(Content warning: Rape, sexual violence, incarceration, law enforcement, addiction, solitary confinement, misgendering, suicide watch, suicidal ideation)

Dictacted 11.23.24 from Dane County Jail, Madison, WI

Dear Mom,

We’ve got to talk a little. The first time I was here in jail, I called you every day. Well, every day except for the eight days they had me on “precautions” (translation: suicide watch), despite me telling them daily I was not suicidal. 

But they needed to justify why they put me in solitary confinement, and that was their opening gambit. Whenever I could, though, I called you every day. I think the topic of conversation was usually how much I disliked solitary confinement and how I could get out of it. Especially coming from a family that was so supportive of the military, first responders, and police, I appreciated your acknowledgment that what was happening to me was wrong. It was very wrong. 

We eventually wrapped up solitary confinement woes, and then it was like any other conversation we had any other day of the week, in any other month of the year, in any other year in time. It was, “How was your day?” You told me about how much pickleball you had played that day, your country line dancing classes, boat rides with neighbors, parties you were hosting in the neighborhood. And I told you about my day like it was normal. I told you about things like when the jail decided I should be permitted a book (only took them a month and a half). And what did they bring down? Nothing other than the Quran. I am not a Muslim, but I dove into that book like it was the best book I had ever read. Do you remember how grateful I was just to have that Quran?

So now it’s weird not talking to you. I think we’re stuck somewhere between What in the hell happened? and a desire to check in every day. But we can’t seem to move past that very important first question. How are the police reports so different from what you heard from me every day I was out? Why does it seem like you keep getting lied to? Why does it feel like you guys are missing so many pieces of the puzzle? 

I don’t have answers to all those questions, but I have answers to some. I don’t think it’s going to happen verbally right now over the phone, so I hope you’re reading this.

I’m writing a blog dedicated to you, and we still haven’t spoken. I think before we get there, I need to clarify what happened between November 10th and November 14th, 2024. It’s too heavy to discuss over the phone. We’ve tried. It’s resulted in shouting, and you know better than I do, we don’t shout at each other. When have we ever shouted at each other? That answer once again, never.

Let’s start with the good part, the way we talk to each other whether I’m in here or not. Let me tell you about how jail has been. It started off rough. I wasn’t taken into custody in the most gentle fashion. There was a bit of an airborne police officers moment that resulted in me being at the bottom of a rather large pile of humans. Nothing is surprising these days. So as I laid there, I thought to myself, “Well, this tracks.” 

They took me to jail, but I didn’t make it through the booking process. When I took my shirt off, my ribs were pointed in the opposite direction that they were supposed to be pointed. I was taken to Meriter Hospital and promptly informed they were not in great shape (I could have told them that). I also had a fairly large contusion on my head, which, on the up side, did not need stitches, but, less fortunately, was a concussion. After being cleared at the hospital, I was taken back to jail in a great degree of pain. Rather cranky as well. 

I sat and waited, fully expecting to be taken back to solitary confinement. I figured I had made it out of there once, but I wouldn’t make it out of there again. I figured they’d find another reason to shut me away once again; an inconvenient complication to be filed away and forgotten about. 

So, after they took me through the photographing and booking process, I protested verbally, loudly the entire way to the seg hallway, where I had spent 46 days in “Female Seg 2 (FS-2).” 

I’ll be the first to admit when I walked past that cell, I had some not very nice things to say about the Dane County Sheriff’s Department. I yelled about it. It was like staring my trauma directly in the face, the glow of that room emanating out as I felt I was being ushered slowly towards it again. I didn’t even hear what the deputies had to say to me, apparently several times. 

As I do on occasion, I finally shut up, and their words reached my ears. “Are you even listening to us? You’re going to the dorms. But if you keep acting like this, you will go to seg.” The deputy informed me I was going into the general population intake area, with other inmates.

So that’s where I called you from the first time, Mom, from the actual dorms. They never put me in seg when I came into the jail. And what a battle we went through just to accomplish that, huh? I think that was the only moment of positivity I felt in my entire body for the rest of the week. I howled all night in pain, and they probably regretted their decision to put me around other people. My ribs hurt like no bone in my body has hurt since I shattered my leg in four places in 2020. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t cry, couldn’t yell, couldn’t do anything that altered my normal breathing in any way because it caused excruciating pain. 

