Hell (A Prison Diary 1)

on.’ I take this as a broad hint that it might be wise not to tell anyone else on the spur of my destination, unless I want to be accompanied throughout the entire journey by the national press. I nod and realize why he has taken the unusual step of seeing me alone. I’m about to ask him a question, when he answers it.

‘We plan to move you on Thursday.’

Only three more days at Hellmarsh, is my first reaction, and, after asking him several more questions, I thank him and return to my cell unescorted. I spend the next hour considering every word Mr Leader has said. I recall asking him which he would rather be going to, Wayland or the Isle of Wight. ‘Wayland,’ he’d replied without hesitation.

In prison it’s necessary to fight each battle day by day if you’re eventually going to win the war. First it was getting off the medical centre and onto Block Three. Then was escaping Block Three (Beirut) and being moved to Block One to live among a more mature group of prisoners. Next was being transferred from Belmarsh to a C-cat prison. Now I shall be pressing to regain my D-cat status, so that I can leave Wayland as quickly as possible for an open prison. But that’s tomorrow’s battle. Several prisoners have ‘Take each day as it comes’ scrawled on their walls.

4.00 pm

I try to write, but so much has already happened today that I find it hard to concentrate. I munch a bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut (32p), and drink a mug of Evian (49p) topped up with Robinson’s blackcurrant juice (97p).

6.00 pm

Supper. I catch Fletch in the queue for the hotplate, and he agrees to join me in my cell at seven. ‘Miah [murder] is cutting my hair at seven,’ I tell him, ‘so could we make it seven fifteen? I can’t afford to miss the appointment, as I’m still hoping for a visit from my wife on Thursday.’

7.00 pm

Association. I sit patiently in a chair on number 2 landing waiting for Miah. He doesn’t turn up on time to cut my hair, so I return to my cell and wait for Fletch. He does arrive on time and takes a seat on the end of the bed. He doesn’t bother with any preamble.

‘You can include my piece in your book if you want to,’ he says, ‘and if you do, let’s hope it does some good.’

I tell him that if a national newspaper serializes the diary, then his words will be read by millions of people, and the politicians will have to finally stop pretending that it isn’t happening or they will simply be guilty by association.

We begin to go through the script line by line, filling in details such as names, times and places so that the casual reader can properly follow the sequence of events. Tony (marijuana only) joins us a few minutes later. It turns out that he’s the only other person to have read the piece, and it also becomes clear that it was on his advice that Fletch decided not only to write about his experiences, but to allow a wider audience to read them.

There’s a knock on the door. It’s Miah (murder). He apologizes about missing his appointment to cut my hair, but he’s only just finished his spell on the hotplate. He explains that he can’t fit me in tomorrow, because of his work schedule, but he could cut my hair during Association on Wednesday. I warn him that if he fails to keep the appointment on Wednesday, I’ll kill him, as my wife is coming to visit me on Thursday and I must look my best. Miah laughs, bows and leaves us. I’ll kill him. I said it without thinking, and to a convicted murderer. Miah is 5ft 4in, and I doubt if he weighs ten stone; the man he murdered was 6ft 2in and weighed 220 pounds. Strange world I’m living in.

Fletch, Tony and I continue to go over the script, and when we’ve completed the task, Fletch stands up and shakes me by the hand to show the deal has been agreed.

8.00 pm

For the next two hours, I transcribe out Fletch’s words, adding to the script only when he has given me specific details, background or names. By the time I’ve completed the last sentence, I’m even more angry than I was when he read the piece to me last night.

10.00 pm

I lie awake in my thin, hard prison bed, my head resting on my thinner, harder prison pillow, and wonder how decent normal people will react to Fletch’s story. For here is a man of whom any one of us might say, there but for the grace of God go I.

These are the words of the prisoner known as Fletch (murder, life imprisonment, minimum sentence twenty-two years).

My name is…* I am thirty-eight years old and serving a life sentence for a murder I did not commit, but I only wish I had.

My whole life has been a fuck-up from the start I was born in Morriston in Wales and although I loved my family, I have only had six real relationships in my life, or as real as I felt they could be. The sort of relationship you want to rush home to, and regret leaving in the morning when you return to work.

I met my wife when I was seventeen, and even today would happily die for her. We had a twenty-year relationship, though both of us had other lovers during that time. Of the six relationships I’ve had, two have been with men, which is where the complication begins. Because of years of sexual abuse I suffered during my childhood, I have never really enjoyed sex, whether it be with a man or a woman.

Even today, I detest sexual contact and accept that it is what has caused the break-up of my relationships. I was always able to perform, and perform it was, but in truth it was nothing more than a chore, and I gained no gratification from it.

I never felt able to tell my wife the truth about my past, despite the twenty years we’d shared together. It’s so easy to claim you’ve been abused, and shift the blame onto someone else. It’s so easy to claim you couldn’t prevent it, and it’s also virtually impossible to prove it.

The truth is that I had no idea that what I was experiencing wasn’t the norm. Wasn’t every child going through this? My childhood ended at the age of nine when I was sent to a home.

Overnight I became a plaything for those who were employed to care for me, those in power. They even managed to secure a place of safety order from a court so I couldn’t be moved and they could carry on abusing me.

During the 1970s corporal punishment was common in children’s homes. For some of the staff it was simply the way they got their kicks. First they caned little boys until they screamed, and then they buggered us until we were senseless; not until then did they stop. Nine other children from that home can confirm this statement; two are married with children of their own, two are gay, five are in jail.

Two of the five in jail are serving life sentences for murder.

After a time, the abuse becomes a form of love and affection, because if you didn’t want to be caned, or belted with a strap, you give in and quickly accept the alternative, sexual abuse. By the age of twelve, I knew more about perversion and violence than any one of you reading this have ever read about, or even seen in films, let alone experienced.