While NC Association of the Deaf continues to advocate our Deaf, Hard of Hearing & Deaf-Blind citizens when faced with social inequality and injustice, we need your help. Clients who are afflicted by oppression and marginalization deserve respect and competency services. We ask that you - yes,
YOU
- continue to
stand up, speak out and seek equality
for members of our community.
Pamela Bauguess has volunteered to share her story. However, she needed a year to process the emotional distress created by the legal system in Wilkes County.
My trauma.
It was a Saturday morning that my boyfriend and I were saddling up the horses for a relaxing day of horseback riding and just simply taking in the beauty that God decorates this ugly world with. For me, it's my church.
I've always had a clean record and I have always been drug-free as I’ve worked 20 plus years in the school system when an abusive husband left me for deaf a couple of years prior. Just like that - when I could hear everything and then just a few hard blows, my world went silent.
Well, I wish that was the worst thing that ever happened to me but it wasn’t. The most terrifying experience for me began when the sheriff approached my boyfriend and I, saying that there were warrants for our arrest. Here we were standing, about to go horseback riding. “Let’s go” the sheriff said. I did not understand why or what for. I asked “Am I coming home later?” He shook his head: “No, you're staying.” I said “wait, let me get my medicine”. They walked me to the car, confiscated my medicine and my phone by putting them in their trunk and proceeded to handcuff us. “Why? I don’t understand”, I kept asking. My boyfriend and I were then put in the backseats of the patrol car where he mouthed slowly: “Charged. With. Abuse. Disabled. Minor.” “Who?” I asked. Again, he mouthed slowly: “my son.”
It hit me. I was being charged for child abuse, something that the police officers failed to explain! I was taken into jail for processing. For those who don't know how this works (well, I didn’t either!), let me explain some “jail rules” before I tell you what happened.
You have to be able to hear to make calls! To verbally communicate, to understand spoken words! Even just to make bail, you have to be able to hear when the deputy speaks to you from behind. Otherwise it's considered “non-compliance” and that gets you in trouble.
That's the first few basics you learn fast. Now I'm chained by my feet to a metal bench and I'm handcuffed which makes it hard for me to use sign language or even try gesturing. They just don't care. Period. At one point, I'm allowed to make calls. I need to try to find someone to come down and wait to see how much the bail is. I'm profoundly deaf and I can't call anybody. No officers will help me. They won't even listen in a call to tell me what the person on the other end is saying. They tell me: “It will be Monday before an interpreter can come in.” What!? Even I have to ask a judge to grant that, they tell me! It’s Saturday morning, I feel fear, knowing that I may have to wait the whole weekend. I'm painstakingly trying to understand what's being said to me, repetitively asking the officers to talk slowly. They know without a doubt that I'm deaf!
When the magistrate reads my charges and sets my bail, she asks: Do you understand? “Not completely. I'm deaf” I tried explaining. “Well, you will understand soon enough”.
The bond was $5,000. I was denied any kind of communication support service during the arraignment. I was forced to lip-read the judge, the district attorney and my court-appointed attorney. Multiple times, the information has to be repeated during the hearing due to my severe hearing loss and my being unable to proficiently lip-read.
In the courtroom my boyfriend and I are still handcuffed with our wrists in front. We are “whispering” in sign language and we get scolded by an officer not to communicate. We weren’t allowed any form of communication in the courtroom.
I'm then taken into a room and am forced to strip, wearing no garment. This strip search process is not just a pat down but a complete visual body cavity search. In this process, the deputy stands behind you. Again, I can’t hear or begin to understand what I'm supposed to do. I have never been arrested before! Remember the non-compliance term? This is why! You must bend down to cough and they check your butt hole from behind. This crazy confusion – not knowing when to bend down and when to cough. The deputy was getting frustrated with me, making me to bend down over and over. I could not hear the officer telling me to cough while I was bent over and this confusion added a whole another level of humiliation. I was deeply humiliated!!
While sitting in jail, there came a bus full of prisoners who were brought in. Suddenly I’m in a cell with all of the prisoners. I haven’t eaten all day and a tray of food was brought to me. Not being able to hear the instructions - I had no idea that if you set your food down, it is immediately taken by the other inmates.
There is access to the phone while you're being held in a prison unit but you have to have a card – it must be pre-paid and you must be able to hear to dial a specific number to activate an account so you can make calls. I pleaded, asking the officers to assist. They tell me:“Ask another inmate to help you”. I learned that you use this same “calling card” to buy food or water that isn’t brown.
While the cells are equipped with speakers on the wall, I’m still deaf! I have no idea when it’s my turn to walk through the door when it opens. In open spaces where there are televisions and wall phones, I’m very much a target. There’s a nurse who brings out the prisoners’ medicine but my meds were tossed out because they weren’t in RX bottles but in a weekly planner box. Anything that isn’t confiscated in RX bottles will be discarded. And, I have a heart condition! Pills that I needed for Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Fibromyalgia.
I left jail around 2 am the following morning, feeling grueling victimized.
About the Author:
Pamela Bauguess from Hays, NC does not only have a profound hearing loss but is also diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome, Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Fibromyalgia. Pamela has an impeccable record - no history of being arrested. She and her hearing boyfriend were picked up by the Sherriff in Wilkes County in November 2018. Pamela Bauguess received
"no communication support service"
from the time she was picked up at her home to the time of release.
T
o All Readers:
NCAD deeply appreciates Pamela Bauguess for wanting to share her story. Again, NCAD urges all of you to
stand up, speak out and seek equality.
