Interview with Rhiannon
Summary:
Rhiannon is a loving mother and wife who is advocating for better living conditions in prisons. She discusses her husband's experiences before and during the pandemic, and she shares her experiences as a wife, mother, and advocate for the incarcerated. Description:
Rhiannon is a dedicated wife and mother who has been advocating for change and awareness of the impact that COVID19 has had within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) and the Telford Unit. Rhiannon describes how TDCJ’s response to COVID has changed policies and procedures which have resulted in the neglect and maltreatment of people currently incarcerated. She shares her husband’s experience with such treatment, and describes the effects of prolonged lockdowns, scarcity of food and water, exposure to illness, and restrictions to communication with loved ones on the outside. Rhiannon emphasizes the importance of speaking out on behalf of her husband and other currently incarcerated people, most of whom face the possibility of retaliation for submitting grievances about the living conditions inside the unit.
Rhiannon also shares her perspective as a mother and wife, and describes the worries and challenges she overcomes to be able to support her husband and children. Rhiannon provides her experience with avenues of communication and visitation being restricted between her family and her husband, and the impact it's had on her children and grandchildren, who no longer have many opportunities to speak to her husband. Rhiannon also discusses the importance of fostering relationships and community with other families who also have a loved one who is incarcerated as a means of support and healing, and as a way to build solidarity while advocating for change.
Transcription:
CELESTE HENERY [00:00:00] Wonderful – today is Sunday, June 7th – and it's approximately 1 P.M. and I'm joined with Rhiannon. This is Celeste Henery as the interviewer.
I wanted to begin, Rhiannon, by asking you what brings you to have this conversation with us. You're one of the many who have a loved one who's incarcerated right now. I wondered if we could begin by talking about that – given the moment – in the midst of this coronavirus.
RHIANNON [00:00:38] Sure. My husband's been incarcerated for the past ten years. We did eight and a half years in federal prison – and then we were switched over to the state charges.
I have some experience being a prison wife in both. Telford hasn't always been a good unit to begin with. There's been problems way before the COVID. However, since COVID, it has progressively gotten worse and nobody wants to listen. A lot of people just think that they're inmates. They did what they did to get there and they deserve their treatment.
However, they don't realize that there's – approximately 75% of that unit is on wrongfully convicted charges – or fighting an appeal charge. They really shouldn't have that treatment. Even if they aren't in appeal and they are guilty – it's still not our place to judge.
I wanted to do this interview to give – I have some notes from my husband that he wanted me to share with some of the things that are going on – their food – recreational. He had to request for MHMR. There's things that have been going on in Telford that nobody understands – and it's got to get out there. That's why I wanted to do the interview.
HENERY [00:02:06] Wonderful – okay. Can you verify what MHMR is – it's mental health services is that correct?
RHIANNON [00:02:10] Yes, mental health services through the prison system.
HENERY [00:02:11] Gotcha.
RHIANNON [00:02:12] When you're locked in a cell for 23 to 24 hours a day – and no bigger than our bathroom – with somebody that you may or may not like – it gets to be pretty stressful. On top of everything else they aren't even getting water.
TDC doesn't have air conditioning – most everybody does know that. I live in East Texas – about an hour away from the unit – it's like – 79 miles. I don't have my air conditioner today and I'm sitting on my front porch just to get some air flow. I can only imagine what my husband goes through on a daily basis – locked in a room way smaller than my house without any air flow.
They sell little fans – he says they're five inch fans – don't put off any air. I mean – and you have a shirt and shorts – that's pretty hot. They're not being provided ice water. They don't have a way to go to the ice water. Last summer he was taking anywhere from 4 to 5 showers in a cold shower to get him through the day. Right now he's lucky if he gets one. The heat's getting to them. Telford and TDC has said they don't know when this lockdown is going to come off. To us and to the inmates – it's like they prefer it this way because it's easier for them to not have to do their job.
HENERY [00:03:47] Can you go back to when the crisis began in the sense that coronavirus became a thing?
RHIANNON [00:03:56] I visited every weekend. I have for several years – but, our last visit was March the 7th. They suspended visits on the 13th and on April 5th – the lockdown started there. We actually went almost a month without any phone calls. We didn't know what was going on. Mail was extremely slow. I was getting letters that he wrote the week before and like I say – I don't live far. Our mail goes to the same [4:38 inaudible] and gets dispensed the same way – it really shouldn't take that long. He wasn't getting my letters. It was very stressful not knowing if he was okay – if I was okay. Our son experienced a 17 year old birthday without his dad being able to even call. That was hard.
When the lockdown started they didn't tell everybody – as far as the prison, the inmates didn't know what was going on. They were watching what was happening on the news before they shut down everything – they could kind of talk to their family and know. One day they came in and pulled everybody that normally goes to a pill window and gave them all of their medicine for 30 days. They didn't tell him why – just gave them all of their medicine. In their minds, they're thinking, They're going to lock us in here and they're leaving – because that's the way they were portrayed.
It was nerve wracking – you couldn't get any answers when you called the unit. My husband actually went from April 1st to April 17th without any blood pressure medication because they didn't give it to him. He ran out on the first and had sent in for an I60 – which is their process to get refills. They ignored it. I had to file a civil suit for medical neglect to get him blood pressure medication – and that's before lockdown – right as the lockdown happened.
Before they were being locked down early – they're supposed to be able to stay out late – stuff like that – they were not allowed to do that. When the lockdown came – and they locked them all down – they fed them Johnnys. Sometimes they were getting fed twice a day – which is 12 hours between meals. I brought my husband's menu that he gave us. One day, his meal for breakfast was at 3:00 in the morning. He received two small pancakes the size of a silver dollar with no milk – nothing else – a slice of cake about the size of a half dollar. Then they did not receive anything else to eat until 4:00 that afternoon. They got a hamburger patty sandwich and a peanut butter sandwich with nothing to drink – nothing else – that's it.
These are grown men. My eight year old grandson eats more than that. They're starving. As it's gone on and we've all started complaining to TDC – TDC will tell us, Oh we're getting fresh fruits and fresh vegetables on the truck. They're supposed to be getting cartons of milk da da da da da. They're saying that they're not trying to spread the virus. Last week in my husband's pod they did mass testing or the results came back last week. They took one of the positives out – his cell mate was negative. They took a person that was negative – had no exposure – was not in with a positive and put him in the cell with the one that was exposed. How is that stopping the spread – because you just exposed somebody else now. Then they turn around and move both of those guys into two different cells – there's two more people. They're constantly saying that they're not trying to spread it – yet they make moves before they think – they're contaminating it and spreading it.
Telford was one of the highest units that had – at one time – over 54 guards that had coronavirus. The last check – just last week – they had 111 inmates that had Corona. They've had – I believe – nine deaths. They don't get anything to clean before COVID – they're not getting anything to clean after COVID.
My husband wrote this little note, Milk comes in a trash can. The SSI – which is the guy that passes it out – the inmate that helps – he's using the same dirty gloves he has had on all day – touching the broom – the mop – the bucket – the trash can and the trash. Now he is using those same gloves to dip their cup down into a trash can to fill it full of drink – and they wonder why they don't want to drink it.
How is that stopping the virus – it's not – but TDC tells us that that doesn't happen. TDC tells us that we're liars – that we don't know what we're talking about. They do investigations with their warden and their staff – but they don't go in and check. My husband's got black mold in the shower that's been there for over a year. They tell me there's not black mold there – it's been there for over a year. Why would he and 50 other men make up the same thing? But TDC tells me it doesn't exist.