The next day, they proceeded to put me in general population, where I had been before in the City County building. Certainly no paradise, but again, one of the few moments of positivity for that entire week. I was placed in a wheelchair and promptly carted up to general population, where I was shown to my cell.

What followed was a week of sleep. A week of 20-plus hours a day of sleep. I believe during that time, I called you once, certainly suffering from broken ribs, concussion, and by no fault other than my own, a fever produced by a rapidly opening abscess in my arm. We’ll get to that later. 

I figured that was the end of me. I had no will left to live, there I was. I’d been raped and then charged with serious crimes for fighting back. I had lost the will to live. I knew my bail would be astronomically high, and I would not be getting out. I had done this before, but I didn’t want to do it again. And on top of that, I figured if I wasn’t the one to take myself out that week, I’d die in my sleep, the very obvious fever radiating from my scorching-hot left arm. A byproduct of decisions I had made to self-medicate after the absolute depravity of being attacked in my own home, the only place I was legally allowed to be due to my bail conditions. 

Well, Mom, something happened this past Wednesday. They flicked on the lights to wake us up, and for the first time in a week, I felt all right. Actually, I felt good. I felt great. My ribs still hurt quite a bit, but the concussion seems to have gone and the fever broke. But what’s more, mentally, I found the will to fight again. And I think that’s what’s most frustrating when I talk to you: I see the vision for the future and you see “broken.” I see this blog, my story, and I’m ready to tell the whole truth in a very public and open way. I’ve embarrassed myself enough and become ashamed of what I am on paper to the point that I don’t feel embarrassment anymore. 

In some weird ways, I feel like I’m on a path that was laid out in front of me by something or someone else, that it was meant to happen this way. Because I woke up on Wednesday with a strength I didn’t know I had. It was the same strength I felt in solitary confinement when the realization dawned on me that I would find my way out, simply by giving them absolutely zero excuses to keep me there. 

So, mom, how’s jail going now, you ask? I’m in a cell block like I was last time. We’ve affectionately dubbed it “610 Zen.” One of the girls here went to civil war reenactments growing up and we talk about that. We want to go to a Renaissance Fair when we get out. They all know I’m doing this blog and they’re sharing it with their families. And I get along well with everyone. It’s probably not the jail setting that you see in the movies. 

I’ve got a routine in here, Mom, and it feels good. Like I said, I wake up at 4am when they flip on the lights, and I wander out to the big full-length window, which looks west over Lake Monona, where you can see the sunset at night. I sip my instant coffee, which I’ve gotten used to drinking room temperature and found I quite enjoy that way, in fact. Heating up the shower for your coffee is too much work, I’ve found. I look out the window in my boxers until the deputies yell at me to put clothes on, which I sometimes do, but I usually find my way to the shower instead. I’m showered by 5am, and then I listen to a few songs on the tablet, which cost me 5¢ a minute to hear, but are always worth it: “Symptom of Being Human” by Shinedown, “I am Machine” by Three Days Grace, and “The Village” by Wrabel. 

Then I sit down and write and have breakfast. “Mornings are for coffee and contemplation.” That’s what the character Hopper from Stranger Things always said, and that’s my morning is writing and contemplation. We have lunch at 12:30, cell block locks down from 2 to 4, and that’s good reading, resting and a reflection time too. 

Usually social hour then or sometimes cards; gin rummy is popular in this block, whereas spades was more popular last time. We eat dinner together. I’m dictating my blog posts just like I did police reports with the department. I send those to a friend you’ve met before, who edits them along with the help of a new friend I’ll have to tell you about when we’re talking again. Another member of my “Badass Team of Weirdos” is doing the web design, and I hear she’s doing a great job. 

Then I make some phone calls before bed, and I sure wish you were one of them. But right now, I don’t think that’s possible, Mom. I think one day it can be again. But in order for that to happen, you have to understand some things. And I’m sorry this is going to be a long post, but here it is. I’m going to say this very directly because there’s only one way to say it. 

On October 7th, 2024, an intruder broke into my apartment, not hard since the management company took about four months to fix the door. They broke into my apartment and I was raped. There’s no question about it, I was very violently raped. I’m going to include a detail that might give you pain, but I think is important. I think it paints a picture of how violent it was, Mom. And I know you’re not going to like it, but here it is. My attacker’s hand was shoved so far inside me that they lifted me by the cervix fully 6 inches off the floor. 

