Biography
Judith Beaumont was a Benedictine sister and teacher from Hartford/Chicago; took part in the 1982 Trident Nein action aboard the USS Florida at Electric Boat, Groton, CT.
Judith Ann Beaumont was a Benedictine sister of 34 years and a teacher who came to Hartford from Chicago. After leaving the Benedictines she co-founded and served as Executive Director of My Sisters' Place, a four-tier program for homeless women and children in Hartford. In 2012 she was ordained a Roman Catholic Woman Priest and became pastor of Good Shepherd Inclusive Catholic Community in Fort Myers, Florida, where she ran Good Shepherd Ministries of SW Florida and Church in the Park. She died of AML leukemia at her home in Fort Myers on January 1, 2018, partnered with Judy Lee.
Trident Nein dates and separate proceedings
Participant Art Laffin dates the action and arrests to July 5, 1982. The contemporary sentencing report dates the original disposition to November 9, 1982. A sentence is not treated as a verified prison-admission date.
The erroneous July 3 admission was removed. Actual initial custody endpoints remain unresolved.
Both apparent duplicate original-case arrest dates were corrected, without copying a custody span into the second record.
Sources: Art Laffin, July 2022 eyewitness retrospective; Revolutionary Worker, November 12, 1982, pages 1–2.
Original archival custody and release evidence
The Nuclear Resister issue 12 names all nine participants and reports seven weeks in jail followed by August 26, 1982 recognizance release. Initial custody is July 5–August 26, not an uninterrupted stay through 1983.
Issue 13 records the November 9 sentence as suspended to time served. Issue 15 documents February 2, 1983 revocation and renewed imprisonment. The intervening recognizance period is excluded from time imprisoned.
Actual later prison release: 1983-03-24. This is not the end of the entire sentence.
Her April 1 letter in issue 16 describes leaving Niantic on March 24 for a community-residence program. Its July 26 sentence endpoint is not a prison-release date. The second apparent duplicate case remains without a duplicated custody span.
Sources: issue 12, October 18, 1982, printed page 4 (PDF page 6); issue 13, November 30, 1982, page 4; issue 14, January 14, 1983, page 3; issue 15, March 9, 1983, printed page 6 (PDF page 8); issue 16, April 17, 1983, printed page 10 (PDF page 11); issue 17, June 6, 1983, page 5.
Earlier November 1981 Groton proceeding and intervening bail
Original page 3 names Dean Hammer, Ann Montgomery, Art Laffin, Chris Grannis, Elin Schade and Judy Beaumont as out on bail after the November 9, 1981 Electric Boat administration-building blood-and-ashes action in Groton. It reports denial of pretrial motions and the judge’s recusal on December 2, with trial delayed. This is a distinct earlier proceeding, not the July 5, 1982 Trident Nein detention or the original Plowshares Eight case. Being out on bail is not continuous imprisonment; the article supplies no exact initial physical-jail receipt, release day or actual custody total. No additional imprisonment counter or speculative discrete jail interval is created.
National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective newsletter No. 9, December 12, 1981, original page 3.
Contemporary anti-nuclear custody report
The Groton update concerns the November 1981 blood-and-ashes protest at Electric Boat, not the later July 1982 Trident Nein action. It says charges against Judy Beaumont, Christopher Grannis, Dean Hammer, Ann Montgomery and Elin Schade were dropped at the January 28, 1982 appearance, while Art Laffin still awaited trial. It does not supply an actual jail-admission or release day; dismissed charges are not a custody endpoint.
National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective newsletter No. 11, April 15, 1982, original pages 3.
Separate two-week imprisonment after the October 1983 Groton protest
The USS Henry Jackson report says Judy Beaumont pleaded no contest after the October 15, 1983 Electric Boat commissioning protest and served two weeks in jail. Elaine Martin also served two weeks after refusing a fine and probation. These are individually reported actual stays, not the four other defendants whose later thirty-day sentences began November 9. The October 15 arrest and October 17 arraignment do not independently establish Judy’s exact later sentence-intake or release day. This episode is separate from the 1982 Trident Nein confinement.
Contemporary 1983–1984 custody evidence
The Women of Faith account names Judy Beaumont among the February 10, 1984 convictions and one-month-unsuspended nominal terms. It explicitly says she and Sue Ann Shay would begin serving March 23 after their women’s-center responsibilities concluded. That future planned reporting date is not actual admission; neither March 23 nor April 22 directory forecasts create an executed 1984 sentence interval in this review.
The Nuclear Resister No. 23, February 12, 1984, original PDF 4 / printed 3, The Nuclear Resister No. 23, February 12, 1984, original PDF 6 / printed 5.
