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Halfway
Home
Sponsors
offers tried and true treatment to recovering addicts.
by
Aria Seligmann
EDITOR'S
NOTE: Some
of the images in this story may serve as psychological triggers to
certain readers. The names of the women have been changed to protect
their identities.
Sue had a good job, cars, a nice house and a loving family until
both her husband and son were killed in a car accident.
"I woke up on the living room floor one day a junkie.
The furniture and cars were gone."
It's all a blur, she says, but she does remember living
on the streets, hopelessly addicted to the heroin she'd begun using
to numb her pain and prostituting to support her habit. She was arrested
47 times. Each time, she was released, sometimes in the middle of
the night, dope sick with nowhere to turn but to one of her johns.
She'd trade sex for money and buy heroin to get "well."
Local treatment programs didn't work and finally quit
taking her. She showed up at Sacred Heart's emergency room with an
abscess (skin lesion from inserting needles filled with heroin cut
with instant coffee directly under the skin) on her arm that stank
so much she was refused treatment and kicked out.
"It got bad enough that I had abscesses on my feet
and it hurt to wear shoes," Sue says, "but I still walked the streets
in the middle of winter, barefoot and hurting like hell. I was still
turning tricks and getting dope."
Patty comes from a successful family. She liked to
party ever since she was a teenager, but never had trouble with any
drugs. One day her roommate came home with a new drug for her to try:
crack.
"That bitch," says Patty. "I don't care who you are,
it would take the Pope one time of smoking it to get hooked, it's
so powerful."
Her addiction caused her to hang out with "a new circle
of losers," she says. "Someone was shooting up heroin. I did it and
I loved it. Anything you could put into a needle I wanted to do. Someone
introduced me to it, but I went running with it. It's hard to stop."
Both women needed an out. Sue finally did enough time
in jail -- three six-month sentences -- that she was able
to detox. When she got out, her parole and probation officer didn't
set her loose on the streets. He sent her to Sponsors, a transitional
program for male and female ex-offenders who are currently on parole
and/or supervised probation in Lane County.
Nowhere to
go
Sponsors opened for men in 1973 and started
its women's component in 1994, with five beds. The women's program
has recently expanded to 19. According to the Oregon Department of
Corrections, the number of female inmates has increased from 155 in
July of 1985 to 589 as of January 2001. The vast majority are in for
drug arrests.
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Women's
program director Jean Daugherty with baby Dalton.
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Most of the women have nowhere to go when they get
out of prison. Friends and family have either never been there for
them or are fed up and gone. If the women have turned to prostitution
to support their drug habits, their johns often take care of them,
bringing them cigarettes, money, or more dope. Some return to partners
and oftentimes dysfunctional relationships. Many are victims of domestic
abuse. Sponsors deals with all of it.
"They're lucky to get this chance," says Women's
Program Director Jean Daugherty.
Lane County Parole and Probation Officer Patrick Schott
agrees.
"Without Sponsors the women get released and they
have nowhere safe to go and it creates a no-win situation," he says.
"They end up back in their addictions, back in their situations, back
in a survival role."
The probation officers have to find housing that is
safe and secure, and to make sure the women are making significant
progress in their recovery. Sponsors is the first place Schott chooses,
but he also uses private houses and other programs. "There are never
enough beds," he says.
It's brutal out there
The Sponsors program lasts 60 days for men;
90 days for women. The reason the women must do 30 days longer than
men is that "Women make less money and have more issues," says Daugherty.
Half of their salary is turned over and saved for them so they can
afford to rent an apartment when they get out.
The first task is to find a job within 30 days. That
can be tough, especially in a slow economy. "With 100 people showing
up for one job, employers don't take the person with a record," says
Daugherty. Plus, the women are fighting through multiple layers of
prejudice: felon, woman, poor, addict, lost custody of kids, and often,
race.
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The
Program
Sponsors was begun in 1973 by Sister Janice
Jackson, who led the agency until 1985. For the next two years
Lucy Lynch held the reigns, then current director Ron Chase
took over in January 1988.
"Up until '88 we didn't have a residential component,
and that was the most compelling need for those coming out of
prison," says Chase. The program was expanded to include five
beds, and now has 65.
The women's program started in 1994. It began
with five beds and has just recently expanded to 19, taking
over the former men's site at 8th and Blair.
Sponsors is funded in part by Lane County, receiving
$400,000 out of a state grant that funds community corrections
programs. The homeless status of the ex-inmates garners the
program an additional $30,000 from the state's Health and Human
Services Division.
