Starting Over Sometimes Difficult For Moms

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MICHEL MARTIN, host:

This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but maybe you just need a few moms in your corner. We visit with a diverse group of parents each week for their common sense and savvy parenting advice.

Today, we talk about a group of women and with a group of women who really need that village. We're taking a closer look at some moms on the edge, especially those who have gotten involved with drugs. Often, these moms wind up getting caught up in the legal system, but happens with their kids when their moms go to prison? Couldn't that just perpetuate the cycle of neglect and vulnerability that leads to drugs and crime in the first place?

Malika Saada Saar thought so. That's why she helped start the Rebecca Project. That's an organization that looks to help vulnerable families find paths to stability and safety. She's here with me in the Washington, D.C., studio, along with Imani Walker. She's the co-founder of the Rebecca Project and herself - do I have this right, also a recovering addict?

Ms. IMANI WALKER (Co-founder, The Rebecca Project): Yes.

MARTIN: And mom of four. Also with us, as usual, is regular Moms contributor Jolene Ivey. She's a delegate in the Maryland state legislature. She's the co-founder of the Mocha Moms, a parenting support group, mom of five. They're all here with me in our Washington, D.C., studios. And Malika, I didn't mean to slight you. You're also a mom of two yourself. And thank you all so much for coming.

Let me start with you. You and Imani co-founded the Rebecca Project when you were still a student at Georgetown Law. Where did this idea come from, and where did the name come from?

Ms. MALIKA SAADA SAAR (Co-founder, The Rebecca Project): The name, the Rebecca Project, came from a lovely woman who had helped us do writing workshops for mothers who were in treatment from substance abuse. And she was really the intellectual and spiritual voice of the workshops that we were doing for mothers to claim their space and to claim and reclaim all of their parts.

We also wanted to name our project the Rebecca Project because we really intersect worlds, mothers who are poor, who are living in poverty, who are vulnerable, and the world of Washington lawmakers. And so because midwives are really about the intersection, and Rebecca in the Bible was a midwife, we really saw our work as being a midwifery, of bringing together worlds that are often insular and isolated from one another.

MARTIN: What is your main focus? Is it bringing the circumstances of these mothers to the attention of policymakers?

Ms. SAAR: To national policymakers, as well as state policymakers, and also ensuring that those mothers are able to lead the advocacy efforts, that they are not there in the halls of Congress simply as anecdote but that they are able to give voice to their circumstances and give voice to policy recommendations in order to transform policy for vulnerable families.

MARTIN: Just give me a sense of the scope of the issue. How many women are there currently in prison, and how many of them are mothers, jail and prison, and how many are mothers?

Ms. SAAR: We know that 35 percent of those who are incarcerated are women. The majority of women behind bars in both federal and state prisons are mothers. They are mothers to children under the age of 18. They are first-time offenders, and they are non-violent offenders.

So we are really looking at this aberrant population of those who are not the drug kingpins, who are not murderers, who are mothers suffering with untreated addiction, who ought to be in the public-health system and not in the criminal justice system.

MARTIN: Imani, if you would pick up here and tell us a little bit about your story.

Ms. WALKER: Sure. As you said, I'm a mother of four, and I've been in recovery from substance abuse for 10 years. My pathway to addiction was like that of most mothers. Ninety-seven percent of moms who are substance-abusing have had experiences of sexual or physical violence that they've experienced the trauma of that physical abuse, and they develop depression or post-traumatic stress disorder as a result, and that was my story.

I was in an abusive relationship, an abusive marriage, for 11 years. And the year that the marriage ended, my mom died the same year. I was severely depressed and began to self-medicate, first with marijuana, and then when that no longer worked to silence the pain that I was suffering, I began to self-medicate with crack cocaine and spiraled down into a severe addiction.

MARTIN: And were you incarcerated at some point?

Ms. WALKER: Actually, you know, I always talk about how it was by the grace of God that I wasn't incarcerated. It's actually easier for a mom to be incarcerated than it is for her to access appropriate treatment for her family. So, you know, I had a couple of really close incidents where I literally was in handcuffs. And because I was so low on the totem pole in the world of addiction and crime, there was a bigger crime happening and I remember the cops saying to me, you know, this is your lucky break. We have bigger fish to fry down the street.

MARTIN: And when you say it's easier to access incarceration than it is to access treatment, talk to me a little bit more about that.

Ms. WALKER: Sure. As Malika said, most moms who are incarcerated are there because they're untreated addicts, non-violent, drug-offending attics. Only 5 percent of all treatment that's available in this country is family focused, a place where a mother can bring her child, a place where she cannot or has not -she doesn't have to, I'm sorry. She doesn't have to make the choice between recovery and her children. Most treatment programs are single adult treatment programs. You cannot bring your children with you. They are no gender-specific groups. The underlying reasons that you're self-medicating in the first place, the physical and sexual violence issues, are never addressed.

