toys - a stuffed unicorn here, a
tiny windmill there, a plastic creature with a trace of a smile stands
propped among some early Spring daffodils. And painted on the rocks all
about the garden are the names, ages and hometowns of children and the dates
they were kidnapped, raped, and/or murdered.

On one large, rock is clearly printed in white paint, "For a brief time 'an
angel rested here.' Polly Hannah Klaas."

This hallowed ground is where the body of the pretty, forever-12-year-old
was found in 1993 and is now called "Polly's Garden and The Memorial for All
Children."

On a recent visit, I sat awhile on one of the benches, overwhelmed with
sadness, mental portraits of my own grandchildren, and total incredulity. I
searched for an answer to how a man, who might have been a father himself,
could kidnap a child out of the warmth and safety of her own home, then rape
and murder her.

I also sought an answer to why the United States' with its immense criminal
justice system; all its great universities and think tanks; and its legions
of psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, criminologists and spiritual
leaders - doesn't seem to care enough about why people like Richard Allen
Davis commit heinous crimes such as the murder of young Polly Klaas.

A freshly painted rock in Polly's Garden mocks our feeble efforts to prevent
such horror; "Clarissa Ernst. Age 8. Another child victim. Her body found
near Shasta Lake in California, Mar. 26, 1999."

There are clues to the mind-set of killers like Davis. But a public blinded
by vengeance and swayed by self-serving politicians discounts these clues as
"excuses."

For decades the public has voted for ever harsher punishment with lessening
efforts toward prevention - as if knowing why people torture others is
insignificant. It is crucially important for us to understand that rape is
torture - the infliction of severe physical and/or emotional pain as
punishment and/or coercion.

In his trial, it was passed over lightly that Richard Allen Davis was
himself sexually tortured earlier in life. Speaking from personal experience
and fifteen years of research, I suggest that this is a very important clue
to why Davis sexually-tortured and killed a 12-year-old girl.

Rape Trauma Syndrome

Rape is crazy-making. It may be the ultimate humiliation, with very serious
and long-lasting psychic damage to the victim as well as to close loved ones
who are secondary victims. Rape of women and the sexual abuse of children in
our society are well known and a national scandal. But there is another form
of rape in our society that receives virtually no attention by our media,
our politicians, our public at large. The eerie absence of social
consciousness on this issue has a sinister match in the enormity of the
social problem created by it. I am speaking of the rape of male prisoners
and the very dangerous and expensive repercussions for all society that
result from this practice.

Many prison rape survivors become rapists themselves in a demented attempt
to regain what they think of as their "lost manhood." If upon release, these
prisoner rapists and survivors-turned-rapists continue this particular cycle
of violence, might they not victimize women as easier and preferred prey? If
so, we may have identified a major root cause for the escalating rape rate
of women in free society. Survivors are often walking, breathing time bombs.

Some prison rape victims retaliate by murdering their rapists, receiving
added years to their sentence. Another outcome of prison rape is suicide.
Researchers have found that suicide is the leading cause of death behind
bars. Sexual harassment is the leading cause of prisoner suicide. Yet
another consequence is disease. Hepatitis-C and AIDS spread by prisoner rape
can be a death sentence. An Ohio man contracted AIDS from rape in jail and
infected his wife who bore two children who in turn tested HIV positive
(Associated Press, Jan. 6, 1988).

Severe psychosis is the most common outcome of prisoner rape. Sexual assault
can often break a prisoner's spirit without even breaking his skin,
resulting in shame, rage and all the actions related to these emotions. With
some people, just the threat of sexual assault can induce rape trauma
syndrome which is similar to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Researchers have found that it takes an average of ten years for a woman to
heal from rape and that many male rape survivors never heal because of
pressures placed on men that are only beginning to be understood. The rape
of male prisoners is especially destructive in that they are usually gang-raped.

In the advanced stages of rape trauma syndrome, a survivor's mood often
swings between deep depression and rage. Prisoner rape may be the quickest,
most cost-effective way of producing a sociopath or, in Richard Allen
Davis's case, a psychopath. The fact, according to researchers, that most
men on death row were sexually abused earlier in life should come as no
surprise. Indeed, it is a clue that we in free society ignore at our peril.

