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The Current Transcript for July 25, 2016

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

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[Through translator] It couldn't get any worse. I mean, we saw kids getting ripped from their mother's arms, we saw cousins and family being killed by ISIS. And we were just running for our lives.

LAURA LYNCH: The words of a Yazidi woman spoken through an interpreter. For many Yazidi girls and women, it did get worse after ISIS arrived in their towns two years ago. Last week, some of those who managed to escape brought their harrowing stories to members of parliament in Ottawa. MPs who are now urging the government to do more to bring Yazidi refugees to Canada for protection. This morning, one young woman joins me to share her tale of trauma and escape. And later.

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I never imagined that I would be involved with a convicted killer. I don’t think it’s something that many people imagine lies ahead for them in the future.

LL: But Diane Schoemperlen did just that, falling in love with a man who was behind bars for murder. She carried on a relationship with him for years. In the course of it, she learned a lot about the prison system, about herself, and about the limits of love. I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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'I wished I was killed': Yazidi ISIS slave shares her harrowing story

Guests: Nadia Murad Basee Taha

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[Crowd crying]

Yazidi refugees arrive each day, escaping persecution. Overnight reports emerged of Islamic State militants killing at least 80 men in a village in the north of Iraq. Women and children were kidnapped too, according to Kurdish officials.

[Baby crying]

This family collapsed, exhausted after getting here this morning. Another family told me they'd hidden for days silent, and terrified for sneaking away past bodies in the street.

LL: Well, next month marks the 2nd anniversary of a brutal chapter in the ongoing story of ISIS. In August of 2014, fighters with the extremist group carried out a massacre in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq. Thousands were killed, thousands more girls and women were kidnapped as sex slaves, and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee. Most of those affected were Yazidi. The United Nations has called it genocide. Yazidis are an ethnic minority group in Iraq who practice an ancient religion. They're considered devil worshippers by supporters of ISIS. And last week in Ottawa, advocates and opposition MPs asked the Canadian Government to allow for the resettlement of five to ten thousand of the most vulnerable Yazidis. It's not known how many Yazidi refugees have been resettled in Canada since 2014, because the federal government doesn't track the race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity of refugees. But Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel claims only nine cases have been processed. Nadia Murad Basee Taha is a young Yazidi woman who now lives in Germany. Her life took a horrific turn in 2014, when ISIS fighters arrived in her village. Ms. Taha was in Ottawa last week to tell her story to a parliamentary committee studying how Canada's immigration system deals with particularly vulnerable groups like the Yazidis. I spoke to her through a translator. And a warning, some listeners may find some parts of our conversation disturbing. Nadia Murad Basee Taha, hello.

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: Hello.

LL: Thank you for speaking with us Nadia. And I realize you have had to tell your story many times, and I appreciate you coming to talk to us again. Can we start here, what was life like for you before ISIS fighters came to your town?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] Before Daesh, I was living in Sinjar in a village called Kocho. I was a student going to the high school. I was living with my family and helping with the farming. We were a small community of about 2,000 people. We had a simple but very nice life.

LL: Can you describe then what happened when Daesh or ISIS came to your town in Iraq in 2014?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] When Daesh attacked the Yazidis on August 3rd, 2014, they came to eradicate the Yazidis. They came to kill and also to enslave, because they considered the Yazidis kafirs and mushrikeens, infidels and nonbelievers. They killed about 4,000 people, they displaced about 400,000 to the mountain. And also they took about 6,000 women and children as slaves.

LL: Take me back Nadia to that day in your town. What did you see? What happened?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] This happened between August 3rd and August 15th. When Daesh came we could not escape, because Kocho our village was away from the other Yazidi towns, away from the mountain. They put us under siege until August 15th. On that day, they took us to the village school, and there they separated the men from the women. They killed about 700 men, and then they took the children. And they killed the elderly women.

LL: This sounds awful. I wondered if I could get you though Nadia to tell me what it was like on that day when you saw saw these soldiers from Daesh or ISIS come into your town? What did you see? What did you hear?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] When Daesh came, they were dressed in black and they were dressed in the uniforms we see for them. Some of them wore masks on their faces. They took the jewelry and earrings from the women. They took the mobile phones away from men, and whatever cash they had in their pockets. Then they also took the children away from their mothers. We saw as they took the men to the outskirts of the village and killed them.

