The day before she handed herself in at the police station, Abigail Percy-Ratcliff packed her belongings away into storage, watched her favourite film, and said her goodbyes.
Family members in her hometown of Spokane, Washington, were in disbelief when she called them on Zoom to say she was expecting to be sent to prison without trial after being accused of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
“I don’t think my parents really understood what was happening. I think they thought I was being dramatic,” she told openDemocracy. “I said: ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be [in custody]. It could be months and months. It could be years.’ I remember my sister laughed, because she thought that I was being overly cautious.”