HENERY [00:10:03] What's your communication been like with TDC?
RHIANNON [00:10:08] I write every day – I write emails pretty much every day. The ombudsman – Texas hotline group – take our complaints. They write us back letters and once again it's the same thing. That didn't happen.
If we give our loved ones’ names – they have questioned the inmates. They told them to sign the papers saying that was not true when it was true. My husband had – two cells down from him – the gentlemen that were in there did not have water for nine days. They had to alleviate themselves in a trash bag.
When it was reported to the Ombudsman, the warden went down to the cell and forced the guys to say that they did not alleviate themselves in a bag. If they did not, they threatened to put them in solitary and take away all of their privileges.
They don't want them to talk more than five minutes because they are scared that they're going to get out more than what they have. Any mail that I send in – if it has the word COVID in it – or the media – or email addresses – he doesn't get it. They're taking some of our mail and changing it. They go through his letters. If he has anything in his letters – sometimes they take them and sometimes they don't. It took me three times to get a Johnny Sack menu from my husband because they took the first two. He has to hide them in between sheets of paper so they don't catch. It's been crazy.
HENERY [00:12:11] I think you mentioned on another call when we discussed this interview that you have a pattern of writing to each other. It’s the fact that letters aren't getting through that you're realizing the difference?
RHIANNON [00:12:24] I've wrote every day for ten years. I skip maybe a Friday – I would skip the Friday night because I'd get up at 4:00 – go visit so I didn’t stay up late writing. I've always wrote and he's always wrote at least 1 to 2 letters a week. We're used to having our 30 minute phone calls. It's been different to not have that call – five minutes isn't long enough. Five minutes – you can't tell – my eight year old grandson lives here – my daughter and our 17 year old son lives here and he can't talk to all of them. Even if – he doesn't get to talk to anybody, he gets to talk to me for five minutes – it's not long enough – It's, Hi how are you doing? And, Oh I'm alive – and that's about it. It’s been really different.
Throughout the ten years my husband has been in solitary before. We have had experiences where we've had to go 30 – 60 days with only letters – but we've always had the letters – we've always had the communication. There's been sometimes that we don't even have that. When the lockdown first started it was almost two weeks before I even got my first letter from him. It was right a little over a month before we started getting phone calls. When they first started the phone calls, Securus had given everybody 2 - 15 free minute phone calls – they didn't charge us.
When the prison went in and locked the phones down to five minutes one time a day, it took those free calls away. The people that were using that free 15 minutes to call because that may be the only money that they have – they don't have that option anymore, so they don't get to call their family.
Speaking from experience with kids and a husband incarcerated – it's tough. I work three jobs. I can only imagine what it's like to not have that opportunity to be able to work three jobs and only be able to work one – and not have the funds to put on a phone and expect that free 15 minutes – with TDC blocking us, we don't even get that. They don't think about those things. The week before Mother's Day is when they turned the phones on. They would call back to back about 5 to 6 times which was about 25 minutes. Everybody was getting phone calls. There wasn't any complaints. There was no fighting going on in the dorms.
On the Friday prior to Mother's Day, the warden decided that he was going to block the phones to one five minute phone call. I personally called and spoke to him and I asked him – my biggest deal was my husband was torn because who do you call your children's mom or your mother? You had to make that choice. I asked the warden himself, Who would he make that call to? He couldn't even give me that answer. Yet he was expecting those guys to make that call. And no – not everybody has a wife and a mother that's in there – but there are a majority of them that do – most of them have kids or grandkids. They could have called their daughters and they don't think about those things.
They don't think about the mental anguish that it causes – not only the offenders – yeah they're being punished – but you're also punishing their family because we still love them. We still want them home – we still want them to be a part of our life. When you are restricting us and you're keeping that away, it's hard – and it's hard as a mother and a grandmother – a daughter in law – to explain to my kids and my mother in law why my husband doesn't get to talk to them all of a sudden because they're used to that communication and they don't get that right now.
They need to have a little bit more compassion when it comes to mental health. When you get aggravated and you feel like you're alone – you don't have anything else to lose – that's when you start having problems in the prison. When your guards are constantly pushing you and you're being tested day in and day out – you get to a point where you don't care what happens anymore.
I can tell you that there is no way I would have survived 24 hours in the prison dealing with the guards – and the lifestyle that they are having to live right now without going insane and I'm not a criminal.
How are you going to push somebody that's short tempered or – a lot of those guys in prison, they have mental health problems already. They're bipolar or depressed. I was a paramedic for ten years. From the medical side of it, I am honestly surprised that there is not been any suicides at the unit because of this mental health that they are going through. When you're hungry and you don't talk to anybody and you're sitting in a cell, all you have to do is think and you think about it too much and it's not healthy.
It's emotional and mental abuse that they are giving – even if they aren't doing a physical abuse – in the unit they are still emotionally abusing these guys in an unconstitutional way. It's not any different than the kid that the grandmother shoved in a storage room in Dallas when COVID started and he wasn't being fed and was in a hot property – and he wasn't having communication. They threw that grandmother in jail. TDC and their government's doing the same thing – they're neglecting and not feeding their state property as they call them. That's neglect – it's unconstitutional and it's not just Telford – it's all of TDC.
HENERY [00:19:24] Rhiannon, would you be able to share from his letters and your brief conversations – brief meeting – that they've constrained the time limit – rather than your desire of [19:37 inaudible] brevity – could you share about how he emotionally speaks of being in there – what it's like – the kind of food – everything?
RHIANNON [00:19:46] I actually brought a letter that they wrote me to this read for you. I listed questions for them to see about how the food had changed. TDC does calls every Wednesday and they're constantly telling us – like I say, I write emails every day – they're constantly telling me these things are getting fixed.
This was a letter that was wrote May 26th. He said, You asked about the food and nothing has changed with the food. We're still receiving sack meals – we have not received any hot meals in over 50 days. The food service procedure manual that you sent me the copy of has nothing compared to what we're receiving. If we amount to 600 calories a day, we're lucky. Reporting in the unit kitchen staff does not correspond with what is received.
In other words, he's trying to say that what TDC is telling us they're giving them as far as fruits and the vegetables – they're not getting. He says, I'm starving – I'm hot – I'm miserable. I feel like I'm going to snap. I don't know how much longer I can take of this. I just need out of this day room for longer than five minutes at a time. How am I supposed to take a shower and brush my teeth – get exercise – talk on the phone and stay away from my cellmate when all you give me is 30 minutes? How am I not supposed to go insane?
It's hard for me to listen to him complain — he's never been one to complain. He's always been the one that – he has made bad choices in the past and he says, I do the crime I'll do the time – and it's part of it. This time's a little different because we were wrongfully convicted – so it's harder to deal with than before.
Even before COVID he wasn't complaining. I would go see him on Saturdays and there were days you could tell he hadn't slept from the heat. Last summer, it was really bad on him. He does take some medications that the heat affects and he is heat restricted – but they do not have him in an air conditioning building. He is on the second floor – which they're not supposed to have him on the second floor either.
I've learned to fight your battles with TDC – you have to learn to decide which factor that going on is the most important to fight first because there's so many of them that they're not all going to change. It's not all going to get fixed – and I don't expect it to all get fixed. It is still a prison and I know that.
I do know that I don't see visits coming back anytime soon which is sad for us. We were supposed to have our marriage seminar on the 1st of April. We've gotten approved to go to. They canceled it of course. We were supposed to have day with dad's again which is a day the dads get to spend with the kids – it's an eight hour day. They get to walk around and play in the gym and spend interacting time – between the two hours they can't get at normal visits. That was something that was really looked forward to with the kids and my husband – that they had to cancel. Those things are safety things and that was understood.
