Not only that, but he also has a mile-long rap sheet. Brian Rapinoe has spent half of his life locked up in California’s most notorious prisons, namely Pelican Bay, for various and oftentimes violent crimes.
He blames his behavior on drug addiction and claims he is reformed now, stating that everyone deserves a "second" chance.
From ESPN:
BY 18 YEARS OLD, Brian had moved on to harder drugs — heroin, specifically — and he became more reckless. He was charged with car theft, evading arrest and a hit-and-run while driving under the influence of drugs — and now, as an adult, his juvenile detention days were over.
He was sent to prison. Within months, he aligned himself with the white prison gang and was inked with Nazi tattoos. A swastika on his palm; lightning bolts on his fingers, sides and calves.
These tattoos devastated his family. “The prejudice, the racism — it was so against the way he’d been raised,” Denise says. “He wasn’t that kind of kid. He was kind, his nature was so loving.”
To Brian, the swastikas weren’t about prejudice and racism at that point — they were about heroin and survival. To support his addiction, he needed to be, in his words, “an active participant in prison culture.”
The California prison system was segregated. That meant Brian lived strictly among the white population.
“You come in as a kid, and there are these older dudes you think you respect, spouting ideas, and you kind of listen,” Brian says. “I developed a protect-your-own mentality.”
He tried to explain that to his mother. The gang was a family, he said; it was a place to belong. “I told him, ‘This is not who we are,’” Denise says. “‘This is not who you are.’”
Megan was as heartbroken as her mother. “I thought [the tattoos] were horrible,” she says. “I still think they’re horrible. I could rationalize them: I understood that when he first got in there, he was searching for identity, trying to survive.”
Brian is certainly an interesting deviation from the rest of his family, and it really makes you wonder if his behavior and beliefs were entirely fueled by drugs.
But what do you think about all this? Sound off in the comments below!
