Passing Through Shadows

Passing Through Shadows by Ken Gartner

Copyright © 2012 by Ken Gartner

Published by Ken Gartner, email kgartner@paradise.net.nz

PO Box 6291, Marion Square, Wellington 6141

All rights reserved solely by the author. The author guarantees all contents are original and do not infringe upon the legal rights of any other person or work. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the permission of the author.

ISBN 978-0-473-21815-7

eISBN 9781483509709

Editing, design and print management: Kapiti Print Media Ltd, email info@kpm.co.nz Printed in New Zealand

Unless otherwise indicated, Bible quotations are taken from:

NIV Life Application Bible. Tyndale House Publications, Inc., © 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991.

NIV Giant Print Reference Bible, 1990, Zondervan Corporation; © 1990.

Zondervan NIV Study Bible (Fully Revised) 2002 by the Zondervan Corporation. © 1985, 1995, 2002.

Other Bibles at times referred to and specified:

The Layman’s Parallel Bible. Zondervan Publishers. 1979 Edition.

New American Standard Bible. 1973. Collins World.

TMNT The Message New Testament. Ed. Eugene H. Peterson, 1995, NavPress Publishing Group. See p. 4 for copyright requirements.

New Living Translation. Metal Edition. 1996 Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Wheaton, Illinois.

The author has italicized any words being used to emphasize a personal point. The emphasis placed on any of these words then, either from the scriptures or elsewhere, is the author’s.

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

Jackie

Gurmel One of Jackie’s guards

CHAPTER 2

Abe

Joanne Abe’s partner

Shane Abe’s stepson and Joanne’s son

CHAPTER 3

Ritchie

Marilyn Ritchie’s mother

CHAPTER 4

John

Jordan John’s son

CHAPTER 5

Richard T

Maia Richard T’s son

CHAPTER 6

Warren

Prue Warren’s wife

‘CS’ Warren’s daughter

Mark Warren’s son

CHAPTER 7

Debski

CHAPTER 8

Tim

Joclyne Tim’s partner at the time

CHAPTER 9

Aroha

CHAPTER 10

Paul

Gill Paul’s daughter

Alison Paul’s wife

Epilogue

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to ex-prisoners who have served terms of imprisonment and successfully turned their lives around, and who now lead positive and active lives as Christians in the community. It is also dedicated to men and women who are currently serving terms of imprisonment and are striving to transform their lives while in prison by following Christ.

Even more importantly, this book is dedicated to the loved ones and families of prisoners and ex-prisoners. Behind almost every term of imprisonment handed down by the judiciary there are loved ones left behind to suffer pain and loneliness. This book tells of their ordeals, and how they managed to come through them successfully.

I pay tribute to all who opened up their hearts to me and by so doing enabled this book to become a reality.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Two years ago I was walking out of church at the end of a service when a young Tongan accountant came up to me full of exciting ideas for my next book. This book has been born out of the enthusiasm of this lovely young man. God has a wonderfully incredible knack of putting people across our paths at precise moments to open doors for us to serve Him in new and unexpected areas. This was certainly one of those moments, and I wish to thank Sai for being an instrument of God in sowing the seed for this book.

I also wish to thank Ann, my wife, soul mate and very encouraging critic, for all her help, patience, and animated discussions during the compilation of this book. My thanks go also to my brother in Christ, Chum, for his ongoing encouragement and support.

I would like also to thank all members and leaders of Wellington Elim Church who have given me so much encouragement with my writing and my ministry over the years.

No reira, kei te mihi rawa atu ki a koutou mo te atawhai.

INTRODUCTION

It is well known that the United States’ incarceration rate of persons imprisoned per 100,000 people is the highest in the world. Per capita, New Zealand is not far behind. Approximately two and a quarter million men and women are incarcerated in United States prisons at any one time, resulting in around 10 million Americans who are directly or indirectly subjected to the effects of imprisonment.