Men stay in the program for 60 days; women for
90. The first 30 days are free; after that, they pay $1 a day
for rent. (Women who need to stay longer than the 90-day requirement
can move into the "Honors" house, paying $325 per month while
still receiving support services.) That, plus $13-15,000 per
year in private donations from individuals, businesses and churches
rounds out the budget. --AS
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Many of the women end up working in the fast food
industry. Some do housecleaning, factory work, or caregiving. If an
application or employer asks them to admit to a felony, explain how
a crime was drug-related, or detail how long they've been clean, Daugherty
encourages them to be honest.
"But it's brutal out there," says Daugherty. "They
get doors literally slammed in their faces. Rude questions. They get
really beat up."
It's very rare for the women to find more than a minimum
wage job. But they get help with job searches, résumés and
role playing.
They get nurtured through the process.
"If someone has a bad interview, I tell them to come
home, get a hug, don't go onto the next one just yet," says Daugherty.
Dealing with the multiple issues the women face is
what challenges Daugherty. "I've died and gone to social-work heaven,"
she says. "The women here recreate their families of origin. There
are all sorts of opportunities for interventions."
Many of the women had parents who were addicts, in
jail or on the streets. It's a generational thing. Depression, battery
and poor childhoods are issues. "A long-term, holistic approach is
needed to break this cycle," says Daugherty.
Yet with all the layers of issues the women deal with,
Daugherty remembers one thing: Not a single client had a criminal
record before their addiction and often, their abuse.
And the abuse is what made Daugherty sit up and take
notice.
All intertwined
How many women have gone to jail to hide from abusive
boyfriends or husbands? Over the years of working intimately with
women for three-month stretches, Daugherty started to discover things
that didn't come out during intakes: information not disclosed, not
talked about openly.
But it started to creep into discussions. Discussions
regarding things like restraining orders. The law says the abuse has
to happen within 180 days to get a restraining order. If the batterer
is incarcerated during that time period and then released, the victim
still qualifies for the order. But if the victim (the woman, in more
than 95 percent of reported cases) is incarcerated, she loses that
180-day privilege. That means once she's out of prison, she is at
renewed risk of attack from her batterer.
Daugherty found this to be a significant worry among
her residents and caused her to ask more questions. What was happening
for everybody else out there? Working with the Oregon Social Learning
Center, she developed a questionnaire that she left in various agencies.
Women with whom she talked told her no one had ever asked those questions
before.
"In alcohol and drug treatment programs, women are
told not to deal with domestic violence issues, but to deal with the
drug problem first," says Daugherty. "But my belief is it's all intertwined."
In group therapy for addiction, some women are told
not to bring up domestic violence because the other women won't respond
properly. In most domestic violence agencies, addiction isn't addressed.
Daugherty realized she was working with a population
that was falling through the cracks.
Daugherty's research so far has found that 29 percent
of the women respondents had committed a crime because they had been
threatened by a partner; 56 percent had committed a crime to please
their partner; 45 percent had committed a crime to get drugs for their
partner; 40 percent had admitted to a crime committed by their partner;
51 percent had lied to authorities to hide their partner's crime;
and 21 percent had chosen jail to avoid violence by their partner.
A real home
When new residents walk into the house where
they're to spend the next three months, they are are greeted by Daugherty
and her black lab, Emmy Lou. Emmy Lou doesn't like men. She growls
if one even comes near the front door. For women dealing with safety
issues, she's a welcome guard.
Many are overwhelmed with the freedom of coming and
going as they please. "I have to keep telling them 'You're home,'"
says Daugherty. But the freedom is checked. The first week there is
a 10 pm curfew, and the twice-a-week drug testing (UAs) hangs over
everyone's head. (One woman enters Daugherty's office with a bottle
of cold capsules -- "Is this going to mess up my UA?" --
Daugherty assures her over-the-counter medications are fine.)
If they use drugs, they're out, although the women
aren't kicked out with nowhere to go -- Daugherty will transport
them to the Mission or to another detox site -- and told "come
back when you're done." Many do.
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Donations
Needed
Both the men's and women's Sponsors programs
are in need of furniture (especially dressers), bedding, linens
and clothes. The Hope Street Project, which offers a safe place
for women on the streets to receive information and referrals
to get out of prostitution, as well as support and food, is
also in need of toiletries and clothes. To make donations to
either organization, call 485-6738.
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After the first week, residents can spend three nights
a week away, although they are just asked to call and check in. "It's
a tight-knit household and the other women worry if someone doesn't
come home," says Daugherty. Three staff members provide round-the-clock
care. All have pagers and the residents are encouraged to call immediately
if they end up somewhere they don't want to be.