LL: What happened to your brothers that day?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] I had six brothers who are with the men, who were taken with them.

LL: Do you know what happened to them?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: No.

LL: To this day you don't know whether they are alive or dead?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] 15 men from Kocho who were wounded but survived the massacres, they told us that men were killed. The village of Kocho is still under the control of Daesh, and we still don't know exactly what happened. But those who survived told us that they killed everyone.

LL: I'm sorry for your loss. You were then taken, and you and other Yazidi women were treated like property. Tell me what that was like to be treated like a piece of property?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] Yes. The same day they killed the men, they took us to another place where they separated the women into groups. There were about 80 older women over the age of 50 or so. They were all killed. I was one of the girls taken with about 150 others. We were separated from our families and taken to Mosul. From there we were distributed to their headquarters. At that moment we knew we were being taken to be used for rape, and to be sold. We were also forced to convert.

LL: So you were separated from your mother at that point is that correct?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] Yes. That day I was separated from my mother and my other two sisters, also from my nieces and nephews. Three of my nieces were among the group that was taken with me.

LL: How old were you at this point?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: 19.

LL: 19. So, as you say you were taken to this centre and essentially you were you were put up as a slave for ISIS fighters. How was it decided which fighter you would belong to?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] When they took us to the centre, us girls were taken to two rooms. The militants came and looked at us. They could pick whoever they desired, whoever they wanted. One of them approached me, a very big man, a huge person. I was very scared of how big he was, and I didn't want to go with him, so I begged another militant to take me for himself.

LL: You begged another man to take you. I gather this man was smaller?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] Physically he was smaller.

LL: So you felt a little bit safer I guess. What did he do to you though?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] He took me. He did the same thing they did to everyone else. He took me, he raped me, and used me for a couple of days. This is what they would do. They would keep the girls for a day, or two days, a week, and then they would pass them to a different one.

LL: So you were passed around?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] He gave me to his guards once. And then after that he sold me to Hamdaniya, a different place.

LL: So you were raped a number of times. You were raped repeatedly. And again, I am sorry to make you go back to this terrible terrible time, but I'm wondering how you actually got through all of that?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] They did it to all the girls. They did it to girls who were 10 and 12. They did it to my nieces, who were 15 and 16 years old. I know they were doing it to everyone. I had no choice.

LL: But how do you deal with that? I mean, when you're going through this you're 19-years-old. I'm sure you must feel very alone, and scared. How do you deal with all of it?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] After I was freed, I thought that the world would bring justice to us, that the world would be fair to us. But still nothing has happened. We still have 3,000 people who are in captivity.

LL: In that time though what did you do, did you pray?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] Yes, I always prayed, and asked God to either kill me or save me.

LL: You wanted God to kill you. Did you ever try to kill yourself?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] I did not try to kill myself. But I wish that when they killed our brothers, our mothers, I wish that they had killed us all as well.

LL: You would rather have died than gone through what you went through.

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] I wished I was killed, or starved, or died on the mountain like the other Yazidis. Instead of being someone who had no value, to be used by the terrorists whatever way they wished to use us.

LL: Human Rights Watch has documented how ISIS or Daesh has carried out what they call systemic rape against Yazidi girls and women. Why do you think rape is being used as a tool by the group? What is the point?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] When they took us, they told us we were the [unintelligible] spoils of war, and they told us that we were owned by the Islamic state. That because we were considered as infidels, we should be used for such things.

LL: Why do you think they were doing that though? Was it because they wanted you to become like them? Were they aiming at trying to get Yazidis to convert?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] Yes. And when they came, they said we will kill the men, and we will convert the women and the children. This is what happened to about 10,000 Yazidis, between the killing and the enslavement.

LL: What else did you endure while you were held captive? I mean honestly, the story of repeated rape is awful enough, but how were you treated over the weeks and months?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] There was no life besides being in the centres. We were not allowed to leave. We had to be there waiting, and they would rape whenever they wanted to. Whenever there was no rape, we just had to be there. There was basically no life.

LL: I understand that you also witnessed mass executions?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] Only in Kocho, when they took the men. Through the windows of the school we saw them killing the men, but I did not witness other massacres after they took us.

LL: At one point you tried to escape, tell me what happened.

