For thousands of women arriving at DPFC, I was the first inmate they had any meaningful contact with. Ever conscious of this privileged responsibility, I focused on making them feel as safe and as reassured as possible. As the old saying goes, first impressions count. On the flipside, almost all of the women I welcomed left a first impression on me, ranging from warmth, pity, anger, disdain, affection or anything in between. Sometimes their personal impact left a kind of stain on me that I could never quite scrub off. Some women, however, left me with deep, permanent wounds that have been carved into my memory forever. Women like Nikki.
One morning in early 2006 I received a routine call to attend Reception. ‘Kerry, can you take care of this girl please? She’s going to be transferred to hospital later on but needs a bit of a walk and fresh air.’
Nikki was sitting in the monitored cell looking rather depressed and washed out. She was also wearing a long-sleeved jacket, which struck me as a little odd since it was a typical scorching day in sunny old Deer Park. ‘Hello, sweetie,’ I began gently, settling myself on the bed next to her. ‘I’m Kerry and I’m here to look after you while you’re here. I want you to know you don’t have anything to worry about, OK?’
She nodded softly.
‘I’m going to take you outside for a walk around now,’ I continued. ‘It’s really quite hot out there, do you think you might want to take your jacket off?’
‘Umm, no thanks.’
No sweat. I walked outside with her so she could stretch her legs, get some sun and maybe have a cigarette. After a little while we sat down together in the middle of the compound in the blistering heat of the day. ‘What’s going on, Nikki?’ I pressed her gently. ‘It’s ridiculously hot out here, are you sure you won’t feel better without your jacket on?’
As Nikki rearranged herself on the bench her sleeves pulled back a little and that’s when I saw what she’d been trying to hide. There appeared to be two steel zippers running up her forearms. She knew I’d seen them and, a little reluctantly, revealed the whole horror show. From the base of each palm to the inside of each elbow there were about 100 staples clipped side by side into this poor creature’s flesh. Clearly her arms had been sliced wide open. Now, these weren’t the Officeworks staples you load into your desktop stapler – they were industrial-sized, medical-grade clips that were so big and shiny they glinted in the sunlight.
I had never seen anything like it and I was horrified, but any outward sign only lasted for a second or two because I didn’t want this young woman to feel ashamed. First impressions count. So, two or three heartbeats after the urge to reel away from her pulsed through me, I re-took control. It was my job to protect her and at this moment that meant shielding her as best I could from any further emotional injury her ghastly wounds might inflict on her. I pretended her scars were no big deal to me; hell, I saw that sort of thing every day! In truth, however, they were ugly, vicious injuries that sent an icy chill through my blood. It was clear she hadn’t been hurt by accident and it was also obvious the resulting wounds had the potential to put up a barrier between Nikki and other people. I was determined not to let that happen.
‘Oh dear, are they sore?’ I inquired, softly resting my hand on her wrist as I looked reassuringly into her face. I wanted her to know that the repellent sight in front of us wouldn’t deter me from reaching out and touching her or talking to her about the reality. I was honouring the truth of whatever nightmare she’d been through. When my hand touched hers I felt the tension drain out of her a little.
‘Yeah, they are a bit sore,’ Nikki admitted quietly.
‘Is there anything I can get you, or try to get you, to help them feel a little better?’
‘Nah, I don’t want anything,’ she replied, letting her guard down a little more with each exchange. ‘Just a friend.’
Well, look no further! Over the next little while, Nikki told me how she’d come to be so hideously wounded. She was in a tempestuous relationship with some crazed fuckwit of a boyfriend she was so fearful of that she sometimes tried to run away. The guy was obviously a psycho because one day, as Nikki attempted to flee yet again, he pinned her hands against a wall and drove a knife through each palm like some sort of suburban DIY crucifixion. Then he started to skin her alive, but for some reason he didn’t finish the job and stopped at her arms. Apparently it had been rather hard work.
The result of his half-hearted mutilation was three slices of skin on each arm were tied at Nikki’s wrists and at the elbows – hence the use of several hundred enormous staples to try to put her tattered limbs back together again.
‘So, what on earth are you doing in here?’ I wanted to know.