Dr. James Gilligan, psychiatrist and director of the Center for the Study of
Violence at Harvard Medical School, has discovered that shame is the "deadly
emotion." "It works to deaden the feelings of being human...Shame a petty
criminal in prison and you may get a serial murderer after his term has been
served." (Violence; Our Deadly Epidemic And Its Causes, Dr. James Gilligan,
1996).

A Monstrous Crime

While I was on a speaking tour in Texas for Amnesty International in
February, 1999, I met the parents of a prisoner who confirmed my suspicion
that John William King was most probably sexually assaulted in prison a few
years earlier. King, you may recall, was the young, white man recently
convicted and sentenced to be executed for dragging to death a black man
last year in Jasper, Texas. This prisoner, once confined with King, told his
parents that King was probably gang-raped by members of the Crips, a
nationwide gang of blacks. King was just an average, Texas, good ole boy,
redneck racist - not a particularly mean one - when he first arrived in
prison, the prisoner reported. But soon afterward, King was "turned out"
(raped) and turned vicious.

One of King's court-appointed attorneys, Brack Jones, was quoted by The
Dallas Morning News, Feb. 19, 1999, as having said, "Something...obviously
happened to him (King) in the penitentiary." In news accounts, including
that of Time for March 8, 1999, words like "attacked," and "assaulted*" were
used to describe what may have happened to King at the Beto 1 Prison Unit in
Texas several years ago. But no account that I read or heard until my trip
to Texas in February ever mentioned sexual assault which is a big step up
the ladder of violence.

* In 1985, I received an unsigned memo from the FBI that included the
following official definition: "By the Uniform Crime Reporting definition,
the victim of forcible rape is always female...Sex attacks on males could be
classified as aggravated assaults or other sex offenses, depending on the
extent of injury." I find it interesting that King was reportedly
"assaulted." In effect, "rape" of male prisoners by other male prisoners
does not exist...officially, it's called "assault."

The prisoner in Texas refuses to go public with his information for fear of
reprisal by prisoners and/or guards. But any psychoanalyst knowledgeable
about rape trauma syndrome or torture syndrome should be able to verify the
prisoner's claim by examining King. If the claim is indeed true, I charge
that voters in general, and the criminal justice system in particular, share
some responsibility for the brutal torture-murder of James Byrd Jr., as well
as the sexual torture of John William King. As it is, King gets the death
penalty while the criminal justice system that made him a killer is never
even indicted.

The major media is negligent for not having dug a lot deeper into King's
motivation. Here we have two stories of sexual misconduct, "Monicagate" and
the issue of prisoner rape. Both are national scandals. The more titillating
and glamorous story gets overplayed by the media. Guess which one has been
underplayed since the first recorded prisoner rape in the US in 1826?

"...my country has betrayed me."

In 1968, I was editor of the alternative newspaper Inferno, in San Antonio,
Texas. I was arrested for civil disobedience and placed in a crowded cell
with thirty prisoners, most of them confined for violent crimes. Almost half
of them were black and the other half Hispanic. There were three whites, two
of whom cowered in the back of the cell. The remaining white became
ringleader of the action. The prisoners had all been moved there just hours
before me and the two rival factions had been building up steam to go at
each other. In the parlance of prison-speak, this was known as a "gorilla
cage," a cell specially arranged for a "turning out party" in which the
prisoners would bend some unfortunate candidate like a rubber tire. Later, I
learned the prisoners had been told by a guard that I was a child molester
and they'd get an extra ration of Jello if they "took care of me." I was
placed into this racial tinderbox, a clean-cut, well-dressed, white man,
obviously ignorant of life behind bars. I wore glasses and spoke funny, too.

After the attack, I learned from my cellies how it had all been
orchestrated. My FBI files (available via the Freedom of Information Act)
indicate the Bureau may have set me up to be "neutralized" this way because
of my anti-Vietnam war activities. What better way to deal with a political
troublemaker than rape in prison? The victim is usually silenced by his or
her own trauma and shame.

Since finding these things out, I've never had ill feelings for my rapists -
but I still haven't forgiven my country. I'm working on it though because I
understand the spiritual necessity and healing power of forgiveness. Whether
the FBI was involved or not, my country set up the conditions for my rape
and torture. I cared enough about this country and its actions to be
arrested for civil disobedience?and I was repaid in a terrible currency.

