Basketball star Brittney Griner on Wednesday said she had contemplated taking her own life after being arrested by authorities in Moscow in 2022, in her first televised interview discussing her nearly ten-month-long imprisonment in Russia.
Brittney Griner spoke at length about her imprisonment in Russia for the first time in a televised ... [+]
In the interview, which aired on ABC News on Wednesday night, Griner said “I wanted to take my life more than once in the first weeks,” adding she felt like leaving the place “so badly.”
The WNBA star eventually decided against it, because she feared Russian authorities would not release her body to her family if it happened.
Griner also spoke about the conditions of her prison cell, which had a mattress with “a huge blood stain on it…no soap, no toilet paper,” all of which made her feel “less than human.”
In a separate interview with the New York Times, she again mentioned contemplating, mentioning her poor living conditions, which made her feel “horrible” and prison guards “snickered” and looked at her through a peephole in her cell.
Griner said she also faced a psychiatric evaluation after her arrest and was worried about getting institutionalized because Russian authorities consider homosexuality a mental illness.
The basketball star said her bunkmate warned her against getting medical exams in prison due to the prevalence of HIV and herpes, and later heard the person who treated her for a severe eye infection later was a veterinarian.
Griner told ABC about being forced to write a letter to Vladimir Putin before her release. “They made me write this letter. It was in Russian. I had to ask for forgiveness and thanks from their so-called great leader. I didn’t want to do it, but at the same time I wanted to come home.”