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Brown: One out of 50 children today have a parent in prison or jail and children with parents in prison are five to seven times as likely to become incarcerated themselves. Could the key to saving some of these kids from the system be found in the relationships they form with their incarcerated parents? An important discussion next on Black Issues Forum.
Voiceover: Funding for this program is made possible in part by UNC-TV members.
Brown: Good evening and welcome to Black Issues Forum. I am Natalie Bullock Brown. Tonight we address an issue that touches a small but important population of children in our state. According to the North Carolina Department of Correction in October 2004 there were roughly 35,000 inmates in the state prison system. Over 12,600 male and female inmates reported having children; now that is about one in three, and it is a conservative number based only upon the number of inmates who volunteered to report. The total number of children reported with incarcerated parents was 27,138, and unfortunately some of these kids have both parents in prison.
Now looking at the racial breakdown of the prison population, 35% of inmates are white compared to 60% African-American, and a remaining 5% Asian, Native American, and other. There is a strong likelihood that a child who has an incarcerated parent will also wind up behind bars so it is important that anyone close to those children understand the measures they can take to prevent them from ending up in prison.
One of our guests tonight says one solution may lie in the relationships those children form with their incarcerated parents and the first steps towards these relationships are forgiveness and reconciliation. I would like to introduce Scottie Barnes, founder of Forgiven Ministry. We also have with us Ronald Eddings, an ex-offender who spent ten years estranged from his children and in and out of North Carolina prisons. Through the help of Forgiven Ministry he became reconciled with his children and today Ron is a successful full-time student at Catawba Valley Community College and is president of the student body there.
We also have with us Eureka C. Daye, a licensed professional counselor, licensed marriage and family therapist, mental health practitioner, and vice president of Behavioral Link for at-risk youth. Wow! Thank you, thanks to all of you for being on the show.
Ron, I want to start with you first. Please tell us a little bit about your story. What was your relationship with your kids when you first entered the prison system and what is it like now?
Eddings: Well actually when I first entered the prison system I had no relationship with my children. Because I was out there selling drugs and involved in that lifestyle I tried to keep it away from my children. And so I didn't want my child, my kids to be around that whole situation so I kind of stayed away from them. And when I finally went to prison, I managed to keep that distance from them. It was only until after I was released with the help of Scottie Barnes that I reestablished that relationship with my children.
Brown: How do you feel that distance that you kept from your children impacted you inside, internally?
Eddings: Well, there was always this sort of emptiness because I can remember when my children were small we had a very close relationship. Once I got into the drug business and started getting myself in and out of trouble that relationship drifted apart and so I kind of felt that emptiness inside that I missed my children and I knew my children missed me. But I was too involved in other things and it was just too hard for me to bring them into that whole situation.
Brown: Right. Scottie, I understand that this subject is close to your heart for a particular reason. Explain to us your relationship with your father and how it led to you establishing Forgiven Ministry?
Barnes: I can remember riding to Regional North Carolina age four with my arm around my mom's neck every weekend to visit my father in prison. That continued throughout my life until at age 42 he died in Lexington Federal Prison. I did not know the love of a father. I longed and cried and at night would just beg God to let me know if Daddy loved me. I was a responsibility he did not want at that time in his life. But now and since the death of my father I have the knowledge of knowing that he did love me and at age 42 he and I reconciled and it brought back the greatest peace in my heart. And out of that has grown the desire to bring reconciliation to children across the United States with their incarcerated parents.
Brown: Let me ask you because you were estranged from your father for so long, I mean from the time that you were really a baby until you were a grown woman. Was the reconciliation that you experienced, I guess upon his death bed, was that difficult because of all of the time that had passed or did it seem like no time had passed, like you know you just wish that you'd had more time with him?
Barnes: Well I am a Christian and God has a way of healing hurts and he took place, took that place in my heart. I did go and visit my father in prison but there was no love shown to me. You felt the coldness, you knew that you were just there and you needed to leave quickly. But then whenever he was found guilty on his last sentence I stood beside him at his sentencing and I spoke on his behalf. I had complete freedom from all of the anger and rejection. And I was able to love him unconditionally at that point.
Brown: And that is, do you think that is what brought about his love or his ability to express love for you?
Barnes: My dad became a Christian at age 61 and that was just months before he died. And there is where the real reconciliation comes.
Brown: Wow. Well Eureka, when you counsel individuals dealing with the issue of an incarcerated parent in the family, what are some of the major concerns?
Daye: Well many times a primary concern is the adjustment. The family is having to go through adjustments similar to a loss like death. There is a grieving process that happens, there is a lot of competing feelings and emotions that go on. And for children especially those feelings compete with wanting to love that incarcerated parent as well as feeling anger, feeling depression, and feeling confusion around the situation. A lot of the times the situation is imposed upon the child outside of his or her control. And so all of those competing feelings interrupt that family's system as well as interrupt that child's ability to understand what is going on around him.
