.The Story of Innocence.
After you have read this I do not ask for your sympathy or your forgiveness for my past. I only ask to be
treated in a fair and just manner. I do not want much, just the chance to go home and build a life for myself.
As far as I can remember, my up bringing
was not an un-happy one. There were six of us, two girls and four boys, we were a poor family and had little stability but
my mother loved us and we were never ill treated, I cannot find anything in my past to say otherwise. In the early 70’s,
my mother was in a car crash in which she was seriously injured and spent about a year in hospital recovering. While she was
in hospital my brothers and I where placed in a care home in Derbyshire with two old lady’s. It was a nice place, and
I cried when it was time for us to go home. Not because I did not want to go home but because I had liked living with them,
I had my first girlfriend and my first taste of bread pudding, I also remember going to the Saturday morning matinee and the
fun that it was.
When my mother was out of hospital life
went back to normal, we lived in Moss Side Manchester in Wellington Street, and I went to Princess Road
junior school
It was a multi racial school and it was a happy environment, all us kids got on with each other and I cannot
remember seeing any fights between the pupils. It was when I moved to secondary school that I started to become a loner and
introverted.
I had a few learning disabilities but in those days it was interpreted as laziness. We were placed at the
back of the class and basically left to it. I did not have many friends and started spending more and more time on my own.
I suppose this was because I found that I was a lot slower than my class mates when it come to school work, I could not cope
with the workload and so I started to play truant.
At first I was on my own and use to spend most days going to the park or messing around on crofts. This went
on for about a year, then one day another lad played truant with me and we attempted a burglary but the lady came in and I
ran away, the lad with me got caught and was taken to the police station. That same night the police came and arrested me.
I was taken to Moss Side police station where I saw the lad I had attempted the burglary there. He was
with his mother who started verbally abusing me, calling me a little tramp and other names. Her son was then released on bail
and that was the last I saw of him.
Later that night my mother turned up and told me that the police had said I was going to be put in a
home and she walked away crying and left me there, it was one of the saddest days of my life. I cried my little heart out
but soon learnt to keep my tears to myself.
Being 12 years of age and scared to death of the police I did as I was told and admitted
to a couple of other burglary’s which I had not committed, not knowing any better and believing the police when they
told me I could go home if I did.
I was placed in a remand home for juveniles called Rose Hill, it was here that for the first time I
can remember violence was used against me, I was caned, ‘3 of the best’, for running across the dormitory and
jumping onto my bed, you know as kids do. I had to be forcibly held over the table. I had never experienced violence on me
before this except the odd tussle at school; I was shocked beyond words and could not stand up for the terror I was feeling.
I also had a blackboard rubber rapped across the head and thrown at me a few times for talking in class, which use to hurt
like mad. In all I spent about six months there, then I went to court and a ‘care’ order was place on me.
Initionally I was placed in a foster home in Langley
where there was one girl and two other boys, the couple who ran the home also had a daughter. At the beginning I settled in
fine. Then after a while things changed; The people who ran the place found that they did not want to put up with me; So after
about a year I was moved on to Mobberly Boys School in Knutsford. This was not because I played truant, or because I was violent
in anyway. I had a tendency to wet the bed; I would not eat some of the foods they gave me and so arguments would arise. I
did not like most meats especially Sausages. Whenever I asked if I could leave them, I was always told that if I did not eat
them then I must not be hungry and was told to leave the table. Moreover, the other two boys who where there did not want
to play with me and so I used to go out without asking. Anyway some days were good but most were sad, I desperately needed
my mother and I was very lonely, I think this made me even more of a loner and introverted.
Moberly was a big place it had four houses each with about 30 boys on, my first days
there where quite lonely and I can remember one lad called John Hasty who was a big lad. He had for some reason taken a disliking
to me and started to bully me. I did not receive any help from the staff and I stopped complaining to them. Eventually he
was sent home and the bullying stopped, years later I saw him occasionally on the streets
After being there for about a year I started to abscond,
I wanted to go home but I was always told I wasn’t allowed. After absconding a few times I realised that I could not
go to my home as it was the first place the police would look, and so I started to live on the streets. I was about 14 by
now; this is when I first started to commit crime. I needed food and so I use to steal it, at first it was stealing food from
shops but then I started to burgle dwellings for food, as I became older I started to learn the value of money and moved on
trying to steal that. Before I knew it; Burglary, in order to survive while on the run became my way life.
