By Kharisma McIlwaine
There are some love stories that stand the test of time, come what may. Sibil Fox Richardson (Fox Rich) and her husband Robert Richardson are an example of one of those stories.
This couple endured 21 years as an incarcerated family in Louisiana, and their fight for true freedom continues daily. The couple began sharing their story of love and endurance that spanned over two decades in the 2020 Oscar-nominated (Best Documentary Feature) film, “Time.”
Directed by Garrett Bradley, “Time” shared the compelling story of Fox Rich’s ongoing battle to bring her husband home. Rob was sentenced to 60 years in prison without parole, as a first-time offender for armed robbery of a Credit Union in 1997 having never fired a shot. Told from a first-hand account through the lens of Fox, and with the use of home videos, their heartbreaking and simultaneously inspiring story touched the hearts and lives of many.
Fox and Rob Rich now return, with Fox as the director of “TIME II: Unfinished Business.” This sequel explores their family’s life after Rob’s release from prison, the fight to have their nephew and fall partner Ontario, released from prison, and their continued efforts to reform the gross injustices within the criminal justice system. Fox and Rob Rich spoke with the SUN about this project, and their ongoing quest for freedom for all in the form of their mantra “to be free is to free others.”
When Fox Rich first began documenting her family’s life in the 90’s, it was not a common practice. That decision to turn the camera on and press record changed their lives forever.
Fox and Rob Rich
“I had just encountered the most amazing thing I had ever imagined,” she said. “Rob and I after 10 years of dating on and off and three children between us made a family. We got married! It was like we grabbed hold of this American institution and were unrelenting about it. That’s why the night that we married, as we share in “Time II,” you see us bungee jumping together as a form of consummating. When we got married and started a family, it was one of the most beautiful things that I had experienced, and I wanted to document it. I wanted to hold onto it so I could share it with generations to come.”
Mass incarceration in America has become an epidemic with millions of Americans having the shared experience of a loved one incarcerated. To shed light on her own experience — including the struggle to keep her family together while raising six sons with her husband behind bars — Fox, who also served 3 1/2 years behind bars, pushed past the stigmas that are so often associated with being incarcerated to share a powerful story.
“We have to get over ourselves and realize that these issues are so much bigger than us. We do the universe a disservice when we don’t share. It is our duty and our obligation to inform other human beings when other’s humanity is being denied,” Fox exclaimed.
“When you look at national statistics and you think about the fact that 65% of all marriages end in divorce, you can already see that statistically speaking, marriage is a challenge, and incarceration only compounds that challenge,” Rob added. “I don’t even know what the numbers are of people who successfully make it through, but it wasn’t the statistics of today that I looked toward in an effort to draw my strength. My strength came from the marriages that happened during slavery, when families were divided and separated due to the conditions that other people placed upon them. Giving up on one another, they didn’t exercise that as a luxury. So much of the same held true when I found myself in Louisiana’s criminal justice system faced with a practical life sentence.”
In order to advocate for their freedom and the freedom of others, Rob and Fox Rich had to do an extensive amount of research to inform themselves on the laws in place, in order to work towards what needed to be changed.
“It was quite the challenge…Imagine yourself being dropped in the middle of a land where you don’t speak the language,” Rob said. “Thinking about the people that came on the first ships, that had been brought into a land where they didn’t understand the people, didn’t understand the language and those things and had to figure it out. Their very survival depended upon it. Much of the same held true for me going into Louisiana’s criminal justice system. The law is a complicated language.”
“Learning to speak it, to interpret it, to understand it and all of those things, they come with the same challenges as I would imagine if you had to learn Mandarin or Swahili,” he continued . “But, when you know your life depends upon it, you eventually get to a point where you say I’ve got to figure this out. So, I spent countless days in Angola’s prison library and every prison that I was in on my route getting to Angola. Every juncture, if they had a law library, I was in it. If they didn’t have a law library, I was asking for books to be sent to me about the law in an effort that I could be able to one understand the law, and with hopes that then I would be able to take my grievances and my complaints to the court in a manner that they could receive it.”
