In a winding legal fight that began in 2011, Samantha Werkheiser and her wife, Jules, were wrongfully convicted of sexually abusing Samantha’s daughters from her first marriage. The New York couple maintained that Samantha’s ex-husband and his wife alienated the girls from them during a bitter custody battle, and, as a result, manipulated the teens into making false abuse accusations.
Over the next 12 years, often on opposite sides of prison walls, Samantha and Jules helped each other cope — with lawyers and judges, motions and decisions, appeals and new trials. Samantha was in prison when she gave birth to their son, Julius, and his twin sister, who died.
Samantha’s indictment was thrown out in 2019, after two trials. She was released from prison after serving four-and-a-half years of a 15-year sentence. Jules, who was serving 11 years to life, walked out of prison in September 2023. The state dismissed her final charge in January 2024.
In this second installment of our “Love Beyond Bars” series, Samantha reflects on the bittersweet beauty of her journey with Jules, and how their son kept them connected even when they couldn’t be in the same space.
Our love story is unique. For years, Jules and I were both in and out of prison, sometimes missing each other by days on either side of the fence. We fought for one another and kept hope alive. It’s something that I think is really beautiful.
Of course, it’s easy to say that our story is beautiful now, but I have to say it wasn’t when it was happening. I knew we could make it, but there were times where I didn’t know if I could bear all that “making it” entailed.
I was three months pregnant with twins in May of 2013, when I was convicted and sent to prison. Our daughter was born early, and she passed away 22 minutes after birth. Doctors were apprehensive about our son’s chances. They said it was likely he would be born early, too. And even if I could manage to make it to 24 weeks, we should expect that he would have all sorts of health and developmental issues.
Julius points at notes he wrote to his mothers pasted on a window of their house.
None of that happened. In November 2013, at full term, I gave birth to Julius. It was miraculous. He survived in the face of those odds.
Our son was 2 when I won my first appeal. Jules was convicted the very same week I got out of prison. I wasn’t allowed to visit her because I still had pending charges, and I was waiting for my second trial. So we had an army of friends who would rotate bringing Julius to visit her. Each time he came back, I would hug him so tightly because he had just seen mommy. He was with her when I couldn’t be.
Our legal battle was scary and lonely and horrible, but we focused on getting through it little by little, getting to that next visit or next letter. Julius was our hope, our love child [who] bound us together. We didn’t believe that God gave us a child that neither one of us was going to be present for. So when one of us would begin to complain or feel sorry for herself, we would remind the other of the great gift of our son. We got through that tunnel of shit. Still, it doesn’t feel real.
Camille Farrah Lenain is a French-Algerian documentary photographer who grew up in Paris. She relocated to New Orleans in 2013. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally, including at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Arab World Institute, Photoville and Les Rencontres d’Arles.
Carla Canning is an engagement journalist and contract editor at Prison Journalism Project. She previously worked on Life Inside as The Marshall Project’s Tow audience engagement fellow. At the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, she created a website guide for people visiting loved ones incarcerated in New York State prisons.
