Read Online Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Hardcover by Jeff Guinn - Free Book Online
Authors: Jeff Guinn
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Uncle Bill’s gun to using a weapon in a holdup. Charlie was still just thirteen.
In Peoria, Charlie and Blackie worked for the latter’s uncle as apprentice thieves much like Dickens’s fictional Oliver Twist and Artful Dodger. But in real life Charlie had more in common with his mother, Kathleen, and Uncle Luther—he could never avoid capture long. After just two weeks of quasi-adult thievery he was back in custody; police nabbed him in an after-dark attempt to rob a Peoria business. The subsequent investigation linked Charlie to his two armed robberies, and this time there was no sympathetic judge to sentence him to Boys Town. Instead, Charlie was packed off to the Indiana Boys School in Plainfield, the type of institution commonly known as a “reform school.” As with Gibault, student inmates there attended academic classes and took courses to learn employable trades.Unlike Gibault, boys at the facility in Plainfield weren’t modestly rebellious and considered in need of relatively gentle correction. Ranging in age from ten to twenty-one, some Boys School inmates were there on a general charge of “incorrigibility,” but many others among the four-hundred-plus juvenile population were in Plainfield for crimes like armed robbery and manslaughter. Accordingly, the Boys School was a sternly regimented place. Some staffers were devoted to disciplining rather thanencouraging. Boys could receive whatever amount of physical correction adult staffers deemed appropriate. This ran a torturous gamut from simple whippings with paddles to duck walking (staggering painfully about with hands clasping ankles) and table bending (arching backward with shoulder blades barely touching the surface of a table; just holding that position for a few moments ensured that a boy could not walk normally for hours afterward). Even youngsters who behaved suffered physically on a regular basis. When they weren’t in class—and classes were often canceled because teachers quit—students were frequently farmed out as field hands to local farmers who paid 50 cents an hour for the help. (The boys were allowed to keep 30 cents.) When staffers weren’t paying close attention on school grounds during the day or in dormitories at night, bigger, older inmates had ample opportunity to physically and sexually brutalize smaller boys. For undersized boys like Charlie, the ultimate goal at Plain-field was not to reform, but to survive.
• • •
When Charlie Manson arrived at the Boys School in early 1949, he found himself in an environment where his usual tactics of lying, intimidating, whining, and otherwise manipulating others to get his way were ineffective. For all Charlie’s remarkable criminal record for one so young, he was a beginner compared to lots of others boys in Plainfield. He claimed later that he was almost immediately raped by other students, who sodomized Charlie with the encouragement of a particularly sadistic staff member. If that is an embellishment, it is undoubtedly true that tiny Charlie was forced into sexual acts by stronger boys. Such experiences led him to develop an almost detached view of rape, whether suffered by himself or others. He said sixty years later,“You know, getting raped, they can just wipe that off . . . I don’t feel that someone got violated and it’s a terrible thing. I just thought clean it off, that’s all that is.”
Charlie couldn’t cut classes as he had back in Charleston, but he still couldn’t read beyond a basic grasp of a few printed words. He may have suffered from some learning disability, but such things weren’t tested or even acknowledged at the Boys School.Reports from teachers indicate that Charlie “did good work only for those from whom he figured he could obtain something,” and that he “professed no trust in anyone.”
Since he was in constant danger of being beaten and suffering sexualassault, it was at Plainfield thatCharlie developed a lifelong defense
In Peoria, Charlie and Blackie worked for the latter’s uncle as apprentice thieves much like Dickens’s fictional Oliver Twist and Artful Dodger. But in real life Charlie had more in common with his mother, Kathleen, and Uncle Luther—he could never avoid capture long. After just two weeks of quasi-adult thievery he was back in custody; police nabbed him in an after-dark attempt to rob a Peoria business. The subsequent investigation linked Charlie to his two armed robberies, and this time there was no sympathetic judge to sentence him to Boys Town. Instead, Charlie was packed off to the Indiana Boys School in Plainfield, the type of institution commonly known as a “reform school.” As with Gibault, student inmates there attended academic classes and took courses to learn employable trades.Unlike Gibault, boys at the facility in Plainfield weren’t modestly rebellious and considered in need of relatively gentle correction. Ranging in age from ten to twenty-one, some Boys School inmates were there on a general charge of “incorrigibility,” but many others among the four-hundred-plus juvenile population were in Plainfield for crimes like armed robbery and manslaughter. Accordingly, the Boys School was a sternly regimented place. Some staffers were devoted to disciplining rather thanencouraging. Boys could receive whatever amount of physical correction adult staffers deemed appropriate. This ran a torturous gamut from simple whippings with paddles to duck walking (staggering painfully about with hands clasping ankles) and table bending (arching backward with shoulder blades barely touching the surface of a table; just holding that position for a few moments ensured that a boy could not walk normally for hours afterward). Even youngsters who behaved suffered physically on a regular basis. When they weren’t in class—and classes were often canceled because teachers quit—students were frequently farmed out as field hands to local farmers who paid 50 cents an hour for the help. (The boys were allowed to keep 30 cents.) When staffers weren’t paying close attention on school grounds during the day or in dormitories at night, bigger, older inmates had ample opportunity to physically and sexually brutalize smaller boys. For undersized boys like Charlie, the ultimate goal at Plain-field was not to reform, but to survive.
• • •
When Charlie Manson arrived at the Boys School in early 1949, he found himself in an environment where his usual tactics of lying, intimidating, whining, and otherwise manipulating others to get his way were ineffective. For all Charlie’s remarkable criminal record for one so young, he was a beginner compared to lots of others boys in Plainfield. He claimed later that he was almost immediately raped by other students, who sodomized Charlie with the encouragement of a particularly sadistic staff member. If that is an embellishment, it is undoubtedly true that tiny Charlie was forced into sexual acts by stronger boys. Such experiences led him to develop an almost detached view of rape, whether suffered by himself or others. He said sixty years later,“You know, getting raped, they can just wipe that off . . . I don’t feel that someone got violated and it’s a terrible thing. I just thought clean it off, that’s all that is.”
Charlie couldn’t cut classes as he had back in Charleston, but he still couldn’t read beyond a basic grasp of a few printed words. He may have suffered from some learning disability, but such things weren’t tested or even acknowledged at the Boys School.Reports from teachers indicate that Charlie “did good work only for those from whom he figured he could obtain something,” and that he “professed no trust in anyone.”
Since he was in constant danger of being beaten and suffering sexualassault, it was at Plainfield thatCharlie developed a lifelong defense
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