Have you ever wondered what goes on in a woman’s prison? In this series, you will journey with me into the heart of the Green Mountain State, where the stark beauty of Vermont’s landscapes belies a hidden world, one often shrouded in secrecy and shadows. In ‘A Vermont Women’s Prison Story,’ we will embark on a compelling exploration of an often-overlooked aspect of the state’s history and society. Within these prison walls, stories of resilience, redemption, and the human spirit’s unbreakable strength come to life. Get ready to dive deep into the captivating narrative of a woman who has found her voice and her path to transformation against all odds.

Vermont, renowned for its natural splendor, serves as an unlikely backdrop for a narrative as complex as it is inspiring. In the articles in this series, I will unveil the untold stories of the women who have passed through the Vermont women’s prison system, each with our own unique struggles and triumphs. I will shed light on our experiences and offer a glimpse into the challenges we faced, the lives lost in the VT prison system, the corruption, the abuse of power, our experiences (good and bad), the transformations, and the hope we clung to. ‘A Vermont Women’s Prison Story Series’ is a poignant reminder that amidst adversity, there is strength, resilience, and the potential for profound change, not to mention a criminal justice system that knows no justice. Join me on this illuminating journey through the lives and lessons of women raised in the Vermont Women’s Prison.

Behind the imposing steel bars and echoing corridors of that first fateful day in jail, I was about to confront a brand-new dimension of evil. In this story, I will recount the surreal and bewildering experience of my initial incarceration, a chapter in my life I’ll never forget. Little did I know that within the confines of those gray walls, an encounter with an evil inmate harboring unfounded malicious intentions would leave an indelible mark on my memory. My vulnerability became her sinister canvas.

Picture it: my very first sentence behind bars, a sentence etched in memory as one of an evil initiation into a world I never wanted to be a part of. That morning, as I reluctantly entered the unforgiving cold hard steel doors of the prison, I had no inkling that a bizarre nightmare was about to unfold with me as the protagonist. As I stepped into my new reality, I was about to learn that incarceration isn’t just about time served—it’s also about navigating the wicked uncharted waters of human nature, especially when it reveals its darkest facets. I am still traumatized by the perplexing events that transpired when this evil inmate cunningly exploited my vulnerability as a twisted means to an end with no motive past her own entertainment.

I was booked and sent to the hole, where I sat for twelve days. On the 12th day, I was sent to a unit. After I was done with the CO (Correctional Officer), I dragged my bag to the cell that I had been assigned to. I was roommates with a sixty-five-year-old woman with only one leg, which my gregarious personality never thought twice about. When I turned around, four of five girls were at my door, and a red-haired girl said, “You got anything?” (Referring to drugs.)

My best guy friend had been to jail, and he had some experiences that he shared with me that had taught me enough to say “no.” She whipped back, “Why aren’t you sick then?” meaning that she assumed I was an addicted person who was suddenly thrown in jail where I had no drugs. I would have been sick had I not had drugs. I was so surprised by her comment that I just stared into her small beady, rat-like eyes.

The CO door slammed shut, and they all scuffled away. I would soon learn that we weren’t allowed in cells that were not our own, and most officers would write us up for standing in the doorways. I would also learn that that loud slam of the door was a wonderful warning that the officer would soon be making his way down the hallway, which they did every half hour on the dot. I looked at my new roomie and shrugged, and she said quietly, “Watch out for that one.” Those were the only words I ever heard her speak.

I won’t get into the details of how this girl kept busting into the bathroom stall on me, trying to catch me with drugs out, or about all of the things she did to make the first days of my incarceration a living hell. I needed to be in nature with my hippie self. There was nothing I loved more than sitting on the grass and feeling the sun on my face, so that’s what I did. About two or three weeks into my bid, I went outside to the rec yard. The red-haired girl had been getting more and more ferocious towards me with every day that passed that I wasn’t sick. From what I had experienced to this point, I knew that she was a level of evil I had never experienced before, but I really had no idea of the depths of this red-haired girl’s depravity. I should have paid better attention.