In 1975 I saw my first prison sentence and this was where I was sexually abused, I
was 14 and only a few months of my 15th birthday, I was remanded to H.M.P Risley, whilst there I had attempted
suicide and was moved form normal location and put into a strip cell on the hospital wing. One of the Officers, who use to
come and check on me, would sometimes give me cigarettes. After a couple of times he told me to take off my clothes and turn
around slowly so he could look at me, and on the next occasion he told me to come over to him and he kissed me and told me
to hold his penis.
I did not report this because I was afraid I would not be believed; and then be punished for lying.
This only went on a couple of more times and then I was taken back to court and given Borstal Training. Whilst in H.M.P Everthorp
Borstal I was interviewed by the police because another inmate had pressed charges against the officer and I was called as
a witness at his trial. The officer received a Two-year sentence. My experience was never asked about or dealt with; all I
was there for was to verify the officer’s behaviour. I have always assumed that this matter was in my case file but
it is not.
It seems odd to me that statements like, ‘violence
and drugs and index offence’ are there on my file in great detail yet this matter which is of great importance to me
is not even recorded.
At the time of My Borstal Training, Leon Brittan was the home secretary and Maggie
Thatcher was in power, it was also the time of the Short Sharp Shock Treatment
We were sent to Detention Centres and Borstals to be punished for our crimes; they were run similar
to Boot camps. We were marched everywhere and were made to scrub floors. Go to the gym every day, where aggression was built
into us by making us play games like Murder ball. ‘This is a game were a medicine ball is placed in the middle of the
gym; Then two teams fight over it’ the winner was the team who got the ball back to their end of the gym. We were made
to do Circuit training, this kept us all pretty fit. If you gave backchat to an Officer, you were taken down the segregation
unit, given a beating by the officers and placed on report.
In all you had to learn to stand up for yourself. Some of us were better at it than
others. If you did not defend yourself! You would end up being bullied not only by the officers but also by the other inmates.
This is when I first started to react and defend other people as well as myself. I did not like to see the weaker lads being
picked on and would challenge the bully about it. Sometimes this would lead to fist fights but most of the time they would
back off when they knew the person they were picking on was not alone.
My prison life first started in 1975 and since then I have done Borstal training twice,
H.M.P Everthorp and H.M.P Stoke heath, an 18 month sentence which I did in H.M.P Strangeways, a two year sentence which I
did in H.M.P Haverigg and this life sentence.
In all I have spent approx half my life, some 27/28 years in one institute or another. This is not including
the time spent in various homes and institutions as a child. Up until getting this Life Sentence, I had never been violent
or been in trouble for violence. The violence I experienced was directed at me. If there is anything in my past which was
the trigger behind my loss of control and as to why I re-acted so extremely when I was in the fight (index offence) then I
suppose it was my protective feelings for the weaker person coupled with all the aggression that had been built up over the
years whilst in and out of homes borstal and prison. Moreover, The fact that I had received no counselling or life training
through my early years, only brute force and control, which has resulted in an apparent ‘lack of motivation and direction
in life’. (Quote)
What kind of man I am today is very different to the youth I was. This life sentence,
since I was jailed in 1984 has made me what I am, in that I have obtained an education and learned to control my negative
emotions. Some of it has come from the prison system but most has come from within myself
I was an ill equipped and uneducated youth who received no help only restriction and the upheaval of
being forced to leave my family at a young age for reasons I did not understand.
I believe I am the man I have become, not because of prison life but in spite of it. If I had
wanted to I could have easily let myself become institutionalised in the early years of my incarceration and I could have
fallen into the trap of hard drug addiction because it was an easy option
I learned to keep my thoughts and feelings to myself as far as personal things go because I learned
that whatever was confided was later used against me. This does not make me a bad person, just a wary one.
