Crimwife (5 page)

When you think about how most of us get together with our partners, it’s often in exactly the same ways that it occurs to the partnerships in gaol. In the cases that I know about it’s been because in one set of partners (wife visiting husband in gaol) each know of someone who’s a bit lonely and think they’d get on well together so they arrange for them to meet. If you’re not in gaol and rich, they arrange a dinner party, for most of us it’s usually a barbeque especially put on to get them to meet, but for people whose life circles around gaol, it’s getting one, usually the woman, to visit the other at visiting time. Another way a lot of us get together is through our work and this happens too in gaol. The most interesting person you’ve met for ages happens to be the male nurse if you’re a doctor, the customer if you’re an estate agent. If you work in some way in the prison system every so often it’s going to be one of the men doing time.

Of course, the main difference between these and many relationships is the physical separation. But what if it is like an online relationship, or a long-distance one? We live in an era where people get married via Skype to someone they have never met in the flesh, or exchange vows inside the game
World of Warcraft
. Financial pressures now separate many couples, who concede they can pay their mortgage quicker if one, or both, works in remote locations part of the time. Physical separation for two people in love is much more common now than at the start of the industrial revolution. Technology connects people where skin or residency can’t.

The psychologist Arthur Aron suggests that physical separation isn’t necessarily a barrier to a satisfying relationship, and that for some people it’s beneficial. “Between 20 and 30 per cent of the population is uncomfortable with attachment,” he said in a 2005 interview with
Good Morning America
. “For some people it’s threatening to be intimate. And a relationship with an incarcerated partner may give these people the sense of control they want or need when it comes to emotional closeness.”

Aron’s psychologist wife, Elaine, agrees with her husband that some people may enjoy relationships with prisoners because it fits their personality type. One such personality type may be the “highly sensitive person,” a type which comprises about 15 per cent of the population. According to Elain Aron, this is someone who is particularly empathic and often struggles with overstimulation and intimate attachments. “Their issues could dovetail quite neatly with an inmate’s … They would feel particularly compassionate or sympathetic to an inmate, and at the same time feel comfortable with a relationship that comes with predictability and defined boundaries,” she says.

Non-jail long-distance or online relationships are not exempt from crime or fear. There has been a rise in the incidence of online domestic violence. Women who enter into relationships with people they’ve met on the internet can find themselves being controlled by someone who started out as their best match. As one woman posted on a forum about relationship break-ups: “He told me how to dress, what to eat, where to go, even what career I should be working at – and he was hundreds of miles away! Why did I listen? I must have been crazy.”

And of course, like long-distance or online relationships, jail relationships bring up the issue of no sex. Conjugal visits are only allowed in Victoria and the ACT in Australia. In these states, couples – including same-sex couples in the ACT – are allowed some private time every two months, where the inmate has a sentence of over three years.

Often, though, lack of sex can be turned into a perverse sense of control for many couples. To defy the prison’s base culture by successfully maintaining a celibate relationship is a victory for the prisoners (in green uniforms) over the screws (in blue).
She loves me anyway. She comes to see me anyway.
“The denial of intimacy” by the subjects in
Dream Lovers
“was often perceived as an integral ingredient in the ‘success’ of their relationships. Some women insisted that the restrictions placed on their marriage gave it more meaning and depth.”

Yet Sheila Isenberg, in
Women Who Love Men Who Kill
, says that the crimwife phenomenon:

involves a complicated series of reasons. The first reason is that if you are in a relationship with a man behind bars for life or a man on Death Row, then you have a lot of control over the relationship. You can decide when to make the visit, when to accept the phone call, or if you will accept the call, and you are that man’s primary link with the outside world. So as you can clearly see it’s a very powerful position to be in … Some of these women may actually feel safer in these relationships. When their partner is incarcerated, he can’t hit her or be abusive.

Why is control such a strange thing for women to want? For those who’ve been assaulted, control is a good thing. Perhaps having a partner in a cage or on a computer screen is the thinking woman’s best option.

