South African Female Prisoners Confronting the Traumatizing Damage of Their Crimes

As some of you may know, I was lucky to spend about one year in Cape Town, South Africa, as I was pursuing a Master’s degree in Development Management at the University of the Western Cape.

Through my initial search for accommodation, I got in contact with the O’Ryans, a truly warm and loving South African family, whose daughter Emily had (coincidently) stayed in my home town in Germany for some time and who (logically, but really not so logically) even spoke fluent German. As if this was not a coincidence but somehow “meant to be”, the O’Ryans quickly (sort of) adopted me into their family, and the incredibly funny and bubbly Emily and me quickly became friends. The O’Ryans are very active in voluntary community work, and one extremely interesting project they are involved in is called Restorative Justice. Their friends Jenny and Jonathan Clayton launched a non-profit organization called Hope Prison Ministry, which is active in prisons across South Africa.

What is Restorative Justice?

Based on the rationale that prisoners are not ready for release until they have confronted the damage caused by their actions, Restorative Justice aims to “heal the wounds of crime”. In other words, it is a program that aims to trigger a thought process within an offender (the prisoner), which will ultimately bring him or her to the point where (s)he will realize WHAT (s)he has done to the victim and what type of consequences the offender’s crime has had on the victim.

Naturally, this understanding would come with a feeling of guilt, or feeling sorry for the victim, which the offender needs to deal with. The “Best Case Scenario”, or let’s say according to the Theory of Change of Restorative Justice, the offender would ideally want to initiate a dialogue with the victim, in which (s)he expresses these feelings and wishes to apologize for what (s)he has done. For the victims it is usually even harder to face their offenders, and this is also part of the process, that, as an offender, you may potentially have to deal with being rejected by your victim. Ideally, the offender and the victim would reach a point where they are willing to sit down together, share their emotions, and eventually forgive. This is the ultimate goal of Restorative Justice because only when these emotional wounds have been healed, both offender and victim are able to move forward in their lives.

Don’t they say that Forgiveness is Freedom? I think we all know that this is easier said than done, especially in an extreme case like this.

Now you may think that every offender must know what they have done, and how bad this may have been for a victim, but unfortunately, this is not always the case. Due to our justice systems, many times offenders lie throughout their trial, mostly to get a lighter sentence. Sometimes they keep up the image of them not having committed an offense, simply as a survival strategy, sometimes with fear of being rejected by their families, or simply due to selfish reasons of wanting to escape their harsh sentence.

What I’m trying to say is that: A situation that seems obvious for an outsider (like us), may be a lot more complicated in real life.

I must admit that this was the first time I heard of Restorative Justice, and it sounded like such an interesting program that I instantly expressed my interest in personally taking part in a session like this.

It actually still seems a bit surreal, but it took only a few days and I found myself in Worcester Female Correctional Center, about an hour outside of Cape Town, at a Restorative Justice session.

Last time I was in a prison was in Costa Rica (oh my, I will have to write another blog about THIS experience). That time I was in a male prison, and what I clearly remember is walking across the prison yard feeling like Beyoncé because hundreds of young-, middle- and old-aged Latino prisoners now pictured their biggest dream come true with me, and like true Latin gentlemen, their expression of hot (situational) passion for me was now a matter of me, the prison officers between us, and the horny Latino prisoners. . . . . Let’s leave this intimidating moment right there. Let’s just say, it was then that I realized why celebrities wear shades all the time.

Also, I remember being escorted to the nearby bathroom by 7 prison officers and 3 not-so-close-but-dear friends of mine, AKA ex-inmates who were part of the drug rehabilitation program I was working for in San José. They claimed I would get raped in the bathroom if I wasn’t escorted by them (clearly there was a lack of trust in prison officers!), and for the sake of not causing a violent prison-disruption between my life-saving junkie-friends and the horny prisoners, I happily accepted the escort.

ANYWAYS!

What I experienced during this Restorative Justice session in Worcester Prison was nothing you would have ever seen or heard of before – TRUST ME!

The good news is, you can watch me share my experience on my Youtube Channel Miss Rose’s Travel Diaries, with all uncensored prison stories and unbelievable confessions I witnessed, personally brought to you by Yours Truly, Miss Rose:

I must say that life in prison seems like such a distinct ecosystem for itself, while at the same time it is like a small outside world behind bars.

