The Sheriff’s Inmate, Part One

One woman’s experience inside the Barnstable County 'House of Correction’

Ashley Rorro is in a good place.

That’s not just because she’s out of prison and done with probation, no more breathalyzers two times a day or drug tests, though she remains religious about her meditation and therapy.

It’s because her life has a phoenix aspect, rising from ashes. She has her own retail store now, called “Cure Wellness” aptly enough, an oasis of a small boutique offering mostly skin care and natural cosmetics off Main Street in Orleans with spiritual practice included. She rents her own nice little house. She and her longtime boyfriend remain close after a tragedy that would have broken most relationships. She has been vigilant about alcohol, doesn’t think she’s perfect or above temptation, but thinks she understands why she kept going to that destructive place:

“I didn’t like myself. Now I’m in a space where no part of me feels like I shouldn’t live a great life. Drinking and driving isn’t ever going to be worth it to me.”

She’s ready to talk about her experiences; that took awhile and still is a little scary. But she thinks she can cope with whatever judgements or repercussions might come, in part because she’s beginning to think she might be able to help others who have been in similar trouble.

And she wants people to understand something: 

How women are treated in “our” Barnstable County House of Correction. How conditions there are inhumane and destructive, worse even than for the men.

The Sheriff’s Inmate

One of the first things that happens when you are a woman brought to prison, after the stripsearch and intake questions about drugs, after a pregnancy test, is that you are given the jumpsuit you will always wear. For those who have been arrested but still await trial, presumed innocent, the jumpsuit is yellow. For women convicted and beginning terms, the jumpsuit is green. Either way, stenciled across the back are the same words:

Sheriff’s Inmate

“When I first got there I said to my cellmate, ‘How does it say that?’” Ashley remembers. “And she said, ‘Honey, that’s the least of your worries.’”

When Ashley’s mother Kim Deane, who has lived in Truro almost all her life, first saw that, she was shocked at how personalized it was, as if her daughter belonged to someone else, a possession. “I said, ‘I’m calling the sheriff.’ Even just having ‘Barnstable County’ would have been fine. But I knew she would have suffered if I said anything. She was in terrible fear.”

Ashley’s father Scott Rorro, a hardworking and successful commercial fisherman and Provincetown native, was beside himself. He and Deane are long divorced, though they stay in touch especially about Ashley, and their outrage converged:

“My daughter is not my property, she’s not the sheriff’s property, she’s no man’s property,” said Rorro, his voice still shaking months later. “She got into a really bad place, and she was paying for it, but she doesn’t belong to him.” Much as he wanted to confront the sheriff, he knew it would only be bad for her, so he bottled it up.

Ashley was wearing that jumpsuit because she had been stopped drunk driving not once, not twice, but three times. The third was brutal; November 11, 2017, less than a mile from home, on probation, boyfriend in the passenger seat, she crashed and caused extensive damage to both, from skull fracture to liver laceration to brain hemorrhaging. When she regained consciousness in a Boston hospital, they said she’d been driving. She didn’t even remember that.

“The first words out of my mouth were, ‘I’m going to jail.’”

The court process dragged out, but she was right. The prosecuting assistant district attorney was adamant that she be sent away for two and a half years; third offense and serious injury. But after hearing arguments, the judge saw it differently and sentenced her to six months -- but no possibility of parole or time off for good behavior. Six months, for real.

The sentence was dispensed on her 30th birthday.

From the docket she was brought in shackles to a van and driven to the prison in Bourne. It’s a sprawling complex, and she was led down a long corridor to the last unit, the only women’s unit in the facility.

“When I first got there I’d say there were 55 to 65 women,” she remembers. “It was packed, but it got up to 70, 80 at times. They give you a mattress to carry. They find a free bed, and tell you to sign a paper saying which room you’re going to. When you walk in, there is a toilet seat, a little bench with a stand coming out of the wall. Each cell has one bunk, two beds. It’s about nine feet by six feet.”

It didn’t take long for her to realize a few important, scary things:

She was not going to see sunlight, or breathe fresh air, for six months.

And despite doing what she was told, not getting in trouble, she would be in her cell for 20 hours a day.

ON WEDNESDAY: ‘A’ DAYS, ‘B’ DAYS, AND WHY WOMEN HAVE IT WORSE THAN MEN