MARTIN: I just want to point out that again, 77 percent of incarcerated mothers were the primary caregivers of their children before incarceration, this from the Institute on Women and Criminal Justice. Jolene, talk to me about this, if you would. I wanted to ask first, and the Moca Moms, which is a support group that you helped to found that - primarily for mothers of color. Did you ever have any members of the group who were struggling with addiction issues and having a hard time figuring out how to get help?

Ms. JOLENE IVY (Delegate, Maryland State Legislature; Co-founder, Moca Moms): Not that I'm aware of. The women in Moca Moms are primarily at-home mothers of color who, you know, are married, primarily. They have a husband who's supporting the family. They're not in the same kind of vulnerable position that you're talking about. So, no, not from that perspective. The information I have is more from a policy level. It's…

MARTIN: From a policy level, what are some of the things that Imani talked about that would make a difference? I mean, she pointed out that if you are particularly a single mom or if you don't have a family structure that would allow you to leave your children for a month and if you become addicted, what do you do?

Ms. IVY: It's a problem. I mean, she's absolutely right. We need to do more to provide more funding for drug treatment. It's really a treatment issue. It's not something that should necessarily be incarcerable(ph) offense. In my opinion, most of the women who are in prison, 70 to 80 percent are non-violent. They're not people who've actually killed anybody or - it's like writing bad checks or drugs problems or something like that. So most of the women who are in are in for non-violent offenses, and I think we need to keep that in mind when we look at how we treat those who are in prison.

MARTIN: But Malika, would you talk about this? There are those who would argue that by definition if a mother is addicted, she is in danger of either being a danger to her children or exposing those children to people who would be a danger to them because of her lack of capacity to care for them. And there are those who would argue that that does warrant her being separated from children. What do you say to that?

Ms. SAAR: Well, what we know is that when we take those mothers and put them into family-based treatment programs, that those mothers succeed and they stabilize their families. I think most mothers want to be good mothers. But mothers who are suffering with addiction are self-medicating to very severe issues of violence and trauma. We know that the shared narrative of mothers who are addicted is that they were first victims of violence, and they started using as a way to self-medicate from the trauma of the violence. And so to give mothers who want to be good mothers, but are suffering from violence, trauma and addiction the opportunity to go into family-base treatment program and heal from the violence and heal from the addiction and to do that with their children is the best outcome for our families.

MARTIN: Talk to me a little bit about that, if you would. Because I think people are - many people are familiar with this issue internationally.

Ms. SAAR: Mm.

MARTIN: You know, they're familiar with women and girls being subjected to sexual violence in war zones and, you know, in the context of civil conflict. What I hear you saying is that a very large degree of drug abuse among women is tied to their being victims of sexual violence. Is that true? Is that what you're telling me?

Ms. SAAR: That's absolutely true. And these mothers have to be claimed as part of those victims of violence. And often our anti-violence and domestic violence movements don't claim these mothers because of their self-medication. But we have to be able to recognize…

MARTIN: What you're saying is that the civil - people don't see them as worthy of activism because you're an addict so therefore, you're the problem and you're not worthy of my support, and that's that.

Ms. SAAR: And if we recognize that as women, so much of what ties us together is that shared narrative of violence, that one in three women in this country will have been beaten, coerced or raped in her lifetime, and these mothers are part of that statistic. They are part of what it means to be a mother America so vulnerable to issues of violence. But what happened to them because they don't have the protective layer of education or economic privilege and stability is that they turn to self-medicating with illegal substances.

MARTIN: If you're just joining us, you're listening to TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin.

We're talking about helping mothers at risk. I'm speaking with Malika Saada Saar and Imani Walker of The Rebecca Project for Human Rights. Also with us, as always, is Maryland lawmaker and regular Moms guest, Jolene Ivy.

Imani, was that your story? That you were subjected to inappropriate sexual attention at a young age and that that was something you couldn't deal with properly? Is that part of what happened, that you were vulnerable and therefore, you couldn't figure out how to - you had no resources, there was nobody to help you deal with that?

Ms. WALKER: My story's is just a little different. At a young age, no, I was not subjected to any sexual abuse. But I married at a young age. By age 19, I was married and I was exposed to physical violence for 11 years in that marriage. And when the marriage broke up and I began to self-medicate, like I said, I experienced a date rape. You know, I had been a marriage since I was 18 years old, really had dated him when I was 18 years old, and it was pretty much my first time going out and dating again. And I experienced a date rape. So I did experience sexual violence in my addiction.