I am not an aggressive man by nature, and I have never used aggression wilfully against
another person, inmate or officer, but like every one else, I can feel afraid and angry if I feel I need to defend myself.
I am certainly not a danger to the General Public. If my family or I were under physical threat then
I would defend them or myself and would use enough force to stop the threat if necessary. I have enough control to refrain
myself from violence and can usually talk my way out of confrontations. This I think I have proven very well by the fact that;
Out of the 20.6 years I have spent in prison on this sentence I have only had two fights, once in the early years when I came
to the aid of another inmate and once when I defended myself when my cell mate attacked me.
It is easy for someone to write a report on me and then have me try to defend myself. Being in my situation
it is me who is assumed to be the liar and I will only be believed if I told them what they want to hear, whether it
is truth or lie. For example; when I was offered the deal on my arrest whereby I plead guilty to manslaughter in order to
get out of jail quick.
At the end of the day, people in authority can write what they feel like and be believed but I have
to fight for that right
Smoking cannabis was a way of getting rid of my frustrations and anxieties; unfortunately it was one
of the few things I enjoyed and had control of, no one could take it away from me, I liked it so much that I became too depend
on it as a calming influence and it got between me and my freedom. For the past
four years I have had my need under control and worked hard with drug councillors to the point that it is not the first thing
I turn to when I become upset or stressed.
Sometimes I would go months without smoking it, and only did it whenever I felt too nervous or upset
to cope. I did so because I did not want to rely on medication that would have been prescribed if I had gone to the medical
officer. The temptation is still there within the prison as it is freely available among the prisoners but I can overcome
it now.
I have had the odd lapse in the past and it shows up on the drug tests. Not only was I punished for
the lapses by being kept in the prison for up to 1 month, I was also fined and lost the privilege of being able to spend my
wages, and then on top of that, whenever I came up for parole it was used as a reason to refuse my release.
I do not need to smoke cannabis at all anymore and given the chance of being released and able to build
a new life for myself I think the problem would never arise again since the stresses that caused me to smoke inside prison
would be gone. I did smoke cannabis before I was jailed in ‘85 because every one around me did, I do not know or associate
with those people any more and I do not have the same ideas or influences that I had at that time.
Since starting this sentence I have educated myself, I have my City and Guilds in Bespoke
Tailoring, numerous A Levels in art and design, and a B.A.Hons in fashion and design. I have also learnt to play the Guitar
and I studied music theory up to grade four.
I have worked hard and achieved a lot in the last 20.6 years so that when I do get released I can find
work in the community and so reduce the risk of ever having to turn to crime or having to live in these types of environments
again.
I agree I may have expressed some aggression during this sentence, but it is very difficult at first
to control the feelings of frustration you have when other people are in sole control of your life and it seems to be indefinite.
Try to put yourself in the situation where I am, for the first 14 years of my sentence I was refused
release because I would not buckle and confess to a murder I did not commit. I could have accepted the deal that was offered
to me by the police upon my arrest, whereby if I admitted to Manslaughter they would have the two section 18 charges dropped
to 20 and I would be given a sentence of 7 years. I did not agree to this, as I know I am not guilty. Unfortunately, since
all records of my arrest and trial are no longer available I cannot use them to prove what I say is true. I do have some of
the depositions, which prove some of what I say but no one seems to want to listen. It is easier to keep a man in prison and
away from the public eye, than it is to open a case that is 20.6 years old.
I was told I would never get out of prison unless I said that I was guilty; I have been called a Gallows
Dodger on more than one occasion, been told that I should have been hung to save the Tax payer some money and verbally abused,
but even so I have still stuck to rehabilitating myself.
For the past 20.6 years I’ve been surrounded by authorities who I feel have given me no respect
as a man and forced me to lock my feelings away and not show any emotion for fear of it being used against me.
I’ve had to learn how to close doors on most of my life and feelings; have been labelled as anti-social
and anti-authority when dealing with other inmates and the prison system. Now as I am just learning to open some of these
doors and to trust again, I have found that I have to learn how to lie because when I answer honestly my words are used against
me, and so I have to start closing these doors again to stop the hurt from showing.
