‘IF YOU TELL ‘EM YOU WANT COUNSELING, THEY’LL MAKE YOU CRAZY FOR REAL.’;

CHARLES GOUCH

Palm Beach Post (Florida) January 23, 2000

Copyright 2000 Palm Beach Newspaper, Inc.

Candy Hatcher

Charles was antsy. Couldn’t sleep. Two years on the inside, two years of taking whatever the guards and inmates dished out, two years of keeping to himself, not making trouble, yes sir, no sir, whatever you say, sir. And now he was getting out. For Charles Gouch, life was going to be sweet, finally.

The 16-year-old, once a punk headed for a life sentence, looked forward to a hug from his grandmother, couldn’t wait for her to notice how much he’d grown (7 inches!), practically babbled about how he was going to get a job first thing. “I want something that’ll help my family out,” he said, “help pay the bills.”

He had taken a carpentry class and passed the skill tests that proved he knew building maintenance. The day before, he had taken the GED exam and felt pretty sure he’d done fine. He’d done everything he could think of to prepare himself to be a success on the outside, including staying out of trouble. Not one disciplinary report in two years.

During Charles’ last night at Indian River Correctional Institution near Vero Beach, he tossed and turned, woke up a dozen times, and finally, at 4 a.m., grabbed his things, folded his mattress and told his friends goodbye. To prepare him for freedom, the guards gave him “a lot of papers about new rules they got, like ‘use a gun and you’re done.’ ” Then he took off the uniform for inmate No. E03744 and stepped into new jeans, a polo shirt and tennis shoes.

A two-hour ride with friends to Seminole County, not far from Orlando, and he’d tell “the sweetest lady in the world” – his grandmother – how much he loved her.

No, he didn’t want to eat; his stomach was twirling. No, he didn’t have any plans, other than visiting Grandma. No, he didn’t have any fears about being out – except going back.

“Unless you’re dead or a bum laid out on the street,” he said, “it’s the worst position you can be in.”

He had spent 33 months in jail and prison, an awfully long time when you’re 13 and used to no restrictions. He’d grown up, become a Christian, written poetry, learned the importance of an education. And he wasn’t looking back.

He looked out the window as the car drove through Casselberry to Altamonte Springs. New restaurants. New video stores. Lots of changes since his arrest in February 1997. The car turned on Depugh Street. He saw that old black dog still wandering around. Then his aunt’s house. And then everybody rushed him, crowded him, Aunt Precious and his mother and his uncle and Aunt Deborah, and they were all crying and hurrying him inside.

Grandma, they told him, was dying. The hospital called. Come now.

Charles was destined for prison. His father is at Sumter Correctional Institution in Central Florida, serving 22 years for lewd and lascivious acts with children. One brother is there, too, serving 60 years for murder. The other brother is at Lancaster Correctional Institution, near Gainesville, on drug charges. His mother has abused drugs.

Charles doesn’t know why his father is in prison. He knows only that he hasn’t been around for years. His role models were his brothers, particularly the one only five years older. He “did things I wanted to do. He was living that type of life, doing bad things, illegal things, getting lots of money for it.”

Only his grandmother provided guidance and love, cooked wonderful meals of fried chicken, macaroni and cheese and spaghetti, and encouraged him to go to school. “Grandma used to teach me a lot of things,” he said. “I tried to understand. I should have listened to her. If I would’ve, I wouldn’t have been” in prison. But by the time Charles was in fifth grade, his grandmother, who had heart problems, was confined to bed.

Charles began going out at night, skipping school. “I was real disrespectful,” he recalled. His school suspended him once for fighting. His grades dropped: one B, four C’s, one F. He began smoking marijuana. When he was 12, police charged him with robbery and assault, but a judge withheld convictions. In February 1997, he was charged again with assault.

Two weeks later, Charles took a gun and went with a friend to a shopping-center garage to steal a car. Charles walked up to a man who had just stepped out of a Pontiac Grand Prix, demanded the keys and pointed the gun at the woman in the passenger’s seat. When she got out, Charles backed up, drove forward and hit a pole. He jumped out, leaving the gun in the car, and ran.

Police found him a block away. They said he had a bad attitude. They arrested him on charges of armed robbery, burglary with assault while armed with a firearm and leaving the scene of an accident. Prosecutors said Charles’ crimes were too serious for juvenile court. So at 13, Charles became an adult.