Pain, loneliness and desperation, whether in New Zealand or the USA, are universal companions of those subjected to imprisonment. These are the stories of some of those men and women – ex-prisoners and their family members – who endured imprisonment in New Zealand.

1

JACKIE

My life before imprisonment was, I guess, one constant party, and experiencing whatever came along. I never turned down anything! And for me, it was like embarking on a big adventure – life was an adventure, and I was going to live it to the max. So that was my kind of mindset. I think very differently about my previous life now though.

Every time I went into prison I lost everything I owned – my flat, all my furniture, and everything else in it. Because I had nobody on the outside that was available to take care of those sorts of things for me, every time I went to prison I lost everything. And I came out having to start again every single time. My family didn’t suffer materially, except my mum at times. My mum was here in New Zealand, and often she would send me money [to Australia] to help me out in certain situations, and I guess she would have suffered materially as she was on a pension and it would have been hard for her to do.

I wasn’t born to offend. Something traumatic happened in my life – the suicide of my dad when I was 11 years old – and I think the way it was dealt with back in those days was not okay. I was never given the opportunity to grieve the death of my father, and I was totally ignored. I felt I was pushed aside, by Mum and by everybody in the family, and I think I was just trying to cope as an 11-year-old and get some understanding of what had just happened.

It was tough. I wasn’t even allowed to go to my dad’s funeral. My mum sent me to school that day. My teacher was a Maori man, Mr. Hiha – I’ll never ever forget him. He knew what had happened because it was announced on radio news that my father was a fireman and that he had gassed himself in our kitchen. My teacher knew, and when I turned up at school on the day of my father’s funeral I think he was horrified. He wouldn’t even allow me to sit down. He just very gently ushered me out of the classroom and put me in the sick bay at school. Then he rang my home and told my family that he was sending me home, that I shouldn’t have been at school. I stayed in the sick bay until after lunchtime, I think, and then they sent me home; it was because of that man’s thoughtfulness. He recognized that a young 11-year-old pupil didn’t know what was happening.

I’ve actually seen that teacher Mr. Hiha in my new life, and he doesn’t remember me! I said to him, Mr. Hiha, you probably don’t remember me but you taught me back in Form 1.¹ I told him who I was but the name didn’t ring a bell, and even now I can just see the polite answer, but he really didn’t recognize the name. Nevertheless I said to him, Can I give you a hug? [Laughter.] I think he was quite taken aback!

I just wanted to hug him – a real ‘thank you’ hug. He had no idea how much he had done for me that day. It was a little connection back then, like the saying People may forget what you say, people may forget what you do, but people will never forget how you made them feel. He made me feel that he cared.

From that terrible time my life spiraled out of control, because I didn’t want to be ignored and pushed aside. I didn’t have time to grieve. I became the kid from hell who wasn’t going to be ignored, and they were going to know I was around. And that’s exactly what happened. Within six months of my father’s death I was sent to a ‘girls’ home’.

That period of time was the defining moment in my life when things went haywire. It was my way of coping.

So my first taste of imprisonment was when I was 12 years old, but by the age of 16 I’d graduated to an adult prison – Mt. Eden Prison, Women’s Division. That would have been back in the early 70s. That period between the girls’ home and Mt. Eden was virtually continuous incarceration, though it was in and out, in and out.

My final sentence of imprisonment was for three years in Australia, where it’s ‘Truth in Sentencing’, which means you serve the full three years. There’s no parole. I served mainly in Australian prisons.

I guess I tried to keep my imprisonment a secret from relatives, really. My sister lived in New Zealand. She’s 10 years older than I am, and she never ever knew that I went to prison. My mother never told her either. I remember asking my mum why she never told my sister, and Mum said that she was too ashamed. My brother was actually living in Australia, but I didn’t want him to know what was going on in my life. I remember ringing my brother from prison only on the odd occasion I think, to ask him for bail money – because you had to put up cash money for bail. He refused. He said, You are where you need to be, and that kind of wounded me at the time, so I just didn’t want to know him. I felt at the time like he’d abandoned me, and he wasn’t there in my hour of need.