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] I decided I need to escape. After I saw his intention and their intentions, I knew that we would be used for rape. So I decided to escape even though I knew I didn't have a good chance. The militant had some guests, some other militants that were there. They were talking about the women and insulting us. I decided to leave out the window and as I was crawling out of the window, a guard saw me. I looked down and saw him. So I immediately went back to the room. They knew I was trying to escape. So they came to see me and they first tortured me physically, and then they did that to me.

LL: They beat you?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: Yes.

LL: And then they raped you.

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: Yes.

LL: [Deep breath] With all of this awful behaviour and actually crimes committed against you by these ISIS Daesh fighters, I wonder did you ever see them demonstrate any humanity any bit of kindness toward you?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] No. I didn't see anything.

LL: How long had you been captive at the time you decided to try to escape again?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] The first time I attempted to escape was about four days after being held by them.

LL: How long were you totally in captivity by the time you managed to escape for good?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] I don't remember. I can't tell how long exactly I was held, but I was held for a lot less time than others.

LL: OK. As much detail as you can Nadia, can you tell me how you managed eventually to get to escape for good?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] The last man I escaped from, it was just him and I. After they took me to Mosul, I was just with him. One day he said that he was going to buy some clothes for me, to sell me. After he left the house, I was alone. So I escaped from the house. I walked towards the older houses in Mosul, and I went to one of the houses and asked for help.

LL: How did you manage to avoid not being captured again though?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] When I went to the street I was wearing a burka, because they enforce the burka, that dress code, on all the women. So nobody was able to identify me or see me.

LL: And you got to a house and they helped you. What did those people in the house do to help you?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] I got to that house and knocked on the door, and they let me in. I told them my story, and asked if they could help me or show me a way to escape, and they took me in. I was able to contact my brother, who was free. That family got me an identification card. The son made me a card with the name of his wife. We used that identification card to escape.

LL: And you eventually made it all the way to Germany.

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] First, I went to the camps. For about a year, I was at the refugee camps. And then through the German program, I came to Germany.

LL: Did you ever feel guilty about leaving your family?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] Our families could not take care of us. That's the situation for all the Yazidis. They could not take care of us, so they said it's better that you go and you don't stay here.

LL: Do you think about your family a lot?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Quivering] Yes.

LL: What kinds of things are you thinking about?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Deep breath] [Through translator] I'm thinking of everyone. I still have 18 family members missing. I'm thinking about family members who are still alive. [Sniffling] People face very difficult circumstances.

LL: And I guess that's why you make yourself tell and retell this story of horrors. What are you hoping the international community will do?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] I do this because I want justice. Because I don't want these crimes that Daesh committed to be committed against any woman or any child. I want to help these thousands of people who are still in captivity. If we do not stop these crimes, they will be repeated in other places.

LL: How difficult is it for you to relive this story so often.

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] Whether I say it or don't say it, I still live it. I'm speaking out on behalf of so many people who are suffering. This must be told.

LL: I wonder Nadia, if you're aware of the fact that Canada has taken in more than 25,000 Syrian refugees of late, and made a special airlift to get them here. Yet there are very very few Yazidis who have been admitted to this country. I'm wondering what you think of that?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] It’s very good that this help has been given to the refugees. It doesn't matter if they're Syrian, or Iraqi, or whatever. Humans are humans. It doesn't matter who they are. I would love it if Canada also helped some Yazidis. Especially those in special circumstances, such as girls like myself who have been victims of rape. Also orphans or widows who lost their husbands, because they have no one to take care of them.

LL: Nadia, you are obviously a strong woman. I'm wondering what your dreams are for yourself for the future?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] My dream is that every woman and every child lives free, and doesn't have to see herself or himself as something that has no value. My dream is that all people live in peace, and that what happened to me doesn't happen to anyone else.

LL: What about you though Nadia? I hear that very generous spirit in your voice, but do you have a dream to perhaps go back and help Yazidis, by becoming some kind of maybe a teacher or doctor? Do you have a dream like that?

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: [Through translator] Before, my dream was to have a beauty salon to help girls look and feel pretty. Now I don't have that dream anymore. Now I just want our areas to be free. I want peace, and I want to go home.

LL: Nadia, you are remarkable young woman and I can't thank you enough for taking the time to talk with us today. Thank you.

NADIA MURAD BASEE TAHA: Goodbye, thank you.

