Saturday, January 23, 1999
Chaplains see hope among young inmates
BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Earlier this week, a Kenton County judge told two young inmates the brutal truth: Jail is a nasty place.
P.S. Get used to it.
The boys, both awaiting trial — one on a burglary charge, the other accused of first-degree assault and escape — claimed they were being abused by guards at the Kenton County Jail. Video surveillance and internal investigations turned up no illegal mistreatment.
The judge decided the fault lay not with the guards, but with the teen-agers' misconceptions about incarceration. Abuse was prohibited in jail, but harsh treatment was not. If they were wise, they'd come to a realization: They left the best part of civilized life behind the day they were charged with breaking the law.
To many Greater Cincinnatians, this advice sounds just about right. Americans are tired of being scared of their children, fed up with cheeky young punks who commit violent acts with little remorse.
Afraid in the big jail? Want your mommy? Too late, bad boys. You crossed the line of civil behavior. Now you're going to find out about life on the other side.
It's a popular line of thinking, logical and easily defensible.
But Kathleen Droder, Sister Mary Grafe and the Rev. Jack Marsh see things a different way.
"Throwaway children'
The three are chaplains who work with adults and juveniles in the criminal justice system.
They spend their days with the kids we read about in the headlines. They do it voluntarily. They ask to be near the children most of us couldn't put far enough away.
And what they see, day after day, is the rage, fear, anger and hurt that someone else put into these children. That spills out in horrible ways.
And that can never be incarcerated away.
“They're throwaway children,” says Sister Grafe. “Usually when you act out in anger, you act from fear. Most of them are dropouts; they've been abused. They've come from home environments that aren't happy.”
They do unspeakable things, the chaplains say, because unspeakable things have been done to them.
They break rules because they were raised in chaos. They have little respect for human life because, from infancy, their own lives were sacred to no one.
They respond with violence because they were raised in violence, surrounded by it in movies, music and video games. They were told violence is the way one disciplines a child. That it is the way one shows himself to be a man.
“A violent society breeds violent people,” says Mrs. Droder, a mother of five and former police officer.
The kind of society that breeds peaceable people — ah, that comes another, more difficult way, the chaplains say.
Answers can be small
“I believe they must have a spiritual grounding. That's the only way,” says Mrs. Droder. The Rev. Mr. Marsh says they need “one intimate relationship with someone.” Sister Grafe says, “Mentoring programs are the best thing ever.”
The problem of juvenile crime seems engulfing, overwhelming. But the chaplains say the answers are, paradoxically, small things, within our reach.
Youth programs in churches. Family dinners, eaten at the same time, at the same table. Retired adults who pair up with a kid. Someone to simply listen. An introduction to God.
The chaplains are not asking for amnesty for troubled teen-agers. They say the long road back begins, by necessity, with personal responsibility. They agree wholeheartedly that there are penalties to be paid, apologies to be made.
But they also say there must be a way back. A light to follow. A path to find.
“Are we really saying a 16-year-old doesn't have hope?” Sister Grafe asks. “Are we saying he can't be saved?”
The rest of us may struggle with the questions.
Three chaplains look into young faces every day, and hold out hard for salvation, and for hope.
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati 45202.
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at the Enquirer, 312 Elm St. Cincinnati 45202.
RAMSEY ARCHIVE