Rock-a-Bye Baby: A Death Behind Bars

Andrea Levan is Co-ordinator of Women’s Studies at Laurentian
University.

This book recounts the tragic life of Marlene Moore, the only woman ever
to be tried under the dangerous-offender provisions of the Canadian
Criminal Code and subsequently labelled by the press as “Canada’s
most dangerous woman.” Moore entered reform school at 13 and, except
for a few brief periods, spent the rest of her life behind bars. She
hanged herself at 31, in the federal penitentiary for women in Kingston,
Ontario.

Reporters Kershaw and Lasovich published a shorter version of this
story in the Kingston Whig-Standard, and the book retains the simplicity
and directness of a newspaper account. Moore seems to have had a
remarkable capacity to draw people to her, including such prominent
women as June Callwood, Maude Barlow, and filmmakers Janice Cole and
Holly Dale. In many ways, this book recreates that ability; it draws one
in, and makes one her advocate. At times, it appears uncannily to speak
with Moore’s own voice. For example, the haunting chapter headings are
excerpted from a sentence-completion test that Moore wrote for a
psychologist: “My friends don’t know . . . I am afraid of jails”;
“The worst thing I ever did . . . was to live”; “If I were in
charge . . . I’d change the correctional system.” This voice gives
the simple facts and, by and large, lets us draw our own conclusions.
What emerges is a devastating picture of the ravages of child abuse, the
lack of resources for victims of such abuse, and the correctional
system’s utter inadequacy to deal with it. Moore, like at least 70
percent of the women incarcerated in federal prison, was a victim of
child abuse, physically battered by her father and sexually abused by
brothers over a period of years. At 17 she was raped. For such victims,
the prison environment only recreates a situation they have known all
their lives, where they have no control over what happens to them and
where punishment and self-blame are the norm. And, again like many such
women, Moore dealt with her pain by turning it on herself, spending
hours rocking violently in her cell, or “slashing”: by the time she
died, her arms, thighs, and abdomen were a mass of scar tissue. The
correctional system usually responded to such behaviors with enforced
solitary confinement.

This book recreates Moore’s pain and forces us to see how
inadequately our society deals with suffering, especially women’s
suffering. But it also conveys Moore’s tremendous spirit, which
provides a powerful incentive for change.