05/12/2026
To the Sheriff,
I am writing this letter because what happened to me while in your custody changed my life, and I refuse to let my experience be buried in silence.
I know there are people who entered those walls and never made it back out. Their stories were buried with them. But I am still here, and I will tell mine.
I was sick. I suffered a seizure. I was vulnerable, confused, and in need of medical care and human compassion. Instead, I was treated with violence and humiliation. An officer repeatedly kicked me in the head, tore my hijab from me, mocked my faith, and called me “Taliban” as if my religion made me less human.
No person should ever endure that — not in jail, not anywhere.
What hurts almost as much as the physical pain is knowing that this happened under the authority of a system that is supposed to protect people in its custody. I left not only injured, but traumatized. Doctors questioned my cognitive condition afterward. I returned home needing a walker. My dignity, my health, and my sense of safety were taken from me in a place where I had no ability to protect myself.
I keep asking myself how human beings could look at someone clearly suffering and still choose cruelty. I may never understand that.
But I do know this: silence protects abuse.
I am writing because I need you to understand that behind every report, every inmate number, every incident file, there is a real human being. A mother. A grandmother. A person with faith, fear, pain, and dignity.
What happened to me should never happen to another person again.
I do not want my suffering ignored, minimized, or buried. I want accountability. I want acknowledgment. And I want you to know that even though others may have lost their voices behind those walls, I still have mine.
And I will use it.
Sincerely, Sharon Tolbert