I was sitting in the grass away from everyone. This is what I had come to like. The normal extroverted me decided I didn’t want anything to do with the kind of energy floating around there. I noticed that red-haired girl and a group of girls giggling as they walked in my direction. By this point, I was hoping she would. I had always been a freedom fighter. I had always fought for the underdog, and now I was the underdog. Believe I was about it, but she had a different plan. She kept walking around me. I was sitting cross-legged on the ground, making a dandelion crown (I told you I was a hippie.) I didn’t like having her hovering over me like she was, and she knew it.

I had been told stories about how girls were so desperate for drugs in jail that they would hold you down and go inside your “purse,” as they called it. There are many ways to get drugs in jail, but there is only one place that is safe to hide them. Yup, you guessed it- your hoo-ha. I won’t lie the idea that I could be raped for my drugs scared me because these girls would have followed anyone who wanted to lead, as I found out later on.

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She suddenly let out a howl. It sent me about three feet off the grass where I was sitting, and I was expecting it. I turned towards the noise, noticing some of the girls hysterically laughing. She was pointing at me. Pointing at me and saying words that I had never heard before. “She has bugs! She has lice! Get her buggy ass outta here!” She went on and on, as you can imagine. The COs were now heading quickly towards us. I remember thinking, “God, help me!” I was a very scared, very young, very naive girl. I caught on quickly, though.

The COs arrived and looked as equally as disgusted as the inmates as she loudly began telling them over and over that I was absolutely infested with head lice. Side Note: Never mind the fact that I had been incarcerated for about 3-4 weeks by this time, had gotten a lice check upon arrival, and that had I actually had head lice, I had gotten it from someone in the unit.

The COs reluctantly asked me to stand up and back, and I did so with my hands up because I would have done anything to escape that rec yard at that moment, as the crowd of inmate spectators grew and grew, and the laughs and giggles grew and grew.

This walk of shame tops almost ANY walk of shame. The guard asked me to keep a six-foot distance between us. He escorted me to the nurses’ office. When I got to the nurses’ office, the moment the door shut behind me, I lost it. I was sobbing and shaking. I don’t think I have ever had a reaction to anything in my life as this reaction. I wasn’t a chick that often cried. I was tough, but a person can only take so much, and unfortunately, this story gets so much worse.

The Nurse Practitioner took pity on me, and when I told her what had happened, she gently smiled. She looked at me with wet eyes and said the red-haired girl’s name. My jaw hit the floor.

She proceeded to use pencil erasers to check my head. She didn’t find anything at all after her fifteen-minute head check. If not for the kindness of this woman, I don’t think I would have found the strength. Turns out that this woman would continue to have my back relentlessly throughout the next twenty-plus years. She was amazing as our facility doctor, and her words meant the world to me.

She told me that the facility would only allow one small bottle of lice shampoo per individual, two per incident. The first initially and the second seven or ten days later. I told her that one bottle wouldn’t even do my ends. She said, “My dear, this is not something you should worry yourself with because you do not have head lice. I am giving you this bottle because I know that if your new friend doesn’t see you treat your head, she will continue to give you a hard time.” She further confided that “hurt people, hurt people.” This stuck with me and has been a mantra of mine for all time since this incident. She gave me a few more tidbits of sage advice and sent me back to my unit. Lice shampoo in my liceless hand. This was the walk of dread that followed the walk of shame.

When I walked back into my until with my head down, my beautiful hair in a giant messy bun on top of my head, something caught my eye after the door slammed behind me, and I looked up to see that every single woman in the unit had a trash bag over their heads, tied in crafty knots; some had the knot in the front, some on the side, and some in the back. Just when I didn’t think things could ever get worse. I grabbed some clothes and went to de-louse my louse-less self.