Freedom is seen as an important part of transition.
Dating, overnights with family and friends, and seeing kids is encouraged.
"They need to learn to pick the time to see them and balance that
out with the rest of life," says Daugherty.
In Sponsors, a few women have their kids and they
are welcome there. Oregon law has recently been altered regarding
child custody. Now, if a parent is in jail for one year, he or she
loses custody. If given a lesser sentence, parents have six months
to prove themselves. That can be difficult. One woman fought hard,
says Daugherty. But she was overwhelmed by working a full-time, graveyard-shift
job, doing a daily 12-step program, getting domestic violence counseling,
getting counseling with her kids plus increasing visits with them.
Ultimately, she couldn't do it all.
Another choice is to agree to open adoption, in which
case women might get letters and pictures only once a year. Whether
the women are fighting for custody, lose custody or choose open adoption,
it's tough: They don't have their kids. "More often than not they
go off and get loaded" when they lose custody, says Daugherty.
Much better now
A poster hangs in the entryway of the back
building, where women are housed when they first enter Sponsors. It
reads, "All I needed to know about life I learned from my girlfriends."
Both Patty and Sue say that before Sponsors, other women were the
enemy. "They take your stuff when you're loaded; they're competition
for your johns," says Sue.
"In the whole drug world, women were only out to undercut
each other so I didn't have any good women friends for probably three
years," says Patty. "It's the same in prison."
Patty loved having her own room at Sponsors, with
her own TV, jewelry, trinkets and stuff. "When you're living in a
crack house or abandoned houses, you don't have anything. You have
the clothes you have on and sometimes you leave those behind in a
car."
When she entered the program, Patty just wanted to
stay in her room, look at everything and "cuddle myself under the
covers and watch television with the remote control."
But the women wouldn't let her isolate herself and
she gradually began socializing with the others.
"I didn't want friendships at first, but I got them.
It was so new, like I was getting relationships that didn't have ulterior
motives. They really liked me for me."
Sue says the Sponsors program was the "first time
I ever didn't mind being around women. I used to hate women. You couldn't
manipulate women like you did men. Here, I found a whole new relationship
with them."
That relationship further improved when Sue got pregnant.
Daugherty, as she does with each Sponsors client, attended every doctor's
appointment with her (many Sponsors women say they are mistreated
by local doctors unless someone is with them). Sue is now the proud
mother of beaming, five-month-old Dalton.
Mary is also a mothering success story. A woman with
two children who'd been at Sponsors twice for treatment, she's now
back because she needs the support of the other women to help her
care for her teenage daughter. Her other child is in the custody of
her step-mother.
Although it's rare, Sponsors will take clients back
in for further support on a case-by-case basis.
The other women help parent Mary's daughter and the
sense of community makes it easier for the two to get along.
"She has some personal issues based on how I parented
her, so we're back because we need some more support and this is an
environment where we get that," says Mary.
The future looks bright for Mary's teenage daughter,
who's doing better in school, thanks in part to the Sponsors residents
who make her do her homework.
But it looks bright for the adults, too.
Patty remembers one day back in January of 2000 when
Daugherty brought college financial aid forms to the house and made
her fill one out. She resisted, but did it anyway.
"Eight months later," says Patty, "I was sitting at
my desk at work and I thought, you know, I could go to school. What
if I went to school? I called Jean and discussed it. Because of her
footwork I was able to go just like this," she says, snapping her
fingers.
Patty now attends LCC, where last term she ended up
with a 4.3 GPA. This term she's getting a couple of Bs, so she "might
be down to a 4.0," she says. Out of the Sponsors program for a year
now, Patty receives rent assistance through Catholic Community Services
for going to school, plus ongoing counseling and drug testing.
"I used to sit and smoke crack and think 'I wish I
could go to Europe, I wish I could go, but I know I'm not going to
get there this way.' Or I'd be in prison thinking 'I wish I could
be there.'"
She plans to travel next year.
For Patty and other women, the most important part
of Sponsors is the fact that it's a safe place for people in recovery.
No drugs are tolerated; no one can get to them. The success rate is
good. A conviction cannot cure an addiction or behavior, but treatment
in a safe place can.
Sue has been clean for two years and is now a counselor
with a local drug treatment program and co-coordinator with Daugherty
of the Hope Street Project, an organization the two founded to support
women who are still working the streets.
Sue reflects once more on her old life. "I was released
47 times from jail. That didn't do it. This did it."
She looks down at the healthy child on her lap.
"We're feeling much better now, aren't we?" she says
to baby Dalton, kissing him on the head.
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