Jackee Taylor

Written By Laine Carlsness
 

Jackee Taylor was put into the Federal Witness Protection program as a 7-year-old girl after her father, Clarence Crouch, a convicted killer and infamous member of the Hells Angels, turned and became a government informant. Jackee and her family have now been in Witness protection for nearly 40 years, but after a life full of hardship and struggle, she had enough and went public with her story - exposing the major flaws of the program and pushing for fundamental change. 

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In this episode, we talk about:

  • What it's like being coached into living a lie.

  • How Jackee learns of her father’s secret.

  • The struggles that come with a missing identity.

  • Why the Witness Protection Program is fundamentally flawed.

  • Jackee’s life mission to be the voice for others struggling.

Wise Words

  • I went from Jacquelyn Crouch to now Jacquelyn Taylor. So I had to write Jacquelyn Taylor, Jacquelyn Taylor, Jacquelyn Taylor, over and over and over until I filled up this entire notebook. I remember that and we were kind of coached into a lie of a life. So you have to imagine being a child you're always told to not lie, cheat, steal, you have the core things that your parents teach you and now at seven years old, I'm in a strange place and these government officials, I know that they're marshals. That's what we call them. They're telling us to lie. We have to lie to everybody and if we don't get our stories straight, it could be very dangerous and we could get killed.

  • So we were brought into the counselor’s office at school, Tom Pharaohs, all of us children and my mother just said point-blank, your father's not on a boat, he's a murderer and he's in prison and you're probably never going to see him again and that's how she told us. I mean, it was just horrific. My whole world was just absolutely shattered and I'll never forget the look on my counselor’s face. His mouth just dropped open and I thought he was going to start crying.

  • I have a hard time with my identification, so I have no birth certificate.

  • I can't get married in my county, I can't get a marriage license. I can't leave the country. I can't go to college.

  • I've always struggled with relationships. I was married once and I just kind of abandoned him. We had some problems when I left. I leave when things get tough. I never really figured out how to make it work and still 47 years old, I have no clue.

  • The witness protection program is very flawed fundamentally from the ground up. It really just needs to be restructured. Nothing has changed. I talk to people all the time that were just recently put in Wit Sec and nothing's changed and that's sad because I've been griping about this and the media for a long time, 12 years to be exact, and they're still not listening and they're still not making changes for us.

  • We are funding the marshals. We have no idea how much of our tax money is actually going into this witness security program and there has been no congressional oversight. There has been no congressional oversight since 1984. Why?

  • I talk about it a lot every day because I have a mission. So where I get healing and comfort from is knowing that by sticking to this mission, this is not what I wanted to do with my life, but I have to, because I am the voice of everybody else that is struggling in Wit Sec right now. So that is huge and important to me

  • there's always a bird outside singing. There's always something beautiful outside. You just have to look up, you have to find that

  • I don't want to get famous. I just want to live in Billings, Montana anonymously and lead my own life here. I don't want to do that. I just want to make some changes so that we can take care of these people that have nobody else to look out for them. I am literally the only person that is trying to help these people, and there are thousands.

  • There's always hope. There's always somebody that will listen. I'll listen.

  • Take care of your brain. If you're having bad thoughts. If people are telling you, you have to listen to the people around you too, if they're telling you, why are you so angry all the time? Why are you isolating? Listen to those people.

Links

Laine Carlsness

I'm Laine Carlsness – the broad behind Broadsheet Design and an East Bay-based graphic designer specializing in identity, web and print. I truly love what I do – creating from-the-ground-up creative solutions that are as unique as the clients who inspire them. I draw very few boxes around what a graphic designer should and shouldn't do – I've been known to photograph, illustrate, write copy, paint and hand-letter to get the job done.

http://www.broadsheetdesign.com/
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