It’s been over a year since Brittney Griner returned to the U.S. after her high-stakes detainment in Russia, but she’s still processing everything she went through.
This week, she sat down with Cam Newton on his Funky Friday podcast and gave listeners one of the most unsettling glimpses yet into her time behind bars-including a story about a cellmate with a horrifying past.
Griner, who was arrested in 2022 after being caught with cannabis vape cartridges while playing overseas, spent 10 months in a Russian penal colony before being freed in a controversial prisoner exchange for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout. The trade sparked heated debate in political circles, but now the focus is shifting to what Griner actually experienced on the inside.
One detail, in particular, stuck with her: her first cellmate.
“She acted like a kid,” Griner told Newton. “But she was a grown woman. Burn marks all over her. Later I found out she was selling videos online of her husband and her child together.”
“They’d Put Their Cigarettes Out on Her…”
That kind of crime doesn’t go unnoticed-or unpunished-in Russian prisons. According to Griner, even in a facility where many inmates were in for murder or drug charges, this woman was treated as the lowest of the low. Other prisoners reportedly tortured her, putting out cigarettes on her skin and forcing her to sleep near the cell door-essentially isolating her as a form of punishment.
Griner said abuse like that wasn’t common among female inmates, but in this case, it was brutal.
Russia’s prison system has long been criticized by human rights organizations for poor conditions and lack of oversight. Griner had already shared some of the emotional challenges she faced-like isolation and fear-but this story reveals the even darker corners of her ordeal.
Since returning to the U.S., Griner has rejoined the WNBA with the Atlanta Dream and continues to advocate for Americans detained abroad. But it’s clear that some memories won’t fade anytime soon.
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