Imprisoned hearts: Families of those serving time are crime’s forgotten victims

Kassie Kennedy remembers the first time she visited her fiancé, Jason Gedzyk, at the Taylorville Correctional Center.

She made the 250-mile drive down to the minimum security prison in Taylorville, with Gedzyk’s mother, Judy, of Crystal Lake.

It was a busy day at the prison, so the pair had to park far away from the visitors’ entrance and run through a full-on central Illinois summer downpour to reach the doors.

At that time, in September 2008, the two had very limited knowledge of what it would take to actually get inside to see Jason, but they hadn’t laid eyes on him since the day he was sentenced.

About six weeks earlier, a McHenry County Circuit Court judge sentenced the then 27-year-old to six years in the Illinois Department of Corrections on an aggravated driving under the influence conviction.

The accident was covered by local media outlets, and the story of the victim and his family was told.

What was not covered was the story of what happened to Gedzyk’s family after the gavel hit the sounding block.

The sadness, guilt, depression and shame felt by Gedzyk’s mother, sister and fiancée.

The hundreds of dollars a month that would be required by the family from then on to maintain ties with Jason and support him while he was away.

The stigmatization that comes with being related to someone who is incarcerated.

The day Jason Gedzyk was sentenced, in many ways, his family was sentenced, too. And they, like the hundreds of other innocent people living in McHenry County who have a loved one in prison, pay for the crimes of those loved ones, in some way or another, every single day.

During January and February, the Northwest Herald spent time interviewing two Department of Corrections inmates who once called McHenry County home, and several families who have a loved one who is behind bars.

On Aug. 13, 2006, Gedzyk drove home from a going-away party his friends had thrown him at a local bar. He had earned a job as a bartender on a cruise ship and was due to leave the next day.

Gedzyk had no prior criminal history to speak of. In fact, he said, he was the type of guy who always called the local police if he noticed someone swerving on the road.

But on that night, with a blood-alcohol level of 0.117 percent, he drove home from the party and drifted over the center line on Route 14 in Woodstock.

His car collided with a vehicle driven by Gerald Gardner, 48, of Minnesota. Gedzyk was hospitalized. Gardner was killed.

During the weeks between his sentencing and the visit, Jason Gedzyk had been housed at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill outside Chicago, where he was not allowed any outside contact, including mail.

Both Judy Gedzyk and Kennedy, then Jason’s girlfriend, were desperate to see him as soon as he was transferred to Taylorville. They needed to tell him that they still loved him and that they knew he was not a bad person – to tell him that they knew he was sorry, and that they were not going to abandon him.

Once inside the prison, Kennedy and Gedzyk showed a corrections officer their respective IDs and began to sign in. Everything went smoothly until it was discovered that Kennedy had a cell phone in her pocket.

While some items are allowed to be brought into the prison with a visitor, cell phones are not permitted on the premises.

TRIAL AND ERROR

Fortunately, that time, Kennedy was allowed to run back through the rain and out to her car to put the phone away while Judy waited inside.

Trial and error is the way most families learn to navigate life after a loved one has been sentenced to serve time, according to members of Jail Brakers, a support group for McHenry County residents who have a loved one who has been sentenced to jail or prison.

Today, a wiser Judy Gedzyk is a member of the group, and she helps others cope with the myriad emotions and obstacles that arise.

The group was founded in 2010 by Woodstock resident Cheryl Niemo about a year after her son, Justin Knapp, then age 18, was sentenced to 16 years in prison after he was convicted of attempted murder for stabbing someone during a fight.

“I went through a period of just absolute grief,” Niemo said. “I was totally, completely, taken to a level so dark and hopeless that I really, really knew that I needed some people in my life and, like, a connection with something higher than myself.”

Eventually, Niemo, a single mother with another teen boy at home, reached out for help and became connected with Kairos Prison Ministry International, a ministry to prisoners incarcerated in maximum or medium security prisons and their families.

Through the experience and her professional background as a family resource developer with Family Service and Community Mental Health Center for McHenry County, Niemo was inspired to set up a local organization that would help others who shared her difficult situation.

Today, Niemo and Jail Brakers strive to reduce the isolation often felt by members and to help them cope.

The group includes a Woodstock woman whose 30-year-old son is in Western Illinois Correctional Center near Rushville for a sex-related crime; a Marengo woman with a 20-year-old son who recently was sentenced to McHenry County Jail; and a McHenry-area woman whose 50-year-old son is serving time in Lawrence Correctional Center in Sumner.

A number of the group members are in elementary school.

Although each member of Jail Brakers is unique, many of the obstacles they face are the same.

A simple trial-by-error story most members can relate to involves prison visitation area vending machine cards – a visitor must have a $5 bill, exactly, not five singles or a ten, in order to get a card. Once the card is purchased, money can be added in various amounts.