I don’t think I actually had anybody close to me at any time during those years – I kept myself reasonably isolated. The people I associated with were like-minded criminals – junkies and drug addicts and such like – but they were all superficial relationships. There was never anything really intense in my relationship with anybody.

Disagreeable inmates – any inmates who caused me problems or I didn’t like – I simply reacted to with violence. I’m also a person with a pretty strong personality, and I guess I was probably the inmate from hell because I wouldn’t let anyone walk over me. I responded all the time with violence.

Mostly inmates affected me in destructive ways rather than in positive ways. I think of some of the connections and some of the friendships I did establish in jail: some of those friendships were pretty tight. I think we shared a common bond of being in a place of desperation. There was something unifying in that, and I think the only positive thing I got out of it was some really good relationships within that situation. They never continued once I was on the outside, though. I stayed connected with only one person once I got out, and that was a prison guard. I didn’t find real friends in there. You might form a common bond or comradeship, but there were no friendships that I maintained with any prisoners once I was released. Regarding any personal problems, I’m sure I didn’t let any inmates enter that place within me, that personal part of my life. To a certain extent there were a small handful of people that I could perhaps trust with some stuff, but I think that all my life I’ve not trusted readily.

It’s very difficult to get time alone in there. I think the only way you got time like that was when you were locked in your cell when you weren’t ‘two out’ (because some of us had two prisoners in one cell). I tried to make light of the situation and make it bearable to get through. Humor is a big part of who I am, and I tried to cope by making it light and fun. Being alone, locked in my cell for 8-12 hours, was basically okay. Even today I like my own company – I like being alone. But it wasn’t like I was ever striving to be alone in prison, because I got that solace that I needed anyway.

I was disappointed with my self-esteem during these times of incarceration. I knew that somewhere, somehow in my life there was a better me, and I always felt that I’d let myself down. I felt I was weak-willed at times. I was disappointed that I didn’t show more strength. I guess there was a part of me which wondered whether my family members trusted me, or if they could respect the human being that I was. I never felt quite good enough, and I wasn’t sure if they felt that I was good enough. I don’t know. But I’m not sure that I felt shame. I think I felt different. I was different, and that was the way I was. If you didn’t like it, sling your hook! [Rocking laughter all round.]

I hated prison guards with every ounce of my being. I never ever showed any respect for them. I would barely even speak to them, actually. I hated them with a passion. I think they thought I was a low life, scum, a junkie.

We only ever had one chaplain in the Sydney prison, and she would come in on a Friday. Major Willett, a Salvation Army prison chaplain, used to come in and give each woman a bag of boiled lollies, and that’s all that was for me – Major coming in with my bag of lollies! There was never any discussion around anything, just Where’s my lollies, Major?

I coped with prison because I had to. I have a pretty strong personality, and I thought Well, this is the hand that’s been dealt to me. This is my life. Suck it up. Get on with it. I just had to get used to it and roll with it. Prison was part and parcel of my life, and so that’s what I did.

You know, going through the court process, and sitting in the cells, and getting on the prison bus and all that – that was all just part of my life. I think I handled it because I had to. Of course I didn’t like going to prison – it was horrible going to prison. Once there, I simply wanted to get on with it, get it over and done with and get out! I didn’t go too much into any form of depression.

The only agonizing part of my going into prison was the enforced withdrawal from drugs. I was a drug addict, and that was a horrendous time. But apart from that, I think I coped pretty well.

One of the most distressing events I missed out on as a result of my being in prison was my grandfather’s dying. There was nothing else of significance, only my grandfather’s death. Letters and photographs were my most prized possessions in prison, as they are with most inmates. They were absolutely precious, and I think I guarded my stuff closely as it was that important to me.

