Dancing with Demons Page 4

  Many of these prisoners from Grafton were reclassified to Parramatta Gaol following Nagle’s report, but they were accompanied, in a typical display of bureaucratic mischief, by the very warders who had tormented them. Quite a number later became my clients, but were unable to recount the abuses they suffered without breaking down – trembling and tearful, like a beaten dog – with all the signs of severe post-traumatic stress. Among those embittered prisoners who were not crushed by Grafton, a sense of unfinished business smouldered, along with fantasies of revenge, mutilation and horror.

  This was the atmosphere in which I found myself, untested and naive, at the age of twenty-five. I wanted to assist the new administration implement its agenda of reform, but also maintain the respect of the prison staff. To do this, I had to convince them that, in the long run, their jobs would be less violent and much cosier by joining with me rather than undermining the process. My work was clearly cut out for me.

  Within a short period my days at the prison became fully occupied. I continued to have cheery discussions with prison officers about triple Weber carburettors, magnesium alloy wheels and other automotive trophies, lamenting my poor Honda Civic. Since four separate sets of gates separated the blue skies and fresh air of the outside from the bowels of the prison where my office was located, the officers’ goodwill allowed my passage to proceed at something more than a snail’s pace.

  First thing each morning, I was confronted with an ever-expanding queue of prisoners who wanted to discuss their problems and generally chew the fat. Often I’d make them a cup of coffee or offer a cigarette. Unaccustomed to simple kindness, their defensive facade would melt somewhat and the atmosphere of tension in the office would drop a peg or three.

  I came to appreciate that many of these men were highly gifted in their own way, even if the focus of their energies was woefully misdirected. Their ingenuity was tangibly demonstrated one morning when I inadvertently locked my car with the keys still inside. I asked for an announcement to be broadcast over the prison’s public address system that I had locked my keys in my car and any prisoners with suitable proficiency should report to my office immediately. When I arrived there ten minutes later, I was amazed to find a mob of prisoners, all wearing the beanie on their heads that no car thief is ever without, squabbling among themselves as to the quickest way to break into my car with least damage.

  Psychological mindedness is one of those clunky pieces of jargon which abound in the psychology profession. Put simply, it means the client’s capacity for limited insight into the very existence of the unconscious feelings, desires and fantasies which drive behaviour. Without a minimal degree of such insight, deep transformations through psychotherapy are next to impossible and supportive treatment is the only option. Supportive treatment aims to contain and restore the defence system and re-establish equilibrium when events trigger the eruption of powerful emotions from the unconscious.

  Given the clay I had to work with, in the form of long-term recidivists and psychopaths, most of my work involved supportive crisis intervention, usually to defuse angry and traumatised crims who had received the inevitable ‘Dear John’ letter. Often around two years into a jail term, the wife or lover’s devotion began to fray. Unable to tolerate the prospect of ten to fifteen years without intimacy and sexual contact, they would write sorrowful letters to end the relationship. These letters were the sharpest punishment these men ever received: their hope was taken away. My clients often arrived at my office brimming to the eyeballs with a confused mixture of hurt and rage. Many became suicidally depressed. Any brief glimmer of reconciliation to their fate would be quickly overwhelmed by evil fantasies of revenge, featuring the usual stock-in-trade of slow death, mutilation and the demise of their former partner’s new companion (much of which they could, in fact, organise with a phone call).

  Because of the extent of this rage, I found that the best approach was to escort the prisoner to the oval, where we’d jog as we talked through the issues. This helped to dissipate their aggression and allowed them to resign themselves to their predicament. These kinds of measures, along with other rapport-builders, like playing guitar with prisoners in the exercise yard, worked well.

  Irene Mamontoff gave me the freedom to try out different programs and to experiment, so there were less bureaucratic obstacles to impede me – a significant blessing.

  Some of the prison officers, however, were uncomfortable with this departure from professional protocol, not only because it suggested fraternisation, but also out of friendly concern for my safety. I argued that to make any impact with these blokes the clinical stereotypes had to be dispatched. I had to be approachable, while remaining steadfast on matters of principle.

  I was soon to share their anxiety though, due to one harrowing encounter. A long-term prisoner, well known for his penchant for deep inhalation of solvent fumes, entered my office. Naively, I believed he’d come to try to deal with his addiction, oblivious to the reality that he had spent the previous evening bingeing on a tub of jailhouse glue, which had become his tipple of choice. Nothing too confronting for the first session, I mused. I started to chat with him about broad issues, when he launched himself out of his seat like a marauding cane toad, landed on my desk and brandished a finely honed, razor-sharp screwdriver in my face. ‘I’m gonna fuck’n kill you, you fuck’n cunt!’ he screamed.

  I knew I was in deeper than a Werribee duck.

  I had visions of a black hearse, the eulogy . . . In that split second, I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my career – never make assumptions about the person in front of you and maintain your vigilance at all times.

  ‘Put that down, you fucking imbecile,’ I replied serenely, a smile on my face. This was just a simple reflex and not any clever psychological ruse I’d prepared for just such an eventuality. But my seeming good humour knocked his fragile mind back into kilter. He dropped the screwdriver and started to cry. Briskly I led him to the door and handed him over to the screws, without making any immediate complaint.