LL: Nadia Murad Basee Taha was in Ottawa. We also requested an interview with the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship John McCallum, he was not available. But the ministry sent us a statement which reads in part, “both the government assisted refugee program and the private sponsorship of refugee program provide protection to women and girls at risk, as well as members of religious minorities who are refute, including Yazidis, who are outside of their countries of nationality. We are also putting plans in place to process Syrian refugee cases out of northern Iraq.” Well, coming up. How an award-winning Canadian author fell in love with a convicted murderer. That story is coming up after the news. I’m Laura Lynch, and you are listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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ENCORE: 'I did not see Murderer': Author Diane Schoemperlen on falling in love with inmate

Guests: Diane Schoemperlen

LAURA LYNCH: Hello, I’m Laura Lynch, and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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LL: Up next, an unexpected love story with a man behind bars.

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LL: Diane Schoemperlen’s name will be familiar to many book lovers. She's a prolific novelist, and short story writer. And her collection Forms of Devotion won the Governor General’s Award for English Fiction in 1998. But there's something about Diane Schoemperlen’s life that few knew about until she decided to share it in a memoir this year. The writer's life took a turn into stranger than fiction territory, when she fell in love with a man serving time in a federal penitentiary. While he served a life sentence for second degree murder, the couple had a tumultuous on again off again six year relationship. It's a more complicated love story than you're likely to find in many novels, and one that reveals a lot about Canada's correctional system. Diane Schoemperlen lives in Kingston, Ontario, and is the author of This Is Not My Life: A Memoir of Love, Prison, and Other Complications. She spoke with Anna-Maria Tremonti in May, and here is that conversation.

AMT: Hello.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Hello.

AMT: I'd like to ask you if you could read the very first sentence of your book for us.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: I would be happy to.

Reading:

It is safe to say that never once in my life had I dreamed of being in bed with a convicted killer, let alone one with his teeth in a margarine container in the kitchen, his mother in the next room, and the word hi tattooed in tiny blue letters on his penis.

AMT: That's quite the first line.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: [laughs] Why, thank you.

AMT: You surprised yourself, didn't you?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Well, I certainly did. I mean I never imagined that I would be involved with a convicted killer. I don't think it's something that many people imagine lies ahead for them in the future.

AMT: And you call him Shane and I should mention it's not his real name, but tell us how you met Shane.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Well I was volunteering at St. Vincent de Paul hot meal, a free hot meal program in Kingston. He was brought there from Frontenac Institution which is the minimum security prison so the guys are allowed to come out on work release with escorts.

AMT: And what was the attraction between the two of you?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Well, it certainly wasn't immediate. We actually worked together for almost a year before things got romantic. I think I was attracted to his sense of humour. He was very funny. He was kind. He was enjoyable to work with. We laughed a lot. We really enjoyed each other's company.

AMT: He gave you a letter at one point.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Well, yes. That hot meal program closed for the summer, so at the end of June on our last day of working together before the break, he asked me if he could keep in touch, so I said sure. And after I got home I thought, oh I don't know if that was such a great idea, but oh well. Sure enough then a little while later, I got this letter from him in the mail which was really him declaring his love for me and saying that he would like to have a romantic relationship. I was totally shocked. I didn't know what to do about it. It arrived on a Friday and I spent all weekend thinking, whoa what am I going to do about this? And then on Monday, I got another letter from him basically taking back everything he said in the first letter. And then we did see each other, maybe a couple of days later. I said this sort of dreaded let's just be friends speech, and he was fine with that. When we started working together again in the fall, I was afraid that it was going to be uncomfortable and it was absolutely fine. He was totally comfortable, it didn't seem to bother him at all, we just kind of picked up where we left off working together, laughing, joking. Then, he was being escorted to St. Vincent de Paul by an elderly nun who was no longer able to do it because of her health, so he asked a number of other volunteers if we would be willing to become his escort. And I said I would, which meant I picked him up in the morning at the prison, signed him out, and then took him to the soup kitchen where we worked together, and then I had to take him back at the end of the day and give him back over to them.

AMT: And it was that ongoing contact and time alone—

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Well, you know, he really loves to talk and I think that was part of the attraction for me; a man who talked about deep things, personal things and so yeah, in those days of driving back and forth in the car we really talked seriously. I mean, at St. Vincent de Paul, it was a lot of joking and laughing and fooling around, but when we had a chance then to really just talk seriously, the two of us, I really felt that I was getting to know him as a deep and thoughtful person.