Brown: So what do you tell-if both parents are not in prison and I hope that in a lot of cases they are not-what do you tell the parent that is left behind to raise the children to help them to know what to say, how to nurture, how to minister to the children so that they somehow will be able to cope with that anger and those competing feelings?
Daye: For children behavior speaks in lieu of words. Children are often unsophisticated depending on their age. They are sophisticated in order to put their words into how they are feeling and put it out there so they show it through behavior. A lot of the times if we give our children words to articulate their realities for their understanding of what is going on around them, what is going on in their family, and help them understand through words and through action they can settle better and they can make that adjustment. Oftentimes we see children who will act out in interesting ways and those ways often will end up as behavior problems at school, with families in disruption, and also in criminal acts themselves.
Brown: So it is just out of sheer frustration that the kids are acting out?
Daye: Frustration, confusion, a loss, feelings of abandonment, feelings of separation, feeling that parent that is incarcerated chose that criminal behavior over the child.
Brown: Gotcha. Ron, did your kids feel any of this to your knowledge?
Eddings: I know when I first came out in trying to reestablish that relationship with my daughter especially, she was mad. My son, even to this day, he is still sort of mad. Because he felt like I abandoned him. My daughter, she was young when I went in, but when I came back we had to reestablish that whole bonding process. Now we are close as ever but it was that process you have to go through where you bond with your children, where you get them to realize that you are not going to leave them again, and that they can depend on you; you've got to build that trust. And that is what I had to do.
Brown: And we are going to come back to that. We want to get Scottie back in on the conversation but we want to tell our viewers we've been talking about relationships between prison inmates and their children. And a private program out of Asheville, North Carolina that helps provide a platform for these relationships that starts with forgiveness. Here is a little more about Forgiven Ministry.
Voiceover: It is estimated that there are over 3.5 million children in the United States who have a parent behind bars. In North Carolina the number is smaller but equally important. Forgiven Ministry is a privately-funded, spiritually-based program founded by Scottie Barnes in Taylorsville, North Carolina. Forgiven Ministry works in partnership with the North Carolina Department of Corrections to help heal and restore relationships between inmates and their children. Scottie, who worked through her own issues as a young girl whose father died in prison, has taken the day camp across the state and the nation, even to maximum-security prisons like the Louisiana State Penitentiary. The day camp is an outreach that brings together prisoners and their children for a day of games, activities, and quiet time discussions with fathers, some who have never seen their children before.
The ministry relies heavily on the work of volunteers who serve food, help with the activities, and otherwise assist in any way they can at the camps. Although Scottie credits the positive effects of her work to God, those who are touched by Scottie's ministry give thanks also to her.
M: I hadn't spent a day with Isiah in five, almost six years; he will be seven this May. I asked for his forgiveness, that means a lot to me. And learned to forgive, so you know it is, what these people are doing with this program is great.
M: Today has just been different. I really got a chance to get to really get to know him even though it has been a while. He has taught me a few things, you know? Not being able to be around him and everything and just, it is hard to describe really but it is good to see him like this.
Brown: Well Scottie, tell us from your experience through Forgiven Ministry, what sort of transformations have you seen with the children and their fathers and how quickly does this transformation take place?
Barnes: Oh it can take place instantly. I can share one experience in Angola. We had a little 14-year-old girl who had never met her father and of course the dad was excited. The day before the camp the father spent all day in a program called Great Dads learning the responsibility of a father and what children are needing. So the dad was prepared to go forward that day with his daughter and she began to cry and wanted to leave; she hated that man. And they came to get me and I walked over and I could see so much anger, Eureka it was just boiling out of her. And the dad was crying. And I said, "Honey if you will just give us two hours and you and your father make the little lamp together. Just two hours. If you are not pleased I'll take you home." And you know what? She came running to me, waving that lamp, "Ms. Barnes, I don't want to go home. I love my Daddy." Now what if we had not, what if we had not had that camp? Where would that anger have gone? It would have been put into some form of action.
Brown: Now Eureka you were saying before we saw the piece on Forgiven Ministry that a lot of kids turn that anger, because they don't know how to express it into, it becomes behavioral problems, they may even end up incarcerated themselves. I mean how do you stem that tide of-you know Forgiven Ministry is of course a great example of how you keep kids from repeating that behavior, but what are some other things that can happen that will keep kids from acting out?
