Read part one here.
Stephen: They took me right from the court to jail. Lindsay Jail was horrible. When I first arrived there a gentleman looked at my file and he said “I think I should take you over to that cell and beat the shit out of you.” I didn’t say anything, I was so scared; he knew by the look on my face that I was. After that I sat in a little cell and then they took me upstairs and that’s where I spent 15 days. Because of my hemophilia I wasn’t allowed to be around any other inmates.
Bob Leahy: What does segregation look like in practice? You get to interact with any other inmates at all?
No, there was no interactions. It was a small bed with a very thin mattress, a sink and a toilet and a very small window – and that was it.
How many hours a day would you spend in there?
Twenty-three. One hour for exercise and shower. That was all in together.
Oy! What was your state of mind in those first few weeks?
Very overwhelmed, very miserable. I tried to get my head around everything that was going on. It was very hard. I read a lot – I’m not a reader, but it was the only thing to do. My family visited when they could but you are only allowed so many visits per week when you are in segregation.
What was the hardest thing about being incarcerated at that time?
(pause) I think being taken from everything I was used to in my life and being thrown in a little room. I had never been in trouble before, I’d never been in jail before, it was just very overwhelming.
How would you describe the way they treated you overall?
In that first jail, very, very bad. They weren’t friendly. They would make smart comments, when I first got there they weren’t going to give me my meds. The guard didn’t know what hemophilia was so she turned around and asked another guard what it meant, and he said “it’s a disorder where if he gets cut, he won’t stop bleeding.” And the first guard turned around to me and said “I wonder what would happen if I punched you in the heart?”
So you were at that first jail just fifteen days. Was that kind of for assessment?
Yes. They take you there before they take you to where you are going to go next. When I left the first jail, I went to Kingston Penitentiary, to the hospital ward,
And what were the conditions like there?
Compared to the first place, way better. It was a step up. I was actually happy, in a sense, to be where I was. Everything was much brighter, I had my own cell, had a TV . .
Did you mix with other inmates there?
No; there again, it was lock down 23 hours a day, but I had a bigger room, I could see outside, there were some positives that I took out of it.
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How about your getting treatment for HIV and hemophilia?
Everything to do with that was very well taken care of. The nurses there were very nice to me. I gained a little weight, because the food wasn’t the best. It was pretty bad, lots of carbs, just not good stuff. I’m a very healthy eater so I’m not used to that.
So at some point you were transferred to Bath Institution. Why was that?
I was in Kingston for two months and they were trying to find out what was the most suitable place for me to go to for safety reasons. Bath was very different; it was more like a camp than you would think what a jail would be like. I was interacting with other prisoners but I more or less kept to myself. I didn’t really interact too much with others – and that wasn’t frowned upon.
All the time you were in prison were other people – fellow inmates - aware of your status or what you were in for, besides the correctional officers?
No they weren’t.
So how did you eventually come to get parole? Was that a bit of a struggle?
Yes. When I first went to Bath we went through the process; my father had already contacted a parole lawyer and when I was talking to my parole officer, she wasn’t on my side at the beginning. She was very negative towards me and told me she wasn’t going to support me for any kind of parole. I don’t think there was really a reason at the beginning. That was just her opinion. She just said “I’m not going to support you for any kind of parole." I remember some of her words were that she didn’t think I was remorseful enough, hadn’t done the things I should have done.
Did they encourage you to express remorse?
Yes, that was very important. I remember my parole officers saying that when we went in front of the parole board it was very important to vocalize that. And I was absolutely remorseful. I had some counselling at Bath, by my own choice, and I had someone to talk to once a week. She was very supportive, very nice and didn’t judge me in the way everyone else had already done.
But your parole officer wasn’t convinced. How did that change in the end?
Well, I met some good people while I was in jail – like both of the Chris’s that work at (Peterborough-based AIDS Service Organization) PARN They were involved since day one – the day I was charged. They heard about my story in the media, came to my hearing and introduced themselves and then were involved with me from then on – they have been fully involved in my life ever since.
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Clik here to view.So how would you characterize that support?
Oh, the best of the best! They were a crutch for me to lean on, that’s for sure. They kept my spirits high and always told me this was going to end soon. They knew the kind of person I was. The Chris’s hooked me up with Diane from (Kingston-based AIDS Service Organization) HARS and she got very involved in my case and ultimately had a talk with my parole officer about my situation and how I came to be in it. They had a very lengthy talk and after they had talked to Diane my parole officer had a change of heart. That resulted in a parole hearing.
Tell me about that.
The parole hearing was very stressful . . .
Were you nervous?
I was very nervous. Who was there? My mother, my father, sister, Diane and my lawyer, my parole officer and the parole board – two men. None of the victims. The parole board seemed sympathetic. The hearing went unexpectedly better than I thought it would. They asked some tough questions. I spoke a lot. I told them that I was remorseful, it was my responsibility, I was looking after my own needs, I was in denial when I was growing up, that I didn’t really deal with my situation when I was growing up. I pretty much told them the whole story. I think once I had explained to them that there was bit of denial, a little bit of wanting to be normal, they were very intrigued by what had happened and they came around. At the very end one of the board members did a little bit of role playing with me. He wanted to know how I would feel in a real situation, about how I would disclose if it came up. It was hard, but they left and came back with a decision very quickly – after about three minutes. And then we sat down and they said “we grant you full parole". There were a few conditions, like I was to go the transition house in Peterborough at the beginning so that I could then get a place in Toronto and get my own life back together – and that’s ultimately what I did.
Tell me how you felt at the end of that parole hearing.