Yet another walk of shame while I listened to this girl, go on and on about how disgusting and dirty I was, and those were the kinder comments. When she saw that I only had one bottle, she started getting louder, yelling at the CO, asking what one bottle was going to do to “fix her nasty hippie head of dirty hair.” She went on and on. The CO yelled something equally offensive, if not more so. The COs loved the drama and contributed more often than not with no fear of repercussions.

Their relentless cruelty killed a part of me. I had always believed that humankind was inherently good, as were their intentions. This shifted, especially after what came next. A forced haircut that was not about hygiene but, instead, a cruel and calculated successful attempt to turn me into a living, breathing punchline.

There was a men’s unit perpendicular to my unit that shared the middle CO office with a window in each unit—being that the women’s prison was simply a unit in a men’s prison. The men and women were always exchanging notes, contraband, and drugs in the food, under the doors, and left in the rec yard. I was walking out for chow, and I looked up at the office, and I saw four or five men in the window. They were looking at me, laughing hysterically, inching their heads, and yelling for their buddies to check me out. I wanted to curl up in a ball, but I knew it was not an option.

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After chow, I was in my cell writing a letter, and I heard the red-haired girl start firing up by being loud and laughing. Suddenly I heard my last name being called by her. They called me out, and I went. I looked her dead in her eyes and said, “What’s up?”

“Can I check your head to see how the little guys are doing? We all want to remove our new hats,” she said, smirking, looking more like a homely rat than ever. I told her to have at it.

This seemed to me to be a Broadway production because this girl sure was putting on quite the show. Grunting and groaning and pretending she was cracking nits (this is what they call lice eggs, and I had never even heard the word prior to this) between her fingernails for effect. I just kept praying and rolling my eyes. At one point, she was like screaming in my ears while they all laughed, grabbing their stomachs rolling over while the CO sat with feet up on the desk, smiling behind the magazine he was “reading”. My ears seriously hurt for days after.

How was this kind of cruelty humorous? What kind of people were they? So desperate for external approval from a completely irrelevant individual. We all lived in different parts of the state, and she was the only woman there from her area. Most would never see her again.

As expected, her prognosis didn’t disappoint her fans. I was infested. There were colonies upon colonies. I just have been walking around with bugs for most of my life. I finally had had enough. I stood up, again looked her dead in her eyes, and asked her what I had to do to make it stop. She flinched and broke eye contact. She looked at her friend and then back to me. “The only thing you can do, baby girl. Let us cut your hair. It’s the only way we will know FOR SURE that your friends have left their home in your head.”

To say I was shocked is a gross understatement. I took two steps towards her, put my face right up to hers, and quietly said, “Not gonna happen.” She broke eye contact again and said, “Don’t say we didn’t warn you then ’cause it’s game on until that pretty hair is gone.” I walked back to my cell, but I didn’t cry. I knew this was all happening for a reason, but I was never going to cut my hair off. I loved my hair. It made me, me.

The torture got worse and worse, and they did unspeakable things to me. It was bad, really, really bad. I have never seen a person go through worse than what I went through. They put shit on my pillow! Who does this kind of stuff? Two weeks later, I allowed them to chop off my hair. I reasoned that it would grow back before I was released, and at this point, I would have given them my pinky finger to get them to even just relent a little.

She tried to sweeten the deal by telling me that she wouldn’t be the one doing it. She told me her friend (this almost six-foot-tall girl with bad breath) would be my barber. I asked how we would get scissors, and, big surprise, they all laughed. She told me that they would be using fingernail clippers. I promised myself I wouldn’t react. That’s what they wanted, and it wasn’t going to happen. I would not let them see me broken. I would not give them that power.

In that stark, unforgiving environment, my heart pounded like a drumbeat of dread as I watched the malevolent inmate prepare what would be needed for the job. The jail dayroom had become an unlikely stage for this surreal act of degradation. Surrounded by her captive audience of amused onlookers, the air hung thick with tension, anticipation, unease, and my own trepidation. As the first lock of hair fell to the ground, I could now not only feel my heart- I could hear it, and I knew as they did that this act was not about personal hygiene but about power for them and humiliation for me. With each calculated snip, my reflection in the commissary mirror transformed into a grotesque caricature, leaving me feeling like the punchline of this cruel joke penned by fate. Yet, hidden beneath the layers of humiliation, a spark of determination ignited within me, a resolve to reclaim my sense of self in this unsettling new reality.