Daye: Probably first and foremost is to give that child permission to feel as they feel, to give that child permission to be angry, permission to be angry at that absent parent, as well as permission to own their feelings, being able to have some kind of support network in place and/or a safe place to be able to express these feelings, for other people around them not to force their own personal biases and feelings onto these children. These children are still the children of incarcerated fathers and mothers and that doesn't go away simply because that parent is incarcerated. And so to encourage that bond to continue, to give that child permission and give them some controls in whether or not they want to visit that parent, what kind of relationship they would like to continue to have with that parent, and to have permission to pick up the phone and call if you will. And so to give some control back to the child in order to maintain some semblance of a father/child, father/mother relationship.
Brown: I am going to stay with you for a moment. I am sure that in many instances if the mother, let's say, is the one that is left with the children to raise them, she may harbor some anger herself.
Daye: Absolutely.
Brown: And that might be, I am thinking that might be some of the bias that you are saying you try and encourage people not to place on the kids.
Daye: Absolutely.
Brown: How do you do that, though? How do you then minister, provide therapy, for the mother so that they don't transfer their anger and their emotions to the children and you have this cycle that is never ending?
Daye: A lot of the times what you do, very similar to a family of divorce, you try not to triangulate that child. You give that parent who is home with the child actually their own safe place to talk about how they feel. There is probably a lot of anger going into the situation with incarceration, there is anger being left behind, there is anger being the person in charge of that child, the one with the responsibilities of parenting that child, financial problems, changes in economic status, so there is a lot for that parent that is left behind to deal with as well. And so probably the best thing is for that family to be in some kind of treatment and some kind of therapies separate for the parent who is left behind as well as for the child, and then together. And so that parent who is left behind can have an understanding of what their children are going through as well as encourage and foster a meaningful relationship with that absent parent.
Brown: One more question then I want to get to you, Ron, but how health is it for children to visit their parents in prison?
Daye: A lot of the times it depends on that relationship that was established before the imprisonment. If there was violence involved, if there was molestation involved, if there was acts of trauma that were involved, then probably the professional would make the best judgment, a clinical judgment, as to when is the best time to reconciliate with that family or that parent that is in prison. So depending on the quality and the kind of relationship that the child had with the parent that is in prison, that pretty much dictates how soon somebody should encourage that child to continue that relationship. But there are situations where children should not have that ongoing contact.
Brown: Okay, we are going to try and get back to those situations but Ron, did your children visit you in prison at all?
Eddings: No, not at all.
Brown: And how-and you were in and out of prison for 10 years?
Eddings: Yes, for about 10 years. That was partly my idea; I didn't want my children, especially my son, I thought it was like an omen, a bad omen, if my son came to visit me on the camp. And I wanted to keep them away from that whole-I didn't want them to see how prison looked. I didn't want them to come behind those gates. I just kind of wanted to keep him outside, let him do his thing, grow up to be a man, and he turned out pretty well.
Brown: Were you, did you experience feelings of shame and embarrassment being-do you think that part of what you felt also had to do with you not wanting your son and your daughter to come?
Eddings: Oh yes, totally. Totally ashamed, wondering how I got myself in that whole situation, in that whole position of being in prison and ruining my life, hitting rock bottom. I mean, of course you feel bad and you don't want your children to see you that way even though they are smarter than you think. You really don't want them to see you that way. You are thinking about shielding yourself from them behind those walls, behind those gates, that they don't know but they really do.
Brown: In retrospect do you wish that you had allowed them or encouraged them to come visit you?
Eddings: In a way I do and in a way I don't. If I could do it over again, and I hope I never have to but if I could do it over again I think I would have liked for my son to come and visit me a little bit more. I just wanted, I think I needed to tell him that I loved him and that I am thinking about him constantly and that I am there for him, whether he knows it or not. My heart is with him and I want him to be successful and I want him to make a good career and a good decision about his life. Those are the things that I tell him now. Even now I try to make sure that I tell my daughter every time we talk, "You know I love you with all of my heart," because I want her to know that I love her and I miss her and she knows this. We have become so close.
Brown: So it has been a blessing for you it sounds like. And Scottie, you know if Ron had the opportunity to tell his son, even behind prison bars, that he loved him on a regular basis, do you think it would have made a big difference? Would have been easier for the reconciliation?
Barnes: I know it would. I know it would. You see incarceration does not diminish a child's heart and their need for their parent. Neither does it diminish the role of a father and mother. So as his son lay at night and wondered, "What does Daddy really-Daddy doesn't even know what I've done today." He could have made a big difference. I know that, speaking from personal experience. And a lot of times a child is under so much pressure from the guardian or the legal guardian, the wife, and they can't express to them at all how they feel because they will make them mad because those people can't stand the inmate. So they are just locked in a little world of their own and they can't tell the kids at school because it is an embarrassment. And so that is what we want to do is unlock that dark world and bring some direction and some hope and excitement into their life, set them on a positive road.