But everywhere else is starting to open up and it seems like TDC is just making more reasons to keep them locked into their cell. They say they don't have any workers, but that's not true – they do have workers going in between the cells. If they would pull their cameras they could see these things. It's amazing to me why – when I call and tell you, No you're not – guards are not passing out your Johnny sacks – your orderly guys are and they're not passing them out to every cell. They're taking some of them for themselves.
They write me back and tell me I'm lying and the SSIs aren't even going in there. I have a friend that's a prison wife and her husband is an orderly. He has gone into all of the buildings. They do put a mask on before they go into a positive building. But if they refuse to go into a building that is positive tested, they get a case. That restricts them from their parole time and doesn't look good – so they have a way of making them go. Once again – they're not trying to stop the spread of it – they're just spreading it in a different manner. Instead of us bringing it in from outside, they're contaminating it themselves – they're not bleaching – they’re not keeping it sanitary.
They're supposed to receive Bibi – which from what I'm understanding is Comet and my husband has not received Comet through all of COVID. When we call up there they say, We've sent it to the orderlies or to the guard pickets and the guard pickets are supposed to pass it out – but they never do. That started way before COVID and it's only gotten worse. They don't have a way to clean. How are they supposed to keep it sanitary and not spreading things?
HENERY [00:26:47] You mentioned a friend – another prison wife – are you in networks or connections with other family members who have – or persons who have family members who are incarcerated?
RHIANNON [00:27:01] Facebook has came a long way over ten years. When I first started as a prison wife they didn't have those things. We didn't have support groups and you went at this alone. It's evolved and Facebook does have almost all of the groups – individual units have their own Facebook page group. We all talk there.
I got lucky and was going to visit every weekend – and ended up running into another wife that lived fairly closer. We became best friends – I talk to her every day. Her husband is on the opposite side of Telford than my husband is. It gave me an inside – because when my husband started complaining I'm going, Hey – is your husband saying these things too – could you ask him – is he having these problems – because he is a lower level? My husband's a G3 which is a life sentence – her husband is a G1 – he's fixing to get paroled and there is different treatments for different levels. They can tell me all day long that they don't – but they do.
I was asking her about food and water access. He's in a dorm and he's not in a cell – so he has access to the air. They have some industrial fans. He has access to those things. He has access to get up and go to the shower whenever he chooses. Where my husband has to wait and have somebody come and open his door to let him out to go get those things – that is a change.
Because it's restraining the higher level offenders to not having any air flow – not having any water – not having access to their cool showers and their cool fans. Because those guys are the ones that work in the kitchen – with food – they are fed prior to delivering those meals – they get first pick. They don't have the moldy bread. They're making their own food. My husband has actually lost weight. Her husband has gained weight – and we're at the same unit. Although they still have some of the same issues where yes – it’s still peanut butter and yes – it's still pancakes and the same foods – they're still receiving more of the food. They're receiving access to the items that they need to be able to stay from getting a heat stroke.
I see – as the heat continues – if Telford and TDC doesn't change this – we already experience deaths every summer and they're not locked out. TDC does a semiannual lockdown every year. They refuse to do it between the months of May and September. Usually they start at the end of October because of the heat. They don't want them to be locked down for three weeks. But now we've been locked down – I believe this is day number 62. That's a lot further than just three weeks. It's consecutively getting hotter day by day and that's really concerning to me.
The food – they don't get access to commissary. They did start doing a $15 commissary spend where they were allowed to make a list and get a few items. They've been going about every other week for $15 – which – in there – doesn't go as far. Yes, it goes further than it would have here – but it still doesn't go far enough. So the food is a concern to me – but I feel that the bigger concern is them being locked in their cell – they're still not – they can social distance. Before the lockdown occurred, they were doing a deal where they rotated. You couldn't have more than ten people out in a certain area of the day room. They would let about 20 of them out – which is half of the dorm. That way they had access to the phones and the showers and they would rotate them back out – that was social distancing. They weren't having any problems.
The problem is a lot of those guys know that medical doesn't do anything. When COVID started they didn't write the I60 to get tested – to get the treatment. They did spread the virus in that way – but now everybody's gotten tested. Everybody knows what's going on. I also think that if Telford or TDC would have notified these guys of this virus more – instead of keeping them in the dark – that could have helped them, Hey I've got a symptom – maybe I need to be quarantined – so they could have taken the precaution instead of TDC keeping them in the dark so much.
My husband does not go to the medical at all. He actually got sick in November with what we believe was COVID. He wasn't tested – of course, back then they weren't doing those things. But he was sick for about three weeks and had a lot of the same symptoms. He did not go to medical at all – he didn't know anything about it. The flu – when the flu comes a lot of those guys don't go because medical doesn't do anything. All they do is take money off of their books, so what's the point? I think if they educated their vendors better, we wouldn't have the spread at all or even as much. The guards up there – they're supposed to be wearing their masks – making sure they have gloves and gowns. My husband says sometimes they walk in with a mask on and sometimes they don't. They have not done this to my husband but my husband has witnessed it –the guards have coughed on another offender and said, Hope I'm not positive. They try to push the buttons. It's like – to me – if you put a bear in a cage in a zoo and you sit there and poke at it with a stick – but you expect it to never attack – how – it's not going to happen. That's the way they do those guys. Some of those guards up there really do care about them. I have ran across some guards that really do care – they're compassionate – enjoy their job – do their job – but a lot of them don't. The ones that don't make it worse for the ones that do.
My husband's always been one of the ones that if you respect – you get respect. He's implemented that at home with our kids and he implements it there. He'll be the first to tell one of the guys, She's not a bad one or he's not a bad one. We don't talk to them that way. He will stand up for them – but if they're not – if they're going to pick at them and push the buttons then he's not going to stand up for them. I can't blame him. He's pretty short tempered, so this has been interesting. I've honestly expected him to get in more trouble than what he has – because he and his cellmate don't get along. They live with each other – tolerate each other – but they don't care for each other. They've had to live with each other for all of these times. I'm proud of my husband for doing good and not letting it test him so much – but it's been really hard.
It's probably harder on my kids and my husband – to me it's hard because I can't fix it. I've always been the one that I have to fix their problems. But watching them hurts the worst because they're not used to having to not go – and talk to their dad. He's not used to not having that. My grandson actually moved to Texas two weeks before the COVID hit, so he only got to saw his grandpa twice – he hasn't got to see him since.
It's been an emotional roller coaster. I try to stay busy – and I try to get somebody to listen to these TDC issues and realize that I'm not the only one that says this – I'm just the only one that's willing to stand up. A lot of people don't want to stand up because they are scared of retaliation – retaliation is a real thing in the prison. They do kill those guys sometimes – beat them up bad enough that they do kill them. Before I interviewed with you – I had to make sure it was okay with my husband before I did this because we were really worried about retaliation.
HENERY [00:37:29] So you’ve been in this for a long time, Rhiannon, and I was wondering if you could talk about what it's been like for you – with different moments – things you’ve mentioned, one as lockdown – or moments when there's the flu – or when it would seem that a heightened level of threat and insecurity – not knowing what's going on and a lack of control. I wonder what it's like for you to have lived these years – particularly in this moment – how that is for you – this long arc.
