God forgave me
Women ex-offenders, all too often spiritually broken, come to the recovery home called Catherine’s Center to put themselves back together again, one piece at a time. The work is as hard as it sounds and is not for everyone, but those who take the chance and make it through the course are apt to say the experience saves their lives.
The Catherine’s Center residence upstairs on a commercial street in South San Francisco houses six women, all of them recently paroled after serving jail time in San Mateo County. Four other women live in a separate building. The center is a ministry of the St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Mateo County in collaboration with the Sisters of Mercy, who developed the long-term recovery curriculum in 2003 after recognizing the need for the Church to do more for women ex-offenders who have exhausted every other resource.
The program combines drug and alcohol recovery, prayer, meditation, retreats, conscience formation and job skills.
“The criterion is that they are determined to change their lives,” said Mercy Sister Marguerite Buchanan.
“There’s a whole lot of shame, a whole lot of fear,” she said. “A huge amount of courage is what they’re exhibiting even by coming here.”
Most women ex-offenders are in triple jeopardy when they leave custody: typically they lack job skills, have experienced abuse and have no family to go back to. What’s more, many have been separated from their minor children and have lost – or must avoid – old friends.
Three out of four ex-offenders, men and women, are likely to go back to jail or prison if nothing happens to change the cycle.
“Parole doesn’t work with people at all,” said George Salinger, who is a deacon at St. Matthias Parish in Redwood City and has long been active in prison outreach. “It’s very obvious the prison system is a total failure.”
Catherine’s Center, in contrast, shows the benefit of counseling to rebuild every phase of an ex-offender’s life. Three out of four graduates break the cycle, the reverse of the parole system’s record.
“They just do everything possible to give these women an opportunity to succeed,” Salinger said. “It’s a sign that it can be done. There’s nothing for men that’s equal to it.”
Many women find their way to Catherine’s Center as a last chance, usually invited by the St. Vincent de Paul Society’s Marty Schurr, the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s chaplain for the San Mateo County jails.
“We try to build relationships,” Schurr said. “That’s what it’s all about at the end of the day. We’ve gotten to know each other as brother and sister. We can have an honest conversation.”
Invitees meet the center’s staff under Sister Marguerite. Those who appear to have a good chance of success and who have what it takes to support the community are welcomed to stay. They start with Christ’s forgiveness and with the unconditional love of the other women in the house. Beyond that, there are no promises.
In interviews with Catholic San Francisco, Catherine’s Center residents described the work of rebuilding their lives in almost literal terms. Typically each broken piece represents a relationship. Each woman’s relationship with herself is the most vital piece. Once women re-establish their self-esteem, they go through the emotionally trying, months-long work of putting back together their relationships with family members and others they have harmed in their careers outside the law. After much spiritual discipline they craft “grief letters” to release the power the past holds over them and the ones they hurt.
Jackie Casalou, 48, is making amends with her 25-year-old daughter – “because we’ve been through so much.” That understates the torment this family has experienced with Casalou’s two years in jail for embezzlement and her son’s suicide just before her release in 2005.
“I came to Catherine’s Center really broken, a broken individual,” she said. “I didn’t know what was up and what was done. I spent a lot of time denying the fact that my son was dead.”
She relapsed into criminal behavior and drugs after the first year. “I tried to end my life, but being a Catherine’s Center woman you’re always a Catherine’s Center woman, and they picked me up and brought me back,” she said.
Now, she is nearly off parole and looking forward to her accounting license being reinstated. “I’m looking for a life of service,” she said. “Whatever God has in my path.”
Arcelia Paiz comes from a family of 15. She grew up with seven older and three younger brothers. She was abused and never felt unconditional love, she said.
When her husband died nine years ago she became homeless and fell into trouble with the law. On her release from jail in February she made a phone call and was accepted into Catherine’s Center. She, too, relapsed, and then picked herself up again.
The problem was not too little love but more love than she could handle at the time. “The more loving they were the harder I was on myself,” she said of her housemates. “I’m not used to being loved like that.”
In Paiz’ room after dinner one evening, with rock music playing on the radio, a desk lamp lit snapshots of two smiling babies. They are her twin grandsons, just under two months old. “That’s the reason I’m staying sober,” she said.
On a desk were photos of her mother and daughter in a frame labeled “Love”, and on the wall were a poem written to her at a retreat and a copy of the Prayer of St. Francis.
Laverne Williams is the Catherine’s Center resident liaison. She was raised in a spiritual family in San Mateo but became depressed and went off course after her father died. She spent three years in jail.
Catherine’s Center, she said, “is just giving you the chance to change your life if that’s what you want. You have to want it, though. You have to get sick and tired of the life you’re living.”
Catherine’s Center welcomes volunteer support. Volunteers are needed to drive women to appointments, share expertise in one of nine program areas, mentor an alumnae, help cook and dine with the residents one a month, celebrate holidays with residents and their children, join staff and residents on outings and write grants or help with fundraisers. The center relies on donations to cover its operating expenses of $24,000 a month.
For more information call (650) 246-1520 or e-mail svdpcatherine@yahoo.com.
(By Rick DelVecchio)
From the January 9, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco
