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September 7, 2007

Sending love from Azores prison, by Webcam / Photo

Journal photo / Kathy Borchers
Lucy Frank, on the monitor with her cousin, talks to her mother and daughter from an Azores prison today.

NORTH DARTMOUTH, Mass. -- The 16-year-old twirled to show off her cute figure and got a kick out of her mother’s eyebrow piercing. They also repeated, “I love you,” and blew kisses in each other’s direction.

It was a common family moment in a not-so-common setting.

Cameras flashed with each gesture today while reporters scribbled down their intimate dialogue. And Tonya Desrosiers, of Fall River, had to talk to a computer screen set up in a prison in order to see her mother in person for the very first time.

Previously, she had only viewed pictures and shared letters with Lucy Frank.

Frank’s shoplifting and other small crimes in Massachusetts left her in and out of jail for most of Desrosiers’ early childhood, her family explained. The 47-year-old mother was finally deported to the Azores -- a Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean -- about nine years ago.

She is one of about 75 former Bristol County residents who have been sent to the Azores by immigration officials in the last three years.

“[Seeing her] is good, but it just makes me miss her more,” the high school student said. “I didn’t think it would be like this. I thought I would be able to talk to my mom…. But I am grateful.”

The Webcam communication was coordinated by the Azorean minister of interior, Portugal’s director of prisons and Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, who visited the country last month. The two foreign officials asked Hodgson to help pilot the video visitation program, which is a first for their country.

Bristol County was chosen because the area has more Azorean residents than the nine islands’ populations combined, said staff from the Bristol County House of Corrections.

“This helps dissipate the anger and anti-American sentiment children have when they’ve lost their parents [because of deportation],” said Hodgson while also stating it may minimize the separation anxiety.

The inmates who will participate in the pilot program, which plans to have families’ video visiting monthly, were deported and then committed crimes in the Azores. Frank is in a jail in Ponta Delgada, the islands’ capital city, for murder. She killed an abusive ex-boyfriend shortly after Christmas last year, the family said.

“This girl had to defend herself and she just snapped,” said Frances Rogers, Frank’s sister, who agreed to let the media watch because she thinks her sister’s story may help others. “She’s not proud of what she did, but her heart could only take so much.”

-- Journal staff writer Alisha A. Pina

Posted by Mike McKinney  at 6:30 PM | Permalink

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Mike | September 9, 2007 7:02 PM link

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