RHIANNON [00:38:01] I wish I could say it's been easy. I wish I could tell you I knew how I get through it – because I really don't. I pray a lot. My biggest deal is – when my husband and I started this ten years ago – we didn't have the communication. We had – like every other marriage – communication issues. I'm thankful that we have the communication line that we have now. If we would have had the problems that we had in our relationship ten years ago when all of this went on now – I can tell you that I don't know that our marriage would have survived it.
I see a lot of relationships on my Facebook groups – they have trouble – and it's been because of this. I think that the biggest thing for me is to make sure – myself – as long as I know that I'm constantly doing something to try to change the certain situation – even though I can't change COVID. I know that. I know I can't get it back to normal in the prison system – but even their normal was just as bad. That's what helps me get through this is trying to make a point to get it changed – and God. God is a lot of it – and my kids – my husband – they get me through. They keep me busy.
HENERY [00:40:06] Prior to your husband, did you have other experiences with the criminal justice system?
RHIANNON [00:40:14] No – with the exception of being a paramedic. We would pick up patients and stuff like that, but no – not anything into that extent. It's been different. My husband's actually been in and out of prison most of his life. He started his first prison sentence when he was 18 – he did a few months and a few years. He's actually done a total of 30 years off and on. This – 10 years consecutive – has been his longest sentence. He has a lot more experience in it than I do. He's taught me a lot. I think this is a patience game.
He describes TDC as chess – it's like checkmate. They make one move and then they take two steps back sometimes. One day last week, they got an apple, which was the first piece of fruit they received in over 60 days. The next day they didn't get anything but one sandwich. It's like, You rewarded us with an apple today – but tomorrow you're not going to give us any food. It changes every day – it's always something.
If you work on making the changes positive instead of dwelling on them being negative it helps you get through everything – to me it does. I feel like I'm doing something for it – I'm not just sitting complaining about it. Even though I feel like my change and my complaints to everybody – my letters to everybody don't do any good – eventually somebody is going to listen – and somewhere – eventually it's going to change. It may be because of me and it may not – but at least I can know that I tried to do it. That helps me try to get through this.
HENERY [00:42:36] It sounds like you've had to – have chosen to – educate yourself about the system. I wonder was there a moment where you became more active in the ways that you're talking about now?
RHIANNON [00:42:52] Since COVID. I’ve always complained. If we've had complaints I've always followed through with them. My husband was in federal prison – don't get me wrong federal prison does still have their issues – but the federal system is very well about if you call and tell them, This is going on and isn't supposed to go on – they fix it.
My husband's been at TDC – he got to Telford March 15th of last year – he’s been there just a little over a year from the federal. This last year is when I really started advocating – more so since the COVID started because that seems to be the other problems. They were issues but they weren't a life or death situation. I didn't feel my husband's life was in jeopardy by a heat stroke or him getting the COVID. I'm not too worried about him getting the COVID. I'm more worried about him dying from a heat stroke than the COVID.
Those things tended to strike up my advocate to where I'm advocating more every day. I literally had to take a break a couple of weeks ago because it got to where – it's stressful. When I write my letters to these guys and girls in the system – I'm talking chairman – governors – senators – I'm putting all of the facts in there – they're very detailed. When they don't give response or they're, Oh you're just lying – then it gets annoying – aggravating and it makes you want to throw your hands up. I learned I got to take a step back from this for a couple days and give myself a break. That does help because it’s personal care and that is a real thing – self-care.
HENERY [00:45:07] In terms of your experience out in the world, when did the gravity of COVID land? I sense from our conversation that it's simultaneous – half of you is in the prison with your husband – keeping assessment of that – and there's the other part of you that’s with your children and grandchildren out here in the world. You're in East Texas you said – I'm not sure.
RHIANNON [00:45:31] Well yes. It hasn't changed too much as far as in my area. I live in a little bitty town outside of – in between Tyler and Longview – we're a smaller community. We did have some positive cases. Our Walmart did the same thing where we close at 8:30 like everywhere else – our schools closed – things like that. But we didn't have some of the things like Tyler – where they had thousands of cases and stores were closing. My daughter and I, we both were able to keep our jobs through the whole thing. I would honestly say that COVID hit my house when it hit the prison because that's when it changed everything.
Up until then my kids and I – we've had a routine. My youngest son – who is 17 – for the last ten years we've got up and go visit on Saturday mornings. When that stopped is when it stopped at my house because that's when it was more affecting us. It really didn't affect us much before then. To us it was our normal anyways – we live out in the country and we got to say to ourselves – that social distance. We didn't really have to worry too much about the change of that with the exception of the kids being at home.
The prison is what changed our whole – a lot of people don't realize that when you have someone incarcerated – like a husband or a father – you're incarcerated too. I feel like I'm just as incarcerated as my husband is on most days. Yes – I can go to the store – I could go and do whatever I wanted to – but the fun things that we do we want to spend and make those memories with the people that are incarcerated. No, I don't feel like I'm putting my life on hold. There's not a day that goes by that I would change what I've done. I'll be a prison wife till the day comes home if it's 25 years from now or 20 days from now. That's where my heart is – that's my world but I'm incarcerated too.
I feel guilty when I eat good food knowing that my husband isn't. I feel guilty going to the doctor to get medical treatment because I'm sick because he can't – sitting in an air conditioning room knowing he's sitting up there sweating. I have a friend that's a mother too – her son is incarcerated with my husband. I had asked her, Do you feel this way? Do you feel guilty when you're eating a hamburger – just a cheeseburger – things we take for granted. When you have someone suffering so bad you feel guilty and you're just as incarcerated as they are.
It's hard watching them not have constitutional rights because they've made a mistake. I believe everybody in the world has made mistakes – we just don't all get caught. I know there are people in prison that they deserve to be incarcerated. Yes – they've done severe – damaging – victim crimes. I'm not saying to release them. I also think that there are some in there that don't deserve to be in there. No matter what they're in there for – they are still human.
People don't realize that the zoo animals get treated better than our inmates do. My husband calls himself the zookeeper all the time. He says he’s a zookeeper. He's like, I gotta lock everybody back up – I'm just part of the zoo – gotta go back to my cage. It's not a home to him – it's a cage. This is his home and it's my home – but it's not home until he's here.
HENERY [00:50:20] You mentioned about your Saturday or weekend trips to go visit. Could you walk us through that?
RHIANNON [00:50:30] I live an hour away. It's kind of weird the way Telford does theirs. They have a little parking lot and very limited space. I get up at 3:30 in the morning. I leave my house no later than 4:15. Usually my kids sleep all the way up there so it's boring – but I get there. I usually try to take a nap till 8:00 and then they will open it. I'm usually there by 6:00 – 6:45 – 7:00 – the parking lot is pretty full. If you don't want to wait for 3 or 4 hours and hope that visit’s not canceled before you get in – you have to be there early. We sit there till 8:00 and then we go through – take our shoes off and hope all of our clothes are coordinated fast enough and good enough for the guards and we get to go in and see him – we get two hours. You get a kiss when you leave and a kiss when you get there and that’s about it. You get to hold their hands but they don't get to get up. They don't get to go to the vending machine, you have to go back and tell them what's in the vending machine. Sometimes the vending machines at the prison works and sometimes they don't. They're highly priced but it's worth it. I actually spend anywhere from $100 up to $1,500 before on visits when my husband was in Arizona. That's an expensive trip. That's hotel stays and lodging – gas, the whole nine yards. They get to be expensive.
I was very lucky when my husband was moved this close. We're from West Texas – all of my in-laws live in a different town up north – about eight hours away from us. I moved here two years ago – the year before my husband got here and luckily he was moved here. We didn't request it – we got really lucky to be able to get to see him so much. We didn't get to do that as much in Arizona.
