September 20, 2009
Sabbath Visit With Michael
Yesterday was a “high Sabbath”, the beginning of Rosh Hashanah. Myself and two other people visited my father, Wayne Bent aka Michael Travesser, at the prison in Los Lunas yesterday. His spirits are good and he told me he is being well-treated by the prison staff. He has not eaten any food or taken any juice since last Sunday. As of yesterday he weighed 118 pounds, and had lost 18 pounds since his fast began.
My father confirmed the troubling report I had already heard from someone else. During my previous visit with him on September 4th, a guard had reported overhearing my father say he was going to “get a razor blade and cut his wrists” that night. I was present during that visit, and my father said nothing of the kind. Later that day, prison guards took my dad and put him in the “hole” completely naked, with only a piece of canvas to cover up with. (“The hole” is an expression for a plain isolation cell without windows or amenities such as a bed.) He laid on the floor with no mattress. He was unable to maintain body heat, first because the room was cold, but also because he is in a weakened state due to his fast. They left the lights on all night and he could not sleep. By morning he was shaking and spasming.
In my opinion, and in the opinion of Amnesty International who investigates prison conditions around the world, treating a non-violent and frail 68 year old man in this manner constitutes a violation of human rights as established by international law.
The next morning the prison discovered that my father had immediately gone on a total fast from all food and water as soon as he was put in the hole. A psychiatrist was sent to his cell to check on him. He told her, “You can’t do this to old people. Don’t you know there’s a difference between a 24 year old gang member and a 68 year old man? If you make it livable in here, I will drink and eat.” That day they brought him a mattress and blanket, and my dad resumed the normal course of his fast at that time, which was water and one meal a day.
Later, my father was moved to the prison hospital where he was placed in segregation. This is where he is now. My father says he is well-treated now and he has encountered a number of prison staff who are very kind and helpful to him. He understands the prison is bound by their policies, and has had a difficult situation foisted upon them by the courts.
As I was leaving the prison yesterday, a guard told me that if my father continued fasting, he would be dragged from his hospital cell by a “five man extraction team.” He said, “It won’t be a pretty sight”, inferring that extreme force is used by this team. The guard said my dad would be carried to the mental health unit where he would be “shackled” to a bed and have “tubes stuck into him.”
I took no offense by these statements. I understood them as simply the efforts of a prison guard to use me as leverage to get my father to eat. He probably saw himself as doing his job, and hopefully my father will not suffer abuse from the prison in the future. But this guard, as well as most of the prison staff, do not know my father’s character and resolve. They aren’t trained to know the difference between a criminal and a political prisoner. They aren’t allowed to discern between “behavioral issues” and someone who is standing up for his religious convictions, and giving up his life for his faith. There is a big difference, and God will judge us all by how we respond.
