My name is Clay Douglas Sanders.  My friends call me Dusty.  I began having problems early in my life and I had my first encounter with the law when I was 13.  Then after 2 violent escapes, 3 times being searched for by police helicopters, once searched for by bloodhounds, once searched for by a sheriff's posse, 1 armed police standoff, 11 stolen vehicles, 17 car wreaks, 5 truck wrecks, 4 times stabbed, 2 times literally breaking my neck, 2 brain operations, 1 time to reform school, many times to jail, 8 drug treatment centers, 6 times to the penitentiary and much, much more later.  I then found out what my real problem was in life!  And I discovered my real problem in a strange way.

I was in prison for the fifth time, as inmate #458703, and I was in what they call a violators camp.  It wasn't much of a camp though; it was actually a 7 story building in downtown Houston, Texas.  No trout fishing there!  (Ha Ha)  Anyway there I was, lying on my bunk, in a 40 man prison dormitory and I was reading a book that another inmate had lent me.  The book was titled, "The Prince of Tides" and I was really getting into it, really enjoying it, when something really weird happened.  I had gotten to a place in the book where the main character was talking to a psychiatrist acquaintance in an effort to uncover any early childhood traumas that may have had an effect and played a part in the depressions of his sister.

As I was spell bound by the story, the main characters began to very slowly and graphically recount an event that happened a long time ago when they were both very young.  Some prison escapees had taken control of their home, with them in it, and the part of that served as a trigger in my own mind, was when he began to slowly describe being raped by one of he escapees!  It was like the picture that was coming to my mind as I read and what I was reading were not the same!  It was very scary at first; it was like I was losing my mind or something.

To make a long story short, what resulted from my reading that book is that I learned that one of my uncles, already deceased, had raped me when I was four and a half years old.  I was 36 at the time that I read the book.  What I later learned was that through some very powerful psychological defense/survival/protection mechanisms, that I had found it appropriate to Repress the whole experience.  So Repress it I did so well that even I was completely unaware of being raped at four and a half until I hit a trigger some 32 years later.

Today, I am in prison for DWI with a total life long income of $20,177.00.  That's right; I've made in 40 years what a lot of people make in one year.  But now I FINALLY know why.


© Copyright 2002 Clay Douglas Sanders

Stairway Outreach  The Primary focus of Stairway Outreach is the reintegration of men and women who are to be or have been released from prison who have been sexually, emotionally or physically abused during their childhood.  


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