I May Be Crazy but I'm Not Insane

As a prison rape survivor, I'm absolutely certain I would not be reporting
on prisoner rape if not for the feminist movement that brought the subject
of rape out of the closet. I'm sure I'd be in a mental hospital or, more
likely, prison, since that's where many emotionally disturbed people seem to
end up these days. Rape is a human issue. This is something I've tried to
communicate to feminists for more than a decade, but, for the most part,
their attitude seems to be possessive, that rape is a woman's issue. The
shocking truth may be that far more men than women are raped in America each
day - period.

In 1984, I fasted for two months to bring media attention to the issue of
prisoner rape and obviously to my own pain. The San Francisco Chronicle
interviewed me at length in my camper parked outside the gates of San Quentin.

I wanted badly for the story of prisoner rape to appear in a major national
newspaper. After waiting two weeks, I figured it wasn’t going to be printed,
so I went to the Chronicle to find out why. Hoping for the best but
expecting a brush-off, I brought a hammer along. I planned, if necessary, to
smash a computer monitor because (1) I wanted to finish my fast, one way or
other, in jail to make it that much more difficult for society to continue
to ignore this barbarism. And (2), if I survived, I wanted to be able to
afford to make restitution if I chose to.

Immediately after identifying myself on the phone in the lobby, the reporter
upstairs told me he knew about me and rudely hung up. I selected one of the
plate glass doors to make my statement. First I went outside, assumed the
lotus position and among other things, I asked the door for forgiveness. I
then rose with difficulty, put the hammer through the door, and resumed the
lotus position, waiting for the police

As you can tell by now, I am crazy. The Veteran's Administration agrees and
in 1987 awarded me a 100 percent, non-service-connected disability pension
for PTSD. I am crazy. I suffer from depression, rages, flashbacks, paranoia,
multiple personalities, and sexual dysfunction, to name some of my symptoms
of rape trauma syndrome. But I'm not insane. I know the difference between
right and wrong and I'm no danger to myself or others. This is more than I
can say for many of those who make the law, interpret the law, and enforce
the law.

For me to finish my own healing process, I need this barbarism to end, or to
at least be greatly minimized. As president of SPR, Inc., every day I hear
the screams for help or the weeping pain of new victims and old survivors.

The War on Drugs and Prisoner Rape as a 'Management Tool'

I submit that the war on drugs never, ever had anything to do with public
health. From its beginning in 1968, it was Richard Nixon's scheme to
politically neutralize young men of color and the predominately white
counterculture of which I am a long-time member. And like most wars, it's
been about political and economic expedience. The war on drugs is a civil
war against America's poor. As in any war, in the name of national security,
civil rights are suspended and atrocities are committed. And since more than
half of the men, women and children locked-up in America are confined for
drug-related crimes (a majority of them non-violent and victimless crimes),
they should be more correctly called "political prisoners." This is why I
use the word gulag, the old Soviet term for a prison system filled with
political prisoners.

Reagan greatly escalated Nixon's war on drugs, doubling the prison
population, thus making the American gulag the biggest in the world. Bush
doubled it again, and, for over a decade, the US has had more prisoners per
capita than any other country in the world. California provides a telling
example: even though new prison spending has outstripped new colleges by 19
to 1, the state predicts that all of its prisons will be filled to capacity
by April of 2001.

America is feeding its voracious prison/industrial complex with this
spurious War On Drugs. Now, in 1999, according to Amnesty International,
conditions in America's correctional institutions have gotten so bad that AI
launched its "Rights for All Campaign," focusing on human rights violations
in the US criminal justice system.

The appalling conditions behind bars are scarcely conceivable in free
society. Statistics do not provide a clear picture of these conditions, but
they can begin to establish a useful perspective. For instance: In 1995,
each day, 83,000 adult male prisoners were raped in US correctional
institutions, according to a report by Stephen Donaldson, of SPR.
Donaldson's statistics have yet to be challenged by the Bureau of Justice
Statistics. In fact Donaldson’s statistics may be so conservative, he may be
off by half, according to Dr. Warren Farrell in The Myth of Male Power. And
according to Carl Weiss and David Friar in their book Terror In The Prisons,
published way back in 1974, "More men than women are raped every year in
America. They are raped in prison."

Not only prison officials, but the entire criminal justice system has a
vested interest in keeping this barbarism covered-up. Why? Because they use
prisoner rape as what is called a "management tool."

