Incarceration: Rehabilitation not part of Angel Facio's life
He'd be taking classes at Elgin Community College by now, he imagines.
Angel Facio had always wanted to be a chef.
“Eggs con chorizo” were one of the specialties he used to make for his family back in Elgin, he recalls with a shy smile.
But his stabbing of an Elgin High teacher three years ago — which prompted the expedited prosecution of two earlier crimes — put his plans for a future on hold.
Because of his fits of violence, he'll be in adult prison for the next 10 years.
Now he waits out the days in near isolation. Loneliness and anger drove him to attack. What will happen when he is freed at age 29?
Facio, now 19, pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder in the Jan. 18, 2008, attack on Elgin High School family and consumer science teacher Carolyn Gilbert. He stabbed her over and over again in the head, neck and eye.
He was sentenced three years ago to juvenile corrections for 18 months, with the provision that he'd have to serve a 17-year sentence in adult prison if he misbehaved.
At first, Facio served time at state youth centers in St. Charles and then in downstate Kewanee. Diagnosed with depression, he was placed on Zoloft and Prozac and was getting mental health and sex offender treatment, Kane County State's Attorney Christine Bayer said in court. Facio's days were filled with individual and group therapy sessions, classes and activities with other inmates. He earned his GED in just a year.
Jennifer Jaworski, behavioral health services administrator at the state's juvenile justice department, says interaction with others is one of the most basic philosophical differences in the approach between the state's juvenile justice facilities and its adult prisons.
“If you're treating kids, keeping a kid locked up in a cell isn't going to do any good,” Jaworski said.
“Many of these kids have trouble relating with others. You don't fix that by parking them off in a room on their own.”
The adult prisons where Facio ended up because of his own actions are all about punishment.
Rehabilitation was the idea, originally.
“Facio would better benefit from juvenile facilities,” James Corcoran, the DuPage County jail chief psychiatrist, said in his 2008 evaluation of the teen. “It would better help him deal with his conflicts and mental-health issues ... providing a better opportunity to change things.”
With another serious conviction on the books, Facio lost that opportunity. He soon would bounce from adult prison to adult prison, presumably, experts say, because he acted out.
After his conviction in the Gilbert stabbing, he pleaded guilty in Kane County adult court to the sexual assault of an 8-year-old girl and received a 16-year sentence. He began serving that sentence concurrently with the juvenile one.
Facio will have been imprisoned for more than 13 years by the time he is released. He is registered as a sex offender.
Facio spoke about his prison life for the first time from Lawrence Correctional Center in downstate Sumner, a 2,300-inmate high security prison, 5½ hours southeast of his former Elgin home.
Rehabilitation is a distant memory.
He spends 23 hours a day alone in a cell.
During the long days in “seg,” an option he chose in order to get away from a cellmate, Facio says he sometimes thinks about what he did, and what he should have done differently.
“Acting like that isn't a way for a man, for any person, to act,” he said. “I was just trying to run away from my problems instead of facing them.”
As a sophomore at Elgin High three years ago, Facio says he didn't think he could talk to his parents, whose lives were in chaos amid their own emotional, financial and drug problems.
But even then, without his parents' help, he realized there had been another way.
“My health teacher said teachers are supposed to be there for us,” he said.
“You can go to any of your teachers and they will deal with (your problems) in a proper manner. I know I could have talked to any of my teachers.”
But it wouldn't have been cool, he says.
“I didn't see none of my friends talk to nobody about their problems. I just wanted to fit in a little bit.”
Facio blames his parents, in part, “but I also take part of the blame. I could have been better,” he said.
Now, he is reminded daily that life is moving on without him.
In six months, no one has come to see him. His mother wrote him a handwritten letter, saying she was in the hospital a few months ago, but he doesn't know why. His father, a native of Mexico, can't write in English.
Facio's two best pals, friends from their days at Larsen Middle School, long ago severed their ties.
He tried, for a time, to call them. But something went wrong with their phones, he thinks.
“I kind of wonder what they made out of their lives,” he said.
Facio's family moved out of the suburbs, but he doesn't know when, or even whether his parents have gotten a divorce. His mother has declined repeated requests for comment since her son's attack.
Facio's youngest brother is now 8. He joined the Cub Scouts, Facio says he heard, his face breaking into a wide smile.
It's a sort of limbo, this place.
Facio spends his one free hour walking around and going to the library. He'll read books by Dan Brown and James Patterson, anything he can get his hands on.
He says he's adapted.
Facio says he talks to the prison “health care people” sometimes about his problems, and knows how to better deal with frustrations.
“I don't get pissed about (expletive),” he said.
“Being in prison has a little to do with it. People say you cannot let that ... (expletive) bother you. You can only worry about the big ... (expletive). ... Getting out, school, people trying to cause you problems.”
Why'd he do it? Will he be able to control his rage when he is released? The questions remain.
A U.S. Surgeon General report on violent youth noted that 23 percent of those who initiated violence after age 13 became chronic offenders.
John Fallon, a psychiatrist who has spent the past 30 years helping released prisoners readjust, says Facio's time in adult prison might increase the likelihood he'll attack again. As Facio ages, Fallon says, his only frame of reference will be prison life, which will hinder development of his coping skills.
“He's not going to be better, that's for sure,” Fallon said. “He's going to be stronger, bigger, less likely to listen.”
Lawrence, like prisons throughout the state, has a psychological staff on hand providing crisis intervention, medication management, and group and individual therapy, says state corrections department spokeswoman Sharyn Elman.
Elman declined to disclose specifics of Facio's treatment, noting his file is sealed because of privacy laws.
The Illinois Department of Corrections, she wrote in an email, “has dedicated mental health professionals that provide coverage systemwide. We treat inmates with mental health illnesses with the same clinical assessments, therapies and necessary medications as individuals would receive outside of the prison system.”
Yet, Fallon says the culture of adult corrections — incarceration and isolation — goes against the goals of mental health treatment.
“Prison sort of freezes your developmental stage,” he said.
For incarcerated teens, that's a recipe for disaster, says Gene Griffin, a lawyer and psychology professor at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.
“Think of adult corrections as being based on a rational act or model,” Griffin said. “Somebody does something wrong, you punish them. And eventually a rational person learns not to do that. It's a bad model for kids, because kids don't act rationally and are much more emotional.”
John Maki, spokesman for the prison watchdog group the John Howard Association, called prison “an extremely blunt instrument” by nature.
“We put mental health on the criminal system. It's not what they're designed to do,” he said.
Facio says he won't attack again.
But isolation still consumes him, just as it did back in Elgin before he hid a knife up his sleeve and stabbed his teacher at least seven times.
“Yeah, I feel a little better,” Facio said. “But there's still depression 'cause I've still gotta face problems in here. It's seeing your family leave, not going with them. That's hard. Not receiving no mail. You've also got to have the right cellies, too. You've got to get lucky in here.”