AMT: How much time had he spent in prison?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: 30 years.

AMT: Can you walk us briefly through his crimes?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: He began his federal time on an armed bank robbery charge and he was sentenced to four years for that, I believe it was. Near the end of that sentence, which they call warrant expiry, he escaped and then he was caught and sent back, of course. [laughs] He has a very long record.

AMT: But it includes murder as well.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Yes. That was the first part of it. He did escape again and it was while he was escaped that he committed murder and that was in 1981.

AMT: And you met him in what year?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: 2006.

AMT: Okay, so his crime was many decades in the past and he was considered non-violent, he was working as a volunteer. You write about the mental gymnastics you went through to justify this choice to yourself. Talk to me about that.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Falling in love with a murderer, as I said, is not something anybody sort of intends to do, or expects to do, and I knew that it was a risky thing to do. I did an awful lot of hard thinking about whether I wanted to try to have this relationship and I asked myself a lot of questions. I kind of drew lines around what I would and wouldn't have been able to accept, and one of them was the fact that his crime was what they call historical. So, if he had murdered someone three years before instead of 30 years before, would I get involved with him? No. If he had murdered a woman? No. If he was a child molester, rapist? No. I think I had to arrange it all in my mind to see if I could deal with the fact that yes, he was a convicted killer. My son at the time, when I first met Shane, was 21. If my son had been a little boy, I don't think I would have gotten involved with Shane. How can I explain that to a five-year-old? If I had been a young woman myself, would I have gotten involved with him? I don't think so. And also, one of the other questions that I asked myself, if I hadn't gotten to know him as a person before I knew what the crime was, maybe not, but I had already gotten to know him quite well. We didn't know for months and months at St. Vincent de Paul that that was what his crime was. And because he came there with this little frail nun, I don't think any of us thought that it could be something as big as murder.

AMT: Had you ever asked yourself that many questions in going into previous relationships?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: [laughs] No! Definitely not.

AMT: How did your friends react?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Well, they weren't overjoyed. I didn't expect them to be. I mean, I realize it's a pretty unusual thing to do. It turned out that I really did have some close friends who couldn't handle it and our friendships really didn't survive. But, I also had a handful of friends who, even though they didn't think it was a good idea, they still stuck by me.

AMT: You and Shane were able to spend time together during his day passes but you also visited him a lot in prison at Frontenac. How strange, how unusual was that experience for you at first?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Well, it was very strange. I had certainly never been in a prison before. I mean, I wasn't afraid to go in because by that time I had been escorting him for a while so I worried about going in. I had the basic idea of what it looked like to just go into the front part. I was very curious to get into the visiting room and I was, by that point, well aware of the fact that what I thought I knew about prison, like most people I think, was mostly based on American movies and TV. So, when I first walked into that visiting room, it was a big, bright room with nice big tables, upholstered chairs. It wasn't anything like what you see in movies, but then again it wasn't a maximum security prison either, so it was actually a very pleasant room to spend time in. I got very fond of that room. I felt very comfortable there, very safe. There were always children running around playing in the room on weekends and all different kinds of family configurations.

AMT: Interesting. You paint a cozy portrait of some of those early visits, the home cooked meals you brought him, were those some of your best days with him?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Yes, certainly the early days were the best days, which I think is often true in relationships. And maybe the level of comfort that I felt during those visits was part of what made me feel; that we could make this relationship work. At Frontenac Institution, in addition to that cozy visiting room, there's a beautiful outside visiting yard where you know, we could have barbecues and again, there was a nice kids play area. [laughs] We played mini golf, which you don't expect they are going to be playing mini golf at a prison.

AMT: Shane was soon approved for day parole and he went to live at a halfway house in Peterborough. You both thought this would help the relationship.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Yes.

AMT: What happened?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Well, it didn't help the relationship because then we were faced with having to have a long distance relationship because he was in Peterborough and I was in Kingston. So, we did do the long distance relationship for almost a year, but of course, because he'd been in prison for so long, he didn't have a driver's license. He obviously didn't have a car so for that part of it, it was a lot of driving. Really, I would say, on every Friday I would drive from Kingston to Peterborough, pick him up, and then bring him back to my house in Kingston. And then every Sunday, turn around and do it again. For me, that was a very difficult part of our relationship because I was kind of trying to do everything that I would normally have done in a whole week in about four days because the weekend was about going to pick him up and then really, we would really only have one whole day together, Saturday, and then taking him back.

