THE CASE OF COURTNEY SCHULHOFF: VIEW ... - Justice4kids.org

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Among bars for ever. No more freedom. About ten thousands offender serve in US prisons life term because of offences that they committed as teenagers; about one quarter of them without any chance to be released: life without parole. She is 1.54 meter small and 44 kilogram light, porcelain skin, freckled. She cries, tears flow out from her brown eyes, she wrings her hands and says: “I don´t exist more.” Courtney Schulhoff is a small hill of unhappiness. She is 21 now und she lives five years among bars, high walls and wireobstacles. Everything indicates that she leaves the prison in a coffin, like an old and bitterish woman that in fact never lived – it is possible only in USA. On an evening in February 2004, a few days after her 16 birthday, Courtney Schulhoff stood with her dog in front of a House in Altamonte Springs, Florida, whilst her 20 years old boyfriend clubbed by a baseball bat her sleeping father. One can’t understand why the young couple expected that their problems can be dispatched from world in this way. Problems accumulated long years and step by step brought Courtney’s family to disruption. Her parents are Mormons that keep very strict rules – no coffee, no spirits, no sex without marriage certificate – but her parents broke all rules. Courtney, teenager at that time, responded by depression, recalcitrance and revolt, she smoked, she drank spirits, she dressed black, she told stories about sex with her boyfriend. “My mom put me in the approved school. She didn’t want me to going to church with such a potato mug.” Her deeply faithful stepbrother agreed with her, because she lost and gave out her virginhood. After a scandal, her mother left the family with a new man. Courtney suffered her father; he is now her last ally in the family but as soon as his divorce trauma passed over he did suddenly “something what usually fathers didn´t do with their daughters.” Two times. “He detested me. When he came home I went out. I wasn´t able to endure his presence.” He drank spirits, he leaded women home, Courtney disliked them, only quarrels were at home, she stole him checks to by a new clothes, he incriminated her, she was several days in jail, the couple went for a drive with father’s car. She said sometimes yourself, it would be better if he would be dead. Courtney Schulhoff, prison number 154495 is sitting in Ocala, Florida, in the visiting room of the woman prison, convicted to life without parole, similarly as her former boyfriend, in light blue prison dress, crew haircut, tears in her eyes. “I have written a poem some days ago, how so much I miss my dad.” She paused, she sobs, falters out and says with faint voice: “It makes my heart bleed. I am without everything, without my dad, without love, I will never have my family. It’s a great fester, I feel a terrible rage, fear an d hate for myself. I don’t know how to survive here. It’s no life. For nobody.” She put her head at the shoulder of her friend Alicia, 25, also convicted to life. “We must die here”, says Alicia with a cool voice.
I present here the English translation of one of the readers’ letters written by Professor Joachim Hradetzky, University of Freiburg, Germany, that tries to analyze why the European point of view so much and so significantly differs from that in US (it is his response to the article in Badische Zeitung News): Let’s realize that in USA there are eight times more inmates for one million of inhabitants than in Germany (one quarter of all inmates in the world, 2.3 million men and women, live in US prisons) and at the same time let’s take into account that about 60 percent of US inhabitants regularly visit church services (in Germany only 20 percent) – a skeptic could conclude there is a causal relationship between religiosity and inclination to acts of violence. A skeptic could find evidence for this conclusion just in Bible – many violent events and many acts of injury are described in Bible. We will not analyze skeptic’s outlooks. It is something else what is alarming and terrifying with those numbers and with the statement of the article in Badische Zeitung Magazin. How is it possible that deeply religious and Christian society is able to be so much remorseless, ruthless, stony and without mercy to its citizens? Teenagers whose criminal offence was never exactly and unequivocally proved are sentenced to ‘life without parole’, without any chance to conditional release, without any chance to mercy. Jesus Christ instructed us to mercy, grace and pity; see Matthew 18;21, Lucas 17;4 or Epheser 4;32; the celebrants bring these words in our memories during mass celebration on Sundays. However, it seems for many people it is only lip-Christianity; in working days the old and traditional law is applied: vengeance and revenge. This view is confirmed by the recent family drama of Courtney Schulhoff, a girl sentenced life without parole. Her Mormon parents never kept special rules of abstinence and restraint. Drunkenness, scandals, the family came apart, even the rape of their 15-age daughter by her own father. She – perhaps – prompted her boyfriend against her father; is it so incomprehensible or perplexing? If one looks at the face of this child, one can only madden that there is a society that is able to take away any possibility of comeback and new beginning not only to this girl but also to many other girls. And the same is valid also for many other inmates. Fortunately, enlightenment in Europe resulted in understanding that no vengeance and revenge but punishment, correction, reconciliation and f<strong>org</strong>iveness are the right way of treating with offenders.If one compares the letter by Professor Hradetzky with the strict rules of Mormons and with the life of the real Mormon’s family (see the previous page) as described above, it indeed seems that the religious faith is for some people indeed only a lip-faith.
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Page 5 and 6: a law clerk at 21. The goals that I

THE CASE OF COURTNEY SCHULHOFF: VIEW ... - Justice4kids.org

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