Anna's story

| Women in Prison | Parenthood | The need of female prisoners | The new prison | Resettlement | Anna's story |

I started using heroin when I was eleven years old, I left home as I didn't get on with my mother and went to live with another family where a lot of people were using, so I wanted to try it. The first time I went to buy heroin I was sold a crushed up anadin and I snorted it that was how innocent I was, after that I learnt and injected heroin. I always injected I never smoked it. At the age of thirteen I had fifteen charges but these were all let build up until I was sixteen and I went to Mountjoy for the first time. I was on heroin and didn't know I was pregnant, I had stolen a bar of chocolate and was sentenced to a month in prison of which I served a week. I cried and cried the first time I was in prison and the woman in the cell with me gave me a very hard time. There was no one there to care for you or see if you were okay. I have been in prison nine times altogether since I was sixteen, for shoplifting, and I was on heroin all of those times.

I have had some good times in prison but some very very bad times too. I remember not being able to sleep in the bed as there were mice running around the floor, I would have been going through withdrawals from heroin and the officers would just come in and you would be thrown in to the pad stripped naked and left there. They put you in the pad to punish you and they always send male officers to check on you just to punish you even more. The priest would come to talk to you and bring you ten cigarettes but I never talked to him even though him and the female chaplains are the people who could have helped you. I wouldn't talk because of embarrassment in case other prisoners heard you.

The officers show you no consideration at all. If you were slouching in a chair they'd say "Straighten up and get something going in your life" and how could you, stuck in that place. As if being locked up wasn't punishment enough, they wanted to punish you even more.

Most of the time though they take nothing in to consideration, like when a girl killed herself they just locked us all up and didn't tell us anything, when we asked what was happening they just told us to shut up. There was no such thing as counselling offered or anything like that.

When I was going through withdrawals I was just left there in the cell I couldn't sleep for about 7-8 weeks, all that was offered were tablets and more tablets. They don't check in on you regularly like everyone says they do, one time I was passed out on the floor for about twenty five minutes before an officer came in from the yard and found me. They give you so many tablets that you are going around like a zombie and then you suffer withdrawal from these when you get out. The tablets are given just to shut you up, all the times I've been there it's never changed.

There were two female officers there that were very caring, they'd look in on you at night to see if you were alright and one in particular would encourage me to go down and do some of the classes. I found in the school that they'd make you feel stupid, they'd put the alphabet up on the board, stuff that you had done already. I used to love the gym I'd spend hours in there, it got you motivated and kept you going, you need that because it's such a gloomy place with the officers going around with long faces, we used to give them hell as well. One thing I did when I was in prison that I loved was a dressmaking course and we got to model the clothes that we made, I discovered that I could sit down and do something, it did a lot for my self esteem. This only lasted six weeks though and then we were left with nothing again.

There was a toilet bowl in the cell which you had to use during lock up times, it was very embarrassing because the officers could look in on you at any time apart from the fact that you could be sharing the cell with two other people, so you had no privacy at all. This also went for washing yourself in the cell as officers could look in at any time.

If two women were fighting they used to send in officers that were called "kickers" who would go in to break up the fight by kicking the women, they wouldn't want to touch the women in case they were bitten and put themselves in danger of infection. In prison I always shared needles with other people, a syringe might have been all around the men's prison and women's prison before you'd use it and it would be as blunt as the top of a biro when you got it. One syringe could be going around and around different prisoners for years. The officers would look in and see you using but just leave you to it, by the time they came back to look for the syringe you'd have passed it in to the next cell.

I thank God every day that I don't have the virus although my children's father has it. I remember when they tested everyone for HIV, they never told us what they were doing. They just came and took blood tests. When they came back they were wearing white space suits and took those who were HIV positive over to the men's prison and told them they had the virus, and those people didn't even know that they were being tested for it. We wrecked the prison after they did that. You get no advice when you are coming out so I always went straight back to drugs. They should have more advice and help for people in prison. Inside they'd offer NA meetings (Narcotics Anonymous) but they never explained what they were. When you asked they'd tell you they were to talk about drugs and the last thing you wanted to be doing was thinking or talking about drugs.

There was a social worker there but all she would talk to you about was who was minding your kids and were they being minded alright. I always gave a false address because I didn't want social workers arriving down at my door. I was never caught out doing this, even when I wrote letters from prison I always wrote to a false address and they were passed on, I just wanted to protect my kids.

The worst thing was not having any contact with my kids. It killed me not being able to hold them or touch them, you'd come off the visit feeling like shit. If the child reaches out and touches you the visit is stopped immediately and you were brought in and strip searched in case you had been passed anything. My father took care of my kids when I was in prison. I know myself that if I had been allowed physical contact with the kids I would have been concentrating on them but I know that at the end of the visit I would have been looking for drugs.

The longest break I ever had between sentences when I was going in and out of prison was six months, I was in prison nine times altogether. Most of my friends were in prison at the same time, a lot of them are still on drugs, only a handful have managed to come off them.

I have been off heroin now for six years, it's been eight years since I was in prison and it took me two years to come off heroin and methadone. The last time I was inside something just changed in me. I missed my kids so much and I didn't want them growing up always coming to visit me in prison. It wasn't anything that the prison did for me. It was something I decided myself. I have two kids of my own and I have adopted my sister's two kids as she died a few years ago. I still have contact with social workers because of the adoption as it's important that they see that the kids are being well looked after.

I still can't walk in to any shops in town. I can't buy any clothes for myself or the kids. When I was buying my son's confirmation clothes I had to pick them out from the window even though I would have loved to go in and get what I wanted. The security guards give you no leeway even though I haven't been in trouble for eight years. I worry about my son who is sixteen now and is getting in to a bit of trouble with the police. I keep trying to warn him but he doesn't listen to me. It's hard on him too because he is branded by the police because of his father and me.

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