If violence, abuse, and injustice are in a crimwife’s history, the lawlessness of the inmate may be the ultimate attraction. For a woman who has tried to keep to the rules and failed, or has been mistreated simply for being female, a criminal represents the ultimate fantasy of freedom: someone who is prepared to do what they want, and cop the result square on the chin. I believe that a lot of professional women turned crimwife, the lawyers, doctors, psychologists and screws, meet an inmate at a point in their lives when they are tired. They have worked, paid their bills and fulfilled all their duties, but being female still feels like the ultimate weakness. A master’s degree won’t stop a stalker, a sleazy boss, or a violent boyfriend. Sometimes women dream of being with someone who will protect them, and the inmate with his range of hyper-masculine charm and bravado fits this to a tee. While traditional feminine traits like compassion, nurture and senseless devotion are useful for a crimwife, most analysts have overlooked the possibility that, rather than wanting to rescue, some women want a saviour of their own. Plenty of people are insecure or have a need for drama. I agree that these things are part of the attraction. I just don’t see what makes them so bad.

The crimwife may also see her relationship as more honest than non-jail romances, because her partner’s wrongdoing is there on record. Unlike in the case of a guy on the outside, she knows what she is up against. His crimes are there for the world to see. His sins are not a mystery.

Yet a pervading theme in crimwife cases is a willingness to believe in her partner, though not necessarily in his innocence. Willcox Bailey’s interviewees “each claimed that their prisoner-husband’s ability to communicate was the best part of their marriage and marvelled at their partner’s success in revealing his ‘true self’ to them – something the ‘free’ men in their previous relationships had been reluctant or unable to do.” Perhaps this is the characteristic that distinguishes women who date crims from women who play by the rules. In jail it is easy to believe. The evidence of his wrongdoing to her or to society is invisible in a visits room. A relationship consisting of love letters, hurried phone calls and restricted visits is made out of hearts, flowers and promises of futures where there are no bars and anything is possible.

So why does a woman hang in there?

Because she loves him. It’s no different to the blind, illogical love that binds people in any relationship. Boring and common though it may be, the majority of crimwives are just like your friend who’s dating a married man, a bad boy or her boss. What is she thinking? The answer to this hair-pulling-out question, for your friend and the crimwife, is usually that she loves him. It may make no sense to anyone, even her. But that’s why love is so grand.

When the broken-hearted or confused went to Mark for advice, he didn’t muck around.

“There’s only two things women are good for in jail: dropping money into your account, and bringing in drugs. If they’re not doing either of those two things, forget ’em.”

When the others laughed, Mark didn’t. He wasn’t joking.

“Mate, you can get any sheila to visit you, or write to you. That’s what churchies are for. You can ring up anyone on the outside for a chat. You’ve got friends.

“But females,” he would say as he pulled back one index finger with the other, “are for cash,” then, pulling back his middle finger, “and drugs. Simple as that.”

Kari knew none of this when she started visiting Mark. She only heard about his views when she ran into his brother years later. Kari had gone to school with Mark, and while they had been friends, they hadn’t kept in touch or seen each other for over ten years. They met up again at a barbecue, a few weeks before he went to jail for a six-month stint. Kari had been single for a while and found herself flirting with Mark.

Kari didn’t know he’d gone to jail until she got a letter from him two months after the barbecue. He said he was taking a chance on her reaction, and if she wanted him to disappear he would. What he really wanted was to see her smile again, but he would understand if she didn’t respond.

Kari had a friend whose brother had been to jail a lot, but they’d been younger then, and she had never been inside a prison. She called the number from his letter and made a booking to see him.

The first visit was thrilling. Mark came out full of smiles, overjoyed to see her. He told her that her smile was worth waiting for. He was the same Mark she’d laughed with at the barbecue. They talked about everything and nothing. Mark told Kari about his charges and his chances.

He’d been in a pub brawl and everyone there was charged. One of those fighting on the other side had ended up in intensive care, and Mark had wrestled with the police. He hadn’t even been drinking. He was just looking after his mates. He would be on remand until everybody involved was charged in the way the prosecutors wanted. It would be another four months at least. Kari didn’t question him about the crime. She wanted to know every detail, what he’d done, whether he’d been in the thick of it or on the side of it, whether it was brutal, and whether it was fair. But she didn’t ask.

He told his story in less than five minutes, she says, shaking her head. When it was over, he looked around from side to side, smiled, and said, “Thanks for coming in to see me. It was an alright night up until then. I was winning in pool. Had no intention of ending up here. None whatsoever.”

“I bet you didn’t. Life is full of surprises for me too,” she answered, and left it at that. When someone is locked in behind walls, gates and razor wire, Kari says that questioning them about how they got there is awkward.