I remember one moment during the session, when two ladies stood up, one of them looked more like a man, the other one very girly, slim with long black hair. They “confessed” in front of the whole group that they had been engaging in what South African prisoners call “Slanga”, i.e. same-sex relationships. They said they realize they are doing something “wrong”, and they have an interest in stopping this relationship. I had to think about my dead cat Jerry to not start laughing out loud. The fascinating thing for me was that apparently this manly girl was “well-situated” in prison, as her family continuously sent money for her, which she now generously spent on her girlfriends in prison. Slim girl was apparently not her first-and-only prison-girlfriend. Manly-girl (or should I say Gigolo-girl) was indeed THE MAN, who picked the girliest of all prison ladies, and usually those who were less fortunate in receiving money from their families. Basically a sort of Macho-dynamic developed, just among women. In prison. We see that money talks. Anywhere!

Another thing that really caught my attention and that had me quite thoughtful for a moment was the abundance of love and care which the Restorative Justice-team showed the prisoners. It may have been the fact that we were dealing with female prisoners and not male prisoners, but it amazed me how the room literally filled up with a loving atmosphere. In fact, I myself was not sure how I was “supposed to” deal with the prisoners upon entering the room in the beginning, and I was blown away by how these ladies welcomed me – as a stranger to them – into “their” space with only positivity and love. Anyone who has some “people-skills” will probably agree that it is easy to detect whether someone treats you genuinely loving or “friendly and nice but with a healthy distance”, if you know what I mean.

I am not sure how much judgement or rejection prisoners continuously receive from outsiders, but these ladies definitely stood above any of this. To the point that I reflected on myself as to why I felt I needed to keep a distance to them in the beginning. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that – without justifying certain actions or crimes – it is simply not fair to judge a person, prisoner or not, based on one bad decision they have made in their lives.

Let’s be honest, how many times have we really done things that we felt would bring us straight to hell? Maybe we didn’t commit a homicide, maybe we didn’t physically hurt someone, but maybe we did betray others, whether it was physically or mentally, maybe we lied about something very important, and how many times were we not punished for it by a “justice system”, but our inner self was very much aware that we did something genuinely wrong?

At the end of it all, the ONLY thing that matters after the fact is how mature and honest we deal with what we have done.

Maybe it is just me, but don’t we all go through phases where we make a bad decision and eventually need to cope with our feeling of guilt and all the consequences that come with it. Does it mean that we don’t deserve continuous love from the world because we have made a bad decision? We do deserve love, no matter what. And I admired Jenny and the rest of the Restorative Justice-team, for showing these ladies so much love and care in moments where they probably needed it the most.

At the end of the day, none of us knows what someone else has been through. I had realized this many years before, when I was working in a Costa Rican drug rehab (I mentioned it before), where I spent most of my days with people who are considered “bad” in society, people who steal, lie, manipulate, assault and kill others… people who live a marginalized existence in society because they are homeless, because they have addiction problems, because they have been convicted, up to the point where not even their own families want to have them around. While the latter is mostly connected to continuous hurtful behaviour towards their families, what I’m trying to say is that we tend to judge these people, and again – without justifying certain actions – if we took the time to get to know them and the stories behind them, we would in some cases understand how they could end up in the position they are in now.

Some people were not fortunate enough to grow up in a stable home, with a caring guardian who taught them basic morals in life. At the end of the day, it is about empathy for people around you. When I was sitting in Worcester Prison, in the Restorative Justice session, I felt truly sorry for most of these women, some of which had committed violent homicides, but regardless I felt sorry.

A few weeks after the session, I was invited to a Prison Family Day, which was meant to be a celebration of the finalization of the Restorative Justice program cycle of this group of offenders, and it was meant to be celebrated with their closest family. Some of the prisoners had their whole family present, you could see that they have a firm and solid background outside of prison, a family that is always there for them. Others had nobody to come see them. This may have been because their families live further away and are simply not able to come regularly, but this was not the case for all. Some are in such disrupted family situations (for different reasons), their closest relatives have been hurt to a point where they are not willing to visit them in prison, where they now have nobody to go to.

What I believe I learned from all this is that it is important to try and disconnect from extrinsic as well as intrinsic judgement about others. I believe it is completely human to judge in the first place because it simply makes our life easier, putting a label on something as “good” or “bad”. It simplifies our life because it allows us to organize our realities by putting things and people in boxes. This type of thinking is simply human in my opinion and our brain has difficulties functioning any other way. Nonetheless, maybe our continuous task is to reflect and connect to our inner value for love, with a fresh and positive mind, with empathy for others.

What I have also learned is that I must try and see people for who they SHOW me they are, not what they look like, not what they seem like, not what people say they are or are not, but what they DEMONSTRATE. Love receives love. And in any other moments which may be characterized by not-so-positive intentions, we define for ourselves where we set our boundary to the love we show others.

P.S. Unlike my other blogs, I do know that this one does not have too many pictures, which is simply because of privacy reasons: it is not allowed to take pictures of prisoners and share them online.

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