A member of the US Witness Protection Program since age 7 explains how the experience changed her life for the worse

Jackee Taylor has been in the Witness Protection Program most of her life.Jackee TaylorJackee Taylor has been in the US Witness Protection Program since she was 7.Now 51, Taylor is opening up about how difficult her life has been because of the program.She didn't ask to be a part of witness protection, and her situation has affected her children, too.More than 19,000 people have been relocated and given new identities under the US Federal Witness Protection Program since it began in 1971. Jackee Taylor, born Jacquelyn Angelique Crouch, is one of them, but not by choice.Her father, Clarence Crouch, was a member of the Cleveland chapter of Hells Angels, but left and turned to the government for protection in exchange for information in the early 1980s. "He did rat everybody out," Taylor told Business Insider's Matthew Ferrera.The family was whisked into hiding shortly after: When Taylor was 7, she said that men in black suits pulled her, her 5-year-old sister, and her 2-year-old brother from bed in the middle of the night.Taylor has been trying to prove she exists ever since.The government refused to issue her a birth certificate under her new name. "I did obtain my old birth certificate," Taylor said, adding, "but I can't use it. That's a federal offense. I can't go back to my old identity."Without a valid birth certificate, she said she struggled to get married, enroll in college, and apply for loans. Her children's Medicaid was once canceled because she lacks a valid birth certificate, she said.Now 51, Taylor is fighting to shed light on a system she describes as "more secretive than the CIA."From the Hells Angels to the Marshals' safe houseJackee Taylor as a kid.Jackee TaylorTaylor was born into outlaw biker culture. Her father helped found the Bandidos Motorcycle Club in Houston before joining the Cleveland, Ohio, chapter of the Hells Angels."I thought it was normal for every man to have a blade on their belt," Taylor said. "I thought it was normal for them to all have pistols in their boots."In 1975, a Hells Angel member bombed a Cleveland home, killing three people, including a baby around the same age as Taylor. That violence fractured the club and her father's loyalty. By 1981, Crouch had left the Angels and turned himself in to the government.He confessed to killing a man years earlier and was sentenced to many years in prison, Taylor said.Taylor's mother chose their new surname after the actress Elizabeth Taylor. After initially spending time in a government safe house, Taylor, her siblings, and her mother were eventually relocated from Florida to Montana.Taylor's father spent about a year with them in Montana, traveling to testify in trials, before eventually going to prison. Taylor said she didn't speak to him again until she was an adult.Life in Montana was nothing like the Hollywood version of witness protection. The family was given about $1,261 a month to survive on, no winter clothes to brave the harsh Montana winter, and no counseling to cope, Taylor said.After moving to Montana, Taylor changedTaylor during her interview with Business Insider.Business InsiderAs Taylor grew up, she struggled with the lies."I got in trouble for lying as a child," she said. After entering witness protection, however, she said, "I'm told that I have to lie to every person I know, or I could be killed or my family could be killed.""Now that messes with a kid. Of course, I felt like I was different," Taylor said. By her early teens, she was drinking and doing drugs. While intoxicated, she'd tell her friends the truth about her situation, but no one believed her, she said."I got in a lot of fights. I was stealing from cars. I was shoplifting, I went to rehab when I was 14, and then I was put in a psychiatric hospital when I was 15," Taylor said. When she tried telling her psychiatrist in the psych hospital that she was in witness protection, they didn't believe her either, she added."I remember lying in bed one night in this psychiatric institution, thinking to myself, I'm going to just have to figure out how to deal with this by myself," she said. Years later, her situation began affecting her kids.A spokesperson for the US Marshals Service told BI over email that it "does not comment on the sensitive security practices regarding individuals subject to witness protection."Fighting for 'the others'Jackee Taylor looking at old pictures of her father's biking days.Jackee TaylorWhen her children's Medicaid was canceled, Taylor spent two days on the phone trying to find help to no avail."That's what propelled me and threw me into the media. My mom always said something that stuck with me. If all else fails, go to the papers," she said. "That's what I've done, and I'm not going away. I'm just going to get louder."In 2020, Taylor released a 10-episode podcast called "Relative Unknown" detailing her family's ordeal, which drew others out of hiding. She's now working on a second season, "The Others," to tell their stories.Read the original article on Business Insider