In 1990 I was sentenced to a term of 25 years in prison for a crime of sexual battery. While I was being held at a jail waiting to be transferred to a maximum-security institution, I was handed a letter addressed to someone else. The woman who wrote the letter had been watching the news and had heard a man say he was innocent of the crime of which he had been accused. She had been praying to know how to help her community as a Christian Scientist and had turned on the news at the moment the man was speaking. The letter she wrote offered Christian Science literature, which could teach him how the truth could make him free. That letter found its way into the hands of my cellmate (who was not that man). He was about to throw it away, but asked me if I'd like to answer it.
I'd never heard of Christian Science and thought it might be a way to get a Christian pen pal. So I answered the letter. I received something far greater than a pen pal. Because of what my new friend wrote to me, I began to learn a new way of thinking about God, myself, and others. I began to study the Christian Science Quarterly Weekly Bible Lesson, and I read the Christian Science Sentinel.
I was transferred to another prison and requested a visit with a Christian Science chaplain. I told her that I wanted to contact my victim to ask forgiveness for my crime. She encouraged me to do so. I did this and was forgiven. The hardest part, though, was forgiving myself. I needed a lot of reformation. But because of the new way I was thinking of myself, as a child of God, without a bad history, I began to make progress. The chaplain came every week to read the Bible Lesson with me, and finally I asked if we could have church services at the prison. Soon my friends and I were attending Christian Science services each week.