I miss my Saturdays. Those are our date days. We used to do – the kids would go anywhere from 2 to 3 weeks and then one weekend was just me and my husband and they literally were our morning date. I miss those a lot. I'm used to having anywhere from 3 to 8 phone calls a day at 30 minutes apiece – those are nice. Five minutes one time a day is definitely been crazy. I'm lucky right now – I'm getting about two letters a week. He's writing every day but he only mails them out –
[Audio ends at 53:52 due to connectivity issues]
I wanted to begin, Rhiannon, by asking you what brings you to have this conversation with us. You're one of the many who have a loved one who's incarcerated right now. I wondered if we could begin by talking about that – given the moment – in the midst of this coronavirus.
RHIANNON [00:00:38] Sure. My husband's been incarcerated for the past ten years. We did eight and a half years in federal prison – and then we were switched over to the state charges.
I have some experience being a prison wife in both. Telford hasn't always been a good unit to begin with. There's been problems way before the COVID. However, since COVID, it has progressively gotten worse and nobody wants to listen. A lot of people just think that they're inmates. They did what they did to get there and they deserve their treatment.
However, they don't realize that there's – approximately 75% of that unit is on wrongfully convicted charges – or fighting an appeal charge. They really shouldn't have that treatment. Even if they aren't in appeal and they are guilty – it's still not our place to judge.
I wanted to do this interview to give – I have some notes from my husband that he wanted me to share with some of the things that are going on – their food – recreational. He had to request for MHMR. There's things that have been going on in Telford that nobody understands – and it's got to get out there. That's why I wanted to do the interview.
HENERY [00:02:06] Wonderful – okay. Can you verify what MHMR is – it's mental health services is that correct?
RHIANNON [00:02:10] Yes, mental health services through the prison system.
HENERY [00:02:11] Gotcha.
RHIANNON [00:02:12] When you're locked in a cell for 23 to 24 hours a day – and no bigger than our bathroom – with somebody that you may or may not like – it gets to be pretty stressful. On top of everything else they aren't even getting water.
TDC doesn't have air conditioning – most everybody does know that. I live in East Texas – about an hour away from the unit – it's like – 79 miles. I don't have my air conditioner today and I'm sitting on my front porch just to get some air flow. I can only imagine what my husband goes through on a daily basis – locked in a room way smaller than my house without any air flow.
They sell little fans – he says they're five inch fans – don't put off any air. I mean – and you have a shirt and shorts – that's pretty hot. They're not being provided ice water. They don't have a way to go to the ice water. Last summer he was taking anywhere from 4 to 5 showers in a cold shower to get him through the day. Right now he's lucky if he gets one. The heat's getting to them. Telford and TDC has said they don't know when this lockdown is going to come off. To us and to the inmates – it's like they prefer it this way because it's easier for them to not have to do their job.
HENERY [00:03:47] Can you go back to when the crisis began in the sense that coronavirus became a thing?
RHIANNON [00:03:56] I visited every weekend. I have for several years – but, our last visit was March the 7th. They suspended visits on the 13th and on April 5th – the lockdown started there. We actually went almost a month without any phone calls. We didn't know what was going on. Mail was extremely slow. I was getting letters that he wrote the week before and like I say – I don't live far. Our mail goes to the same [4:38 inaudible] and gets dispensed the same way – it really shouldn't take that long. He wasn't getting my letters. It was very stressful not knowing if he was okay – if I was okay. Our son experienced a 17 year old birthday without his dad being able to even call. That was hard.
When the lockdown started they didn't tell everybody – as far as the prison, the inmates didn't know what was going on. They were watching what was happening on the news before they shut down everything – they could kind of talk to their family and know. One day they came in and pulled everybody that normally goes to a pill window and gave them all of their medicine for 30 days. They didn't tell him why – just gave them all of their medicine. In their minds, they're thinking, They're going to lock us in here and they're leaving – because that's the way they were portrayed.
It was nerve wracking – you couldn't get any answers when you called the unit. My husband actually went from April 1st to April 17th without any blood pressure medication because they didn't give it to him. He ran out on the first and had sent in for an I60 – which is their process to get refills. They ignored it. I had to file a civil suit for medical neglect to get him blood pressure medication – and that's before lockdown – right as the lockdown happened.
Before they were being locked down early – they're supposed to be able to stay out late – stuff like that – they were not allowed to do that. When the lockdown came – and they locked them all down – they fed them Johnnys. Sometimes they were getting fed twice a day – which is 12 hours between meals. I brought my husband's menu that he gave us. One day, his meal for breakfast was at 3:00 in the morning. He received two small pancakes the size of a silver dollar with no milk – nothing else – a slice of cake about the size of a half dollar. Then they did not receive anything else to eat until 4:00 that afternoon. They got a hamburger patty sandwich and a peanut butter sandwich with nothing to drink – nothing else – that's it.
These are grown men. My eight year old grandson eats more than that. They're starving. As it's gone on and we've all started complaining to TDC – TDC will tell us, Oh we're getting fresh fruits and fresh vegetables on the truck. They're supposed to be getting cartons of milk da da da da da. They're saying that they're not trying to spread the virus. Last week in my husband's pod they did mass testing or the results came back last week. They took one of the positives out – his cell mate was negative. They took a person that was negative – had no exposure – was not in with a positive and put him in the cell with the one that was exposed. How is that stopping the spread – because you just exposed somebody else now. Then they turn around and move both of those guys into two different cells – there's two more people. They're constantly saying that they're not trying to spread it – yet they make moves before they think – they're contaminating it and spreading it.
Telford was one of the highest units that had – at one time – over 54 guards that had coronavirus. The last check – just last week – they had 111 inmates that had Corona. They've had – I believe – nine deaths. They don't get anything to clean before COVID – they're not getting anything to clean after COVID.
My husband wrote this little note, Milk comes in a trash can. The SSI – which is the guy that passes it out – the inmate that helps – he's using the same dirty gloves he has had on all day – touching the broom – the mop – the bucket – the trash can and the trash. Now he is using those same gloves to dip their cup down into a trash can to fill it full of drink – and they wonder why they don't want to drink it.
How is that stopping the virus – it's not – but TDC tells us that that doesn't happen. TDC tells us that we're liars – that we don't know what we're talking about. They do investigations with their warden and their staff – but they don't go in and check. My husband's got black mold in the shower that's been there for over a year. They tell me there's not black mold there – it's been there for over a year. Why would he and 50 other men make up the same thing? But TDC tells me it doesn't exist.
HENERY [00:10:03] What's your communication been like with TDC?
RHIANNON [00:10:08] I write every day – I write emails pretty much every day. The ombudsman – Texas hotline group – take our complaints. They write us back letters and once again it's the same thing. That didn't happen.
If we give our loved ones’ names – they have questioned the inmates. They told them to sign the papers saying that was not true when it was true. My husband had – two cells down from him – the gentlemen that were in there did not have water for nine days. They had to alleviate themselves in a trash bag.
When it was reported to the Ombudsman, the warden went down to the cell and forced the guys to say that they did not alleviate themselves in a bag. If they did not, they threatened to put them in solitary and take away all of their privileges.
They don't want them to talk more than five minutes because they are scared that they're going to get out more than what they have. Any mail that I send in – if it has the word COVID in it – or the media – or email addresses – he doesn't get it. They're taking some of our mail and changing it. They go through his letters. If he has anything in his letters – sometimes they take them and sometimes they don't. It took me three times to get a Johnny Sack menu from my husband because they took the first two. He has to hide them in between sheets of paper so they don't catch. It's been crazy.