I used to ring my mum and let her know every time I was in prison, and she was probably the only person I would ever tell that I was there. She would often tell my brother, but I think Mum was about the only person I ever contacted. I never had visits in jail, and I never had people contacting me from the outside.

My mum used to come in once a year. I lived in Sydney for 17 years, and every year my mum came over [from New Zealand] for my birthday and also every time I was in prison – which was nearly every year. She knew, therefore, when I was in prison, and I knew that she was coming over and I would make arrangements to have special visits from her. I never found that to be a difficulty or a struggle. Whether that was because she was travelling from New Zealand, I don’t know, but I never had a problem with her coming to visit me.

I usually had the one visit a year. More visits from people would have been nice, but at the end of the day there wasn’t anybody that I really wanted to see. There weren’t any strong connections or relationships within the realms that I travelled. My visitors would have all been crims anyway; they wouldn’t have been allowed in.

It was extremely hard for my mum to come visit me in Australia. I think she used to just cry, and she was quite wounded and hurt. And I used to be quite flippant about it. My attitude regarding her was, There’s nothing to worry about; I’m okay. What are you worried about? I’m all right. I can take care of myself. There’s nothing to be frightened of. There’s no one in here that can cause me any harm! And I think I spent most of the first visit reassuring her that everything was going to be okay!

I’d ring my brother when I was inside on the odd occasion, when I started speaking to him again, and he used to kind of preach to me about how he’d just become a Christian. He used to go on and on. I didn’t really mind it, but I didn’t want him trying to convert me or throwing that at me all the time either.

I actually knew there was a God. But I felt that God had abandoned me, and I didn’t want any part of Him. That’s how I was then. I think my brother wanted to help. He wanted to make it all ‘better’, but it wasn’t going to happen. He was quite a new Christian. My brother and I are certainly connected now. And I’ve forgiven him for his judgmental attitudes! [Booming laughter all round.] But we get along really well now, and I’m open to him, and I think he’s proud of my achievements. Yes, it’s quite lovely now to have God conversations with my brother, and he encourages me and lifts me up in prayer and vice versa. I don’t know whether he’s forgiven himself for his attitude towards me; he’s still a bloke – one of those blokes!

My brother won’t talk about emotional stuff much, and I think he’s got a lot of grieving and a lot of forgiving to do, because he was affected in much the same ways as I was by our upbringing. And he experienced the same things that I experienced by the suicide of our dad. Being five years older than I was he coped with it differently, but he still experienced the same wounds that I did, and he’s never allowed himself to express his grief. That, I think, creates bottled-up anger, and that’s not healthy for him. I’ve tried to have discussions with him about it, but I haven’t had much success.

My mum was an amazing lady. She never ever judged me. She never used to come and visit me and say, You should be doing this and this and this. She simply showed unconditional love: Was there anything I wanted? How could she help? What could she do for me? All that kind of stuff.

It was very sad when it was time for her to leave. Some of the prison staff were actually very good to her. Perhaps they took into account the fact that she had to travel over there all the way from New Zealand.

However, there was one time that she came out to visit me and they tried to put me on a ‘booth visit’! I went ballistic, and my mum was standing there crying during all this and going, Oh please don’t. Please don’t. She thought that they would terminate the visit and I wouldn’t be allowed to see her, and I just said, No – I’m not f--g having this! And then it was slam! and bang! and crash! In the end they called the superintendent down and I just went nuts at the superintendent also, and they allowed us to have a ‘contact’ visit.

It turned out that somebody I didn’t even know had come in to visit me. That person got caught coming through the visiting center with drugs! I didn’t know any of this had been going on, and then when I went up for my visit, that’s when they informed me that I was on ‘booth visit’, and I said, What for? I never had a visit! It’s not my fault if somebody comes to visit me and gets caught. I wasn’t there! However, that was the only disruptive sort of encounter that I had during visiting sessions with Mum. I’ll never forget that.

