Evelyn Mason

Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter

A cocaine dealer, a two-time deportee who founded Land of Our Birth Ministries, assisting others forced to return to Jamaica - Evelyn Mason has always been a strong woman.

"Heinous, a very hard girl," explains a male relative of the 51-year-old Evelyn, once known as 'Yardie Pam' or 'Fat Pam'. "She knows how to seduce people, to manipulate them and influence them to traffic the drugs."

In her London heyday Evelyn was so good at being feared, she never had to resort to violence. That was until she kidnapped a woman who stole from her in a drug deal. That woman fell three stories from an apartment block trying to escape the person now known to her Christian brothers and sisters as 'Evangelist Mason'.

She was punished with a jail term of three and a quarter years before being deported to Jamaica in 1994. She still regards this as unfair - double jeopardy she calls it. However, she blames nothing but her own greed for becoming a drug dealer and before that, a prolific shoplifter.

Trouble

"I just wanted to do it big and done, than do it small because you are still going to get into trouble," she says, explaining how she took over her jailed baby father's drug business, and expanded it. However, the fall was hard, leaving her four children behind in her adopted country of 15 years, before her citizenship application could be completed.

"I came back to Jamaica a bitter and angry person. You see trouble can either make you a bitter or an angry person," she explains. "I was very bitter because I had lost a lot. I lost my Mercedes Benz, my BMW car, I had lost my jewellery, I lost my home, my children were elsewhere, so it was back to base with nothing."

Upon deportation her immediate intention was to "flood the UK with drugs", as she freely admits.

With her family having relocated her children to the United States during her stay in prison, she began smuggling cocaine north. But it was the five-year jail time and her subsequent and second deportation from the United States, which saved her.

A drug mule arriving on the same flight had informed on her when collared. Threatening to kill the hapless mule, she terrorised him in the court room.

Back in her cell she began reading the Bible which led to her salvation and later in court, "I told him that I loved him - he thought I was mad!"

Calling

For the deportees who flood into Jamaica every week from the U.S., United Kingdom and Canada, her calling is more easily understood. Evelyn introduces a 63-year-old woman to The Gleaner - someone who might best understand her.

They shared jail time together but are from different levels in the hierarchy of the drug trade. Jackieis one of many poor Jamaican women who have become 'drug mules', smuggling cocaine out of the country, strapped to their bodies or intravenously.

Despite reported successes by law enforcement agencies at points of entry, for some such as Jackie, poverty can force them to try again.

Once she was caught and imprisoned when smuggling for Evelyn. Her situation has become desperate as she attempts to support two grandchildren who are still in school; her own offspring having died. She owes $20,000 to a smuggler who is ransoming her passport and valid six-month U.S. visa. It is a stark choice: sacrifice money she does not yet have to start her cook shop; or smuggle.

She does not look like a criminal and indeed many other deportees are not. In fact (29 per cent of all deportations between 1990 and 2005 were due to immigration breaches. Most deportations ordered by the U.K. were for this reason. However, the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) report that deportees are in charge of many criminal gangs.

By contrast, Jackie's demeanour is of beaten resignation.

"Sometimes I do a day's work an tings like dat. I don't want to take more drugs. Mi jus' want travel," says Jackie. But asked whether she might yet resort to smuggling, if only to have these opportunities returned to her, she nods.

These days it is, of course, not cocaine, but packages donated by Food For the Poor, that Evelyn delivers to deportees like Jackie, who are unable to support themselves and their dependants. As a volunteer Evelyn's resources - earned from preaching and motivational speaking - are stretched.

"We as dealers; that's how we hang onto the people," she explains of Jackie's dilemma. "We have the money and we will lend you the money. It's a deposit towards the work they are going to carry out for us. I would love to help to get back that $20,000 and take back that passport for her, but I don't have $20,000."

"It's not easy!" she sighs.

Government persistently lobbies the 'Big Deporting Three' of the U.K., U.S. and Canada for more assistance, arguing that it is as much their problem being dumped on Jamaica. At home social interventions are essential to enable rehabilitation of deportees maintains 52-year-old David Mullings, who was ordered home from the U.S., where he moved with his family in 1969 and worked as a school guidance counsellor.

David considered forming his own organisation before coming into contact with Evelyn's, who he assists on days like this.

Rehabilitation programme

Evelyn Mason, former drug dealer. - photos by Ross Sheil

Today is the arrival of the monthly 'Con Air' flight from the United States, bringing home deportees to be processed and inducted into Evelyn's Deportee Rehabilitation and Reintegration Programme. Besides their particulars they are asked to state their health status, substance abuse and other needs - deficiencies she hopes to help them with.

"You are locked out of the equal opportunities available to the rest of society," says David. While inside the church, the party of about 40 male deportees, are filling out documents and being interviewed by authorities. "If you do not have the support, it's likely that you will do something wrong because without the support, what else can you do?!

Most of the men have family here, but for some like David, home was the deporting country, and they return to nothing. In these cases, Evelyn tries to find them a place at a halfway house, and on some occasions, in her own home.

Back inside the church Evelyn is exhorting the deportees to follow her example, which is met by loud applause from an understandably tired-looking audience. They will remain for several hours more until their processing is complete.

An alien culture

They, and others like them can be 'wounded animals', maintains Evelyn. They may be angry, as she was, helpless, or unable to find employment due to stigma or a lack of relevant skills or education. Those who have been away for long, often since their teenage years, must adjust to what has become an alien culture.

She resents the stigma that deportees boost the crime rate; and the argument advanced by government; and the recent study on the issue by the Ministry of National Security that there is a "strong correlation between increased deportation and increases in the murder rate".

University of the West Indies Mona criminologist Professor Bernard Headley, has conducted his own research into criminal deportation, and strongly criticised that assertion when repeated in Parliament by Minister of National Security Dr. Peter Phillips last year.

One of Professor Headley's students, 20-year-old Chenelle Taylor is assisting Evelyn during the summer months, having met her when she was invited to the university to make a presentation. With ambitions of becoming a forensic psychologist, Chenelle has an interest in the issue and shares Evelyn's belief that deportee's are over-stigmatised.

"The fact that she doesn't have any funding from government, and pays out of her own pocket, is inspiring to me," she says.

Apart from the assistance of fellow deportees and her socially aware student, notwithstanding support from the Church community, Evelyn remains a one-woman operation. Her 'office' is a single desk, allowed to her by Commissioner of Corrections Major Richard Reese, and only recently she acquired a laptop computer.

With the rate of deportations more than tripling in 15 years, between 1990 and 2005, reaching a total of 33,268, Evelyn believes she is struggling against what she terms an epidemic.

"I am hoping that when I speak out somebody will come forward and help, and yes, I will donate something," she implores. "Everybody needs a fresh beginning, a new start in life, and if you don't get it what are you going to do? It's rough and somebody needs to say something."

Name changed to protect identity.

ross.sheil@gleanerjm.com