The red-haired girl’s sinister grin revealed her sadistic pleasure in my vulnerability. Each snip of those fingernail clippers and there were many, seemed to carry a piece of my dignity away, strand by strand. The cruel transformation she wrought was a grotesque parody of a haircut, leaving me resembling something out of a slapstick comedy. But beneath the facade of humiliation, an ember of resilience was still burning within me, determined not to let this bizarre ordeal define my experience in this unforgiving place.

I sat there and allowed them to destroy my very long, thick, and beautiful hair. Every single one of them knew that I had never had head lice to begin with. I thought maybe I would have an uneven bob or the equivalent. What they did to me is something I will never understand. The cruelty of this “haircut” and everything after has haunted me to the point that I have never had even a trim in all the time since. Never once until a few weeks ago by my stylist, who has been doing my hair for years. It was hard, but she got me through it. I am forever grateful.

Does anyone remember Kid & Play? This girl did more damage with those little, tiny nail clippers than I could have done with a chainsaw. She started on the bottom and went in a perfectly straight line from the bottom of one ear to the middle of the other ear, leaving about 1/2 inch of hair. She then moved up 1/4 of an inch and made the same crooked line. 1/4 of an inch above that the same and on and on. So, those lines on the sides of Kid & Play’s hair; I had lines like that but crooked all the way around my head, and she also left a tuft in the middle on the top. You don’t even know. No matter how badly I try to portray this with words, they just can’t possibly do the hideousness of my new haircut justice. To give you an idea, this image is what my hair looked like, except not just on the sides; it went all the way around with these even lines. 👉👉👉👉👉👉👉👉👉👉👉👉👉👉

I’m not going to get into what happened after this except to say that I had many chances over the next 20 years to get back at that red-haired girl, but aside from ensuring that she never received drugs that made their way to population as I worked my way to the top of the VT prison food chain, I never did anything to her. I thanked her silently for making me strong and preparing me for all that came after. Honestly, holding out on her and ensuring she never got anything from my direction, which was often the only direction, was enough. I pitied her for having to live her existence, hating herself more than anyone else possibly could.

This was my welcome to the following twenty years of torture. It wasn’t long before the jail started treating me much as my town did. Why? I’ll be honest. It was because I was a highly intelligent person addicted to heroin. In my experience, most of us addicted to heroin are highly intelligent, not all but a lot. There was also the fact that, much like now, I didn’t say I was going to do something and not do it. Authenticity was and continues to be very important to me. I was no innocent by far. When I would get out, I would send drugs in, and they would get in.

I did it in legal mail, so nine times out of ten, it was a supervisor who handed the drugs over to the inmate. When that got blown up (told on and caught), I would come up with another way. I was doing it for my girls AND to get over on those who had repeatedly administratively segregated me for up to six months at a time… Alone… In the hole for things like “suspicion of trafficking drugs/Suboxone” into the facility, when most of us were prescribed upon arrival and inhumanely ripped off to detox with nothing to help. Side Note: Suboxone is a medication prescribed for people with SUD to aid them in discontinuing their drug use. At times when I was down there, the superintendent would come down at lunchtime, put one glove on, and hand me my lunch, antagonizing me. One time he came down, and they were short on beds, and they knew I could get a ride at a moment’s notice. He told me if I gave him my word that I wouldn’t send drugs into the facility, he would let me out. Even they know I am a woman of my word, and I kept my word to him that time.

I think it’s important that I let you know that I do not think any of this is cool. I am not proud of the things I did during this time of my life. You have no idea what it’s like to be served a search warrant on your vagina and then have the incident put in every single newspaper in your state, talking about you having drugs, tobacco, and body jewelry hidden in your ‘vaginal cavity.’ The thought of my kids someday finding these newspaper articles makes me see that I REALLY have to make it count so that they will not see what I have done but what I have overcome.

