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PISA refers to “post-isolation support activities.” It’s a program that was developed by the military to address the physical and psychological needs of people who have been detained or held hostage.
The activities include medical checks and repeated counseling sessions, all designed to facilitate “the return of the recovered person to military or civilian life as expeditiously as possible,” according to a manual from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Griner spent months in a penal colony after being sentenced to 9½ years in prison on minor drug charges. She was convicted of arriving in Russia with vape cartridges containing less than a gram of cannabis oil.
The athlete arrived in Texas on Dec. 9. She was exchanged in a prisoner swap for the arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was serving a 25-year sentence in a special, restrictive unit dubbed “Little Guantánamo” inside a federal prison in Marion, Ill.
Griner was flown to Joint Base San Antonio, a military facility that has served as the first stop for several Americans released from captivity this year. Trevor Reed, an ex-Marine imprisoned in Russia, arrived there in April. So did members of the “Citgo six,” a group of energy executives wrongfully detained by the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela and released in October.
The former detainees, including Griner, were first taken to Brooke Army Medical Center, a major hospital located on the base, where they underwent medical checks.
Jorge Toledo, 61, spent nearly five years in captivity in Venezuela before being freed in October. For the first several days, he said, his group spent time in a restricted area of the base’s hospital where personnel took extra measures to maintain their privacy.
Initially, Toledo thought he would be going straight home. Then he learned that there was a program prepared for the detainees to help them adapt after their long captivity. He described the experience as invaluable.
After the medical checks, Toledo’s group moved to a different part of the base where they participated in individual and group sessions with a team of psychologists.
They asked Toledo and his fellow detainees to tell their stories from before their imprisonment all the way until their arrival in the United States, in as much detail as possible, over several sessions.
The activity was a way to decompress from their experience, the therapists said, making use of an analogy: If you shake a beer can and suddenly open it, “you’re going to have a sort of explosion,” Toledo said. But if you “let the pressure go out slowly, you’re going to have a better result.”
The detainees were also encouraged to discuss any concerns they had about transitioning back to life at home, whether their relationships with their spouses and children or how they were going to approach their careers. The final sessions were for military personnel to gather information from the detainees.
Toledo and his group spent 10 days at the base, where their families were also welcome. He said the program was critical in preparing him for some of the challenges that lay ahead.
“People think it’s a given that you’re going to have a great time when you go back to normal life,” he said. While he was overjoyed to be with his family, he also found that some daily tasks, such as driving a car, suddenly felt like enormous challenges.
Toledo said the days he spent in the PISA program were key to helping him make the transition home, and he hoped the same would be true for Griner.
Griner said Friday that she intends to return to professional basketball when the next WNBA season begins in May 2023.
Toledo was an avid runner before his detention and has begun training again. In January, he plans to run a half-marathon in Houston. It is more than a race. Toledo sees it as a message to his captors. “It’s a matter of telling these guys in prison, ‘You tried, but I’m stronger than your system,’” he said.
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