In response to Kara Nelson’s column in the Juneau Empire on March 31, I wish to tell you the dark side of Senate Bill 91 and House Bill 205.
You see, your wife, girlfriend and daughter will all do heir first shot of heroin, crystal meth, crack cocaine or whatever other drugs because they are offered for free. This is how drug dealers get them hooked. Over the next couple of weeks or months, drug dealers will sell her the drug she needs to get by from day to day. At some point she will eventually run out of money to support her habit.
It is at this point drug dealers will break her will to perform sexual acts for a hit. She will be shot up with a large dose to make her sick. While she is puking out her guts in the toilet or in some other state of debilitation, she will be sexually violated. If she resists, she will be physically abused until she submits. She will be emotionally wrecked, but if she behaves she will be rewarded with another hit to make her feel good.
Afterward, your wife, girlfriend or daughter, who is lying there on the bathroom floor, will be offered to any man who is present at the time as a party favor.
At this point, the drug dealer owns your wife, girlfriend or daughter. He has broken her physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. He will have her selling herself to support not only her drug habit but his as well. She will steal, harm children and walk away from her marriage. She will commit crimes, go to prison and may even contract STDs. Your daughter will have what seems like teenage behavioral problems, but the truth is she will not tell you what is going on. They both will always go back to the drug dealer for another hit, no matter how demeaning the dealer is to her or how degrading he is to her sexually.
The dealer does not care about her feelings, nor does he view her as a human being with value. Your wife, girlfriend or daughter are nothing more than a party favor.
The drug dealer does not care about the harm he will cause her, family members or friend or if he destroys her life. The drug dealer will not care about her children because when the time is right he will turn the children into future drug dealers and prostitutes. The more she comes back to the dealer, the more he controls her. She will lose her self worth and self esteem. The last thing the drug dealer will take is her self respect.
You see, SB 91 and HB 205 award extra time off credits for people who will only get out and return within a few months. Since my arrival at Lemon Creek Correctional Center in September 2014, I have watched the same one-third of the prison population get out and come back. And their return is always for the same thing: dealing drugs or dirty urinalysis tests. They will do a small amount of time and be returned to the streets or be given the opportunity to go to the halfway house, only to return to prison again in a few days, weeks or months on new charge or for probation violations.
I am happy for Ms. Nelson and she deserves the support of the community. She has overcome her demons and moved forward in life. I commend her for the work she has done. I have never met her, however, I have seen her here at Lemon Creek. What I have written about is what I hear day in and day out in various conversations between inmates. And I really would not call it “conversation,” it is more “bragging” than conversing. There are three women here right now who have been involved in the very situations I just described above involving five inmates who openly brag about “turning these women out.”
By the way, I am a convicted sex offender, so please explain to me, who is the real boogeyman in society? Since being a sex offender is more demonized by society, law enforcement, Department of Corrections, social services and legislative policymakers, I am a little confused on the matter. Because from what I heard every day for the past 18 years, there seems to be very little difference between what I did and what a drug dealer will do to a woman in order to “turn her out.”
• Martin W. Moody is imprisoned at Lemon Creek Correctional Center.