I fear that I will spend more years in prison when this is read, because it will be said that I am emotionally
unstable, and that I carry too much baggage, which makes me a risk to the public.
I may be emotionally unstable by some standards but I am coping with 20.6 years in prison for a crime
I did not commit.
I may have a lot of baggage, but I feel it is what I have collected over the many years
of my life when I have had to deal with being given no say in where I went or who was controlling my life from an early age.
If I have issues I have to manage, one of them is the fact that my family never beat or abused me that
was done to me while I was in the ‘care’ of the authorities. And
no doubt, some one somewhere will want to analyse me and tell me I am too dangerous to be released because
of this.
The authorities that control my life have said that I am a dangerous and unpredictable
man; I have been incarcerated for over 20.6 years apparently to enable myself to be rehabilitated and released back into society
after having paid my debt to it.
What is hard to understand is why after 20.6 years in prison I am apparently not rehabilitated
and am considered too dangerous to be in the company of every day society. Has the 20.6 years of imprisonment turned me into
a violent man ? Or is this just another excuse, I do not feel violent; it was over ten years ago that I last had a fight.
So what is it that makes me violent ?
Am I to understand that Prison as a solution has not worked? Am I to understand that rehabilitation
has not taken place? Am I supposed to accept that I am being told that I am too dangerous to be released on licence?
It is the anxiety I am suffering every time I get to the point of almost release and then the crushing
disappointment of being refused that makes me become detached and emotionless. If I gave in and allowed myself to feel it,
I would die of a broken heart and spirit.
Since being given the opportunity to live in an open prison in category ‘D’,
I have worked hard to gain the trust and respect of my fellow prisoners and officers. I have been at H.M.P Kirkham for just
over two years now; I get on well with every one I come into contact with, Six people recommended my release from kirkham
and numerous members of the public have said that I should be released, these people have known me for 12 months or longer.
Yet it took a Six-hour interview with a trainee psychologist to keep me in prison. I now apparently have ‘issues’.
Shouldn’t these have been dealt with within the first five years of coming to prison?
I am told that I need to be taken back to the night of the fight to find out how and what I was thinking
on that night. I then need to be told the under-laying factor behind the reason for my reaction, and then I will have to get
psychiatric help to sort it all out. If I was locked up in the beginning to rehabilitate and punish me surely all this should
have been sorted out at the start of my sentence.
How long all this will keep me in prison I do not know
but I think it will take probably another five years, knowing the system. By then, I should not want to be released, my mum
will probably be dead and the system will have achieved its goal.
I have a job in Preston which I’ve been in for the past 12 months; I work five days a week and
I am allowed to go home for seven days resettlement leave every 8 weeks, also I have occasional day’s at home to visit
my family, I do not think that I can be realistically classed as a danger.Even the statement on my parole refusal that I am
in danger of re-offending is ambiguous, as it does not state categorically exactly, what offence they think I may commit.
For example, I was guilty of two section 18s, which I pleaded guilty to and received an eight year sentence
for which was over twenty years ago and that debt to society is paid in full.
I am most definitely not going to go out and commit a murder (for which I was found guilty of
and have always denied.) In the light of modern legislation regarding the use of cannabis, it is hardly an offence which will
cause major complications in my freedom, particularly as I do not feel the need to use it any longer.
I do not understand the implication that I am a potentially violent person. I have been in many situations
during my prison life where violence has been an option and I have always walked away from it. My mistake was that 20.6 years
ago I jumped into a fight that was not mine in the mistaken belief that I was defending my friend who was being severely beaten.
I did hurt three people during that fight; my other mistake was to believe that if I told the truth
I would be dealt with fairly by the authorities.
I have tried very hard during my incarceration to follow the rules. Obeying the laws, rehabilitating
and educating myself. I believe from that perspective I have succeeded, I have never succumbed to the temptation of admitting
guilt to a crime I did not commit just to try to gain my release. I have always told the truth. I can only come to the one
conclusion left to me, and that is that I am being punished still for maintaining my innocence.
My innocence is all I have left. So will released ever be granted? If
not then let the home office be honest and tell me the true reason
