T.J Parsell and Sexual Assault in Prisons “They’re coming back into society indelibly marked by what they’ve experienced – either traumatized by sexual assault, or hyper-violent by having learned to fend off threat,” said T.J. Parsell. He talks about how he relates to Linda’s son who was sentenced to prison over a petty crime, he set a trash bin on fire, at the age of seventeen and was the victim of multiple rapes while incarcerated with adults and he later took his life by hanging himself in his cell; Parsell himself had a similar experienced in prison because he too was raped in prison at the age of seventeen but after he got out he got therapy help years later; He also says that he felt a special bond with Linda’s son (Parsell). Parsell
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Most teenagers are mentally scarred after being released from prison due to the things faced while they were in and some are worse than others. Teenagers may have trouble speaking out or even talking about the stuff that had happened to them. Many children prosecuted as adults suffer from untreated mental illness and unlike adults with mental illness, children have very limited experience managing their disabilities, anxieties, fear and trauma (“Children in Prison”). In Parsell’s book, FISH: The Memoir of a Boy in a Man’s Prison, he says, “After my release from prison, I was determined to put that part of my past behind me, but my demons from my experience continued to haunt me and I lacked self-awareness to seek help,” (FISH: The Memoir of a Boy in a Man’s Prison). Therapy later helped Parsell to open up about the horrors that had happened to him during his time in prison. He was released from prison at the age of 21. Before therapy, he could not manage his stress with what had happened to him, so he turned to drugs for an escape. He became a better person after therapy, he got sober and later went on to write FISH: The Memoir of a Boy in a Man’s Prison. Another man by the name of Kevin Young spoke out about his rape while he was sentenced to prison for three months after being convicted of receiving stolen property; “I thought I was going to be killed,” he says (Allison, Eric & Hattenstone, Simon). Young’s experience was slightly different from Parsell’s, he was tormented by the kitchen supervisor who raped him continuously while he was in
Most teenagers are mentally scarred after being released from prison due to the things faced while they were in and some are worse than others. Teenagers may have trouble speaking out or even talking about the stuff that had happened to them. Many children prosecuted as adults suffer from untreated mental illness and unlike adults with mental illness, children have very limited experience managing their disabilities, anxieties, fear and trauma (“Children in Prison”). In Parsell’s book, FISH: The Memoir of a Boy in a Man’s Prison, he says, “After my release from prison, I was determined to put that part of my past behind me, but my demons from my experience continued to haunt me and I lacked self-awareness to seek help,” (FISH: The Memoir of a Boy in a Man’s Prison). Therapy later helped Parsell to open up about the horrors that had happened to him during his time in prison. He was released from prison at the age of 21. Before therapy, he could not manage his stress with what had happened to him, so he turned to drugs for an escape. He became a better person after therapy, he got sober and later went on to write FISH: The Memoir of a Boy in a Man’s Prison. Another man by the name of Kevin Young spoke out about his rape while he was sentenced to prison for three months after being convicted of receiving stolen property; “I thought I was going to be killed,” he says (Allison, Eric & Hattenstone, Simon). Young’s experience was slightly different from Parsell’s, he was tormented by the kitchen supervisor who raped him continuously while he was in