  I decided not to inform on him, since this would place me squarely on the side of the authorities in the eyes of the prisoners and badly damage their trust in me. The unbreakable prison rule has always been ‘don’t be a dog’, whatever the intensity of the insult you suffer. The next day I was distressed to learn that the man had been admitted to the prison hospital with multiple fractures due to a severe beating.

  I was at a loss to understand how our interaction had become public knowledge within the space of twenty-four hours. The prison adage of the walls having ears could never have been truer.

  Several jail gangsters had taken it upon themselves to point out the error of my assailant’s ways. No one said anything, it was just understood that a violation of the prison code of honour had to be remedied.

  Despite the unpromising circumstances, there were one or two prisoners who seemed to grasp the possibility that they could change through therapy. Several times a week one of these prisoners, Kevin, an armed robber, would arrive for our sessions. Kevin had been living in institutions since he was a child. Nobody cared for him and nobody valued him, and he repaid that neglect with a series of crimes that saw him repeatedly jailed into his adult life.

  Kevin was now married and this relationship seemed like a positive element in his possible rehabilitation. By some miracle, his wife planned to offer him a normal life on the outside once his upcoming parole was granted. She had wanted to be a social worker and would often seek me out to discuss his progress. Meanwhile, a hefty proportion of her earnings disappeared into Kevin’s prison account without fail every week, which he would then promptly withdraw to settle gambling or drug-related debts he’d accrued.

  I had some misgivings, but of all the prisoners I had counselled he seemed like the best prospect for rehabilitation. So it was to my surprise when he came into my office in a state of gloating excitement about one month before he was due for release. With a broad smirk on his face, he handed me a
letter. Clearly written by a woman in a careful and decorative hand with little curlicues and embellishments, it read as follows:

  ‘From the moment I saw you from the visitors yard, Kevin, I wanted to suck your cock. I wanted to suck you so hard that the marrow would come out of your bones.’

  ‘Lovely handwriting,’ I mumbled.

  Kevin ignored me completely, and swaggered off to continue his rounds of show-and-tell. On the strength of that letter, he ditched his wife, the one person who had faithfully supported him throughout. She had sacrificed promotions, travelled on public transport several hundred kilometres every week with their children to visit, and lived in privation, all for his sake, in the hope of a future together as a family. But it was as if Kevin had forgotten her very existence, and all her modest dreams went up in smoke.

  Kevin made contact with the letter-writer and, on his release, moved in with her. Within a month it became apparent to the woman that this was a terrible mistake. Delicately she told him that he would have to leave. Kevin moved out in a dangerous state of resentment and disappointment. He then went on a crime spree which ended with his capture. Love had failed him again. Kevin was escorted back to jail, none the wiser.

  Optimism was essential in the face of such reversals. Even though I’d had my doubts, especially when he had ditched his wife, I still hoped that Kevin would make it on the outside. There were so few prisoners who demonstrated even the potential for reform, to see him return was highly demoralising. Fortunately, Superintendent Harry Duff helped to keep up my morale. When my office hours finished at around 3.30 p.m., I would meet Harry at the Northmead Bowling Club to drink and talk through management issues and particular prisoners. The superintendent’s tough demeanour hid an innate sensitivity, remarkably still intact after decades in the New South Wales prison system. More incredible still, he retained an underlying feeling of compassion for the prisoners and the blighted lives they led.

  Harry recognised in me a similar wish to ease the harshness of life in jail and an ambition to achieve a standard of excellence in my practice. He was held in high regard by the prison officers and his friendship helped soften the screws’ attitude towards me even further, and they came to see me as part of the team, a bloke who enjoyed a beer and possessed, like them, the black humour needed to cope with prison work.

  This team approach allowed potential problems among prisoners to be brought to my attention quickly. Wing officers phoned me each morning to tell me their concerns about certain prisoners. Later in the day I’d casually visit these men in the cells, allowing me to contain the prisoners’ feelings of paranoia or of being stigmatised before they escalated.

  After my failure with Kevin, I started to pay more attention to the records of the parole and probation office across the road from the jail. Here I discovered the sorry inability of most of the crims under my care to ever rehabilitate themselves and cope responsibly with freedom. I spent hours and hours perusing these files and it became apparent that one of the major reasons why so few prisoners successfully assimilated back into the community upon their release was a lack of follow-up. Many of them had been institutionalised for over a decade and the world outside prison had changed dramatically in that time. Once they were free there seemed to be a lack of resources to maintain the type of structure and supervision that would help them adjust.

  I began to think that programs which promoted mutual understanding, trust and co-operation (the very qualities so essential to life outside), and which brought out the strengths in prisoners, would better suit my aims.

  So, with youthful enthusiasm in my favour, I decided that group therapy could be a solution to both time constraints and the limitations of one-on-one treatment. The only fly in the ointment was that I had absolutely no experience running group therapy. I decided to trust my intuition and wing it. After all, I reasoned, the worst that could happen was a hostage crisis when a berserk crim reacted badly to some mild criticism by another group member and we were all killed or maimed.

