I spent a year as a member of a group that visited with prisoners in a Berks County, Pennsylvania, jail when I was nineteen. On one occasion, I was allowed to go into a cell block to talk to one of my contacts. His cell was much like those shown on TV. It was an eight-by-eight-by-eight-cage with a bunk bed for two inmates and a sink and a toilet that seemed to be out of order. That visit was enough to convince me that I never wanted to go to jail for any reason. Staying one day, let alone years, in a situation like that was more than I cared to think about.
Demented started out as a story about a man who serves time for a serious crime and then faces life after prison. Incarceration for this character is much like prison for Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption. He is trapped in a violent world with bizarre rules designed to dehumanize and break a man’s spirit. He leaves jail to face a life of survival as a convicted felon and a violent sex offender.
The underlying crime that led to the events in Demented came from an episode of Law and Order SVU. Two college men rape a female classmate who had been making gang rape videos. One of the attackers is a rich kid. The one who is not rich admits his guilt, apologizes for his misdeeds, and is sent off to prison. Then he is dropped from the story. The rich kid is awaiting a resolution of his case at the end of the show. It looks like he will probably get away with his crime.
The porn star coed is kicked out of school for violating school policies designed to prevent violence against women. She goes back to making porn videos. Detective Benson goes to the dean of the college and berates her for mistreating the woman but doing nothing about the rich kid.
The young man who went to prison interested me. He is Troy Mondale in Demented. The rich kid becomes Adan Jackson. Cindy Smith Fosteris the young woman. I added Adan’s brother Beau because I liked having a third member of the gang. Lydia Bennett is a thinly disguised stand-in for Olivia Benson.
The final element of the story, the confluence of lives years after the fact, comes from an article that appeared in the Washington Post some time ago. A woman leaving the Senate Office Building runs into a man who got away with raping her and trying to kill her. He was entering the building because he was employed as an aide by one of the senators. In Demented. Cindy and her attackers find themselves thrown together years after the rape—sixteen years, to give Troy time to complete his prison sentence. Adan, Beau, and Cindy work for a big accounting and financial consulting firm with offices across the United States and around the globe. Cindy and Adan are both working in the D.C. office.
Several books helped me get a handle on prison life. Earning Freedom by Michael Santos was the most important. Santos had put together a small drug distribution company aimed at servicing the needs of white-collar customers in the Seattle area. Law enforcement charged him as a drug kingpin. He was sentenced to forty years but got out in twenty-five by focusing on good behavior. Earning Freedom is a memoir of his time in prison and his return to civil society. Santos is the founder and head of Prison Professors, which was the inspiration for Mondale Legal Consulting Services.
Inside, also by Michael Santos, is an earlier version of his prison memoir, written while he was still serving time. In this edition, Santos provides more details about the people he met in prison and talks about incidents that illuminate facets of prison life. The two books are complementary, but Earning Freedom was more helpful to me as a resource for Demented.
Lockdown on Rikers: Shocking Stories of Abuse and Injustice at New York’s Notorious Jail describes the prison experience from a completely different perspective. The author, Mary Buser, started as an intern in the Mental Health Department at Rikers and worked her way up to chief assistant. She talks about trying to provide required counseling sessions despite staff shortages and about medicating men in solitary confinement to keep them from killing themselves. She is the one who wrote about men being imprisoned while waiting for a court hearing—not a trial, but a hearing to get a date for a trial—because they could not afford bail. She complained that many of these men plead guilty without a trial because they had no other way to end their imprisonment. Buser also pointed out that Rikers was used as a dumping ground for the mentally ill because there was nowhere else to put them.
Finally, Derailed by Mark Roseman is the memoir of a lawyer who went to prison for two years because he misappropriated funds entrusted to him as a settlement for his clients. His benign experience provided key details for Troy’s imprisonment.
I owe a debt of gratitude to author Serenity Rose for her support from the first version of the story through the present. My sister, Kathy Benoit, read the second version and gave me a “thumbs-up” as well as some free editing. Kathy Loraw read, commented and edited out of the kindness of her heart. Mitchellville Writers Group read and commented on the initial outline, as well as the many chapters I gave them to review from time to time. My wife has read every chapter in every version. There is no way I can thank her enough for her support.
I also want to thank Donnielle Tyner, Tanya from The Book Gremlins, Randy Ladenheim-Gil and Jeni Chappelle for their work in critiquing and editing my novel.
Debbie O’Byrne provided the stunning cover art.