If you don’t bring a $5 bill, you go hungry.

“When this all started, we had no idea what we were doing. You’re just pretty much on your own,” Judy Gedzyk said.

When Gedzyk and Niemo speak about their incarcerated sons, it is clear that they are mothers in pain, but also that they do not seek pity.

Their mission and the mission of the group to which they belong is to provide a safe place for families who have been affected and to raise awareness about their needs.

“Before, if I would hear someone was incarcerated, I might have had a stigma myself,” Niemo said. “You know, ‘Oh well they are probably better off there.’ I didn’t realize. I didn’t experience it.”

ISOLATION

For reasons including fear of being harassed by the community or harshly judged by family, co-workers and friends, many members of Jail Brakers are deceptive about the whereabouts of their incarcerated sons, daughters, grandchildren and other loved ones.

“I chose to tell two friends about where he is,” said a 73-year-old Jail Brakers member who lives in the McHenry area. “For four years I haven’t talked to anyone else about the details.”

Whenever she makes the six-hour drive to visit her son, she lies about where she is headed.

The McHenry area woman and several other members of Jail Brakers agreed to share details about their situations only on the condition of anonymity.

Other members admitted to telling family and friends that their loved ones “lived four hours away,” letting them assume that the person had gone off to college or moved for a job.

“I don’t want to have to answer the questions like ‘Why are you bothering?’” another member of Jail Brakers said. “It is difficult to explain. I’m a mom.”

Learning how to talk about a loved one who is incarcerated is one of the things on which Jail Brakers’ 12-week program focuses.

“There is a deafening silence around this issue,” said Felicia Moller, the chaplain for Jail Brakers who is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church.

“People are afraid of transference. ‘Your dad or mom did this, so you must be bad.’ The kids especially can really be hurting,” Moller said.

OTHER COSTS

Beyond the deep emotional impact of having a loved one in prison, there are more practical complications.

When Jason Gedzyk's mother makes the 500-mile round trip to visit him for a few hours, she estimates that it costs about $100 – that is, if she does not spend the night in a hotel.

That includes gas, meals and $40 on a vending machine card.

If her visit extends over a mealtime, there is no opportunity for Gedzyk to make up the missed opportunity for food. So visitors, if they can afford it, will buy sandwiches, snacks and drinks out of the visiting area’s machines.

Food in the Department of Corrections machines is expensive. For example, an ice cream Snickers bar is $4.50.

“I think that it is unfortunate for the families that can’t afford it,” said Kassie Kennedy, Jason’s fiancée, who spoke while holding Gedzyk’s hand at a table inside the visitation area in Taylorville Prison.

“I’ve seen ladies sitting at the table with their kids, and the only thing they can possibly afford is like a drink or a bag of popcorn, and the poor kids are hungry,” Kennedy said as she looked over at an inmate sitting with a woman and two children who appeared to be grade-school-aged.

Kennedy estimates that she spends up to $500 a month to stay in close contact with Gedzyk through phone calls, mail and visits. The two began courting in 2007, when Gedzyk was free on bail.

She tries to visit at least once a month and sends multiple letters a week; the phone calls burn up cash.

A half an hour phone call costs $9.30 using a pre-paid phone card. The first connection costs $2.63 and there is a $3 surcharge after that, Kennedy said.

Most members of Jail Brakers who have a family member in prison limit the number of times each month that they will talk to their loved ones. Gedzyk talks to his mother once a week on Sundays.

Niemo’s budget also has limits.

“Because of the cost, we try to keep it to like a weekly call,” she said.

“It’s a hard thing to say, though,” she continued, mock-scolding her son. “’You just called me yesterday, what are you doing?’”

All of the costs related to supporting an incarcerated loved one, especially at first, can be overwhelming, members of Jail Brakers said.

Many struggle to pay lawyers’ fees, court costs and reparations on behalf of the imprisoned.

In addition, helping inmates buy personal hygiene supplies and clothes is burdensome.

“You drain everybody,” said Jason Gedzyk, keenly aware of the load his actions have placed on his family.

Inmates in Illinois are allowed to earn a small state “salary.” This ranges from $15 to $35 a month, Gedzyk said. Because he is a well-behaved inmate with clearance to perform grounds work, he is on the high end of the scale.

The money does not go far, however, when three pairs of boxer underwear cost $18 at the prison store. A three-pack of plain cotton T-shirts is $15, Gedzyk said, and a pair of socks is $1.20.

“Toiletries, stamps, his socks and shoes, everything you have to buy for them, and you have to buy it through the prison,” Niemo said.

OTHER OBSTACLES

The two closest state prisons for adults are more than an hour drive from McHenry County in either direction, and saving up the cash to support the trip is only half the battle.