I remember later saying to my mum before she passed away, And what do you think about all the changes that have occurred in my life, Mum? What do you think about what’s going on for me now? She said to me, I’ve been waiting for the novelty to wear off![More thunderous laughter.] Obviously there was a huge part of my mum that didn’t quite believe that what was going on for me was real, and I created that partly through what I had dished out to her in life. I didn’t give her any reason to believe that what I was going to do was honorable and going to be continued. She really thought the novelty would wear off and then I’d simply move on to the next thing.

There were no rehabilitation programs while I was inside – none, nothing available. You go to school for basic schooling like reading, arithmetic and the like, but there were no rehabilitation programs available at all.

There were times of joy in there only when I was acting the fool. I remember this particular prison officer called Gurmel who said to me, Why don’t you think about being a peer educator for other prisoners around Aids and HIV? I said, I don’t know what you mean. She said, I’ve got this doctor coming in to do a presentation and I think you should come in to sit and talk and listen.

Well I did, and I became this peer educator in prison, educating the women about HIV, and how to keep safe, and so on. That was the catalyst for a change in my life, I think. I then formed a group of women who were instrumental in raising funds for the children’s AIDS unit in Sydney, and we used to put on plays and do all sorts of fun stuff all around, educating prisoners on the dangers of sharing needles and having sex without condoms, that sort of stuff. Yes, those were joyous moments for me. I felt like I was actually achieving something positive for the first time in my life.

There were also many occasions for humor, lots of humor – I made sure of that! I remember one day when this girl spoke to me. We were talking about courage and strength, which we used to call ‘dash’, like Have you got any dash? She said to me, You wouldn’t know what dash was all about. And I said to her, "I’ll show you what dash is all about!" I had hair down to my waist, and I went into the bathroom and I shaved the whole lot off – and I walked out bald! So there were funny, crazy moments like that which would cause you to do some outrageous things.

The only help I got from anyone was from Gurmel, an Indian prison guard with whom I’d had a connection. She was the Deputy Superintendent of our prison. I don’t know what it was with that woman, but I connected with her. She actually helped me believe that I could be something better – in fact, she was the light in my tunnel at that time. I never believed I could be anything other than what I was – she was the one that used to tell me that I could do great things.

When I got out of prison I kept writing to her. She wasn’t allowed to write to me, of course, as prison guards aren’t allowed to do that. For ten years I kept writing, continually telling her how my life had changed and what was happening. When she retired I got a card from her, and she told me that she’d received all my mail over the years. She was so proud of me. Now we actually talk over the phone. We haven’t seen one another yet, but she’s invited me to go and stay with her [in Sydney, Australia] and vice versa. But she was the only person back then, I think, who gave me a glimmer of hope. I know I’ll go to see her one day. That’s my definite intention.

There was so much spare time inside – it was all spare time! The whole lag was spare time! [Eruption of laughter.] [Sings] "Wasted days and wasted nights...!" [More eruption of laughter.] I was always scheming and plotting: who had drugs, and so on. There was always skullduggery going on, and stealing this and brewing that. [Loud laughter.] You know, you always kept yourself occupied with the unsavory things. As far as learning new skills, I did a bit of painting and decorating, actually doing a learning program and passing with an A pass. So I can hang wallpaper and paint! That was probably the only skill I learnt in prison: painting and decorating. I was also the foreman of the painting gang. I was the foreman because I was always in charge. It didn’t matter where I went, I was always the boss! [Great laughter all round again.] I worked for a short time in the prison laundry. I quite enjoyed that because there was a good group of us in there, but really, I wanted to be free to wander out and about in the prison.

Over the years imprisonment slowly wore me down. That last prison sentence was the only time I’d ever thought about how I could perhaps do it differently. I was getting tired of prison. Time inside passed quite slowly, mainly due to the nothingness. It felt kind of wasteful. There was never much in the way of constructive things you could be a part of – like sitting around twiddling your thumbs, really. And that made the time longer, and made it all seem meaningless and wasteful. And I received no help of any sort while inside.

