Biography
Theresa Cusimano is a Denver, Colorado-based Catholic Worker and longtime peace activist who has been arrested repeatedly for SOA Watch line-crossings at Fort Benning, Georgia in protest of the U.S. Army School of the Americas / Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), as well as for Plowshares-style actions at U.S. nuclear weapons facilities. She served a six-month federal sentence following her 2007 SOA Watch line-crossing.
Each November on the anniversary of the assassination of six Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter at the University of Central America in San Salvador in 1989, peace activists gather at the gates of Fort Benning to commemorate the dead and to call for the school's closure. Hundreds have crossed the line onto the base over four decades of vigils; many have served federal sentences ranging from 30 days to a year for trespass.
In a letter published July 20, 2012, Theresa Cusimano described her physical release on July 11 from the federal prison system. She reported spending her six-month term in five federal holding facilities, including moves through four facilities in two weeks, kidney failure following lack of water and nutrition, forty-four days of seclusion and degrading treatment. These are her first-person allegations about the conditions of that historical imprisonment. The accompanying account identifies Judge Stephen Hyles and a January 13, 2012 six-month sentence.
One documented 2012 prison stay
The contemporary SOA Watch reports date Theresa Cusimano’s arrest to November 20, 2011 and her immediate prison admission to January 13, 2012, after Judge Stephen Hyles imposed six months. Her own post-prison letter describes leaving federal prison on July 11, and the accompanying report names Carswell Federal Medical Center as the release location. Those prison dates total 180 days. She described the completed stay as six months across five federal holding facilities. Accounts giving a November 19 arrest, January 12 admission or July 10 release are not supported by these reports and do not establish a second stay. Sources: arrest report; immediate custody after sentencing; first-person physical release account.
SOA Watch accounts report that Theresa Cusimano served two months in federal prison for her 2008 protest at Fort Benning against the School of the Americas. This was a separate imprisonment from her 2012 stay. The reports do not supply exact custody dates or the prison location. Sources: November 2011 account; January 2012 account.
