Prison inmates to wed
They say love finds you when you least expect it. That certainly seems to be the case for two young people who met in a place most of us hope we never have to go. Although they have yet to even kiss, they feel their love is meant to last.
She has been serving a five-month sentence for the possession of a pipe used to smoke crack cocaine. He was sentenced to ten years for robbery and escape. Now it looks as if Pauline Williams and Sean Langshaw will be spending the rest of their lives together. Apparently both inmates have found love behind the bars of Hattieville Prison and wedding plans are underway.
Pauline Williams, Inmate
“When I first met Sean I had just got here. I was here about a couple weeks, about two to three weeks, and he was in the yard working and I was in my cell and he looked at me and he said something. And when he looked at me he told me about my eyes and when he told me about my eyes it was like right then I felt something for him and from there we started talking.”
Because the institution does not permit any physical contact between inmates, the couple, whose cells are several hundred yards apart, has only been able to communicate through hand signals and love letters.
Pauline Williams
“We communicated through letters basically; that is how we did our communication. Like I said I saw him in the yard. We smile at each other, talk to each other if we can but basically we grew spiritually.”
Sean Langshaw, Inmate
“Well, it has been difficult for me but I am strong in mind to resist all of that temptation and everything. And that’s how it is.”
The couple has been sharing their feelings for one another on paper for the past two months. Although both say it was love at first sight, Williams believes it was her faith in God that brought Sean into her life.
Pauline Williams
“Lately I have been praying, I have always prayed to want to know when this special person will come into my life, this special person for me. I always thought oh maybe not. The Lord always tells me, yeah he has this special person for me and I will know when that time is. When I met Sean I felt right then he was the one.”
Q: “Are you as spiritual as Pauline?”
Sean Langshaw
“Well not as spiritual, you know. I could be spiritual with her in my life.”
However Williams who was scheduled to be release on August eleventh, will now be discharged on Friday, the 6th due to good behavior. The intended groom will not be out until the year 2001. In order not to lose one another, the couple decided to tie the knot. But who popped the question?
Pauline Williams
“The asking well, oh… the asking. We kind of both got into that.”
Sean Langshaw
“I did. When I got locked down back at “max” then I said before she ever leave and leave this place you know, I’d just ask her to marry me. That’s when I ask her through a letter and then she responded.”
The date and location for the wedding, which Superintendent Keith Hamilton says will be performed off the prison grounds, have not yet been set, but Pauline wants to get married as soon as possible.
Pauline Williams
“Hopefully I will try to see if I can do it before the end of the month and get it over with. But it is going to be this month.”
At this time it is not known if Pauline and Sean will be able to have any honeymoon time after the wedding, or if Sean will be taking a lonely bus ride back to prison after the ceremony.
Keith Hamilton, Superintendent of Prisons
“He will not be released until another year or so but I will involve myself in this to see the possibility of having him legally spend the night with his first wife.”
Pauline Williams
“I feel that the relationship that we have is one of the best relationships that you can ever have because we have a spiritual relationship to start off with; we don’t have that personal relationship to start of with as yet.”
Sean Langshaw
“Well by she being strong until I get out and I could get myself a job and I can do things you know family-wise and stop living that stupid life that I was living before, start living for my family then.”
Hamilton says because Langshaw has shown signs of improving himself, it may be possible for him to get an early release.