AMT: Give me an idea of the points of tension.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Well, the biggest point of tension for me was that I was having a lot of trouble actually getting my writing done because that's what I do and—

AMT: That's a solitary thing.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: It is a solitary thing and just as he had been for the 30 years that he was in prison, I was mostly on my own, so I was very used to having a lot of time to myself. I think there were big difficulties in adjustment for both of us. It wasn't just him that had trouble possibly getting adjusted to that part of the relationship, it was me as well. I wasn't used to sharing my space with another adult.

AMT: And how prepared was he for living back in the real world?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Not as prepared as either of us thought. Although he had been coming out into the community for years on work releases and passes, that step for being back out in the community more consistently was much harder for him than I thought it would be. And I think, like possibly like a lot of people who have been in prison for a long time, I think he thought it was easy out here because in comparison, you would think, oh well, it's freedom, everything is easy, but we all know that daily life out here is not easy. There's a lot of aggravation and a lot of stress.

AMT: He ends up eventually getting right out and living with you and that then, of course, that just makes it even more pronounced, right?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Yes, and that I think was the hardest time. I didn't understand what he was going through and he was, he did say to me afterwards that he was really scared out in the free world because he realized he didn't know how to manage.

AMT: Did he have a job?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: He didn't have a job. How can you get a job with a criminal record like that?

AMT: And decades inside.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: And decades inside. Certainly, he was what they refer to as institutionalized, which I didn't really understand what that meant. I mean, when you're in prison you don't ever have to really make decisions about what to eat, what to wear, it's all done for you, so in some ways, long term prisoners are kind of infantilized by it all. They don't have to make those kinds of decisions.

AMT: He didn't understand that, you didn't see that coming, did anyone know kind of wave a flag you and say—

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: No. No, and this is the part of this whole thing that kind of boggles my mind still is that there's so little in the way of really solid practical support for men who are getting out of prison after a long, long sentence. A lot of the programs that they had were actually cut by the Harper government and so, basically I really felt on the day that he got full parole that it was like the Parole Board of Canada gave him to me, and I didn't know how to look after him. I didn't understand how hard it was going to be for him because there's prison, then there's the halfway house, and then there's being out on full parole, but the halfway house is not really halfway. It's closer to prison than it is to being out there on the street. I mean, if he hadn't had me, he wouldn't have had anybody.

AMT: You do point out that during the time you were involved with Shane, the Harper government was making changes to the correction systems under the tough on crime agenda. So, programs for prisoners coming out were cut.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: One of the programs that they cut which was really, really successful was Lifeline, a national organization working specifically with people serving life sentences. It had been praised as having been a hugely successful program in working with lifers who were then able to get out of prison after these long sentences and reintegrate successfully into society without ever re-offending. So, that sort of thing they kept taking away more and more of the things that were actually supporting inmates towards their release into society, and it always struck me as being so short sighted because what they didn't ever seem to think about or talk about is that 99 percent of the people who are in prison right this minute are going to get out some day. And they're going to get out without having had the benefit of programming and real support. They're going to come into our communities and they're not going to be able to stay out of trouble.

AMT: You make the point he did eventually land back in prison. What happened?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: He did end up getting sent back to prison, not for having committed any new crimes, but for having broken some of his parole conditions.

AMT: And so at this point, you're no longer romantically involved.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: No.

AMT: And what was that like for you?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: I didn't know what else to do. I think at that point it seemed like that was better, that we should end the relationship. I was very confused, I didn't really understand what was happening to him.

AMT: Eventually though, you get back together again.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Yes.

AMT: Why?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Well, we were apart for a few months and during that time I still had a lot of questions. I didn't really understand everything that happened, so I decided that I would go to the parole hearing to decide whether they were going to give him back his full parole or whether he was going to have to stay in prison. And there was a part of me, I missed him, I missed him an awful lot, and after that parole hearing I completely fell apart because seeing him again, I didn't get my questions answered really at the parole hearing. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to see him. I ended up writing him a long letter in which I kind of went step by step through all the misery that I had felt. I needed to find a way to understand what had happened because I loved him with all my heart and I couldn't--I couldn't let go of that.

