Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

by Johann Hari

She screamed and clawed at the man, howling for help, and somebody must have heard, because the police arrived. When they barged in, the officers decided at once what was going on. Billie, they declared, was a whore who had tricked this poor man. She was shut away in a cell for two days. Months later, Wilbert Rich was punished with three months in prison, while Billie was punished with a year in a reform school. The nuns who ran the walled-in, sealed-off punishment center looked at the child and concluded she was bad and needed the firm thwack of discipline. Billie kept spitting their attempts at control right back at them—so they decided they needed to “teach her a lesson.” They took her to a room that was empty except for a dead body, slammed the door shut behind her, and left her there overnight. Billie hammered on the doors until her hands bled, but nobody came.