HENERY [00:12:11] I think you mentioned on another call when we discussed this interview that you have a pattern of writing to each other. It’s the fact that letters aren't getting through that you're realizing the difference?
RHIANNON [00:12:24] I've wrote every day for ten years. I skip maybe a Friday – I would skip the Friday night because I'd get up at 4:00 – go visit so I didn’t stay up late writing. I've always wrote and he's always wrote at least 1 to 2 letters a week. We're used to having our 30 minute phone calls. It's been different to not have that call – five minutes isn't long enough. Five minutes – you can't tell – my eight year old grandson lives here – my daughter and our 17 year old son lives here and he can't talk to all of them. Even if – he doesn't get to talk to anybody, he gets to talk to me for five minutes – it's not long enough – It's, Hi how are you doing? And, Oh I'm alive – and that's about it. It’s been really different.
Throughout the ten years my husband has been in solitary before. We have had experiences where we've had to go 30 – 60 days with only letters – but we've always had the letters – we've always had the communication. There's been sometimes that we don't even have that. When the lockdown first started it was almost two weeks before I even got my first letter from him. It was right a little over a month before we started getting phone calls. When they first started the phone calls, Securus had given everybody 2 - 15 free minute phone calls – they didn't charge us.
When the prison went in and locked the phones down to five minutes one time a day, it took those free calls away. The people that were using that free 15 minutes to call because that may be the only money that they have – they don't have that option anymore, so they don't get to call their family.
Speaking from experience with kids and a husband incarcerated – it's tough. I work three jobs. I can only imagine what it's like to not have that opportunity to be able to work three jobs and only be able to work one – and not have the funds to put on a phone and expect that free 15 minutes – with TDC blocking us, we don't even get that. They don't think about those things. The week before Mother's Day is when they turned the phones on. They would call back to back about 5 to 6 times which was about 25 minutes. Everybody was getting phone calls. There wasn't any complaints. There was no fighting going on in the dorms.
On the Friday prior to Mother's Day, the warden decided that he was going to block the phones to one five minute phone call. I personally called and spoke to him and I asked him – my biggest deal was my husband was torn because who do you call your children's mom or your mother? You had to make that choice. I asked the warden himself, Who would he make that call to? He couldn't even give me that answer. Yet he was expecting those guys to make that call. And no – not everybody has a wife and a mother that's in there – but there are a majority of them that do – most of them have kids or grandkids. They could have called their daughters and they don't think about those things.
They don't think about the mental anguish that it causes – not only the offenders – yeah they're being punished – but you're also punishing their family because we still love them. We still want them home – we still want them to be a part of our life. When you are restricting us and you're keeping that away, it's hard – and it's hard as a mother and a grandmother – a daughter in law – to explain to my kids and my mother in law why my husband doesn't get to talk to them all of a sudden because they're used to that communication and they don't get that right now.
They need to have a little bit more compassion when it comes to mental health. When you get aggravated and you feel like you're alone – you don't have anything else to lose – that's when you start having problems in the prison. When your guards are constantly pushing you and you're being tested day in and day out – you get to a point where you don't care what happens anymore.
I can tell you that there is no way I would have survived 24 hours in the prison dealing with the guards – and the lifestyle that they are having to live right now without going insane and I'm not a criminal.
How are you going to push somebody that's short tempered or – a lot of those guys in prison, they have mental health problems already. They're bipolar or depressed. I was a paramedic for ten years. From the medical side of it, I am honestly surprised that there is not been any suicides at the unit because of this mental health that they are going through. When you're hungry and you don't talk to anybody and you're sitting in a cell, all you have to do is think and you think about it too much and it's not healthy.
It's emotional and mental abuse that they are giving – even if they aren't doing a physical abuse – in the unit they are still emotionally abusing these guys in an unconstitutional way. It's not any different than the kid that the grandmother shoved in a storage room in Dallas when COVID started and he wasn't being fed and was in a hot property – and he wasn't having communication. They threw that grandmother in jail. TDC and their government's doing the same thing – they're neglecting and not feeding their state property as they call them. That's neglect – it's unconstitutional and it's not just Telford – it's all of TDC.
HENERY [00:19:24] Rhiannon, would you be able to share from his letters and your brief conversations – brief meeting – that they've constrained the time limit – rather than your desire of [19:37 inaudible] brevity – could you share about how he emotionally speaks of being in there – what it's like – the kind of food – everything?
RHIANNON [00:19:46] I actually brought a letter that they wrote me to this read for you. I listed questions for them to see about how the food had changed. TDC does calls every Wednesday and they're constantly telling us – like I say, I write emails every day – they're constantly telling me these things are getting fixed.
This was a letter that was wrote May 26th. He said, You asked about the food and nothing has changed with the food. We're still receiving sack meals – we have not received any hot meals in over 50 days. The food service procedure manual that you sent me the copy of has nothing compared to what we're receiving. If we amount to 600 calories a day, we're lucky. Reporting in the unit kitchen staff does not correspond with what is received.
In other words, he's trying to say that what TDC is telling us they're giving them as far as fruits and the vegetables – they're not getting. He says, I'm starving – I'm hot – I'm miserable. I feel like I'm going to snap. I don't know how much longer I can take of this. I just need out of this day room for longer than five minutes at a time. How am I supposed to take a shower and brush my teeth – get exercise – talk on the phone and stay away from my cellmate when all you give me is 30 minutes? How am I not supposed to go insane?
It's hard for me to listen to him complain — he's never been one to complain. He's always been the one that – he has made bad choices in the past and he says, I do the crime I'll do the time – and it's part of it. This time's a little different because we were wrongfully convicted – so it's harder to deal with than before.
Even before COVID he wasn't complaining. I would go see him on Saturdays and there were days you could tell he hadn't slept from the heat. Last summer, it was really bad on him. He does take some medications that the heat affects and he is heat restricted – but they do not have him in an air conditioning building. He is on the second floor – which they're not supposed to have him on the second floor either.
I've learned to fight your battles with TDC – you have to learn to decide which factor that going on is the most important to fight first because there's so many of them that they're not all going to change. It's not all going to get fixed – and I don't expect it to all get fixed. It is still a prison and I know that.
I do know that I don't see visits coming back anytime soon which is sad for us. We were supposed to have our marriage seminar on the 1st of April. We've gotten approved to go to. They canceled it of course. We were supposed to have day with dad's again which is a day the dads get to spend with the kids – it's an eight hour day. They get to walk around and play in the gym and spend interacting time – between the two hours they can't get at normal visits. That was something that was really looked forward to with the kids and my husband – that they had to cancel. Those things are safety things and that was understood.
But everywhere else is starting to open up and it seems like TDC is just making more reasons to keep them locked into their cell. They say they don't have any workers, but that's not true – they do have workers going in between the cells. If they would pull their cameras they could see these things. It's amazing to me why – when I call and tell you, No you're not – guards are not passing out your Johnny sacks – your orderly guys are and they're not passing them out to every cell. They're taking some of them for themselves.
They write me back and tell me I'm lying and the SSIs aren't even going in there. I have a friend that's a prison wife and her husband is an orderly. He has gone into all of the buildings. They do put a mask on before they go into a positive building. But if they refuse to go into a building that is positive tested, they get a case. That restricts them from their parole time and doesn't look good – so they have a way of making them go. Once again – they're not trying to stop the spread of it – they're just spreading it in a different manner. Instead of us bringing it in from outside, they're contaminating it themselves – they're not bleaching – they’re not keeping it sanitary.