It turned out she had also attacked the boyfriend at some point, and the police had warrants out for her arrest. ‘My God,’ I thought to myself. ‘What a twisted world we live in.’ Although it had been a harrowing day with the poor girl with the butchered arms, I was pleased that I’d been able to reassure her and connect with her, emotionally and physically, and that she was also able to verbalise what had happened to her. I had a sense that it was of crucial importance. I was also slightly surprised that the prison had actually trusted me to look after an actual human being again considering I’d lost the last one …
A day or so earlier the officers at the Medical Unit asked me to take another woman named Sophie for a walk and entertain her between lunch and afternoon muster because she, too, was only going to be with us for the day. Still, it was unfair to keep her cooped up inside Medical with no access to fresh air for the whole day so they called me – the trusted, responsible and on-the-ball peer educator!
I walked alongside this frightened, precious woman as I gave her the guided tour of DPFC. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about, Sophie,’ I assured her as we sauntered among the murderers, robbers and violent long-termers. ‘I’m with you and you’ll be one hundred per cent safe.’ Still, the poor thing’s eyes were like dinner plates: after all, she was a complete newbie who was only in for shoplifting a couple of T-shirts! She was genuinely terrified and overwhelmed by where she was.
As we neared ‘Movement Control’ – the general office on the compound that handles the flow of inmates between the various units and other prisons – a group of women approached me, most upset that they were about to be transferred to the minimum-security prison at Tarrengower. They didn’t want to go. ‘What can we do about it, Kerry?’ they pleaded. ‘Can you please help us?’
Before I knew it I was shanghaied into the dispute to try to find a solution. Sometimes when DPFC is full, management opens up more beds by transferring people to Tarrengower, where women can also be sent for ‘pre-release’ in the final stages of their term. Because it’s a minimum-security prison farm, the inmates must be on short sentences. The problem is that this messes with women’s access visits as most relatives find it difficult to travel all the way to Bendigo. Tarrengower is also where the state’s female child sex offenders are held, so overall it’s not the most appealing option.
I told the women to calm down and said I’d try to sort things out. Negotiating a satisfactory end to the stand-off took the best part of an hour and only when we’d reached an understanding that suited everybody did I leave. I’d barely stepped back outside the office when I ran straight into Wendy from my unit. She’d also had a challenging day. ‘I’d kill for a brew,’ Wendy declared with a Hollywood roll of her eyes.
‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ I replied. We wandered home together to the cottage where Wendy knocked up a nice coffee. About thirty minutes later I was sitting there contentedly basking in the afterglow of my little caffeine fix when a niggling voice started to pipe up from the far back paddocks of my subconscious. There was something that needed my attention but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. ‘K-e-r-r-r-e-e-e-y,’ the voice in my head kept calling from a distance, but I kept drawing a blank on what else it was I had to do. Oh well.
Wendy and I chatted for a while longer and I nodded sympathetically while she catalogued what a bastard of a day she’d been having. Then she changed the subject: ‘Hey, did you see that new girl in Medical?’
Those words hit me like a bolt of lightning and I jolted out of my chair. ‘New girl in Medical …’ The little voice in my head that had been trying to tell me about it was now bellowing ‘FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! YOU FORGOT ABOUT THE GIRL!’ I was in a full panic. I’d got so caught up in the dramas at Movement Control that I’d left Sophie out the front while I sorted things out – and now she’d gone! ‘Shit!’ I gave myself up to Wendy straight away and begged for her mercy and understanding, and for her to help me find Sophie. If I didn’t locate her ASAP I’d be in the deepest shit of my prison life.
I could hardly believe what was happening: dire scenarios flashed through my mind as it dawned on me that I’d left a vulnerable and frightened woman somewhere in the middle of a maximum-security prison. She was only in on minor shoplifting charges, for Christ’s sake! My reassuring words to her were now echoing inside my head: ‘I’m with you and you’ll be one hundred per cent safe.’
‘Oh my God, where is she?’
Wendy and I agreed to split up and start searching.
‘OK. Shit. Fuck! First thing – what does she look like?’ Wendy asked.