MARTIN: I wanted to ask this because you live in a major city, and how a lot of people who have this notion now - you know, we have Oprah. You know, we have all these you know programs where we talk about these issues, women's magazines. And a lot of people have the sense that this is taken care of in a country like the United States and such that there's always a phone call, there's a help line, there's a shelter, there's some place to go, particularly in a city. Now maybe people might think well, gee, in a rural area I can see. You know, everybody knows every, and we're isolated. But could you talk a little bit about that? I mean…

Ms. WALKER: Sure. As a woman who experienced physical abuse for so many years, what I'm really clear on is that the psychology, you know, all of the - for example, when I was raped and it was a date rape, I did not report it to the police. And I consider myself a pretty savvy woman, and if any of my friends had told me they were raped I would be, let's go and report it. But just like with addiction, there was so much shame associated with it. I felt like I should've known better. You know, how could I have gone to his office alone? Even though it was the middle of the day, but you know I should've known better.

And, you know, how did I allow myself to be in that position? What's going to happen if there's a public trial? You know, my children just went through the divorce with me, and I had began to self-medicate and knew I was spiraling down. What attention is this going to bring them? So there was all of these reasons that I felt like it was better to be silent. And that's what so much of our work is about in The Rebecca Project for Human Rights. It's about getting to those layers of silence that we suffer, the remorse, the shame, the guilt that we suffer both in our addiction, but also in our physical and sexual abuse.

MARTIN: Do you think, Malika, that lawmakers are seeing the connection that you see?

Ms. SAAR: I think that we have to work every single day to make that connection. And it's not only the lawmakers who have to see the connection. It's the women's movement that has to see the connection. It's the religious movements that have to see that connection. I think that we have taken vulnerable mothers and vulnerable girls and put them at the margins of our conversations around women's rights, around anti-violence, around criminal justice reform. And so I think our work is an every day struggle to make sure that all members of our community claim women, mothers, girls and daughters who are at the margins, at the core of our community.

MARTIN: So I'm going to ask Jolene the same question, but Malika, I have to ask you, there are those who will be listening to our conversation and say personal responsibility still attends.

Ms. SAAR: Absolutely.

MARTIN: That one can say look, it's true, if a person has abused as a child then he or she deserves the resources and support of our society and it's wrong if people don't get that. But when one becomes an adult, one is responsible for ones own conduct, particularly if one becomes a mother. And if you choose to break the law, if you choose to engage in antisocial conduct, then consequences have to be paid. What do you say to that?

Ms. SAAR: You know, I have seen the most grace and the most personal responsibility taken by mothers who go into family treatment programs and who face their demons and struggle with those demons and come out on the other side whole and strong and intent on being the best mothers to their children.

MARTIN: Jolene, what about you? Do you think that your fellow lawmakers - do you see a connection between women who are subjected to violence, women who are subjected particularly to sexual violence and this later involvement with drugs and self-medicating - do you see that, do you think that that link is starting to be in a policymaker's mind? Do you think people agree with that?

Ms. IVEY: I think it's pretty obvious that there's a strong link there. And what we do about it is the issue. Now, when people commit crimes, obviously, if we catch them, they're going to go to prison. And once they're in prison, it's then our responsibility to help them be ready to get out and be stronger members of society. And there are programs in prison, but not enough. And, in fact, there's the Higher Education Act that was just passed by Congress. I was kind of appalled by some of it. I don't know how much each congressman knew what they were voting for. But of the things that it does, it's severely limiting who can access - once they're in prison, who can have access to some of these higher education programs.

It increased the age from 25 to 35, so that's good. So there's a few more people who will be included. On the other hand, if you've been convicted of a crime of violence or against children or various other things, then you can't. And if we want people to get out of prison and be good members of society, we have to do more to help those people, too.

MARTIN: Imani, I'm going to give you the last word, because this is your story, as it is the story of many women. What is the one thing you would like to have people walk away with from our conversation today? What would you like them to know about moms like you? Like you, for whatever that means. You're a mother. I am sorry.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. WALKER: Yes. What I would like them to know is that most moms, if not all, want to be good mothers, that mothers who are self-medicating to issues of trauma, physical violence to sexual violence want to be good mothers and that they should have access to appropriate treatment for their disease of addiction and that family treatment should be funded to scale, a place where mom can heal from the trauma and a place where her children can also get therapeutic services because they also suffer in the addiction with her.

MARTIN: Imani Walker along with Malika Saada Saar are the co-founders of The Rebecca Project for Human Rights. Jolene Ivy, a regular Moms contributor was here with me also. We were all here in our Washington, D.C. studios. Ladies, moms, thank you all so much for joining us, and Happy Mother's Day to you all.

Ms. WALKER: Thank you.

Ms SAAR: Thank you Michel, you too.

MARTIN: And that's our program for today. I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Let's talk more tomorrow.

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