They're supposed to receive Bibi – which from what I'm understanding is Comet and my husband has not received Comet through all of COVID. When we call up there they say, We've sent it to the orderlies or to the guard pickets and the guard pickets are supposed to pass it out – but they never do. That started way before COVID and it's only gotten worse. They don't have a way to clean. How are they supposed to keep it sanitary and not spreading things?
HENERY [00:26:47] You mentioned a friend – another prison wife – are you in networks or connections with other family members who have – or persons who have family members who are incarcerated?
RHIANNON [00:27:01] Facebook has came a long way over ten years. When I first started as a prison wife they didn't have those things. We didn't have support groups and you went at this alone. It's evolved and Facebook does have almost all of the groups – individual units have their own Facebook page group. We all talk there.
I got lucky and was going to visit every weekend – and ended up running into another wife that lived fairly closer. We became best friends – I talk to her every day. Her husband is on the opposite side of Telford than my husband is. It gave me an inside – because when my husband started complaining I'm going, Hey – is your husband saying these things too – could you ask him – is he having these problems – because he is a lower level? My husband's a G3 which is a life sentence – her husband is a G1 – he's fixing to get paroled and there is different treatments for different levels. They can tell me all day long that they don't – but they do.
I was asking her about food and water access. He's in a dorm and he's not in a cell – so he has access to the air. They have some industrial fans. He has access to those things. He has access to get up and go to the shower whenever he chooses. Where my husband has to wait and have somebody come and open his door to let him out to go get those things – that is a change.
Because it's restraining the higher level offenders to not having any air flow – not having any water – not having access to their cool showers and their cool fans. Because those guys are the ones that work in the kitchen – with food – they are fed prior to delivering those meals – they get first pick. They don't have the moldy bread. They're making their own food. My husband has actually lost weight. Her husband has gained weight – and we're at the same unit. Although they still have some of the same issues where yes – it’s still peanut butter and yes – it's still pancakes and the same foods – they're still receiving more of the food. They're receiving access to the items that they need to be able to stay from getting a heat stroke.
I see – as the heat continues – if Telford and TDC doesn't change this – we already experience deaths every summer and they're not locked out. TDC does a semiannual lockdown every year. They refuse to do it between the months of May and September. Usually they start at the end of October because of the heat. They don't want them to be locked down for three weeks. But now we've been locked down – I believe this is day number 62. That's a lot further than just three weeks. It's consecutively getting hotter day by day and that's really concerning to me.
The food – they don't get access to commissary. They did start doing a $15 commissary spend where they were allowed to make a list and get a few items. They've been going about every other week for $15 – which – in there – doesn't go as far. Yes, it goes further than it would have here – but it still doesn't go far enough. So the food is a concern to me – but I feel that the bigger concern is them being locked in their cell – they're still not – they can social distance. Before the lockdown occurred, they were doing a deal where they rotated. You couldn't have more than ten people out in a certain area of the day room. They would let about 20 of them out – which is half of the dorm. That way they had access to the phones and the showers and they would rotate them back out – that was social distancing. They weren't having any problems.
The problem is a lot of those guys know that medical doesn't do anything. When COVID started they didn't write the I60 to get tested – to get the treatment. They did spread the virus in that way – but now everybody's gotten tested. Everybody knows what's going on. I also think that if Telford or TDC would have notified these guys of this virus more – instead of keeping them in the dark – that could have helped them, Hey I've got a symptom – maybe I need to be quarantined – so they could have taken the precaution instead of TDC keeping them in the dark so much.
My husband does not go to the medical at all. He actually got sick in November with what we believe was COVID. He wasn't tested – of course, back then they weren't doing those things. But he was sick for about three weeks and had a lot of the same symptoms. He did not go to medical at all – he didn't know anything about it. The flu – when the flu comes a lot of those guys don't go because medical doesn't do anything. All they do is take money off of their books, so what's the point? I think if they educated their vendors better, we wouldn't have the spread at all or even as much. The guards up there – they're supposed to be wearing their masks – making sure they have gloves and gowns. My husband says sometimes they walk in with a mask on and sometimes they don't. They have not done this to my husband but my husband has witnessed it –the guards have coughed on another offender and said, Hope I'm not positive. They try to push the buttons. It's like – to me – if you put a bear in a cage in a zoo and you sit there and poke at it with a stick – but you expect it to never attack – how – it's not going to happen. That's the way they do those guys. Some of those guards up there really do care about them. I have ran across some guards that really do care – they're compassionate – enjoy their job – do their job – but a lot of them don't. The ones that don't make it worse for the ones that do.
My husband's always been one of the ones that if you respect – you get respect. He's implemented that at home with our kids and he implements it there. He'll be the first to tell one of the guys, She's not a bad one or he's not a bad one. We don't talk to them that way. He will stand up for them – but if they're not – if they're going to pick at them and push the buttons then he's not going to stand up for them. I can't blame him. He's pretty short tempered, so this has been interesting. I've honestly expected him to get in more trouble than what he has – because he and his cellmate don't get along. They live with each other – tolerate each other – but they don't care for each other. They've had to live with each other for all of these times. I'm proud of my husband for doing good and not letting it test him so much – but it's been really hard.
It's probably harder on my kids and my husband – to me it's hard because I can't fix it. I've always been the one that I have to fix their problems. But watching them hurts the worst because they're not used to having to not go – and talk to their dad. He's not used to not having that. My grandson actually moved to Texas two weeks before the COVID hit, so he only got to saw his grandpa twice – he hasn't got to see him since.
It's been an emotional roller coaster. I try to stay busy – and I try to get somebody to listen to these TDC issues and realize that I'm not the only one that says this – I'm just the only one that's willing to stand up. A lot of people don't want to stand up because they are scared of retaliation – retaliation is a real thing in the prison. They do kill those guys sometimes – beat them up bad enough that they do kill them. Before I interviewed with you – I had to make sure it was okay with my husband before I did this because we were really worried about retaliation.
HENERY [00:37:29] So you’ve been in this for a long time, Rhiannon, and I was wondering if you could talk about what it's been like for you – with different moments – things you’ve mentioned, one as lockdown – or moments when there's the flu – or when it would seem that a heightened level of threat and insecurity – not knowing what's going on and a lack of control. I wonder what it's like for you to have lived these years – particularly in this moment – how that is for you – this long arc.
RHIANNON [00:38:01] I wish I could say it's been easy. I wish I could tell you I knew how I get through it – because I really don't. I pray a lot. My biggest deal is – when my husband and I started this ten years ago – we didn't have the communication. We had – like every other marriage – communication issues. I'm thankful that we have the communication line that we have now. If we would have had the problems that we had in our relationship ten years ago when all of this went on now – I can tell you that I don't know that our marriage would have survived it.
I see a lot of relationships on my Facebook groups – they have trouble – and it's been because of this. I think that the biggest thing for me is to make sure – myself – as long as I know that I'm constantly doing something to try to change the certain situation – even though I can't change COVID. I know that. I know I can't get it back to normal in the prison system – but even their normal was just as bad. That's what helps me get through this is trying to make a point to get it changed – and God. God is a lot of it – and my kids – my husband – they get me through. They keep me busy.
HENERY [00:40:06] Prior to your husband, did you have other experiences with the criminal justice system?
