I was stabbed in a gang fight at sixteen. The police arrived on the scene and a witness told them what they saw. The officers approached me and directed me to turn around and lift up my shirt. As I complied, they saw blood running down my back, confirming the witness’s statement. Asked what happened, I refused to cooperate.
Growing up in the street culture and occupying a Black body taught me to never trust people, let alone the police. I knew who had stabbed me but it’s a violation of the street code to report to authorities any violence we survive. I knew the drill: spend a night in juvenile and retaliate when I was released.
Then the officer said something confusing to me. She said I was a victim. No one ever told me I could be a victim. They always told me I was the problem, perpetrator, or offender. My confusion turned into anger because I didn’t understand what the officer was trying to communicate. It was like we weren’t speaking the same language. I spoke street. She spoke cop. I thought she was trying to set me up.
Before I was ten, I witnessed levels of violence that no child should see. My best friend was shot in his head by rival gang members. Although he survived, he left the hospital with a metal plate in his head and he was never the same again. I witnessed a grown man molest my relative. I remember her eyes, filled with tears of pain, despair, and helplessness, when I burst into the room as she was being victimized. I was too young to understand exactly what was happening, but I knew she was hurting and I didn’t have the strength or power to stop it. I didn’t know we were victims. I only knew I was going to hurt whoever tried to hurt me or the people I cared about. I responded to violence with violence.
In my sixteen years, I identified as a victim only once. My mom’s boyfriend asked me in his usual drunken slur if I stole candy from the store. I denied it and he called me a liar as he slapped me. The blow split my lip, knocking me from the hallway back into my room. He stormed down the hall, cussing and yelling about how he was going to beat the truth out of me. When he returned he started beating me with his leather belt. He kicked and punched me between the skin-peeling lashes of his belt.
My mother tried to intervene and I wish she wouldn’t have. I could handle the lashings, but what happened next affected me differently. He started beating her worse than he was beating me. The sting of the belt I knew so well was now aimed at my mother, my protector. I was scared for her as I thought he was going to kill her.
The officer said she wanted to help me. She wanted to notify my mother and make sure I received medical attention. But I am not accustomed to being helped, let alone by cops. I was eventually sent to the hospital and stitched, the word “victim” still ringing in my ears.
I will never forget the images of my mother being hurt. The punch to her face, the sound and sight of her body hitting the floor, the kick to her ribs, her torn shirt, or the blood pouring from her face as Jeff tried to squeeze the oxygen out of her battered body. Seeing my mother so powerless shook my world. I learned that day that I couldn’t rely on anyone else for safety. I didn’t feel safe at home so I went to the streets, eventually joined a gang that led me down a path of violence. I became good at it and thrived in the gang culture. On the surface I was feared, but deep down inside I was afraid. I was afraid of who and what I was becoming.
A few weeks after my eighteenth birthday, I shot and killed Carlos Hernandez Sanchez. Three years later, at twenty-one, I was convicted and sentenced to die in prison. Life without the possibility of parole. LWOP. Life without hope. When I first entered prison I was full of shame, anger, hate, and pain. I was carrying a lot of trauma on my teenage shoulders. I struggled with the moral injury of taking another human’s life. I wrestled with the idea of dying in prison. I tried to cover my shame with a blanket of violence, which led me to spend over a decade in solitary confinement.
Eventually, I came to realize that my capacity for violence did not define my value. I was worth more than spending my life in solitary confinement. If I wanted to be a better man, I needed to change the way I viewed my incarceration and myself.
Over the years of incarceration I had developed a mindset of us vs. the world. If I didn’t know you, you were an “other” — someone different from me. One of the main targets of my exclusionary thinking included the “freaks,” the “dings,” and the “j. cats” — these are the things we prisoners call our fellow prisoners who are living with serious and persistent mental illness.
When I decided to move my life in a different direction, I stood at my cell door in solitary confinement listening to those who were socially outcast — humans who I had “othered.” I began developing empathy and speaking to these men. I talked to them about life and wanting better than what prison offered. These individuals struggled with mental health. I related to their struggle and felt obligated to use my social influence to help in any way possible, even if it meant being disliked by my peers. I didn’t care what they thought of me. I was showing compassion to those who needed compassion.
I had spent the majority of my life doing what the street culture deemed admirable; all it had gotten me was a life behind prison walls, and then a life in solitary confinement. I had to do something different. Now I just cared about helping individuals who were vulnerable, who needed a voice and someone to talk to them.
I asked myself one question: “Theron, would the little boy you once were be proud of the man you have become?” The only thing more difficult than asking that question was dealing with the disappointment of answering it honestly. This caused me to make difficult, life-changing decisions. In 2014, I denounced my gang affiliations.
When I was released from solitary, I was introduced to the principles of restorative justice. I started working with my fellow prisoner Sterling Cunio and Professor Melissa Michaux. Slowly, I started to become someone I was proud to be. Restorative justice empowered me to take a healing path and let go of shame, blame, and excuses for past experiences. I realized my gangster life was little more than an attempt to never again be that little boy who witnessed his mother get hit over and over again. I didn’t want to be a victim again. The healing path required me to deal with my trauma and the times I have been hurt by others; I needed to see hate and unresolved anger as destructive forces. I began forgiving myself and those who had harmed me in my life. I started doing what I could to make amends for the harms I caused. I could never restore Carlos’s life. For me, making amends meant serving and helping others, and doing all I can to make sure the harms I committed are never repeated.
In 2016, I officially began working as a mentor with prisoners diagnosed with severe mental health issues. I helped them write letters to their loved ones. I assisted them with keeping up with their hygiene, making sure they had clean clothes and supplies to clean their cells. I played sports and board games with them.
One afternoon after playing a round of Ping-Pong with one of the guys I mentor, he punched me in the face. He had gone into a psychosis and I had become someone else to him. I was completely blindsided. My brain flooded with adrenaline. It was the most challenging moment I faced in my transformation. It was the moment in which my amends would be tested. And it was a test that I passed. In spite of my long history of violence, I did not respond with violence. My empathy for this man overpowered my trauma-induced inclination toward violence. I had to walk around the prison with a black eye. Doing the right thing gave me more credit than the violence could have ever given me. Staff was proud. My peers were impressed.
I currently work as a certified recovery mentor, peer counselor, and community peace builder. The work I do provides me a sense of purpose. It’s therapeutic, and serves as a motivating factor to keep me pushing for policy changes. I am good at what I do because I relate to the people I counsel. I’ve walked down the path they have walked down. I have hurt in ways that they have hurt. My credibility doesn’t come from surviving all the things that have traumatized me, it comes from all the work I put into healing myself. Part of my healing is staying committed to helping others find a path of healing as well. | TH
THERON HALL HAS BEEN INCARCERATED SINCE HE WAS 18 YEARS OLD, AND HAS BEEN SERVING LIFE WITHOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF PAROLE. HE HAS SERVED AS AN OFFICER ON MY CLUBS AT OSP. HE IS CURRENTLY THE PRESIDENT OF CAPITAL TOASTMASTERS.
Excellent writing. The author has put himself on the page, which takes fearless humility and practiced craft. Thank you.