Anand Jon describes ordeal in letter to writer Sharon Waxman

Washington, July 24 : Indian fashion designer Anand Jon has written a letter from jail to writer Sharon Waxman, describing his ordeal.

Jon, who has been in LA County jail for 12 months due to legal gridlock as New York has refused to grant him a bail hearing, is facing rape charges and sexual battery in two separate cases.

In a telephone interview with Waxman, Jon said that he is '100 percent innocent' and now he has written a letter, in which he describes what all he is going through.

"I have not seen the sky in months - six, maybe seven. Kind of easy to lose track of time and yet be unbearably aware of its existence. I am awakened at around 5:30 a.m. usually and on court days about 4:30 a.m. and then remain in shackles while being "sergeant-escorted" to a tiny moving metal vertical coffin in a van and transported underground to the downtown court.

"The time in front of the judge is the only time I am not in shackles and handcuffed. The wait in the holding tanks, usually 3 feet by 7 feet high, is among those disorienting experiences that are carved into your sensory memory, some days as long as 18 hours, surrounded in filth of both indefinable and unidentifiable sources.

"Welcome to the strangest episode of my blessed life as I near one year in L.A. County jail. There is a possibility I may not survive this ordeal. "The threats against me escalated over the first five months, and it got so bad that my food was being kicked around and there were all-night howling sessions and hurling sessions of substances with such aggression that it is better not discussed.

"One deputy demanded why I eat kosher and how it meant to him that a rabbi spit into the food as a blessing. When I was arrested, the detective's severe racial and anti-Semitic comments echoed - the prejudice, the bigotry gave me a taste of what my ancestors endured.

"Before I was moved to total solitary confinement, I was on a "high profile" row and was constantly made fun of due to my total ignorance of "crime as a culture."

"Yoga, meditation, and the love of my family and God have sustained me as I grapple with blankets that have blood stains dried in tie-dyed patterns and battle nocturnal visits from entities that include, but are not limited to, rodents and insects. How much of it is my imagination? I'm not really sure. But the whole thing feels like a Stephen King novel turned into a movie directed by M. Night Shyamalan," he added.

ANI