Jon Ronson - So You've Been Publicly Shamed

—

Jim gathered the women into a circle for a group meeting. I wasn’t allowed to record it and so I managed only to scribble down fragments of conversations like “I come from a small town so everyone knows where I am and that tears me up inside…” and “most people know why Raquel is in here…”

At that, a few women glanced over at the woman I took to be Raquel. Their looks seemed wary and deferential. Pretty much every woman here was in for drugs or prostitution. But the comment and the glances made me think that with Raquel it was something else.

Raquel’s eyes darted around the room. She fidgeted a lot. The other women were stiller. I wondered what Raquel had done, but I didn’t know the etiquette of how to ask. Then, as soon as the meeting broke up, Raquel immediately dashed across the room to me and told me everything. I somehow managed to get it all down — taking notes frantically like a secretary in Mad Men .

—

“I was born in Puerto Rico,” she said. “I was sexually abused from the age of four. When I was six, we moved to New Jersey. Every memory I have of growing up is a memory of being punched in the face and told I was worthless. When I was fifteen, my brother broke my nose. I ended up covered in blood. When I was sixteen, I had my first boyfriend. Three months later I was married. I started smoking pot, drinking. I cheated on my husband. I left him. Eighteen, nineteen was a big blur. I tried heroin. Thank God I don’t have an addictive personality. I drank like a fish. We’d go to bars, wait for people to come out, take their money, and make fun of how they screamed for their moms. Suddenly, holy shit, I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant with the only thing that’s ever going to love me. My son was born January 25, 1996. I went to business school, dropped out. I had a daughter. We moved to Florida. In Florida we’d have water fights, movie nights. I’d buy all their favorite food and lay it all out on the bed and we’d pile in and watch movies until we all passed out. We played baseball in the rain. My son loves comedy, drama, he sings. He won a talent show when he was fourteen. I would make him do his homework over and over. I used to make him do five-page reports, read encyclopedias. I shoved him out of the bed when he was fourteen and slapped him. A girl had texted him, ‘Are you a virgin?’ I was ballistic. I slapped the shit out of him. It left nail marks.”

—

Ten months ago Raquel had sent her children to stay with their father in Florida for a vacation. As she watched them walk down the tunnel toward the plane, her son suddenly turned and called back at her, “How much do you want to bet I don’t come back?” Then he said, “Just kidding.”

Raquel yelled back at him, “How much do you want to bet you don’t get on that plane?”

Her son walked on for a few more steps. Then he called back, “We should make that bet.”

“And that was the last thing he ever said to me,” Raquel said.

—

That Friday the Department of Children and Families turned up at Raquel’s house. Her son was accusing her of child abuse.

“He used to ask me if he could stay out until nine p.m,” Raquel said. “I’d say no. He’d ask why not. I’d say, ‘There are people out there that can hurt you.’ But I was hurting him more than anyone. Thank God they got away from me when they did. He’s safe. He’s getting the chance to be a teenager. He’s a very angry boy because I made him that way. My daughter is very shy, withdrawn, because I made her that way. I just pray they’ll be normal.”

—

For the first few months of Raquel’s incarceration she was downstairs on a nontherapeutic floor.

“What was that like?” I asked her.

“Downstairs is chaos,” she replied. “It’s borderline barbaric. Downstairs girls get slapped with the food trays. Some girl will decide she doesn’t like you. She’ll pull you into a room and lock the door and you’ll fight and whoever comes out unbroken wins. Up here we eat coffee cake. We watch TV. We spread books across the table. It’s like we’re in a college cafeteria sipping our coffee. Sophisticated!”

Just then there was commotion. A woman behind us had collapsed and was having a seizure. She was carried away on a stretcher.

“Feel better!” some of the other women shouted after her.

“Last call for medications,” an officer called out.

Jim and I left the prison and walked back toward his car.

“How long do you think Raquel will stay in prison?” I asked him.

“We’ll know more in two weeks,” he replied. “That’s when we’re due to hear from the prosecutor. My guess is a few more months.”

Jim said he’d pass on the news when he heard it. Then he drove me to the train station.

I didn’t hear from Jim two weeks later, so I e-mailed: “How did things go with Raquel?”

Jim e-mailed back. “She received difficult news yesterday. An eight-count indictment. She is in significant emotional pain.”

I telephoned him. “What are they charging her with?” I asked.

“Attempted murder in the first degree,” Jim replied. He sounded shaken. “She threw a knife at her son. They’re going for a twenty-year jail sentence.”

• • •

Six months later. Three people sat together in the council chamber at Newark City Hall: Jim, Raquel, and I.

Jim had intervened. The prosecutors were persuaded that Raquel was a victim of an “abuse cycle.” And so instead of twenty years she served four more months and then they let her go.

“If shaming worked, if prison worked, then it would work,” Jim said to me. “But it doesn’t work.” He paused. “Look, some people need to go to prison forever. Some people are incapable… but most people…”

“It’s disorienting,” I said, “that the line between hell and redemption in the U.S. justice system is so fine.”

“It’s public defenders that are overwhelmed and prosecutors that are following guidelines,” Jim said.

This has been a book about people who really didn’t do very much wrong. Justine and Lindsey, certainly, were destroyed for nothing more than telling bad jokes. And while we were busy steadfastly refusing them forgiveness, Jim was quietly arranging the salvation of someone who had committed a far more serious offense. It struck me that if deshaming would work for a maelstrom like Raquel, if it would restore someone like her to health, then we need to think twice about raining down vengeance and anger as our default position.

It wasn’t freedom without boundaries for Raquel. She’d been banned from contacting her children for five years. Her son would be twenty-two then, her daughter seventeen. “So even when she’s seventeen, any contact will have to be okayed with their father,” Raquel told me, “because my parental rights have been stripped.” But still, she gets updates. “My friends from Florida are still friends with them. My friend actually called me yesterday and said, ‘You will never guess who is Facebooking me right now.’ I said, ‘Who?’ She said, ‘Your daughter.’ I said, ‘No way!’ My daughter is sending her messages, and she’s sitting there reading them to me. So apparently my daughter has a little crush on someone. He’s got a cleft in his chin. He’s got sandy brown hair…”

I told Raquel it was nice to see her in such a good mood. And that’s when she told me her news.

“Yesterday, when group was over, Miss Blake called me into her office.”

Miss Blake was the manager of Raquel’s halfway house.

“She said, ‘Raquel, I’ve seen how you carry yourself, how the guys listen to you. I want to offer you a job here. Can you get me your résumé?’”

Raquel replied, “As luck would have it, I have a résumé right here.”