Police officers and prosecuting attorneys use the threat of prisoner rape to
coerce suspects into plea bargaining. Ex-prisoners who know what to expect
behind bars are especially vulnerable to these threats.

Police - and guards - use the threat of prisoner rape to coerce suspects and
prisoners into becoming informers.

I believe the criminal justice system has become a vast criminal conspiracy
that preys mostly on the poor while extorting money out of middleclass
taxpayers through the use of misinformation such as all the rhetoric about
drugs.

Politics and Prison Rape

Who is being raped behind bars? It's certainly not the big drug lords or the
vicious thugs in for murder and assault. It’s mostly the young, non-violent,
first-offenders confined for a little too much pot and too poor to buy their
freedom who fit the victim profile. The legislators and judges know all
this. It's their job to know.

A few politicians have spoken out. In 1970, in the wake of prison
insurrections in our country, we find these comments on record: "The
appalling conditions and practices in many of our penal institutions can do
more damage to a young person than his use of marijuana," said then New York
State Representative Ed Koch before he became Mayor of New York City.

But as Mayor of one of the greatest cities on earth, what did Ed Koch do to
end those appalling conditions and practices?

"I think you are absolutely correct as to the consequences for these young
men," agreed then Philadelphia District Attorney Arlen Specter, now a
Republican senator of Pennsylvania. "Men who got into the prison facilities
and who are victims of attack, or who may join in the attack, come out more
finely-honed weapons against society than when they went in. Can any of us
understand the degradation and hatred a young man must feel when he is
released into a community after being raped?" asked Specter.

Yet as a powerful and influential senator now, what is Arlen Specter doing
to end the system of prison rape which creates so much degradation and
hatred in young men?

Prisoner rape violates two amendments to the US Constitution, the 8th
forbidding cruel and unusual punishment and the 13th forbidding slavery.
(Many victims of prisoner rape become sexually enslaved by a dominant
prisoner and are often forced into prostitution for contraband such as drugs
which, in the reality of prison culture, are often smuggled in by guards.)
Reactionaries predictably claim that prison rape doesn't exist, complaining
that, to the contrary, prisoners are coddled and prisons are too
comfortable. Such voices are especially shrill when prison reform activists
report on atrocities. (I observe reactionaries to be very selective about
what parts of the Constitution they defend. For instance, property rights,
"yes," and to hell with human rights.)

Curbing Prisoner Rape

There is one quick, simple and inexpensive solution to at least drastically
cut down on prisoner rape and it has been used in San Francisco City/County
Jail for more than a decade. I've been jailed there a number of times for
civil disobedience and each time I was screened by a male nurse whose job it
was to separate the obviously vulnerable prisoners from the obviously vicious.

So I'd like to thank San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessy and his staff for
doing the decent thing and contributing to the solution rather than the
problem. But it occurs to me, if the solution is so simple, why isn't it
more widespread? The extent to which it is not is evidence that SPR's charge
is correct, that prisoner rape is indeed used as a management tool.

God Is Truth

Christians say, God is love. But I go along with Gandhi who said "God is
truth." Despite having been intimate with perhaps the worst horror of
confinement and despite being an emotional cripple as a result, I have long
believed my rape in San Antonio thirty years ago was the greatest single
lesson and the greatest single blessing of my life to date. It forced me to
know myself, as Socrates urged his students. And it knocked me into a higher
consciousness, closer to the Great Spirit. From this great lesson and
blessing, I remain optimistic that the prophecy of Victor Hugo will one day
become a reality: "We shall one day come to look upon crime as a disease.
Physicians shall displace judges and hospitals the gallows. We shall pour
oil and balm where we formerly applied iron and fire. And evil will be
treated with charity instead of in anger—a change simple and sublime. The
gentle laws of Christ will penetrate at last into the code and shine through
its enactments." It is to this end we work; not just an end to prisoner
rape. I rest my case.

Tom Cahill is a long-time political activist, mainly concerned with issues
of justice and the environment. He's been a member of Earth First! since
1990 and is currently president of Stop Prisoner Rape Inc. Tom lives on the
Mendocino Coast of California. He can be reached at PO Box 632, Fort Bragg,
CA 95437, or 707/964-0820. www.spr.org