The Tribune

By DIANE PHILLIPS

Barbara Murphy runs. These days, she sports an extra piece of apparel as she sets off, pacing herself, going slowly at first, building up speed, one smooth movement after another, trying to find that zone that runners live for where all is right with the world.

Murphy’s new wearable is an ankle bracelet, a gift from the judicial system of The Bahamas that let her trade the electronic monitor for the heavy steel bars where she had been held in Remand at Fox Hill Prison for five months. Her crime, according to the charge - kidnapping her son, Valentin, now 11.

Murphy says she did it to save him from a very bad situation in Switzerland and as rough as life in Fox Hill Prison was for a woman clearly accustomed to the finer things in life, she says she would do it all over again.

“Never for a moment did I think I shouldn’t have done that,” she says. “I can sleep easily at night except I miss my son so much.”

American-born Murphy who lived and worked in financial services in Switzerland and London is not here today to discuss the past. We have agreed to meet for coffee. She wants to talk about the book she wrote about her experience in Fox Hill, a prison that chews up first offenders and spits them out as hardened criminals. The men’s cell blocks have been described as living hells. Slop buckets, rats, roaches, gangs, sexual abuse, the ceaseless noise and yelling and threats. Overcrowding is so extensive that 1400 inmates squish into the 75-year-old buildings designed for a maximum of far less.

The women’s prison, broken into Remand and Cell Block is only slightly better because it is less crowded.

Murphy, as I said, wants to talk about the book. And I want to read it, but it’s hard not to stare at the ankle jewellery because I rarely share coffee with someone on bail.

The bandage-like wrapping around the monitor, says Murphy, a seasoned marathon runner, draws different reactions.

“Visitors or foreigners look at me with sympathy and ask, ‘What happened? How did you hurt yourself?’ Locals look and they just nod. They know,” she says.

Ankle jewellery has become so commonplace in The Bahamas it hardly warrants a second glance. But everything about Murphy is in stark contrast to others in the category of the remanded, those out on bail awaiting trial. A recent report from the Office of the Prime Minister cites 178 young men out on bail for murder being monitored. Another says nearly half of last year’s murder victims were on bail themselves for homicide.

But, as I said, everything about Murphy’s case is in stark contrast to the natural response to the image of criminal, even her ability to tell the story from the perspective of the accused, as she does in the book we are here to discuss, Angels of Paradise (available at Logos Bookstore, Harbour Bay or on Amazon).

Honest, disturbing tale

Angels of Paradise is an honest, disturbing tale of life behind bars as told by a white woman who must make her way in a world in which she was dropped and could never have been prepared for.

In lively, often vivid dialogue peppered with adjectives and verbs you would never want your child to use, she details the day-to-day sense of despair, the anger of others, the aloneness she feels, the sympathy and distrust. There is no holding back. It is not just the physical conditions of Fox Hill Prison that are chilling, but what life without purpose and a sense of abandonment does to the soul.

Murphy’s ability to tell the story is not surprising. Her first book, Confessions of a City Girl, made the bestseller list. She is a former columnist for a London newspaper and a copy writer with an impressive resume. Writing about her experience, telling a tale while it was raw and fresh, describing the sadness and the slow-forming sisterhood while awaiting trial was natural for her.

“What happens when you put 20 people in the same room day after day with nowhere to go and no way out is you either fight or you find some way to bond,” she says. “We were all in the same boat and eventually we overcame the cultural differences.”

Accused of racism

It did not happen quickly or without strife. Murphy was frequently accused of racism though she vehemently denied it, at one point levelling with the women, telling them what she hated about the native culture (too much emphasis on violence) and what she loved, respected and awed (dance, music, warmth, hospitality, rituals, even the ability to move different parts of the body separately to a rhythm).

But the more she shared the fresh fruit, nuts and wholesome home-cooked food that her fiancé, Ian Goodfellow, brought for her, the more the women in prison seemed to dislike her, the more apart she felt.

The fact that someone cared enough to cook and deliver food only seemed to emphasize the gap between the other inmates’ world and hers.

“Ian visited me 72 times while I was in Fox Hill,” she says, “I would have starved if it hadn’t been for him, and he would bring enough for me to share plus little things the prison needed. There are so many needs…”

Still, she would wake in the morning and the Tupperware container of nuts that had been full when she fell asleep was nearly empty when she awoke. There were a few attempts by women to rub up against her, but she stood her ground firmly with the same steely reserve she presumably learned as she, in her mind, was doing all she could to protect her son in Switzerland where, depending on where you lived, women’s and children’s rights were up to 50 years behind. In some places, women were only granted the ability to vote in the 1970s and in some areas, the practice did not become reality until 1996.

Resentment overload

At 5ft 2in, blonde, weight less than 130lb and a fresh face that looks more like the young mom on a box of cereal than the 42 years of age she is, Murphy could have been instant prey for women desperate for some sort of sexual satisfaction. Instead, she became the butt of their insults, the face of all they resented in the world – someone, even behind bars like they were who had it better and would always have it better than they did.

Murphy’s case is before the courts. This column will not deal with that other than to say that I had the occasion, as a writer, to interact with Murphy and her son, Valentin, prior to her arrest when I had no idea what had brought her to The Bahamas and what lay in the shadows of their lives and I found the love between them something to behold.

They both played piano and violin. She had made his favourite Saturday morning pancakes and they were about to leave for some sports event he was participating in. I’ve forgotten what it was, maybe soccer, but he was as happy a ten-year-old as I had ever met and I marvelled at the relationship even though I had gone to the home to tell Murphy that I was unable to do something she had requested related to writing, delivering bad news in person to be polite.

The next thing I knew her name was in the headlines, something to do with a bid to have her extradited. Next, I read that she had used her skills wisely, to tell the story of hopelessness in a place where the greatest gift the judicial system could give the women in Fox Hill Prison is a reason to believe they have a chance to build a future, to create a life different from the one they left behind, a reason to hope.

“I wrote Angels of Paradise to give a voice to the Black Bahamian women who just want a chance to start over,” she says. “All they want is to break the cycle of crime. They don’t know how. Many of them are in for a one-time crime, one mistake they made, like the five girls who were charged with manslaughter when one girl did the killing but they all went out afterward and were seen to be drinking and laughing so they all got charged and now they are paying the price with their lives for one moment, one mistake.”

But unlike Murphy, who had been earning six figures in financial services in London and Switzerland in an earlier chapter of her life, the women in remand or a cell block at Fox Hill did not have a record of professional success behind them. They had a record, but not the kind that would get them a good job when they finally made bail or served their sentence.

Similarities and sisterhood

There were similarities. They had their ups and downs, though few cried every day like Murphy did. They had medical issues, though theirs were different from the malady that grew worse while Murphy was behind bars. They all had Bibles and loved it when the church ladies came to visit - they could leave their cells and march across the courtyard to attend church. They all watched movies, though Murphy once lost her composure and screamed at the entire group, sick of listening to the loud movies filled with violence, sexual assault, abuse, stories of drugs and guns.

The women in remand saw a different side to this white woman that day and they listened. They turned on something juvenile and silly and with a moral to the story and together, they all laughed and cried and bonded. There were other moments – the readying someone for release when everyone helped fix up an inmate to greet whoever would be waiting outside, the preparations for Junkanoo, the cheering when someone got bail, the lesson her one friend, a woman named Vera, taught her.

Even in darkness, there is room for hope.

“Maybe God put me in here,” she told herself, “to tell the story of these girls and how what they need most of all is hope.”