Life After My Lockdown
[Music]
[Applause]
my name’s raphael rowe
and i spent 12 long years in prison for
murder
and robbery crimes i didn’t commit
i want you to imagine that you were me
you’re 20 years old
you’re in your flat in your bed sleeping
all of a sudden you hear loud noises
you’re woken up
you go to investigate the noises you
wonder if somebody’s broken into your
flat
and what you’re faced with is men in
balaclavas pointing guns at you
these are not criminals this is the
police you’re thrown on the floor and
your hands are cuffed behind your back
with plastic cuffs you’re dragged out of
your flat put into the back of a police
van and taken to a police station
you’re then interrogated about murder
and a series of robberies
you’re being accused of crimes you know
you didn’t commit
then you’re charged with that murder and
those robberies
and you’re sent to prison but not just
any prison
you end up in a prison within a prison
you’re 20 years old
when i entered the prison i walked
through the normal population where they
housed most of the prisoners in this old
victorian nick
and i went up some iron stairs they
banged the door
the slot opened a man looked out
one on they said i shut the slot
open the door i stepped inside with two
prison guards
and they shut that door before they
opened another door
and then i walked inside the prison
within a prison and what that means is
that this prison this confined space is
built inside a prison for
the country’s most dangerous prisoners
and i’ve become one of the most
dangerous prisoners in the country
in that show i had my head in my hands
and i wanted to cry
i was 20 years old in a man’s prison
within a prison
there was a window up in the wall three
sets of bars
it let in little light there was no
toilet and no sink
there was a chamber potty that i was
expected to pee and poo in every day
which i did for the next 18 months i’d
empty it when they’d open my cell door
alongside a number of other prisoners as
we had to slop
out area and we’d slop out so all this
pee and poo was being tipped
into the same space imagine the smell
i’d eat my meals in my cell and the only
other time i’d be allowed out of myself
was to go on exercise
and that was in a 20 by 20 cage i stood
in the number one court at the old
bailey
charged with murder and robbery with two
other men
two other black men the victims of the
crimes had described
the perpetrators as two white men
and one black man yet three black men
stood in the dock accused of these
crimes
and then were convicted of these crimes
despite the victims
descriptions of the perpetrators i was
sentenced to life imprisonment
never to be released at the time the
media were calling for
hanging to be brought back and if it had
been
i would have been hung and i wouldn’t be
here sharing my story with you today
i didn’t conform to the regime which
made it even harder for me
because every time the screws or prison
officers opened my cell door
and demanded that i go to work or
demanded that i do something
like rehabilitation i’d refuse i’d
refuse
because i couldn’t accept that i was in
prison for a crime that i didn’t commit
so i fought back physically mentally
psychologically and for that i’d face
the consequence
they would drag me down to the isolation
block or the segregation block
they’d give me a kick in and then they’d
leave me stripped naked and left
in my own blood and bruises the
psychological scars
and the physical scars i endured during
those
12 years in prison were difficult and
that happened
so many times i become hardened
to what it was like being isolated and
segregated so it’s one thing being
confined
in a prison within a prison it’s one
thing to be held in maximum security
cells it’s another thing to be in the
dark belly of the beast
in the segregation unit where there is
no one
but just you a cardboard table and chair
and an iron bed and i’d spend years over
the years
in isolation in segregation suffering
because i was an innocent man not
accepting my fate the only way to fight
my wrongful convictions
was with a pen and piece of paper
today you have the internet you have
access to smartphones
and other bits of technology you never
get those in prison
but at the time i was in prison it was
only pen and paper and that’s what i’d
use
day after day i’d read the documentation
that said i was a guilty man
every line of every document over and
over again looking for
bits of evidence that i could present to
my lawyers
to help me fight my conviction the media
played a significant part
in my wrongful convictions by deeming us
to be the uk’s most dangerous man
painting this picture
of the devils we were even though we
weren’t
and so i knew the only way to get people
to support my wrongful conviction
was to get the media to write about my
wrongful conviction and so i embarked on
a journalism course
to use the media i needed to understand
the media and that’s exactly what i did
among all this there was one thing that
kept me going
i wrote to the journalist i’d started to
engage
they started to engage and ask questions
about my
conviction but there was nothing
nothing more powerful than the hope i
had within myself
that one day my convictions would be
overturned and that
hope turned to reality when in july 2000
the court of appeal recognized after 12
years
that i’d been wrongly convicted and set
me free
and that was a frightening moment mobile
phones didn’t exist when i went to
prison
the internet didn’t exist when i went to
prison not like it does today
so when i walked out the court of appeal
and i shouted
i shouted as loud as i could i was 20
when i went to prison
i’m 32 now all those years gone
never to get them back it was really
difficult for me when i came out of
prison because i’d lost the ability to
do the things that you acquire
just growing up i spent the whole of my
20s locked up in prison
and so i’d lost the ability to develop
relationships
with people i knew the insides and the
outsides of prisoners
the manipulative prisoners the
vulnerable prisoners the most dangerous
and most fearful prisoners people i had
to live with day in day out
to survive during my time in prison but
i didn’t know how to interact with
normal people
i had to relearn those skills i had to
re-socialize myself back into society
and that was really difficult it still
is really difficult
when you spend the length of time that i
did confined in a square
space you don’t forget that i went on to
lead a very successful career
as a journalist and i used the
meticulous skills i learned when i was
in prison
fighting my wrongful convictions reading
every document and every line
using the paper and pen to help others
when i got out working on social justice
issues and criminal justice issues
highlighting other miscarriages of
justice
that became my weapon that’s what i use
to inform people about other people
suffering or situations that were
unfair so although i wouldn’t wish those
12 years on anybody
it’s what made me who i am today
it built the character in me to make me
the success that i am today
what does that mean that means i can
share the hope
that i cultivated during those years in
prison
and give it to other people during
lockdown
there are lots of people suffering far
more than other people
we can’t complain it could be worse we
can look out the window
we can see the green i couldn’t for 12
years all i could see was the sky
i couldn’t see the green the only thing
in front of me was a concrete wall
so when you’re suffering or feeling that
you’re suffering during this lockdown
period
reflect on what other people are going
through
you still can make decisions in prison
you can’t
you still have choices in prison you
don’t
you can go for a walk around the park in
prison you can’t
you might want to go to nightclubs you
might want to go to bars you might want
to go to see your family
across the country in prison you can’t
do any of those things
you don’t have a choice in fact you
can’t see beyond the wall
you can open your front door and walk
out for 12 years i couldn’t reach for a
handle
on a door and open a door myself and
walk out
i used to come up to a door and stand
there
and wait for a prison guard to open the
door
and let me through i was conditioned
so when i came out of prison i’d
forgotten how to
open a door that’s the psychological
traumas of prison
what happened to me happened to me more
than 20 years ago now
but i still live with the psychological
and physical
scars of my time in prison but i don’t
let it hold me down
in the same way i would suggest that you
today don’t allow
the past year or two years of lockdown
isolation lack of socialization
hold you back because there is a way
through it
we do get back to normal we do start to
do things that we weren’t able to do
previously because of our circumstances
and then it all becomes normal again i’m
a dad
i’m a husband
my life has changed my message to you is
your life will change
as you come out a lot down and it all
starts
with hope i hoped in all the years that
i was in prison
that my wrongful convictions would be
quashed
i’d be set free and i could go on to
live my life and i have
my convictions were crushed i did come
out and i have lived
a very happy life since
i can you will
you