I Am Outraged!
It’s not very often that I share my personal life with you guys, but I wanted to show you something that had my blood boiling. Please follow this link. It will take you to a website called the Pampered Prisoner, and the webpage of a prisoner named Carl Allen Ahlquist. Here is Carl’s history with the Michigan prison system.
What has Carl to do with me? Well, he is the person that ran my sister down with his car. She was walking around the lake, and was in a desolate area when his car passed her and then stopped and turned around and then he came up from behind her and “accidentally” dropped a cigarette and hit the gas rather than the brakes and sent my sister flying between 75-100 feet. Don’t worry, her head broke the fall when she hit the reflector poll along the other side of the road. Metal rods and steel plates do wonders to rebuild arm and legs. The stitches on her skull were cool to look at as well. From her browline on top all the way to the nape of the neck! Carl was being watched in the area, but the cops couldn’t do anything to him. He was a convicted rapist that was out on parole at the time, but because there was no evidence that this was a kidnapping gone wrong, there was nothing for the police to do. I accept that. Those cops felt awful, they really did, but legally, there were no criminal charges to be brought. I accept that. Unfortunately, in 1993, another young woman was jogging in the same vicinity as my sister. She was kidnapped, taken to his home and raped. He is now behind bars for a long time.
I hope you can understand why I would be angry to read the front page of the website:
This is a prison pen pal site for inmates in need of a caring friend. Through this site we hope to bring friendship, love and laughter to lonely prisoners. We hope to help ease the time they have to serve. It is a fact that 90% of prisoners lose all contact with family and friends after 3 years. They also lose all contact with life outside. Together, we can help change the way people think of prisoners. They are serving their time and it is hard. They often feel loss of dignity, self-worth and self-respect. A letter, a card and a friend can lift their spirits in ways that we could never imagine.
Boo freaking hoo! Where is the dignity for the victims of these prisoners? Here is a great link to a father that was astounded by the fact that the man convicted of killing his child, could have access to such a website:
“I cannot believe they have a man in prison for murder, and the state of Colorado is letting him troll for women,” Terry Vernon said in Monday’s editions of The Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction.
His daughter, Coty Vernon disappeared in February 1998 outside De Beque, about 170 miles west of Denver. An elk hunter found her remains nearly five years later. Authorities said she was killed with a sharp instrument, possibly stabbed to death.
Steve Siegel, a Denver prosecutor and past president of the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance, said prohibiting prisoners from getting access to such a site could be difficult because of their First Amendment rights.
Can anyone cite me cases that make this site legal or illegal?
This is outrageous !
October 25, 2007 - 02:42 PM on October 25th, 2007
[...] I Am Outraged! [...]
October 25, 2007 - 03:01 PM on October 25th, 2007
I have to agree with you. I don’t think prisoners should have this level of contact with people on the outside.
Certainly we shouldn’t lock them up and throw away the key, but come on…pen pal sites? dating sites?
100% unnecessary.
Am glad your sister is OK…
October 25, 2007 - 03:05 PM on October 25th, 2007
Pam. I can so sympathize with you. One of the reasons that I am a death penalty advocate is because of a skeleton in my closet. Let’s just say I almost lost my life on a dark, lonely road 30+ years ago. He murdered before his attempt on me (unbelievable acquitted) and murdered after, in California, where he’s serving a life sentence. I still have nightmares and thanks to the internet am able to keep track of his parole hearings. Still, if he ever gets out
I hope your sister is doing okay and I pray for her. Lets hope they end this horrific privilege of allowing inmates to use the web.
October 25, 2007 - 03:19 PM on October 25th, 2007
Well, I won’t go that far, but they certainly shouldn’t be able to converse with people on the outside.
I have no problem with inmates using the internet for research or education, but certainly NOT for recreation. Not even games.
Read a book, guy.
October 25, 2007 - 11:58 PM on October 25th, 2007
Last I checked, there wasn’t a damn thing in the Constitution that said convicted felons are guaranteed access to taxpayer funded internet service. They lose their rights to vote (at least until the Dems regain the White House). Why shouldn’t they be denied access to the internet? There is nothing on the internet that they need to be accessing. They can, as SFL so plainly put it, “Read a book”. It is entirely too easy for them to hatch an escape plan by conning some gullible insecure nut job on the outside into helping them. Look at how many times convicts have gotten their bimbo penpals to sneak them drugs or weapons and help them to escape. Time to shut this down. Pam, my suggestion would be to bring it up to the state legislature and make a HUGE stink over it. Make them cut off the funding. They may not be able to tell the prisoners no internet, but they don’t have to spend taxpayer dollars to fund it.
October 26, 2007 - 06:40 AM on October 26th, 2007
I have an idea, see if the prisoner in WI that killed Jeffery Dahmer could be tranferred to be this waste of humanity’s cellmate.
October 26, 2007 - 06:52 AM on October 26th, 2007
Bon Bon, I sent you a note.
SFL, I agree they should be reading books,or working at the prison. The teachers at the prison can printoff any online materials needed for the class, so they shouldn’t need unlimited access to the internet. The site access can be that restictive btw.
FAO- Agreed.
October 26, 2007 - 07:43 AM on October 26th, 2007
This reminds me of something I saw in one of the best Woody Allen movies:
“Virgil Starkwell is tried on fifty-two counts of robbery and is sentenced to eight hundred years in federal prison. At the trial, he tells his lawyer confidentially that with good behavior he can cut the sentence in half.”
February 4, 2008 - 03:51 PM on February 4th, 2008
Pam,
I am outraged as well! I had come across Carl’s webpage just before I read your post and was shocked to hear the story about your sister. The reason I was looking up information about him is that I was a friend of the girl that you talked about that was attacked in 93. I saw first hand the aftermath of what he did to her , her family and friends around her. I was one of many who wrote letters to the judge before Carl was senteced as a witness to the damage he caused and urged the maximum punishment. I was glad he was put away but also hoped he had truely repented and started to change, like he claimed, after she (my friend)had offered him forgiveness. This is why after all these years I still think about it and wondered. I decided to see if I could find the info I wanted on the internet and imagine my disgust to see his webpage claiming to be a devout Christian in one breath and asking big women to send him sexy photographs in the next.
I am so sorry that happened to your sister,Pam.
I always felt that he had to have hurt a lot more women than what we knew about. If you find a way to stop this website I am in full support. I will be looking into it myself.
God Bless