Regina woman says she needed spirituality while in solitary confinement
VANCOUVER — A Regina woman who spent 3-1/2 years in solitary confinement cried Wednesday as she recalled how a spiritual ceremony led by a First Nations elder helped her through difficult times at a British Columbia prison.
BobbyLee Worm, 31, was testifying at a B.C. Supreme Court trial launched by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the John Howard Society of Canada over the use of indefinite solitary confinement.
Worm was sentenced to nearly six years in prison in June 2006 for armed robbery. She served time at the Edmonton Institution for Women before being transferred in July 2008 to the Fraser Valley Institution for Women in Abbotsford, B.C., where she occasionally participated in spiritual ceremonies.
Prison officials limited an elder to certain elements of a spiritual ceremony, she said.