With my approaching release there were some concerns as to where I was going to live, where I was going to put my head down that night, but that was about it. I was always released back into the street with nothing. I had nowhere to go and nobody to meet me. I’d lost everything again, of course, and so I would start all over again, but prior to getting out of prison I would arrange to maybe connect with somebody who had got out of prison the week before to go to that person’s place, or they would pick me up. I kind of had a place to go to each time (albeit temporary).

I was always excited about approaching release dates, absolutely excited about getting out. When I was about to get out of prison, the first thing I would think about was having a needle in my arm – that’s the first thing I would do on my release. The next thing I would probably do would be eat a Crunchie Bar, and maybe smoke a tailor-made cigarette, kind of in that order really! [Infectious guffaws again.] Most times that did happen, and the last time of release as well. Within one hour of being released from prison I was actually up in King’s Cross. I’d already had my taste of heroin, and I was standing on a street corner selling cocaine for a dealer, all within one hour of being released from prison.

On the day of release I was on cloud nine. Feet didn’t touch the ground. It’s hard to describe: party mode! It was just so exciting.

My last lag was for three years, and on that release day I actually had someone meet me in the car park of the prison – an ex-prisoner, someone who had got out just a few weeks earlier – and she was there to pick me up. It was such an amazing feeling to be free again. What they do in Australia is a little bit different from here in New Zealand – when you’re due to be released, a person from the government Welfare Department comes out and interviews you and signs you up for the unemployment benefit. They then give you your ‘Steps to Freedom’, a monetary grant you receive in cash as you are leaving and signing out of the jail. You have two to three days to go in to register at the office closest to where you’re going to be living, and your information is already loaded into the database. You’re then automatically on the dole; they make it very simple to be on the benefit.

I regret that I didn’t seek out more opportunities for change. I also regret that nobody ever challenged me about my behavior, or the fact that I was using people. Yes, there are a few regrets. I think I could have done things differently.

I wish I hadn’t been so violent. I wish I hadn’t hurt so many people, in and out of prison – I hurt a lot of people inside as well. I wasn’t a nice person in prison. I even spent nine months in a segregation unit in a men’s jail. They transferred me from a women’s prison to a men’s prison and put me in a segregation unit for nine months because the women’s prison couldn’t contain me and they didn’t want me there. I was a troublemaker, so that’s where they stuck me, in Parklea Prison.² When my time was up at Parklea, they released me out into the street at 6 o’clock on a Friday night, with nowhere to go and a box of mail under my arm. When I was released I didn’t notice too many changes, possibly because I was pretty hazed when I was out there anyway. It was all hazy, and it wasn’t long before I was hazy again. Everything pretty much blended and looked the same!

The most memorable sense of pain experienced during my time in prison was physical – my withdrawal from drugs, which was physically painful. In terms of emotional pain, I guess I had a sense of failure; that was hurtful to me. I always felt responsible for wounding me. And I always felt like I’d let myself down at those times, and so there were those kinds of thoughts, but nothing too major I suppose.

Most of all I missed drugs while in prison. Occasionally I got them inside, but not very often – not as readily as I could get them on the outside, of course! I think that essentially I missed drugs even more than I missed people, except my mum. However, drugs are even more available nowadays in prisons. It’s a very, very scary scenario now.

The most positive thing to come out of my prison experience was the connection I had with Gurmel – the fact that it took this woman to tell me that I could do great things. As far as strength within me is concerned, I always felt weak-willed but knew at the same time that I was a person with strength. I don’t know whether it was just my personality being over the top. I could be fairly assertive and I knew what I wanted and I knew that if I set my mind to something I could probably achieve it. I think this might have come from my mum, who was a woman of real strength.

I’ll never forget going to prison, ever. You can’t forget. And yes, there were moments in prison that I treasured, like some of the connections and some of the things you share with inmates, and some of