Though technically “TIME II: Unfinished Business” serves as Fox Rich’s directorial debut, “Time” was told from her perspective. The decision for Fox to officially step into the role as director came naturally.
“This was important to me,” she said. “Mine was not so much the research of law as it was I wanted to raise cases that I saw that just really vexed my heart and were flagrant. Faith Winslow was one of those. Faith Winslow was from my hometown, and it was like my husband and I. Sixty years for attempting to take $5,000, and you’re saying nobody sees the wrong in this? They think this is ok? Nobody has the power to fix this? So even though Faith passed recently after he was released from prison, I wanted to make sure we could lift his name and his story. That’s why we chose some of those stories that were in our documentary.”
Fox and Rob realized that by sharing their own journey towards freedom, they were also helping so many other people and families during their own fight for freedom. One of those people still fighting for freedom was their nephew Ontario Smith, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison for accompanying them during the robbery.
“To me, Rob getting out was important, yes, but the real testament to things would be what would we do with freedom now,” Fox said. “What would we do upon his return? This was the important story to us. It was the honor code. We had invited our nephew to be with us and he still remained behind when we became free. It was, how do we get to know each other after 21 years as husband and wife? What does this look like? This is not a collect call. So many of those things I thought were important for the 2.3 million people that are behind bars as well as those that are related to those behind bars, that they had an opportunity to know what happened next for us. People fell in love with “Time”… they deserved to know what happened next.”
Many people discuss the horrors of life behind bars, but the adjustment required once freedom is attained comes with its own set of challenges. One of those major challenges is survivor’s guilt.
“I think probably the biggest challenge when I came home was just that no one was really ecstatic to see me other than my immediate family,” Rob said. “When I say my immediate family, I’m talking about the house that Fox and Rob built. We were excited about seeing each other, our children were excited about seeing us together and seeing me on this side of things, but my family of origin were not necessarily as excited… because they knew that one of our family members was still left behind.”
“The first thing they wanted to know was when is he coming home? Why didn’t he come with you? He went with you,” Fox said. “In “TIME II,” I make mention of a thing called survivor’s guilt. It’s a real emotion for people who experience life behind enemy lines, and they forge relationships, camaraderie and partnerships for survival purposes. With that being said, some of the men I was incarcerated with, I know them in ways that I don’t even know family members that I share the same blood with. So, when you’ve been through what I’ve been through, with many of the men who have been incarcerated, you come home with a sense of guilt because you know that you left behind a lot of deserving individuals that needed the same opportunity that you needed. One of the recurring themes in the film is that you come to the understanding that to be free is to free others. You utilize the freedom that you’ve been blessed to have with the hopes that you can free other people.”
Rob and Fox are still fighting for the freedom of others and themselves after Rob was sentenced to another sentence of 40 years of probation as a retaliation for their advocacy for prison reform.
“When you take all of those things into consideration, people are not excited about you escaping to freedom and then returning back talking about freeing someone else,” Rob said. “It comes at a cost and it costs us tremendously. When I first went up for my clemency, I went in anticipating that I was going to be receiving credit for time served for the offenses that I had committed some two decades ago. But, instead after it had been realized that I was working to free what they deemed as countless others, they thought to brand me, to whip me so to speak by saying ‘we’ll let you out of prison because this request for your freedom is coming from a tall order much higher up than us, but at the same time it doesn’t mean I can’t leave a scar or marking on you.’ This is why you hear me say in “Time II: Unfinished Business” that it’s like I went from slavery to sharecropping.”
Much like the movie’s title states, there is still unfinished business and a great deal of work to be done. To help Fox and Rob Rich continue their fight, follow them on IG @FoxandRob, and visit their websites at: www.richfamilyministries.org and www.pdmnola.org.
For more information on how you can assist their nonprofit organization Rich Family Ministries and their initiative the Participatory Defense Movement Nola. Additionally, “Time II: Unfinished Business” will be screening at The Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival August 2-10th. For more details visit www.tmvff.org.
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