Being treated the way we were treated, and for so long, steals a part of you. You start to think of yourself the way that they see you. After that, there is no possibility for growth. You do desperate things because desperate times call for desperate measures, and this is somehow justifiable. I can say that I probably wouldn’t have worked so hard to get drugs if I had been kept on my meds or if maintenance was allowed in facilities back then. We stuck together back then. It was us vs. them and we were all suffering with addiction and mental health issues (dual-diagnosis’.)

One time when I was administratively seggregated (ad-segged) my case worker, who used to be a correctional officer supervisor, told me that he had heard a long time ago that I “was smarter than all of them put together.” This had a profound effect on me and is one of the things that made me see that I was pointing all of my energies in the wrong direction. If I worked as hard on my transformation as I did to do things like get drugs in the jail, I might be able to accomplish something and don’t you know I DID.

Aside from the red-haired girl, I never had another issue in jail. I wouldn’t allow it. The women I met in that jail are/were some of the gentlest, kindest, funniest, most loving, and amazing individuals that I had ever met. We all have our shit, and 90% of us were running from things that someone else did to us that we had no control over. We all suffered from serious mental health issues that were NEVER addressed or treated within those walls. I can also tell you that some of the best times in my life were within those walls. Well- almost all of the years in my life were within those walls, but e always made the best of it. Back when we were moved to Windsor and could move freely around the facility, even though it was so cold our shampoo would freeze on our dressers, we used to have scavenger hunts. You know, like Sam’s black brush, Tonya’s red sock, etc. Each team would have a list of hard-to-get items, and whoever finished first won the game. Maybe it was more like Capture the Flag or something. Who cares because it was fun.

What really breaks my heart is how things changed when Fentanyl came on the scene. Before this, we never wondered upon going back out if we would ever see one another again. It was another whole nightmare altogether. Every time I would leave or watch my friends leave, I would be silently wondering if this was it. Is this the last bid? Is this the last time I will see her? The worst part was that, more often than not, they would leave to never come back. On top of all of the other stuff, we had a whole hidden world of another level of corruption in that jail, as I’m sure you can imagine reading the articles. They treated us like dirt, and yes, we went in there addicted, but they perpetuated our diseases. Between the vicious revolving door/recidivism and not knowing how we could ever feel right after witnessing and experiencing some of the stuff we experienced in that jail. The COs that would meet up with us (inmates) and buy drugs for us definitely didn’t help either. When someone would roll in that the COs had “interacted” with on the streets, they would get nervous and suddenly start over-enforcing the rules and reg’s by ALOT. Too much. The abuse of power in that place was staggering, almost like they sought out dudes with “little man” syndrome. Maybe people who were picked on their whole lives and never felt in control of anything throughout those lives. When they got a taste of the power within the correctional officer title, they unleashed. They took it all out on us lowly inmates, and we were the low lives?

One of the COs had sex with multiple inmates in the facility, and most of the upper food chain had witnessed or was aware of the circumstances. When it hits the fan, and everybody starts being questioned, three girls pursue charges as a result of his harassment inside and outside the walls. That’s three witnesses against this sick fu*k. The state knows that he had purchased drugs for them in the past, and so do the other inmates, and suddenly all three of these beautiful women, two with children, pass away as a result of ‘overdoses.’ The CO walks! He walks! Three of his witnesses don’t live to tell the story, and he walks. Nobody has said a thing, as you will see in the articles. So, because they were addicted to drugs, this doesn’t seem suspicious at all? Pshhhhhhhh… This is Vermont, friends, and I am opening it wide for the world to see!

I was very close with one of the women, and what she told me about their contacts made my blood run cold. This guy was a sick, twisted, perverted sadist, and they didn’t deserve this. Looking back now blows my mind because you would never believe the resilience, strength, and perseverance that we exhibited during those times. It is truly commendable. No matter what we were losing with the current bid, we were able to rise above and make the best of our current circumstances. I have never experienced such an inspirational populace in my life. None of us were bad people- we just had bad drug problems.

