By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org

Convicted YDC abuser James Woodlock cries while talking to his sister, experiences panic attacks throughout his days in solitary, and worries that the devil is trying to hurt him.

“I don’t know if I had a dream or I called [female relative] today and I asked her that. I said, am I alone? And she said, no. And I said, the devil is trying to convince me that I’m alone. My brain is playing tricks on me again,” Woodlock told his sister during a March 16 phone call.

Woodlock’s attorney, Richard Guerriero, is asking Hillsborough County Superior Court — North Judge Will Delker to order a competency evaluation for the 62-year-old who is serving a 20 to 40 year prison sentence. With another trial against Woodlock pending, Guerriero’s motion filed this week states Woodlock’s mental and physical health are in sharp decline due to the fact he’s been held in solitary confinement for months.

Woodlock was convicted last year on charges he acted as an accomplice in the rape of a child inside the Sununu Youth Development Center, then called YDC, in the 1990s.

While prosecutors oppose the evaluation, and said that Woodlock’s prison phone calls demonstrate he is not in a mental decline, Guerriero disagrees and filed excerpts of phone call transcripts with the court.

“The defense has listened to many of the calls and has attached to this motion transcripts of excerpts (with time stamps) so that the court is able to see for itself how solitary confinement has affected Mr. Woodlock,” Guerriero wrote.

All phone calls made by prisoners inside prisons are recorded as a matter of routine, and Delker will be listening to the recordings as part of his deliberations on Guerriero’s motion. The transcript excerpts filed in court find Woodlock worried about his growing inability to think clearly, afraid he will be assaulted or killed if he’s moved into a general population unit, and dealing with near-constant panic attacks. Asked by his sister in a March 6 call if he’s remembering to make a list of things to do when he’s feeling bad, Woodlock started to get emotional and paranoid.

“No, I didn’t. No, I got off the phone with you. I could have done it today. [whimpering] I haven’t really been on the ball…. The wrong side is trying to make me go crazy. That’s what that side is trying to do,” Woodlock said.

During a March 3 call, Woodlock told his sister he hoped God would “call him home” soon as he didn’t want to keep going in prison.

“I’m going to break. It scares me. I feel like it’s changing me. Each day it’s eating away at me. Changing me from the person that I was, withering away,” Woodlock said.

Along with memory problems and obvious signs of depression, Guerriero told the court this week that Woodlock has lost at least 25 pounds in a short matter of time, and his hands now shake.

Woodlock is named as an abuser in many of the more than 1,000 civil lawsuits brought by adult survivors who claim they were physically and sexually abused as children held in New Hampshire’s youth detention system.