Seminole County Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. wasn’t comfortable with the idea of sending Charles, then 14, to prison with adults.

“I want to hear from his own mouth that he did the act that got him to the point where he is standing before a circuit judge facing life in prison . . . it is not a game,” Judge Lester said before he accepted Charles’ plea. “Where’d you get the gun?”

Charles told him a friend gave it to him.

“What did you do with the gun?”

“Rob somebody.”

“Did you point the gun at the person?”

 “Yes.”

“Did you threaten them in any way?”

“Yes. I really don’t remember exactly what I said.”

“Mr. Gouch, let me be real blunt with you here. I didn’t mean to torture you. I’m not going to sentence someone to prison when they’re age 14 for three years unless I hear from your mouth that you did it.”

He sentenced Charles to three years in a prison for criminals no older than 24, ordered him to spend seven years on probation, required him to pay for the damage to the Grand Prix and said he had to get his high school diploma, seek a job when he got out and perform 100 hours of community service.

Then Judge Lester allowed deputies to remove Charles’ handcuffs so he could hug his mother. “You’re a 14-year- old going to prison for three years,” he told the boy. “You’re going to have a tough row to hoe, but nobody put you there but yourself. Nobody made you go out there and get a gun and stick it in people’s faces. So when you look in the mirror in the morning, you have nobody to blame but yourself. Your mother didn’t make you do it. Your friends didn’t make you do it. Your attorney didn’t make you do it. You did it to yourself. And you’re also the only person who can change your life and get it back on the right road. So, hopefully, you will learn from this.”

Rise at 4 a.m. Wait in line to use the bathroom.,

Get dressed. Make the bed. Sweep the room. Line up shoes for inspection. That was the easy part. The hard part was figuring out whom to trust. Charles learned quickly. “Hold your peace, keep your mouth shut and do what the officer said.”

“We had one person last week tried to kill theirself,” he said. “They didn’t want to kill but didn’t know how to ask for help. If you tell ’em you want counseling, they’ll make you crazy for real.”

He recalled one counselor at another prison who kept bringing Charles to his office. The counselor repeatedly asked Charles what method he would use if he were going to kill himself. Charles kept saying he never would commit suicide. The counselor continued to ask the question. “I finally told him, ‘With a rope.’ ” The next thing he knew, he was “butt-naked in a cage for a week.” Solitary confinement. On suicide watch.

Meanwhile, his contact with the outside dwindled. His mother stopped writing. His friends seemed to forget about him. “I went six months with no letters, period.”

He wrote his grandmother, who occasionally sent money: “I’m trying to get my GED while I’m here. I’ve already graduated a carpentry class about two months ago. So when I come home I probably won’t have to go to school. Just remember, Grandma, that I love you always and forever.”

He wrote poetry about his hopes for a unified, colorblind nation, and about how feeling love also means being hurt. He grew strong. He focused on preparing for a new life and making sure nothing, no one, botched it for him. During his last week, some of the guards taunted him, tried to make him mess up, earn a disciplinary report that would require him to stay in prison longer. He ignored them. He thought about his grandmother, who was 80. “She won’t be here too long, and I know that. I have to tell her how I feel.”

Charles got to the hospital as soon as he could. His grandmother was in a lot of pain. The family had told her, “Just hold on. Li’l Chuck’s coming home.” She worried she wouldn’t make it, Charles said later, so “she asked God to see me one more time before she left.”

God answered that prayer. Doretha Williams died that night.

The next morning, a Saturday, Charles went to the probation office to fill out paperwork and begin fulfilling his obligations. The office was closed.

He’s living with his aunt. He gets along with his mother. He spent Christmas around lots of family. But he’s a felon on a short leash. His probation officer, he said, shows up at 5:30 a.m. just to see whether he’s home. He’s been looking for a job, but when employers find out his background, they don’t hire him.

He has hopes for a job paving roads. “They want young people so they can teach them,” he said, adding, optimistically, “They didn’t ask if I had a felony.”

– An excerpt from a letter Charles Gouch wrote to his grandmother: . . . Soon I’ll be home again to see and be with you all. . . . Just remember, Grandma, that I love you always and forever and God bless you.

Love, Li’l Chuck