The Damage Done

In 1978, Warren Fellows was caught red-handed in Thailand airport for drug dealing and was thrown to Bangkok's most notorious prison, Bang Kwang prison. Here, he lived for 12 years and all the stories of brutality and terror behind this 'hell on earth' are told in the Bestselling True Story, Damage Done.

Warren wrote this book to share his experience of non-human treatment the prisoners received while being imprisoned. I let Warren explained it to you, "I do not tell this story to bring pity to myself. I know that many people hate me for what i did and would believe that i deserved whatever i got. I can only ask those people to keep reading. If, at the end of my story, you still believe that anyone could deserve the horrors that i saw, then you, too, are a criminal. A vengeful and sadistic one. Maybe you just haven't been caught yet."

Warren had been transferred to a few prisons beside Bang Kwang, he'd been imprisoned in Maha Chai and Lard Yao prisons as well. Although the treatment between these prisons are different but they are still categorized as 'hell'. Can this 'hell' really change criminals to be a better person while inside or after they are out to the real world? Perhaps prisons are where one is suppresed from doing crime and when they are out, they are free once again. Change starts from the heart, we have no need to go far.

How is the condition inside these prisons that Warren been to? I'll write some incidents written on this book to give everyone a glimpse on the notorious prisons of Bangkok.

"David told us to hold the Frenchman down, as he was going to lance the lump with the razor. As soon as the blade sliced the skin, the wound opened up like a new flower. And out of the gash in the Frenchman's neck spilled hundreds of tiny, worm-like creatures, wriggling and oozing out like spaghetti...According to the hospital staff who examined him later, a cockroach had crawled into his ear, burrowed through to his neck and laid its eggs. A man who, somewhere, had a mother and a father, family and friends, had been left to become a living nest for maggots." - pg x-xi

"I was so starving hungry I thought i could have eaten anything. But when i saw what was offered - 3 plates of rice on the ground with a dirty liquid that looked like it might be some kind of stagnant soup - i began to lose my appetite immediately." - pg 53

"The thing people don't realise is that it's not appliances and simple comforts that give people their freedom, but the ability to exercise options. To eat when you want to, shower when you want to, go for a walk or talk to a particular person late at night. These are the things you really notice when they are taken away from you". - pg 54

"In the morning we were taken downstairs for a bath. This consisted of stripping naked and splashing ourselves with water from a horse trough. The water itself was filthy, siphoned from a nearby river which was full of excrement and rotting carccasses of animals." - pg 55

"I had heard of a game once played in Maha Chai - a game that had gone on to become something of a legend. I never saw this happen myself, but i saw drawings the other prisoners had done that depicted the game." - pg 57

"...we would be shackled like animals everyday. It seemed unbelievable that these chains, so rusty and dirty and already eating into my ankles, would not be off my feet at anytime..." - pg 59

"..the entire cell was so thick with the smell of excrement that there was scarcely any point in using the toilet." - pg 60

"It was Building Two that the prisoners feared most. Building Two was the punishement building, and it housed some of the darkrooms...that absolutely no sunlight penetrated the blackness of the darkrooms." - pg 60

On sewer rats: "They'd come out at night in little packs and they'd ferociously attack, biting chunks out of you as you slept. It was dreadful. If you tried to defend yourself, say, by kicking at them, they were quick enough to take a piece out of your foot.." - pg 62

"After 2 days, i was awoken one night to hear the distinct sound of a woman's voice..it seemed to echo eerily throughout the building...Building Nine, he said, used to be the women's prison, a place of terrible reputation where rape and murder were daily occurrences." - pg 100-101

"...Bang Kwang is an evil place where no foreigner should be sent, no matter how serious their crime." - pg 117

"Your embassy comes once a month, and you get 30 minutes with them. Get this perfectly clear - the other 30 days, i've got you for every minute. Do you understand?" - Bang Kwang's guard's common threat - pg 126

"They beat him so badly i could not understand why he was still alive and breathing. His skin was broken and streaming with blood. A bone on his arm was sticking out through the flesh and his legs were crippled and mishappen....As if sensing they had pushed him to within an inch of his life, the guards stopped." - pg 128

What right have we got to torture other humans? If yes, then we are arrogant to say that we are living without faults and sins.

More gruesome stories by Fellows in his book: