Case Studies
“I feel I’m serving that sentence with him. I’m serving every day”
Sarah’s first reaction when she heard her son Paul had been arrested in the United States was disbelief: “I kept thinking ‘this can’t be real, it’s not real’. We had absolutely no idea he had gone down that road”.
Her biggest worry was for his safety: “I had a lot of concerns- is he being looked after, would he be hurt, would he do harm to himself, is he eating…” Paul didn’t want to remain in contact with his family following his arrest and asked them not to visit him. This made things harder as Sarah didn’t know how he was or what was happening within the prison: “Not having someone on the ground who could see if he’s alright and the fact that he was able to cut us off even though we knew where he was made it really difficult.”