Hi, my name is Sam, addict. I was addicted to using and selling heroin for more than twenty years of my life before addiction was considered a disease. My addiction was so bad that my hands are permanently damaged from IV drug use. I spent my entire early-mid adulthood behind bars for minor, non-violent drug-related crimes without being offered any kind of significant rehabilitation program.

In 2016 at the age of thirty-five, I suddenly found myself pregnant, and it wasn’t just about me anymore. I immediately began making small changes and living in a more positive mindset as a result of learning about the law of attraction. I checked myself into a local homeless shelter to get out of the apartment where I was selling drugs, with the clothes on my back, a 450 credit score, and a correctional GPS around my ankle, and two years after I had a second child and one year after that I purchased my own 350k home. I am a Certified Addictions Recovery & Life Coach, CDAC Intern, and I just finished my addiction counseling education program at Westfield State.  I hit seven years in March.

All I want is to help others struggling in life. Every person who knew me growing up would have bet the farm that I would have been dead long ago. I created this blog to build a beautiful community of support because I truly believe that I can help people and make enough money to feed my kids, despite being told that this is not possible. It’s much harder than I expected. I’m struggling to stay afloat, and I am blogging even more than full-time with two small children. I just assumed that people would come, and that’s not the case. This is why I need all the support I can get. I am bound and determined to #provethemallwrong and to #showthemwhatwecando. I need your help, though. Please share, like, follow, subscribe, register, and comment below if you are someone or know someone who has spent time in prison. I would love to hear from you, and you will be helping me give a voice to those of us who have been failed by the Criminal ‘Justice’ System because if we don’t find our voice, it will be lost, and the world will never know what our addictions have truly cost us. I am going to link to an article regarding the incident that I referenced above. I am only sharing it to maintain authenticity and because I believe in 150% transparency with readers.

You have to understand that addiction really is a disease. The first time I heard how drugs were transported into a facility I was absolutely repulsed like BAD. When we are going in knowing we would be yanked off all of our meds instantly it leaves you with two choices and though one may be repulsive it not sitting in your own fecal matter from a dibilitating detox. I chose not detoxing every time. The article below was the result of my first body search warrant. I only gave up a small portion of what I had and this was the more mild incident. I managed to the the entire jail high for quite awhile and so badly we were locked down for weeks. It’s Suboxone people, if you could die from overuse I would have died a long time ago and I said I would be honest. The murderers that didn’t use drugs were pretty angry about losing their visits and I could eat kitchen food for months because they kept putting bugs in my food. Awesome, right? That’s jail.

Woman allegedly smuggled drugs within her body into state facility

The thought of other young people getting sucked into this unjust system eats me alive, so let’s work on prevention and get our stories out there. I want your stories. I want to know about your experiences. I want the good, the bad, the wicked. You can submit your original works such as writing, drawings, sketches, paintings, poems, and whatever else is relevant to this cause. Help me help them and you. Please use the submission form at the bottom of the page. If you are in need of support, check out my support forums after registering. If you are looking for resources, check out my sidebar or my Resource page. If you are interested in learning more about me and my story, check out my About page. If you are looking to contact me, click this 👇👇👇.

I am here to tell you that if I can do what I have done, it is a real possibility for ANYONE! I never even wanted to get sober. I was fine with dying the way most of us do. I am so glad I kept fighting because it really does get easier, just like they said, and now I just want to help you find your way because if my zero willpower having ass can rack up seven years, then there is hope for all. I swear.

If you enjoyed this post, let me know in the comments below and check out my post, Addiction & Incarceration: Breaking the Silence and Giving a Voice to Addicts in the Criminal Justice System, and see some of the issues we were forced to deal with inside of a corrupt and unjust justice system in Vermont with links to real newspaper articles.