Brown: Well Ron it sounds like your life is definitely on a positive road and that you've not only reconciled with your children but even the mother of your children?
Eddings: Oh yes.
Brown: Tell us a little bit about that?
Eddings: Well her name is Joan. We have a great relationship. We have two children together and we've, she has come to realize that I am fighting for my life and I am trying to reestablish myself, or reinvent myself I guess, and she is proud of me. And not just that, she sees my kids that are proud of me. She hears them talking, my son talks about his father now; Brittany talks about her father a lot. And so she hears these things and when I talk to Joan on the phone, one of the things that she tells me is that she is proud of me. She is glad of my accomplishments. And it kind of makes me feel good, it makes me want to go even further. It makes me want my children to go even further. And I have to say she has been a great mother. She has raised those kids great, without me.
Brown: Well she also did something that I think is probably pretty rare in terms of child support. Tell us about that?
Eddings: She did that. Well, she went in front of the judge and told the judge that she was proud of my accomplishments and that my children and I had reestablished our relationship and that she didn't see any reason why she should hold that over my head and she dropped it, so.
Brown: So you are no longer obligated to pay any back support?
Eddings: No. I thought it was a great thing. It shocked me, you know.
Brown: But I am sure that is a way, that really helps you to start your life over.
Eddings: Now one other thing that I do want to add, and she is friends with my wife, and that is very important to me, and my children have a relationship with my wife, and my ex-wife has a relationship with my wife, so that is very important. It is like a family bonding. Any time there is a decision to be made everybody is involved. A lot of changes have happened in my life, you know, in the last three-and-a-half years.
Brown: Well a lot, I understand that a lot, all of the things that are going on in your life-you are trying to spread the word, take your message to a larger audience. Tell us about how you are doing that?
Eddings: Well Scottie started me in speaking, going out speaking, giving my testimony and since that time and going back to college and I am getting ready to graduate here soon, I've gone out to churches, high schools, prisons, anywhere I can to share my testimony. Mainly to try to get these guys that are incarcerated to know that I am leading by example, there is an opportunity for you to change your life but you've got to get some guts and you've got to want to do it. And once you realize what you are capable of you can do anything. And I try to lead by example like I said, by becoming SA president, by making the national Dean's list, by winning the national Coca-Cola scholarship, all of these things. And I am a three-time convicted felon.
And so you know I just want to let these guys know that you don't have to sit behind those bars and do nothing. You start building your life right now. You establish your relationship with your children right now. And when I go behind those bars that is what I tell them, now is the day, today is the day.
Brown: Well Eureka, Ron's story sounds like it is a rare example but how often does it, does the story have a happy ending?
Daye: Well you know each child has their story. And each incarcerated inmate has their story. And collectively there is a larger story. For children especially and for the parent that is left behind and for that imprisoned inmate, that story has to be told. And so for Ron and for other inmates coming out back into the community, the re-citizen rate, especially when these relationship are reestablished, when fathers and children and mothers and children reestablish and reconcile relationships, the meaningful value of that relationship does decrease the re-citizen rate. You see it through Ron and through other inmates who go out and become productive citizens.
Brown: And when you say re-citizen rate, you are saying that they do not go back into prison?
Daye: Many times because of fatherhood and responsibility, because of becoming a responsible parent again and knowing what the responsibilities entail, and wanting to show by example and wanting to make good influences in their children's lives, and becoming productive in ways that they weren't before and making the choice to do that, and so employment is real important at that point. Staying out of jail is real important at that point. Salvaging old relationships and severing old relationships are real important. And so to re-invent yourself, as you had mentioned, and to reframe what that reality is now, so coming out is a whole new reality. And there is some choice in there. And so the re-citizen rate does go down, choices around behaviors, good behaviors go up, and those relationships with the children sort of encourage that responsibility to the child to stay out of prison.
Brown: I wish we could continue this discussion; it is so important. I thank all of you. I'd like to thank Scottie Barnes, Ron Eddings, and Eureka C. Daye for joining us tonight. We should note that the spokespeople of the North Carolina Department of Corrections told our producer they not only understand the value of the relationship between inmates and their children, but they encourage the development of those relationships. And to that end they have written a handbook and they provide assistance to help caregivers, teachers, and family members of inmates and give guidance on how to continue and nurture these relationships while the parent is serving a prison term.
For information on the guidebook and about tonight's show, please visit us on the website at UNC-TV.org/bif or call us with your questions at 919-549-7167. Thanks for watching tonight and be sure to join us right here each and every Friday night at 9:30. For Black Issues Forum I am Natalie Bullock Brown reminding you to be encouraged no matter what. Good night.
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