I was very emotional, my sister was very emotional. I cried again. My dad was very emotional as well. He told me that he was very proud of me getting through everything and he said not to worry, that things were going to get better. I had my parole hearing on the Thursday and I was released on the following Monday.
So your father picked you up at the prison gate?
I packed my stuff up the night before, said goodbye to a few people, that was about it. I walked to the front gate, the guard let me out and I did a little run towards my dad.
So after than I’m guessing you had to deal with the reality of the parole terms. Do you want to describe what was involved?
So I’m on parole until May 2014, another year. When I was on parole in Peterborough it went very well. my parole officer was very nice, but once I moved to Toronto my parole officer there was a little more difficult and we’ve bumped heads a few times. I think at the beginning she made assumptions about the kind of person I was. She came to visit my house to see my place in Toronto. We met for about fifteen minutes and after that meeting she wrote a very lengthy report about me and said I was living too high end and that it was morally right for me to give my pension from the Red Cross to my "victims".
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Clik here to view.There were also conditions imposed on any relationships you might have with females, right?
Yes. One of the conditions in my parole is that I am to immediately report any female relationships I have to my parole, officer. She took it to mean any female in my life including my friends, so she has made me write a list of all my female friends with their phone numbers.
Did she contact those people?
She has, yes. I know that she has asked one of the girls how they felt about my charges, if we were intimate, if she was ever going to come see me – you know, it got pretty personal.
How did you feel about that? Did you feel your privacy, your confidentiality had been breached?
Yes, absolutely. I felt very vulnerable. I didn’t think she could go telling anyone and everyone everything about me, especially people I have no desire to be involved with. They are just friends.
And part and parcel of this sentence involves, of course, your being placed on the Sex Offenders registry, right?
Yes, I’m on the registry. On my parole I have to report once a month and after my parole it will be once a year for life.
How do you feel about that? Do you feel like a sex offender?
I guess - because of the charge that comes along with it. I don’t feel like I am one myself because I’ve never raped or think of anything like that. The only reason I’m a sex offender is because of my charge, but I don’t believe myself to be that type of person. I kind of put in on the back of my mind. I mean I know I’m on it, but I cant do anything about it. I know people may see me on there and that may cause problems down the road . .
But it would show up on a police check if you applied for a job or a volunteer position, right? You seem as if you’ve processed a lot of this, you’ve come to terms with it and you’re trying to get back to a normal place again. Tell me about your life now.
It’s a little rough. I was in a halfway house for a bit. But now I’m living in a condo by myself in Toronto. It’s a big step and it feels very good to be by myself again and have my own things. I try to keep my family very close. They are a big help. Other than that my health is good, I try to keep active, I swim, I try and get a little exercise. I’m trying to put all that stuff in the past behind me. It’s hard because I’m still dealing with it. But I think once my parole is over next May it will be a transition in to the better life.
So looking back at this whole experience, how fairly do you feel you were treated by the system?
(pause) I don’t have very many good things to say about the system at all.
How do you feel about HIV criminalization laws in general though? Are they right or are they wrong?
I think they are right for the people who are doing the wrong things, people who want to infect people or do it purposely. Absolutely I think those people should be penalized.
What about the people who don’t intend to do harm, who have challenges in disclosing their status? Do you think the law is heavy-handed there?
I’d have to say half and half. I know it was my responsibility to disclose and I have to take responsibility for my actions. I’m not going to look back at that and say I just got the shit end of the stick because in some ways that's not what happened. In the end, I should have disclosed.
So has it changed your mind about disclosure? Would you disclose to girls you meet now?
Oh absolutely. It’s totally changed my outlook on it.
So what would you advise other people to do in similar circumstances? If they meet someone, you would advise them to disclose?
Absolutely. I would say not disclosing is not worth the outcome, all the hassle, it’s just the easier and better thing to do. It’s the right thing to do. I think I've learned a lot about myself in the last five years, I've learned a lot of things about other people. I think it’s just another hoop I had to jump through. I've had many life experiences and this was probably the worst one, but I just look at it now as another stepping stone that I had to get over – to grow up.
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Postscript.
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Clik here to view.Bob Leahy: Two days later I talked to Stephen’s father, by phone. Stephen had said he would want to talk to me. They are clearly very close. His father was never informed of Stephen‘s positive status as a teenager; Stephen was living mostly with his mother then who chose not to inform her estranged husband of his son's infection. Says Stephens’s father “If I had been informed he was positive, I sincerely believe that if I had been involved he would have had counselling and wouldn’t have got himself involved in this predicament. But he was put in this mindset as a boy of “keep it to yourself and don’t tell anybody."
Stephen’s father is angry that it was a negligent Crown Agency - the Red Cross - that was responsible for his son’s HIV infection via cut-rate blood products originating in the USA. The history, for those who don’t know it, involves a company called HMA which was contracted by the state of Arkansas to provide health care to prisoners in the state of Arkansas in the early to mid-1980s. This arrangement allowed HMA to collect blood from the prisoners. The blood, some of it proven to be infected with HIV and hepatitis C, was found in the Canadian blood supply, having been sold cheaply to the Red Cross. (It was not found in American supplies because of a ban on prisoner blood use.) The irony that it was a Crown Agency whose actions resulted in Stephen’s infection and the Crown who ultimately jailed him for two years because of that infection is not lost on Stephen’s father.
On his son’s relatively light sentence? “The judge was basically doing what he had to do, but I do believe that he saw this young gentleman was not going to reoffend. There was guilt, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t deliberate. When he was led away after sentencing it was sad, but we knew it was coming. But in a sense it was a relief because it was so many years coming. It was like “let’s get this over with.""
“I’ve always found that once people hear the whole story, what he has been through in his life, they figure it out and they go “oh my!” I’m very proud of him, he’s done really well.”