Instead, Kari asked him about jail and what his days and nights were like: the food, the people, the boredom. Mark joked about a lot of it. He had a very laid-back attitude for someone in serious trouble. Kari was amazed he could be so relaxed while living what to her was a nightmare. Then his name was called. The visit was over. As they stood up, he said, “Book another visit, please.”

“OK,” said Kari, and Mark was led away.

Kari came away worried and excited about her feelings for Mark.

She now says she ignored the alarms going off in her head. She knew she didn’t want a relationship with someone who was at all violent, whether he was looking after his mates or not. She didn’t want someone who’d been to jail. She didn’t know if Mark was telling her the truth. He’d written in letters that this wasn’t the first time he’d been in. He’d done a bit here and there as a kid and when he was younger, but had stayed out of trouble for six years.

Whatever, thought Kari. These months will give me time to think, to find out. I haven’t got a lot to lose.

Mark started calling and writing more often. Kari went back to see him.

On the second visit, Mark said, “Can I hold your hand? I’ve been wanting to kiss you since that barbecue.” And they sat there, Kari says, like any couple in love, squeezing each other’s hands and laughing, until again his name was called. This time when they stood up, Mark kissed Kari on the cheek. She smiled and he smiled back at her.

Mark kept calling. Kari started looking forward to the calls. They were so short and mainly happy. Mark wanted her to visit, so Kari kept visiting. Within a month he was writing to her that he loved her, that he was in love with her, that he was confused, that he missed her. At visits he would hug her. Soon Kari told Mark she felt the same. She hadn’t planned it, but she wanted to spend more time with him and it wasn’t a friendship feeling. She felt appreciated. She felt wanted, needed and loved. She felt listened to. And she liked sharing time with Mark. Time was all they had. Time was all he asked from her. That, and her smile.

Kari says, “‘All I look forward to in my life in between visits,’ Mark would say, ‘is seeing your smile.’ He would say that he knew it was corny, but I made him feel complete. And I felt the same way. I did.”

A couple of months went by and life for Kari was the same, apart from her world with Mark. She kept working, kept visiting, and her social life carried on. She wrote to Mark every day, and he was writing too. He mentioned sometimes that he didn’t have envelopes or money for phone calls, as a way of apologising for not being in contact. Sometimes she didn’t hear from him for a day or two and then they would be back in touch. Kari thought it was exciting, and he was so easy to get on with.

Then a letter came one day that was different from the others. Instead of the positive, carefree letters she was used to, Kari read about a side of Mark she hadn’t known. Mark wrote that he was distressed, that he was pretending on the outside that everything was OK, but that jail was getting on top of him. He said he’d tried to stay positive for Kari, but that the closer they were getting, the harder it was to act the part. But he said that he would get through it, that he knew he was stronger than anything jail could hand out.

“He told me he was hungry,” says Kari, “He said the jail food made him sick, and that he owed people money. He said that made him worried. I’d never heard him be like that at all before, nothing like that. I knew it was a cliché to give him money, but he didn’t ask for much.”

To Kari at the time, $40 was not a lot. She was working and paying her bills, so she decided it was no big deal. She sent Mark a money order.

At the next visit, Mark couldn’t thank her enough. “You can’t understand how you’ve helped,” he kept saying. She started to feel bad. Maybe she should send him money more often.

“How badly do you need money?” she asked him.

“How badly does anyone need money?” he answered.

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Kari. “I just don’t want our relationship to be like this, I guess. Money always changes things.”

“Just smile for me,” Mark said. “No one can buy that.”

And Kari smiled.

Kari remembers going to McDonald’s on the way home from that visit and spending about $12. She heard Mark’s voice thanking her for saving him from an unknown fate, and decided she should send him money regularly. Kari sent Mark $20 without telling him and when she saw him the next weekend, he thanked her straightaway.

“I needed that for the interest on what I owed,” he said. “Jail interest is pretty steep. Now I’m squared up. Thanks to you.”

So he still didn’t have any money?

“Nope,” he smiled, “but I don’t have a tuna can in a sock waiting for me either.”

Kari put another $20 in his account after the visit. Mark called her the next day and said he would have it put on his phone account as soon as it was Tuesday. But when the money came through on Wednesday afternoon, Mark said he didn’t have a whole lot of phone calls left. Again, Kari didn’t want to question him over a small amount of money, but she assumed he needed a whole lot of other things too. Kari started sending Mark $40 a week. He was going to be out, she figured, in a few months. She knew how much it meant to him. He wrote it in the letters.

