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By James Bragg
Welcome to a new breed of marriage: a rising phenomenon that unifies those behind bars with those on the other side. But why are more and more women searching for love with the convicted? Is it sympathy, loneliness or simply the excitement of danger that fuels the trend?
The good girls never could resist a rebel; but the rebel’s tendency to develop a lack of mortgage paying skills and an inability to remember Valentines Day does suddenly become an issue when they hit 25. However for some women the ‘bad boy’ aphrodisiac remains potent and they set out to form a full-blown matinee with their revolutionary. Not a conventional fling demanding flowers, lingering, kisses and never-ending phone calls. A meeting of the mind formed by a meeting of the fingers - a prison pen-pal affair.
Silvia Denson, 38, knew her pen-pal before he was incarcerated. She met Ray, 48, on an internet dating website three months before he savagely murdered his sister, during a psychotic episode after sniffing glue to ease his depression.
Although they had only known each other for a few months, their relationship developed quickly and soon they were spending up to twelve hours a day talking online or over the phone. On the day that Silvia found out about Ray’s crime she had just booked her first 5000 mile flight from Bristol to Texas.
“His brother rang me and in a matter of minutes my mind went from imagining him waiting for me with open arms at the airport to plunging in to a state of shock. After two days I decided that no-one else would want to know him, so I would not abandon him.”
Ray was sentenced to 40 years imprisonment on September 16th 2004, with a rare possibility to be considered for parole in 2024 - he will be nearly 70. Instead of letting this ring the death toll on their relationship, when Silvia did finally make it over to Texas, Ray got down on one knee in the middle of the visiting room and proposed to her.
In December 2006 they were married by proxy in Dallas, with Ray’s mum standing in for him. To Silvia the strength of their emotional relationship overrides the issues of distance and physicality.
“Some of my friends write to Ray too, and those in conventional marriages say that he and I know each other far better than they know their spouses despite living with them.”
“With Ray, I know this sounds naïve, but we don’t have any secrets or any subjects that are taboo, including his crime. He gets no psychological help from the prison service, and his family are all too close to the crime for him to be able to talk candidly with them, so it’s just me.”
Although their relationship had already begun when Ray was imprisoned it is not unusual for women to form relationships with men even after they have been jailed.
Denise Knowles, a Relate counsellor, specialises in counselling inmates about their ‘outside world’ relationships and she believes that there is a definite attraction for some women to criminals.
“It is a relationship that most people would frown upon – it’s a naughty boy, a bad boy - but it’s a safe bad boy relationship because they’re in prison and I’m on the outside and a lot of women are very intrigued how they tick and what’s going on for this person.”
However John Bower warns that it is not just women who are to blame for the intense responses to the relationships - the artificiality created by the environment also affects the in mates.
“What starts off as a nice mutual friendship can end up being built into something very contrived. You sit in the visiting room with them and this hour and a half represents the only female attachment you’re likely to have until you’re released, so you tend to make a big play of this woman. She actually becomes something that she’s not. You put her on a pedestal and use the image of her to help you through the dark times.”
For some women the story does not end happily ever after. Two Australian sisters left their long-term “boring” marriages to marry their pen-pal prisoners. They held faith in the rehabilitation of their new husbands and had no fear of a relapse of behaviour. Only a week after his release, one of the sisters was beaten to death with a hammer by her new husband. Within a few days the other husband was back in the hot-house for trying to sever off his wife’s ear and pull out her teeth with pliers.
However loyal Silvia Denson believes in giving people a second chance in life and why not?
“There are obviously adjustments we will have to deal with when he comes home, because he will have been in an artificial environment for so long, but I have no fears of him returning to his ‘previous’ life or of committing the same crime again.”
She is not naive as she fully understands the gravity of her husband’s crime and his subsequent sentence.
“Don’t get me wrong- I don’t think he deserves to come out just yet. He did kill someone after all, but I think that after a few more years and a few more encouraging letters, he will be on his way. But one thing is for sure; whenever - if ever - he does come out, I will be waiting for him. And I hope he will keep waiting for me.”
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