There is the mix of excitement and sorrow that is dredged up before, during and after each trip. Whatever coping mechanisms were in place before the journey, including pretending things are different, are impossible to ignore when you are approaching the high barbed-wire-topped walls of a DOC facility.

But for most members of Jail Brakers, it is worth it – those with loved ones housed in a minimum- and some medium-security prisons are allowed contact visits, offering the prospect of a hug, holding hands or wiping away a tear.

“I try to get to see him once a month because I believe that staying connected physically is really important to keeping him who he is and keeping him healthy, and it is important for me to be able to see my son and be present,” Cheryl Niemo said.

Her son reinforced the importance during a phone interview with the Northwest Herald.

“Being away from your family and friends, it changes you,” Knapp said.

“Every day it is a mental battle to rise above the lifestyle here. ... Sometimes it is hard not to fall into a pool of negativity, and it is an everyday battle to keep up an emotional connection with your family,” he said.

The process to get to those visits, however, is nerve-wracking.

At the minimum-security prison in which Gedzyk is housed, females, including children, cannot wear white blouses or sleeveless shirts, or shorts that are cut above the knee. If a woman shows up wearing inappropriate clothing, she will be sent away.

Visitors must have empty pockets and mouths, too – no cough drops or gum.

Violations can result in revoked visiting privileges.

There also is the possibility that after the drive to the prison, visitors will not be allowed in, Kennedy explained during a Feb. 18 trip to see Gedzyk.

Occasionally, there are random car searches done in the parking lot during which any number of items, if found, can trigger a lockdown, which means no inmates get to see visitors that day.

Other reasons, including attempted escapes, broken rules or a rampant illness among the prison population, also can mean a lockdown. So it is possible that after a long trip to see a loved one, access will not be granted.

ANCILLARY VICTIMS

Accounts of tear-filled testimonies from those who have lost loved ones to an armed robber or drunken driver are common features of courtroom coverage.

More rarely, however, do we learn of crime and punishment’s secondary tier of victims – the loved ones of the imprisoned.

“It smacks you in the face and it knocks you completely off guard, and the smallest little things will take you back and stop the whole world from spinning, and when you’re not aware that it is coming,” Niemo said. “It just takes you to a place that is just so painful to sit with and nothing else seems to exist in that time.”

For now, though, there is the solace that Jail Brakers provides, and of knowing that she started something triumphant from tragedy.

Is it just?

The Northwest Herald asked Jason Gedzyk whether, given all of the effects his incarceration has had on himself and his loved ones, he thought that the punishment was fair and just.

The following is part of Gedzyk’s answer:

“I took a life. [Prison] is just temporary. This is just five years out of my life, out of my family’s life, that I am here and that I’m taking away from them, as opposed to forever ... I took another life, and he’s never going to come back. He is gone because of something I did.”

Gedzyk went on to say that there isn’t a day that goes by when he is not haunted by the bad decision that he made to drive drunk on Aug. 13, 2006, and he replays over and over again all of the opportunities he had to make another choice.

“I mean, that is just another reason why I wanted to turn around and speak out, because I feel like I owe it to his family,” Gedzyk said of the family of Gerald V. Gardner, who died after his vehicle was struck by an SUV driven by Gedzyk.

“Then again, I think, how much time is sufficient enough for somebody who has taken another life? ... Should I technically be killed, too? You know? But here I am and I want to make a second chance out of it and help somebody else out so they don’t have to go through what I’ve been through and what [the other] family [went through].”

IDOC by the numbers

• 7: the number of adult facilities when the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) was established in 1970.

• 27: the number of adult correctional centers as well as various work camps, boot camps and adult transition centers in the state today.

• $1.17 billion: IDOC’s fiscal 2012 budget

• 11,600: the number of IDOC employees

• 49,000: the number of adult inmates for whom IDOC is responsible

• 51.1 percent: the recidivism rate for fiscal 2010 in Illinois

Source: IDOC website, www.idoc.state.il.us

For information about Jail Brakers, visit www.jailbrakers.org, email jailbrakers@gmail.com or send mail Attention: Cheryl Niemo, Jail Brakers, c/o Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 5603 W. Bull Valley Road, McHenry, IL 60050-7490

Jail Brakers’ monthly support group meets 6:30 to 8 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month at the Unity Spiritual Center of Woodstock, 225 W. Calhoun St., Woodstock, IL. Locations may vary, however, so contact Cheryl Niemo at jailbrakers@gmail.com for current location and time before dropping in.

Jail Brakers’ wish list:

• Target/Meijer gift cards

• Stamps/envelopes

• Napoli’s pizza (Woodstock) certificates for dinners during group meetings

• Movie tickets for children and families

• Office supplies

• Drums for drum circle

• Community space for groups to meet

• Volunteers