“Sitting silently thinking and screaming 4 freedom from this constant insanity and endless solitary confinement.” Drawing by Thomas Silverstein about being in isolation for years. (Copyrighted Pete Earley Inc.)
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(4-3-23) Were Thomas Silverstein and Clayton Fountain born bad or did they become bad because of the childhood physical abuses inflicted on them, including the savagery and depravity that each endured as youngsters and later in prisons?
Silverstein was physically abused by an alcoholic and vicious mother who relentlessly beat him. Fountain’s mother shot him with a pistol in the leg and his Marine father would dispatch him into the woods to be stalked during a sick game before beating him. Both men murdered correctional officers. Silverstein was accused of committing three other violent murders while in prison. Fountain committed four additional killings.
Was this violent behavior linked to years of abuse?
Silverstein and Fountain are not the only men born into violent homes, who endured corporal punishment when it was common practice in schools, and who were sent to youth correctional facilities and ultimately prison. Few commit multiple murders.
In this excerpt from my new book, NO HUMAN CONTACT: Solitary Confinement, Maximum Security, and Two Inmates Who Changed the System, Silverstein describes his twisted love/hate relationship with his abusive mother.
NO HUMAN CONTACT by Pete Earley, available April 25th.
“No mommy! No!”
The five-year-old lifted both hands to block the leather belt that his mother was swinging. It slapped into his bare thighs and he screamed.
“You wet the bed!” she hollered, lifting her belt and again hitting the child cowering in front of her.
She grabbed a paper cup. “Pee in here,” she yelled.
Sobbing, he dropped his yellow stained white underwear to his feet and peed into the cup.
“Now drink it! You drink it or I’ll swat you again. You’re going to drink every drop every time you pee in the bed!”
“Mommy don’t make me drink my pee pee.”
He yelped when she struck him again. He raised the cup to his mouth. — One of Thomas Silverstein’s first vivid memory of his mother, Virginia.Click to continue…
