‘I REFUSED TO LET PRISON BREAK ME’
BRUSH in hand, she knelt down to scrub the filthy communal toilet she shared with the five other women in her cramped cell.
With the bleak concrete of the walls reflecting the sweltering heat of the South American summer and the bare windows taped up to keep out mosquitoes, the smell was revolting. Never had the easy comforts of Melissa Reid’s suburban upbringing seemed so distant.
Now back in the safety and cosiness of the family home, Reid has spoken candidly about her time behind bars in Peru, describing – but refusing to criticise – the bleak conditions she endured.
Over three years she experienced the full range of the country’s penal institutions, spending time in a maximum-security police holding area, where officers sang her Happy Birthday when she turned 20; an overcrowded inner-city jail, Virgen de Fatima, where disease is rife; and Peru’s notorious Ancon 2 prison deep in the desert.
Sitting at the family kitchen, surrounded by the loved ones whose support kept her strong, she says: ‘Prison didn’t break me but I saw it break other girls. It was sink or swim and I chose to swim.
‘Peru is a poor country and the conditions in prison were very basic, but I have no right to complain about them. I was in there for a reason.
‘I am very lucky that I have such a supportive family who would take my calls at any time of the day, whenever I was feeling at my worst. The worst thing wasn’t the cold showers or the heat in the cell or the basic food or having to clean the communal toilet, it was being separated from my family.
‘There were some dark, dark days in there. You can’t escape your thoughts. You have a lot of time to think and a lot of guilt to deal with.’
In May 2014, as she and Michaella McCollum were finding their feet inside Virgen de Fatima women’s prison, they were moved without warning to Ancon 2, a maximumsecurity ‘concrete jungle’ built into a hillside more than an hour outside Peru’s capital.
They spent the next two years locked up in the female wing where, Melissa says, ‘you have to watch your back at all times’. She explains: ‘There is a constant atmosphere inside and you know you need to keep your head down. In that environment anything can happen and there is a lot of jealousy. I was constantly looking over my shoulder.
‘People knew who I was and where I had come from and how my family were sending things to help me – even some of the guards were jealous and would make things more difficult.
‘The guards all spoke Spanish. We didn’t know what was going on and that spurred me on to learn the language as quickly as I could.’
The desperation of some of her fellow prisoners, who did not have the luxury of money sent from home, became clear on visiting days – when local men would come in and ‘try their luck’. She says: ‘On visiting days you would get Peruvian guys coming in to meet girls, particularly European girls with fair hair and blue eyes.
‘I didn’t get involved in any of that but there are some girls who are vulnerable and need money so they get involved with these guys.
‘You can’t have sex in the female prison but you are allowed to kiss in the visiting area.’
The stress also took its toll phy-
‘The communal toilet wasn’t the worst thing’ ‘I’ll never take freedom for granted again’
sically, Melissa admits. She says: ‘My periods stopped for a full year. It was quite worrying and they finally brought in a gynaecologist for me.
‘There are a lot of people who have HIV and are very sick – it is hard to see the suffering. The medical care is basic.
‘While I was in Ancon prison there were a couple of suicides, but thankfully it wasn’t in my cell.
‘You get through it because there is a sisterhood. You get each other through it.
‘It will take some time to get used to my freedom again. It is something I will never take for granted ever again.
‘You don’t realise that it means everything until it is gone.’