The first few days at MDC Brooklyn went pretty well. I wasn’t being bullied, and I could carry on a decent conversation with the inmates often enough to pass the time. I started to let my guard down, which proved to be a huge mistake. If you let your guard down in prison, you make yourself vulnerable to bad people. When there is so little to do, inmates get bored. When inmates get bored, they start coming up with things they might do to hurt each other. You never know what people are thinking; you never know what they're saying to each other.
It's like Survivor: You don't know what conversations these people are having behind your back. You don't know if they're teaming up with other people to assault you. It could happen at any moment. Still, for the first month or so, things weren’t too bad.
That all changed on January 31st when inmates Ronald Manis AKA Sticks and Howard Hoisington AKA Tragedy entered my cell and said, “What you up to Melvin?”
Sticks and Tragedy were members of the Aryan nation. It was around 8 AM so most of the other inmates were napping. Breakfast is so early in prison, and there’s so little to do that many inmates sleep from after breakfast until 10/10:30. Any inmates who were awake were in the dayroom playing cards and whatnot.
Still, I had no sense from them whatsoever that I was in danger, but I probably should have known because, next thing I knew, Sticks grabbed a hold of me and, within seconds, he forced me to my knees and shoved his cock in my mouth. He smelled terrible. He probably hadn’t showered in a few days. It was absolutely disgusting, but there was nothing I could do.
After a few minutes he bent me over the toilet, and started raping me. It lasted probably about between 15 to 20 minutes, but it felt like hours. I had never been penetrated before. It was incredibly painful. I cried the entire time but was too afraid to cry out. If I did, they said they’d kill me.
I prayed a CO would happen by but even though they are supposed to check on every cell at least once an hour, they rarely stick to that schedule. Sometimes I wouldn’t see a guard for hours. Besides, Tragedy was watching for anyone to come by. They would have stopped if they saw a CO coming down the hall.
While he raped me, he grabbed my ass so hard it bruised. Feces ran down my legs. He slammed in and out of me over and over so hard I bled. He kept whispering, over and over, “Take it, bitch. Take it, bitch. Take it, bitch.”
At one point he asked, “How does it feel to be fucked by a straight guy?” in my ear.
When he finished, I went straight to the showers and got cleaned up. I was shocked, I’d heard about inmates raping other inmates, but I didn't think it was going to happen to me. I was horrified, but I didn't know what to do. I couldn't tell the COs because they’d put me in solitary, and that was the last thing I wanted. If I told anyone else, word would get back to my rapists and who knew what they might do?
I decided to tell my mother. When I told my mother about what happened, she told me to report it to the COs. She didn't see what would be so awful about solitary compared to sleeping in the same unit as the men who raped me. Of course she didn't understand. She’d never been to prison...