Justine van der Leun
speaker
2,366 appearances
8 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 14 Sep
Justine van der Leun’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 5.
Appearances
But she was also separated from information.
She had no internet, no way to get reliable daily news.
Her radio signal was shaky.
She could only read books that people sent in and magazines approved by the state.
I knew that when Quinetta was told something inside prison, she wasn't really able to verify it.
She couldn't call out without being monitored or talk without being overheard.
She had to go with her instincts.
When Quinetta sent me that email telling me she was withdrawing cooperation, I wasn't sure what to think.
Had someone scared her?
Was she having regrets about the things she'd said?
And then concocting yet another elaborate ploy rather than just, say, communicating her trepidation to me?
While I was trying to get my bearings, I started reaching out to women who had been incarcerated with Quinetta.
I wanted an inside perspective on what Quinetta was like in prison and how TDCJ treated her.
Joy Brenby lives in Houston now, but she spent a decade in prison in Gatesville, much of it in solitary confinement alongside Quinetta.
On a scale of 1 to 10, Joy told me, she knows Quinetta at a 10.
Of course.
Dangerous because Quinetta has knowledge about how the levers of power work at TDCJ.
The majority of people in prison, some estimates say around 75%, don't even have a high school diploma.
More than half of the women in Texas prisons have mental illness.
It's not easy for them to advocate for themselves.
Showing 101–120 of 2,366 · page 6 of 119
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