AMT: I was just going to say, you really loved him.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: I really did.

AMT: You were in deep.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Deep. Really deep.

AMT: You do write that essentially you realised you were in love with the story at the expense of reality. What is that?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Well, I mean certainly I am probably a kind of a romantic person at heart and the idea of him coming from prison, and all of the things that happened in his life, and all of that, and then if that could possibly be made into a happy ending, I mean what a great story; a beautiful story. But, the reality of it was not like that. It was hard, it was difficult, it was unpleasant, he wasn't nice to me a lot of the time towards the end, so I guess my realization was that I had to stop hanging on to this romantic story that I had in my head and face the reality of what I had right there in front of me.

AMT: In all of that process, because then he's back in jail, you go back. You're together, you're dating, you're visiting him all the time. In all of that, you saw firsthand what it is like to be connected to someone serving time. What did you learn that most people would never even be aware of?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: The stigma that the families of prisoners face because of their connection to someone in prison. I actually didn't feel like I suffered from it a whole lot, that I knew of. Maybe because—

AMT: You weren't with him when he was convicted so you weren’t carrying that stigma.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Exactly. Yes, and that is a whole different part of it that I have no experience of.

AMT: But the visits, the process, the talking to the guards, the going through security, what do we need to understand about that?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Sometimes you are made to feel like a criminal yourself just trying to get in there to see him. Maybe me, I really tried to not let that get to me. I wanted to see him, it was my choice to go and see him. He was in prison when I met him in the first place, so again, that's a bit different than if you're with someone who is convicted of a crime and suddenly you have to deal with this. I also, for myself, I generally speaking, got along pretty well with the guards. I saw a lot of women who didn't, who kind of chose to take more of an adversarial stance with them. One of the things I learned about all that is the matter of stereotypes doesn't fit prison guards either. All the stereotypes, for me during this experience, were just proven totally wrong.

AMT: So many of us see prisons with a wall.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Exactly.

AMT: Very few people get in. If you do get in, you get in under certain circumstances, very conditional, and then you're out again. Prisoners are talked about as prisoners, inmates, detainees, the other. You broke through that wall.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: I did.

AMT: What do we need to know from what you learned? When we hear stories about prisoners tomorrow?

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: There's a part in the book where I talk about when I looked at him every day, I did not see Murderer. I looked at him every day and saw Shane, the man I loved. And this doesn't mean that I am soft on crime, either. I would like to say that, but I do think it's important that we remember that all those people who are ending up in prison are people. They have families, they have people who love them, and we need to remember that it. It's not that the committing of a crime is okay with me, it's absolutely not okay with me, and I believe that all criminals should be held accountable for what they did. That we, as people on the outside, who are reading about them in the paper, I think you have to remember that they are not only their crimes.

AMT: And that one day they will be back.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: One day they will be back.

AMT: In our neighborhood with us.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Exactly, and we will all be a lot better off if they have had proper support and programming along the way to that. It's also true that for a person getting out of prison, generally speaking, they don't have any money, they don't have a job, they may not have an especially good place to live, so they're at such a disadvantage just in practical terms in trying to become fine, upstanding citizens again. It's almost like they're bound to fail if they don't get the proper help along the way and then that's putting public safety more at risk, not less because there will be more crimes and there will be more victims. And we don't want that. We want to bring our prison system back to a place where in fact, it could actually help, not just punish and then spit them out on the street with no support. I don't think it's hard to understand that that's not going to work.

AMT: And from your own experience, it can't just be one person who helps someone re-enter.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: It really needs to be a structured group of people who can help the inmate deal with—yeah, it's not a one person job and it can't be done at the last minute either.

AMT: Diane, thanks for sharing your story.

DIANE SCHOEMPERLEN: Thank you very much.

LL: Diane Schoemperlen is the author of This Is Not My Life: A Memoir Of Love, Prison, and Other Complications. She spoke with Anna-Maria Tremonti in May. Well, that is today’s edition of The Current. And we’ll leave you today with a summer love song by Canadian indie-pop duo Tegan and Sara. The identical twin sisters released the video for BWU, short for Be With You, late last week. Their anti-marriage anthem gets today’s last word. I’m Laura Lynch, thank you for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: BWU by Tegan and Sara]

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July 25, 2016 episode transcript

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