With the recent arrest of 67-year-old prison chaplain Kenneth Dewitt on 50 counts of alleged sexual assault against three female inmates, I wondered just what prison life is like for women who wind up in the state's McPherson Unit in Newport.
Time and a courtroom will tell whether Dewitt is guilty of the crimes he stands accused of committing. Yet I can't help but believe the Department of Correction and Arkansas State Police have solid basis for the charges.
For insight I turned to Shawna Day. She's a former inmate who, since her release in November, has formed the nonprofit called "Echoes" to hopefully provide help for prisoners, especially when it comes to reporting abuses. Day served 14 years for being accomplice to aggravated robbery. She's the first to admit that her naivety as a young woman landed her in a bad place.
"Feeling unheard as a person inspired me to form Echoes," she said. "It's fundamentally a prison advocacy group offering free paralegal service as a voice for the incarcerated."
She said arrival in the penal system means being immediately stripped of identity and separated from anything familiar. "You're issued a number. Your hair is cut and you're given clothes identical to a thousand others. Regret and grief become your new closest friends. You grapple with fears that consume you, which makes many become introverted if they're wise. But the turmoil in your conscience makes even that deepest place inside feel unsafe. I sought solace and peace in Jesus Christ but I had no idea how to even begin to be a Christian person."
The prison's Principles and Applications for Life religious program accepted Day. "From the intake office I could hear the echoes of voices singing hope in the barracks beside mine," she said.
Shawna today lives in rural Northwest Arkansas. She said many women enter the PALS program "seeking safety from the dangers of prison life and fear of homosexuality. Others look to PALS to relearn how to live because all we knew was the behavior that got us into this situation. Eager to understand how to change, we were taught how learning to please God was the only hope and to protect of our loved ones with prayer. That was especially true for a woman who had become vulnerable and at the complete mercy of authorities."
That, she added, is what the prison system is designed to do: "Teach us the principle of authority. We'd broken the law and needed to learn how to submit to authority through PALS." In that approach lay the seeds for potential abuse by any person in authority.
"Pleasing God is one of the seven principles taught and stressed in PALS: That there be no authorities but those ordained by God," she said. "Therefore to deny such authority was to defy God and alienate the only source of comfort and solace you have through the church. The government, your husband and parents become the liaisons between your everyday decisions and providence.
"That meant in an indirect way, chaplain Kenneth Dewitt became our God ... a tall, silver-haired gentleman who under such circumstance embodied the ideal of a Godly man. He taught us to be women of virtue to the abused and abandoned in prison. Dewitt also stood in as a husband, father and brother example of what a man should be. We even projected these expectations on our husbands and pressured them to con-form to Dewitt's ideas.
"My grandmother thought I'd joined a cult. Questioning or denying Dewitt's doctrines could be rewarded with a return to the general population or segregation and easily result to extra prison time."
Being among Dewitt's "chosen few" provided attention and an element of prestige in the prison community, Shawna said. "It was considered a great reward for a female prisoner without an identity. To fathom he abused such power is abominable. And it raises the question of how many women fell victim to his righteous demeanor. How many lived to please him in hoping to atone for sins of their past?"
She said feelings of rejection a female prisoner with esteem problems could experience are devastating. "Not to mention the power Dewitt had to issue disciplinary actions that could leave an inmate with virtually no viable chance to successfully refute it." Day said it was common practice for Dewitt to have guards summon females from their cells on Sunday mornings to his domain to "help prepare for the weekly service."
"This man in the beginning inspired women to be more than a shadow inspired by faith. Truth revealed a harsher reality, that anyone can turn out to be a predator," Shawna continued. "The truth is not all authorities are agents of God."
Her goal through Echoes (Box 507, Uniontown, Ark. 72955) is to find an attorney who'll represent the group, thereby allowing female prisoners an outlet to enable private correspondence through attorney-client privilege, which the state cannot control and censor. "In that way, the truth of what actually transpires in that environment can be disclosed without fearing reprisal from within."
------------v------------
Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 01/12/2016