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and supposed I was a nun. “Mother, give us a prayer book - a rosary,” they begged of me. “No,” I said, “but I will teach you how to pray from your heart.” They were made to sit on benches and I stood before them I mixed my English with whatever Tagalog I knew and realized that, for the first time in my prison ministry, I was talking to murderers! I wanted to show even these hardened men that God loved them in spite of their sins. Their tattooed bodies testified to their gang membership and the violence of their lives. The stockades that housed them had been built of the steel matting the U.S. Air force had used for landing planes during the fighting in the Philippines during World War 11. The senseless killings disturbed the entire prison, and for several weeks the atmosphere was turbulent and unpredictable. The slightest movement inside a cell would cause all the men to run for cover. Many were attacked with whatever weapons the men could devise. I saw one man, cringing near the gate, begging to be transferred to another dormitory. He, and many others, were acting like scared rats. Riots spread to Davao Penal Colony and there was retaliation among the gangs incarcerated there. Men were killed upon the slightest provocation. Those who were caught taking part in the riots were put into leg irons, made to do hard labour and to sleep on the cement at night. Early one morning, it was raining and still quite dark when some prisoners sneaked out of their cells, crawling along the prison grounds. They neared the prison gate where the rioters were held in the leg irons. These helpless men were killed before the guards knew what was happening. After nine months, the stockades that held these men were destroyed and they were returned to the New Bilibid compound where they occupied Building Four. I continued to minister to them there. The day came when one of my elders baptized eighty members of the Sputtnik gang in the water tank of their dormitory. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor, He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.” (Isa. 61: 1) We influence change by the grace of God
75 A Visit to the Prison
This is a quotation from Sentenced to Death” By Earl Wilkinson and Alan Atkins, Chapter 14. Meanwhile, Wilkinson also had been very busy. The lawyer, to whom he had given both the transcript and a check in order to obtain an opinion, returned both with apologies. The reason he could not take on the task was that his firm specialized in prosecuting paedophiles, not defending them. As Geoffrey Robertson Q. C. wrote in one of his books, “The most unpopular task any lawyer can undertake is that of defending paedophiles.” He decided that it was the turn of Atkins to pull it apart and see what could be found that might assist in the Appellant’s Brief that had to be considered when the case came up for review before the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, he invited Atkins to accompany him on his next visit to Wilson. The visit was so traumatic that, upon return, Atkins wrote it up in his computer while the emotion was fresh. It said: We sit on the concrete bench, smoking our cigarettes, looking out into the valley of lush grass and banana palms, enjoying the cool of the early morning. To get here at this time, we had both risen before the sun. Dawn had witnessed us in a taxi, being driven down the South Superhighway, away from the city of Manila and towards the town of Muntinlupa, home to Bilibid Prison. Our mission? To meet Albert Ernest Wilson, British subject, incarcerated on Death Row, waiting for his final appeal to be considered by the
