Flanked by fig groves and vineyards and surrounded by electrified fences and thick coils of barbed wire, the Central California Women’s Facility is the largest women-only prison in the state. Inside the low-slung cinderblock buildings, in a trailer that doubles as a classroom, a dozen prisoners have gathered around a conference table. They are black, white and Latina; former gang members, preschool teachers, musicians and veterans.
They have one thing in common. All these women are serving long-term sentences for committing violent offenses. Many of them are LWoPs—life in prison, without the possibility for parole. They’ve come to this classroom to talk about the beginning of their journeys to prison — which almost invariably began with childhood trauma.
Fauzia Fields, 31, remembers being so independent growing up that she never turned to her family for help. As a result, she became isolated in an abusive relationship as a young woman. Fields had the same mindset when she came to prison, where she is serving 22 years for voluntary manslaughter and first-degree robbery. “When I first stepped in here, I was like, ‘I’m not going to talk about my past, it’s nobody’s business,’” she said, adding that she felt it would be an expression of weakness to “sit up there and cry about being molested at 3 years old and use it to justify something I did at 26.”
[For more of this story, written by Marisa Taylor, go to http://america.aljazeera.com/m...round-in-trauma.html]
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