‘Well, ah, Wendy, you see that’s the thing – she’s a bottle blonde with four inches of black re-growth starting at the scalp, she’s got no front teeth and she’s very skinny,’ I said. It was a fairly accurate description of every second prisoner in DPFC. ‘Oh yeah, and she was last seen wearing a white T-shirt, blue tracksuit pants and prison-issue runners.’ In other words, she was dressed exactly the same as the other 300 people there. A needle in a haystack.
On this day, I realised for the first time just how much women in prison look alike from behind. I hurried around the compound thinking I’d found my missing charge only to tap her on the shoulder and be looked at askance by someone else. Before long, Jenny Hayes the prison chaplain and Mr McKenzie, the A5 senior supervisor, were also onto it. But rather than freak out they appeared to enjoy my dilemma. After two long hours I came up empty-handed and realised with a sense of dread that my only option was to wait until last call for muster, stand out in the middle of the compound and wait until Little Miss Houdini was flushed out. Sophie would have no door to stand beside as each unit was shut down, therefore she’d be the only woman on the compound – other than me. And that’s exactly how I ‘found’ her in the end.
It turned out that while I was fighting the battle in Movement Control, another group of women walked past and Sophie thought it was the same group I’d been in the middle of. After all, everyone looks the same. She followed along as the women went back to their unit, which happened to be the furthest one away from the compound. When they realised they’d picked up a stray they felt sorry for her and invited her in for coffee.
Since I knew Sophie didn’t know anyone and that inmates tended not to be overly friendly to new arrivals, I didn’t think to actually go into any of the units – I just scoured the front of each one on the compound instead, along with all fifty-two women in A5 just in case she’d wandered in there. I’d considered having her paged, too, but since she had no clue about the prison she’d have had no idea where to go if her name was called out. Also, paging her would have alerted Medical to the fact I’d actually lost their prisoner.
Thankfully, I returned Sophie to Medical at the required time, but by then it was already too late: the staff, like everyone else in the prison, was already onto it. ‘Kerry Tucker lost a prisoner! Bah-ha-ha-ha!’ Oh how they laughed. ‘Inside a maximum-security prison, no less! A-ha-ha-haaaa!’ I had to laugh too: it really had been quite an achievement to misplace a fully grown human being inside a prison that is specifically designed to know exactly where everybody is at all times.
So, I was slightly amazed that they trusted me with Nikki. She was a gentle soul and I could see relief in her eyes as she reached out to me for friendship and safety. I gave both to her – I’d have given her more if I could. I took her up to my unit and organised a care package to make her stay in Medical more comfortable: some Christmas cake, biscuits and red cordial. Nikki thought it was very special. I could always count on the women in my unit to provide my strays with little bags of goodies: I was forever bringing the walking wounded home with me – at least two a week – and the girls always sent them off with a little hamper.
These rudderless, lost and lonely little creatures broke my heart: the challenged girls, the girls with head injuries, the ones who clung to me like small children being left at school on their first day. The girls like Nikki. I’ve been told they appealed to the rescuer part of my self-destructive/ rescuer personality. I don’t know, I’d like to think it was the ‘decent’ part of my personality. Before she left us to go back to Medical, Nikki sat outside with me and stared at me with those lovely, trusting eyes. ‘Y’know,’ she said softly, ‘you’re the nicest person I’ve ever met.’
That stirred my emotions even more and made me tear-up a little, but I quickly explained it away as some grit that had got into my eyes. These women looked to me for strength, calm and a sense of safety. I was a lifeline in the turbulent, crashing waves of their hectic and traumatic lives. I was someone to cling onto for a while; someone who’d be nice to them. I couldn’t cry for them – not in front of them. If I did it would reinforce a desperate situation, their desperate situation. They needed someone to pick them up off the floor, to shelter and tell them – show them – ‘It’s OK now. You’re safe. Nobody is going to hurt you again. I’m here. It all stops now.’
Just ‘being there’ for them saved lives. Talking them out of suicide; giving them hope. Did it make my sentence worth it? Definitely. Did it change my life for the better? Absolutely. Should I have got a shorter sentence? No. I needed to see this and to be a part of all of it to know who I really was and – given that I’d left my own girls behind – whether I could truly like myself again.