Woman reveals the toll of her partner’s conversion to Islam in jail
Seven years after her boyfriend went to jail, Candy Towers fears her partner is adhering to extremist views after converting to Islam inside prison. She offers a candid insight into the impact religious conversion can have on an inmate’s family.
NSW
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In his letter Ryker Scott Jennar wanted to know how his girlfriend was holding up and how their son was going.
He expressed remorse at not being a good father while he was locked up for a string of violent armed robberies.
On the second page of the handwritten note, dated February 9, 2013, to his girlfriend Candy Towers, Jennar politely asked if she would go past the nearest mosque, in Wallsend near Newcastle, ask for two books on Islam and read them for 30 minutes each night to learn about the “beautiful” religion he had discovered.
Fast forward to December, 2018 and Jennar was unrecognisable to the woman he had been with since he was 15.
“He started talking about going overseas,” Ms Towers said.
“He said he was leading the prayers and he had a lot of responsibility. That’s what started freaking me out.”
At his urging and after reading the Koran, Ms Towers, 35, attempted to follow Islam too but her heart wasn’t in it.
A conversion would have been disingenuous but Jennar, who was a talented amateur boxer before jail, told Ms Towers he could only be with a Muslim woman.
“He said he had to forget a lot of people from his past,” she said.
“I think he was very vulnerable at the time, I don’t think he knew how to deal with the 16 years.”
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Seven years after her first and last boyfriend went to jail, Ms Towers fears Jennar is adhering to extremist views after converting to Islam inside Goulburn prison.
Her experience offers a candid insight into the impact religious conversion can have on an inmate’s family and the challenge for prison authorities in preventing jailyard radicalisation.
Ms Powers said she was encouraged to speak up because she was frustrated by the lack of support for the partners of inmates who convert to religion inside jail.
“The men get support, they get psychologists and people to talk to, education and the women are left out here to pay the rent and look after their kid,” she said.
“There should be someone I can go to within the jail and say this is what I am struggling with.”
Corrective Services NSW would not be drawn on Jennar’s individual case but it is understood he is not seen as a radical within the prison system.
A spokeswoman said comprehensive intelligence records and security information were kept on inmates and their behaviour was monitored on an ongoing basis.
Privately, a prison source said Jennar came onto the radar after he adopted Islam.
Whether Jennar, 34, believes in what he preaches is yet to be seen.
Experts in prison radicalisation say some inmates convert to Islam behind bars to align themselves with a particular group as a means to get through their sentence.
“The issue comes when the person is released and goes back to their social circle that might not be religious and they find it very hard to follow the religion,” terrorism and radicalisation expert Dr Clarke Jones said.
According to CSNSW, Muslims made up 8.4 per cent of the prison population of 9731 in 2008.
In 2018, 10.5 per cent of inmates were Muslim and the general population had risen to 13,658.
Dr Jones said his research had identified five cases of radicalisation in jails in Australia but a majority of Islamic conversions were positive.
“It is a long bow to say someone will convert to Islam, radicalise in prison and then go and commit terrorism offences after,” Dr Jones, from the Australian National University, said.
Many extremist inmates, like those in prison for terrorism offences, held their views before they were behind bars and the challenge is trying to change those while ensuring they don’t influence other vulnerable inmates.
Raised around Newcastle, Jennar, an indigenous man from the Kamilaroi tribe, had a rough upbringing as the son of a convicted murderer before he met Ms Towers and they had a child in their mid-teens.
“We were inseparable,” she recalled.
Ms Towers was raised Christian, which was at odds with Jennar’s religious views.
“He used to say there is no God, when you die you go back to mother Earth and that’s it, there is nothing after that,” she said.
In June, 2011, Jennar, armed with a screwdriver, and rifle-totting Joel Barton stormed the Water Board Bowling Club at North Lambton and shot the manager in the process.
When Jennar was sentenced to a maximum 16 years behind bars for this offence and others, Ms Towers stood up in the court with him.
“I said I’d do the time with him and I’d wait,” she explained.
She went down to Goulburn Jail on most weekends to visit Jennar before he was relocated to Wellington and was initially supportive of his decision to follow Islam.
Admittedly she didn’t understand the religion but Jennar sounded positive.
Then he started sending her literature on the hijab and the questions about home in his letter were replaced with pages of Islamic teachings copied from books.
During one jail visit, he told his sister and Ms Towers that they would have to tie their hair up and wear long sleeves and pants next time they came down.
In a phone call last year, Jennar told Ms Towers he wouldn’t be returning to Newcastle if he was released on parole in 2023 as he needed to go overseas.
Unsure where to turn, she went to a local mosque, after anxiously backing out of a prior attempt, armed with dozens of questions.
Last month, Ms Towers had her phone on loudspeaker and was standing next to her 17-year-old son when Jennar said he was getting married to a Muslim woman he met while in jail.
“He said she wants to meet my son. I just lost it, I said my son would never do that to me how could you even think like that?” Ms Towers said.
“I said you’ve lost your relationship with me and our son. Why couldn’t you spend your time working on that instead of this religion.”