  One of my regulars put out the word on the prison telegraph that I was accepting applications for a group, which would be run for eight weeks initially. The response was overwhelming. Far more prisoners wanted to bare their souls and accept lacerating judgements from their peers than I ever imagined. I was ecstatic at the response, but was quickly brought back to earth when it was pointed out to me by Carl Synnerdahl that prisoners received four dollars a day for employment, and therapeutic hours in my office were considered equivalent to paid work. Two hours sitting around chatting to me seemed just the ticket for the work-shy who needed a few bucks in their kick.

  Nevertheless, I managed to sort out the motivated prisoners from the slackers and our sessions began. Every Friday morning a diverse bunch of liars, cheats, killers and thieves would arrive at my office, fortified by the grain of courage needed to delve beneath their tough exteriors and expose frailty and weakness. This courage is necessary for anyone who attempts therapy, but in the prison jungle, convicts and warders alike ruthlessly exploited any secret or vulnerability, so the group had to be doubly brave. And close-lipped.

  The cone of silence edict is a difficult one to negotiate. Even in a community-based group, individuals feel threatened by exposure, but afterwards they can retreat to suburban anonymity. In jail, a confidence betrayed could be lethal. There was nowhere to hide, no escape. Taking advantage of their survival instinct, I amended the unwritten prison code of silence to insist that anything aired within the group stayed within the group: no exceptions. They understood and honoured this principle to the letter.

  I well remember that first session. Eight men sat on steel grey prison chairs drawn up in a semi-circle. Every so often the prisoners shot glances at each other – looks full of blank contempt or glowering anger. Otherwise they stared resolutely ahead.

  An atmosphere of brittle tension permeated the room. Progress was slow. I might as well have addressed a meeting of the Deaf Society. Still, I persevered. It was not until one prisoner’s fart provoked a sudden hilarity among the boys that the group really started to work. A wisecrack about prison food followed and then an animated discussion began about how prison conditions affected their ability to cope with the length of their sentences.

  Nothing of great moment transpired that day, but we had ventured forth into a new territory. As the weeks went by, a strange esprit de corps emerged as intimate details and long-nursed hurts were revealed. In the process, a sense of co-operation and concern for one another materialised which extended to life outside therapy. And for the first time in their lives, some prisoners finally came to enjoy the warmth that genuine friendship can provide.

  The group continued for many months, before the inevitable strains of prison life brought it to an end. It was simply too difficult for its members to translate their newfound ways of sharing and communicating within the group to their daily survival in the prison yards. Despite this, we did some good work and the men realised that it was okay, if not desirable, to discuss their feelings, and in so doing to adopt better problem-solving techniques than the bash ’em and kill ’em mentality of old.

  One day, Harry Duff raised the idea of me becoming involved in a new program, which was still on the jail’s drawing board. Some enterprising prisoners had established a group known as the Parramatta Recidivist Group (the PRG). Modelled on a program which had been devised at the Rahway State Prison in New Jersey, called ‘Scared Straight’, the PRG hoped to do its bit by offering a ‘day in jail’ program which would deter aspiring juvenile offenders from a life of crime and incarceration. I hand-picked a group of prisoners and trained them in basic counselling and communication techniques so they could run the program.

  The idea had been enthusiastically floated by a number of the prison gangsters, in particular one by the name of Ricky Groom. Ricky was doing time for a series of brazen armed hold-ups in Queensland and New South Wales. When his time expired in Sydney, he would be extradited back to Queensland to face the
music there. He was going nowhere for years and, as his criminal history sheet abundantly demonstrated, he was an expert when it came to describing and explaining a life of crime.

  Most of the other prisoners involved in the program had a similar life story and regretted wasting their lives. They sincerely hoped to turn young toughs around. It was also thought that the mentors themselves would benefit, since even a negative mentor will enjoy some paternal satisfaction from their role.

  Ricky selected a couple of vice-executives (criminals have a weakness for titles) in Ray ‘Bruiser’ Annesley, in for murder, and Kevin Browne, who had a penchant for armed robbery. Bruiser’s jail number was #1, a tribute to his fearsome reputation in a fight and the regard with which he was held by both prisoners and warders. A burly ex-boxer, Bruiser was not a man to be trifled with. He was well known for his protection of younger offenders from the predatory sexual advances of older inmates. He was genuinely concerned for younger prisoners, partly out of a wish that they not follow in his footsteps, but also by his profound remorse for his crime and his desire to atone in some way.

  Kevin was a runty type with darting brown eyes and a 1960s hairstyle who also shared the aims of the program.

  Johnny Bobak, a prisoner with a big heart and a fearsome reputation, was also involved. Despite the vicious gang rape for which he was convicted, Bobak was generally an affable bloke who truly wanted to help, even if he knew himself to be beyond salvation. Built like a brick shithouse, his arms were reminiscent of a technicolour Persian rug due to his countless tattoos. His colourful life was certain to command interest from the juvenile offenders.

  The involvement of such formidable prisoners as Bruiser and Bobak meant other inmates gave the program begrudging acceptance, and Bruiser and Bobak’s imposing presence was sure to leave an impression on the juvenile referrals.