RHIANNON [00:40:14] No – with the exception of being a paramedic. We would pick up patients and stuff like that, but no – not anything into that extent. It's been different. My husband's actually been in and out of prison most of his life. He started his first prison sentence when he was 18 – he did a few months and a few years. He's actually done a total of 30 years off and on. This – 10 years consecutive – has been his longest sentence. He has a lot more experience in it than I do. He's taught me a lot. I think this is a patience game.
He describes TDC as chess – it's like checkmate. They make one move and then they take two steps back sometimes. One day last week, they got an apple, which was the first piece of fruit they received in over 60 days. The next day they didn't get anything but one sandwich. It's like, You rewarded us with an apple today – but tomorrow you're not going to give us any food. It changes every day – it's always something.
If you work on making the changes positive instead of dwelling on them being negative it helps you get through everything – to me it does. I feel like I'm doing something for it – I'm not just sitting complaining about it. Even though I feel like my change and my complaints to everybody – my letters to everybody don't do any good – eventually somebody is going to listen – and somewhere – eventually it's going to change. It may be because of me and it may not – but at least I can know that I tried to do it. That helps me try to get through this.
HENERY [00:42:36] It sounds like you've had to – have chosen to – educate yourself about the system. I wonder was there a moment where you became more active in the ways that you're talking about now?
RHIANNON [00:42:52] Since COVID. I’ve always complained. If we've had complaints I've always followed through with them. My husband was in federal prison – don't get me wrong federal prison does still have their issues – but the federal system is very well about if you call and tell them, This is going on and isn't supposed to go on – they fix it.
My husband's been at TDC – he got to Telford March 15th of last year – he’s been there just a little over a year from the federal. This last year is when I really started advocating – more so since the COVID started because that seems to be the other problems. They were issues but they weren't a life or death situation. I didn't feel my husband's life was in jeopardy by a heat stroke or him getting the COVID. I'm not too worried about him getting the COVID. I'm more worried about him dying from a heat stroke than the COVID.
Those things tended to strike up my advocate to where I'm advocating more every day. I literally had to take a break a couple of weeks ago because it got to where – it's stressful. When I write my letters to these guys and girls in the system – I'm talking chairman – governors – senators – I'm putting all of the facts in there – they're very detailed. When they don't give response or they're, Oh you're just lying – then it gets annoying – aggravating and it makes you want to throw your hands up. I learned I got to take a step back from this for a couple days and give myself a break. That does help because it’s personal care and that is a real thing – self-care.
HENERY [00:45:07] In terms of your experience out in the world, when did the gravity of COVID land? I sense from our conversation that it's simultaneous – half of you is in the prison with your husband – keeping assessment of that – and there's the other part of you that’s with your children and grandchildren out here in the world. You're in East Texas you said – I'm not sure.
RHIANNON [00:45:31] Well yes. It hasn't changed too much as far as in my area. I live in a little bitty town outside of – in between Tyler and Longview – we're a smaller community. We did have some positive cases. Our Walmart did the same thing where we close at 8:30 like everywhere else – our schools closed – things like that. But we didn't have some of the things like Tyler – where they had thousands of cases and stores were closing. My daughter and I, we both were able to keep our jobs through the whole thing. I would honestly say that COVID hit my house when it hit the prison because that's when it changed everything.
Up until then my kids and I – we've had a routine. My youngest son – who is 17 – for the last ten years we've got up and go visit on Saturday mornings. When that stopped is when it stopped at my house because that's when it was more affecting us. It really didn't affect us much before then. To us it was our normal anyways – we live out in the country and we got to say to ourselves – that social distance. We didn't really have to worry too much about the change of that with the exception of the kids being at home.
The prison is what changed our whole – a lot of people don't realize that when you have someone incarcerated – like a husband or a father – you're incarcerated too. I feel like I'm just as incarcerated as my husband is on most days. Yes – I can go to the store – I could go and do whatever I wanted to – but the fun things that we do we want to spend and make those memories with the people that are incarcerated. No, I don't feel like I'm putting my life on hold. There's not a day that goes by that I would change what I've done. I'll be a prison wife till the day comes home if it's 25 years from now or 20 days from now. That's where my heart is – that's my world but I'm incarcerated too.
I feel guilty when I eat good food knowing that my husband isn't. I feel guilty going to the doctor to get medical treatment because I'm sick because he can't – sitting in an air conditioning room knowing he's sitting up there sweating. I have a friend that's a mother too – her son is incarcerated with my husband. I had asked her, Do you feel this way? Do you feel guilty when you're eating a hamburger – just a cheeseburger – things we take for granted. When you have someone suffering so bad you feel guilty and you're just as incarcerated as they are.
It's hard watching them not have constitutional rights because they've made a mistake. I believe everybody in the world has made mistakes – we just don't all get caught. I know there are people in prison that they deserve to be incarcerated. Yes – they've done severe – damaging – victim crimes. I'm not saying to release them. I also think that there are some in there that don't deserve to be in there. No matter what they're in there for – they are still human.
People don't realize that the zoo animals get treated better than our inmates do. My husband calls himself the zookeeper all the time. He says he’s a zookeeper. He's like, I gotta lock everybody back up – I'm just part of the zoo – gotta go back to my cage. It's not a home to him – it's a cage. This is his home and it's my home – but it's not home until he's here.
HENERY [00:50:20] You mentioned about your Saturday or weekend trips to go visit. Could you walk us through that?
RHIANNON [00:50:30] I live an hour away. It's kind of weird the way Telford does theirs. They have a little parking lot and very limited space. I get up at 3:30 in the morning. I leave my house no later than 4:15. Usually my kids sleep all the way up there so it's boring – but I get there. I usually try to take a nap till 8:00 and then they will open it. I'm usually there by 6:00 – 6:45 – 7:00 – the parking lot is pretty full. If you don't want to wait for 3 or 4 hours and hope that visit’s not canceled before you get in – you have to be there early. We sit there till 8:00 and then we go through – take our shoes off and hope all of our clothes are coordinated fast enough and good enough for the guards and we get to go in and see him – we get two hours. You get a kiss when you leave and a kiss when you get there and that’s about it. You get to hold their hands but they don't get to get up. They don't get to go to the vending machine, you have to go back and tell them what's in the vending machine. Sometimes the vending machines at the prison works and sometimes they don't. They're highly priced but it's worth it. I actually spend anywhere from $100 up to $1,500 before on visits when my husband was in Arizona. That's an expensive trip. That's hotel stays and lodging – gas, the whole nine yards. They get to be expensive.
I was very lucky when my husband was moved this close. We're from West Texas – all of my in-laws live in a different town up north – about eight hours away from us. I moved here two years ago – the year before my husband got here and luckily he was moved here. We didn't request it – we got really lucky to be able to get to see him so much. We didn't get to do that as much in Arizona.
I miss my Saturdays. Those are our date days. We used to do – the kids would go anywhere from 2 to 3 weeks and then one weekend was just me and my husband and they literally were our morning date. I miss those a lot. I'm used to having anywhere from 3 to 8 phone calls a day at 30 minutes apiece – those are nice. Five minutes one time a day is definitely been crazy. I'm lucky right now – I'm getting about two letters a week. He's writing every day but he only mails them out –
[Audio ends at 53:52 due to connectivity issues]
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Texas After Violence ProjectCategory
Activism and Advocacy, Mass IncarcerationSummary
A photo of a written account of meals served in prison, annotated with serving frequencies and descriptions by the individual who received them.Protocol:
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Advocacy, Correctional Medicine, Covid-19, Family, Living Conditions in Prisons, Medical Care, Relationships, Support SystemsCollections:
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2020 June 7thCreator:
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
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Texas After Violence ProjectIdentifier:
tav00093Type:
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