He always thanked her, says Kari, always made a fuss over the money she sent. But it was never enough. Sometimes, he would send her price lists for clothes or for activity buy-ups. He would say these were just for her to think about, to get an idea of what could be useful if money fell into her lap.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get, Kari had always preached. But somehow this was different. She wanted a relationship, not a sponsor child. But how to refuse such basic requests? Extra money for rice, a jumper or socks. She felt mean, but often she had to say no.

Then Mark’s cellie moved and took his TV. Mark said having no TV was making him depressed again. Kari didn’t want to spend $300, the going price in jail, but he kept writing about it and a month later she sent the money. He wrote back and said she’d saved his life, as well as probably a bunch of other blokes’ lives too, because he wasn’t so stressed-out now.

For a couple of weeks, Mark stopped asking. Kari relaxed a little, reassured that she was right. He was only trying to survive like everyone else. There was no mention of money in letters or calls, and Kari let go of the questions and resentments that had been building, like: was he setting her up to buy his love? Or was it survival? She’d wondered what she would do if she were in Mark’s position. She knew she’d ask people for help. But she wasn’t sure she’d pressure them. So she was pleased when Mark backed off for a while. She sent him the usual weekly money and he sent her love letters. She figured it didn’t matter after all.

Then things changed. A month before he was due to get out, Mark came out to visits wearing a hollow, haunted look. The prosecution had received new statements about the brawl, and they had charged Mark with five new offences. He was going to be in for at least two more years, he told Kari. She started crying.

Mark said he knew this changed everything. Kari waited for him to tell her that she was free to move on with her life, but he didn’t.

“I know this isn’t how we started; I know this isn’t what I promised,” he said. “But it’s out of my hands. What I do know,” he smiled for the first time, breaking the tension, “is that we have the strength to get through it.”

It was his bad news, she thought, not hers. She tried to be supportive, but while she wept, nothing he said made it any better. She’d become so attached to Mark and his calls and letters. She knew she didn’t want to leave him now, but she also didn’t want to spend her life like this.

Then the other side of Mark opened up.

“You know, babe,” he said, “I haven’t had a smoke since I’ve been in here, and with all the stress I’ve been under, do you think you could bring some in for me? I’ll organise it. You just have to pick it up.”

Kari was reeling. It was no great shock that Mark smoked pot, but they both knew it was a massive risk for her to take.

“No way,” she said. “I can’t believe you’re even asking me.”

“I know you can do it,” he said. “It’s too easy. I just need a break from this stress. I’ve got to have some escape.”

“I know that,” Kari said, “but if I got caught …”

“You wouldn’t get caught,” Mark said, smiling. “You’re a smart girl.”

“I’m never speaking with you about this,” said Kari. “I’m going to try to forget you even asked me.”

“Well, it’s up to you,” he said. “It’s all good. Just think about it.”

“No,” said Kari.

“OK,” said Mark. “The end. The end.”

But it wasn’t the end. Mark wrote letters apologising for asking, explaining why he’d asked: how hopeless and lonely it felt at times, how he just wanted a break, how he wished she would understand. Kari wrote back saying she understood, she did, but why didn’t he understand that she wasn’t willing to risk a criminal record?

Mark had a friend in jail whose wife couldn’t visit him because she’d been caught bringing in drugs. She’d done it so often, she’d become complacent. When they found a packet of speed in her jeans pocket, she got a criminal record and a two-year visiting ban. She was also deregistered for life from practising psychology in her state. She told Kari later that her husband expected her to bring drugs on the first contact visit they had after the ban was over.

Mark wasn’t that bad, was he?

Kari would visit and each time he would ask her if she had changed her mind. She hadn’t. Mark would flick his eyes towards another inmate at visits and say, “He’s picking up a truckload today,” or “He’d better not come off visits empty-handed, there’s about twenty blokes waiting for him.”

Kari found herself wondering who was there to deliver drugs and who was there for love, or whether in here being a drug mule was proof of affection and true devotion.

“Do you owe someone something?” she asked Mark.

“Nah,” he told her. “It’s not like that. I just want to relax. And I don’t want to spend the money you send me on drugs.”

About two months after the first time he’d asked, Mark came to the visit very depressed. When they sat down, he started crying. It was a quiet sunny morning and there weren’t many people around, but he didn’t care. He told Kari he was cracking, and he didn’t know what to do. He was starting to self-harm, cutting himself with razors, and he wanted to burn himself.