And that’s why I’m so upset when you say you don’t believe me because who could make something like that up? That memory will live in my mind, haunt me, unfortunately, for the rest of my life. I need you to believe that detail and not just that detail for the rest of my life. That’s why we’re fighting, Mom.

When I tried talking to you last, you got upset, and you asked me why I didn’t call 911 and tell the police. Mom, I’ve got bail conditions not to call the police. I know the letter of the conditions say I can in an emergency, but do you remember what happened in late July, Mom? You saw the pictures of my face with blood streaking down my eyes, my cheeks, my forehead. My hair coated in sticky red blood. You scrubbed and vacuumed that blood out of my carpet, the stains that were everywhere in my apartment. And I was charged with disorderly conduct. 

That was the state of me in my apartment when I was hit in the head by someone while my back was turned, walking away from them. Away from a confrontation that they had started in my own apartment. Should they have been there in the first place, Mom? Of course not. That’s not the kind of company I need to keep, but I’m not perfect and we know that. That’s a different story, though.

None of this means I deserved to be attacked. It does mean, however, that I didn’t expect the police to respond and treat me as anything other than a criminal or a suspect or the problem. I certainly do not anticipate them to treat me as a victim. So when I was violently raped on October 7th, I did not call the police, and I still don’t regret that.

Here’s the problem, Mom. That rapist broke in again, in mid-October. You helped me and you didn’t even know it. I walked into my apartment and I could smell the strong scent of dumpster combined with body odor. For all my misgivings, I do shower quite a bit, and I live alone. 

I knew nobody that I associate with smelled quite that … ripe. I shouted at them, to come out and show themselves. And they did. I told them you were on your way up the stairs and you were going to walk in the apartment any minute. That scared them. They left without protesting that time. Well, almost left. I let the dogs out about an hour later, and I saw them sitting in their car, still in the parking lot. My rapist stared at me the entire time I walked past. And I told them never to come back. 

On November 10th, apparently my rapist’s birthday, they decided they were going to give themselves a birthday present and chose me as their gift. I wasn’t informed. I was sitting on the couch when they walked down my hallway from either the laundry room or the bathroom. They could have been in my apartment five minutes. They could have been in there for hours. I’m not really sure. My attacker walked down the hallway with an erection sticking out of their pants. And they leaned in and shoved their crotch six inches from my face. You know what they said, Mom? They used the name you gave me at birth. And then they said “Suck it, toy.” That’s when what the police say I did took over. And I’m not going to sit here and argue strongly against that. As it turns out, I wasn’t interested in a violent rape part two, but this person didn’t seem to get the picture. 

Mom, I tried. I did tell them I was calling 911. Do you know what they did? They laughed and said, “You have bail conditions that say you can’t.” They had been at my apartment for close to an hour while I was gone at the dog park the previous time they were there. They had figured out my name, and had done their homework on me. So you better believe I did what I could to get them out of there as nonviolently as possible, but in a way that would ensure they would not attempt to attack me again. 

I don’t like acting violently. I don’t make a habit of acting like that. In fact, as a police officer with the legal permission to act like that at times, I accrued zero use-of-force complaints in eight years, and yet, this was time and I knew it with every inch of my body and my soul.

That’s why I’m upset with your reaction, Mom. You know there’s more to that story and we’ll get to that later. In these accounts I’m writing, on the phone, I don’t know where, but somewhere. Because my entire testimony to the police opened a whole can of worms that I thought I would never open. But that’s enough for one post. That’s what you need to understand and that I hope the rest of the world will understand with you. 

I’m an alcoholic, Mom. And as of late, I’m also an addict. I don’t know how to cope with something like being raped in my own home on a good day, and there have been a lot of bad days. So I coped with something like that in a bad way, and you know that. The charges reflect that. And those charges, I’ve never denied for a second. But the three associated with my rape? I’ll sit in jail for the next 10 years before I take a plea deal associated with even one. I won’t be satisfied until that rapist sits behind bars. That’s what’s going on here, Mom.

But I wanted you to walk away from this with something. I want you to know that I’m happy here for now. Life is easier here, I’m not chasing addiction. I have a routine. I have fellow inmates who are kind to me and who I am enjoying talking to and spending time with. The food sucks. So if you wanna put some money on my books, I’d sure appreciate it. But other than that, I mainly just drink coffee anyways, Mom.

You know what? Forget the money. I don’t need that. But think of me sometime. 

Because I’m still here.

Still me
-Eli