New transitional house will help women leaving prison to succeed
By Michele Linck, Journal staff writer | Posted: Friday, October 14, 2005
Franciscan Sister Gwen Hennesey, left, and Shirley Waldschmitt, stand in the living room of the Clare Guest House in Sioux City, a project of the Sisters of St. Francis of Dubuque, Iowa, to provide a supportive community for women just leaving prison. (Staff photo by Jerry Mennenga)
After they've done their time and paid for their crime, women inmates leave Iowa prisons with $100, a bus ticket to their chosen destination and a month's worth of medication -- that's it.
The Sisters of St. Francis are about to start giving some of them much more -- a helping hand up in their first few months of freedom, and, importantly, a place to live.
The Roman Catholic order is opening a transitional home for women leaving prison, the Clare Guest House, at 1918 Douglas St. in Sioux City. It will provide a supportive community and mentoring as the women look for a job, a place to live and start reconnecting to the community.
Clare House is the only transitional house in Northwest Iowa and the only one operated by the Dubuque, Iowa-based Sisters of St. Francis, who, long ago, founded Briar Cliff University here.
Sister Gwen Hennessey, 73 years old and no stranger to prison herself, having served six months for civil disobedience, will be the live-in Clare House manager. The first residents will move in sometime next week.
The public is invited see the house first, during an open house from 3 to 6 this afternoon. They can meet Hennessey and other Clare House founders, Sisters Shirley Waldschmitt, Grace Ann Witte and Mary Lee Cox.
The Franciscans are renting the house from the Boys and Girls Home and Family Services. The order provided the seed money and many people have given generously of needed furnishings and labor to spruce up the house. Now the sisters are hoping the wider community will support it with financial gifts, and that the residents themselves will be able contribute.
Clare House will not be a religion-based home, Hennessey said. It is nondenominational and there will be no proselytizing. Women must commit to stay there at least two months and can stay no longer than six months. The women must be looking for work, must attend regular sessions with their mentors, must participate in the house's community life and help with chores, such as cooking and cleaning. The use of drugs or alcohol is not permitted. There will be a nightly curfew.
The home will not provide social services. It also will not house women with their children, although, Hennessey said, it will be supportive of those who are mothers. "We hope their time here will help them gradually reconnect with their families," she said.
The residents will all come from Iowa's three women's prisons, according to Witte, a professor of sociology and criminology at Briar Cliff. She said about 30 women who are released from those facilities come to the Sioux City area each year.
"It's a very stressful time," she said. The stigma of prison makes it difficult as they look for housing, try to find a job, try to pay bills and reunite with their families.
Witte said women who don't successfully rejoin the community typically fail in the first two or three months, usually for financial reasons. Studies show that women who receive good support in the first months after leaving prison succeed much more often. Of the 1,600 women who leave prison each day in the United States, she said. only 13 percent have any pre-release preparation for their new life.
'I've walked the walk'
Hennessey is certain her own prison experience will help her help Clare House residents. "I walked the walk," she said. "I know a bit about what it's like to be looked at and treated as an object."
She and her sister Dorothy Hennessey, now 93, and also a Franciscan nun, were among 13 women arrested in 2000 during in a nonviolent protest at the U.S. Army Infantry Center in Fort Benning, Ga.
Hennessey said 3,600 people were protesting the School of the Americas at the base, where they said the U.S. was training Latin American military who used their new skills to terrorize and oppress their own poor citizens to the benefit of the rich ones and multinational corporations.
She and her sister each received a six-month sentence and served it at a minimum security women's "camp" in Pekin, Ill.
She said most of the women there participated in the "community" of the inmates, supporting and encouraging one another. She said everyone hated prison, but many women admitted it had saved their life from drugs or other bad choices.
She said she knows even that, even more than instruction and life skills, the women who will come to Clare House need someone who believes in them, listens to them and who will be as compassionate as possible.
Michele Linck may be reached at (712)293-4227 or michelelinck@siouxcityjournal.com.
The public is invited to the Clare Guest House open house from 3 to 6 p.m. today, at 1918 Douglas St. The house is a project of the Sioux City Multicultural Neighborhood Project of the Sisters of St. Francis. The new transitional home takes its name from St. Clare, the counterpart of St. Francis and a woman known for her gift of hospitality.
The Sisters of St. Francis are about to start giving some of them much more -- a helping hand up in their first few months of freedom, and, importantly, a place to live.
The Roman Catholic order is opening a transitional home for women leaving prison, the Clare Guest House, at 1918 Douglas St. in Sioux City. It will provide a supportive community and mentoring as the women look for a job, a place to live and start reconnecting to the community.
Clare House is the only transitional house in Northwest Iowa and the only one operated by the Dubuque, Iowa-based Sisters of St. Francis, who, long ago, founded Briar Cliff University here.
Sister Gwen Hennessey, 73 years old and no stranger to prison herself, having served six months for civil disobedience, will be the live-in Clare House manager. The first residents will move in sometime next week.
The public is invited see the house first, during an open house from 3 to 6 this afternoon. They can meet Hennessey and other Clare House founders, Sisters Shirley Waldschmitt, Grace Ann Witte and Mary Lee Cox.
The Franciscans are renting the house from the Boys and Girls Home and Family Services. The order provided the seed money and many people have given generously of needed furnishings and labor to spruce up the house. Now the sisters are hoping the wider community will support it with financial gifts, and that the residents themselves will be able contribute.
Clare House will not be a religion-based home, Hennessey said. It is nondenominational and there will be no proselytizing. Women must commit to stay there at least two months and can stay no longer than six months. The women must be looking for work, must attend regular sessions with their mentors, must participate in the house's community life and help with chores, such as cooking and cleaning. The use of drugs or alcohol is not permitted. There will be a nightly curfew.
The home will not provide social services. It also will not house women with their children, although, Hennessey said, it will be supportive of those who are mothers. "We hope their time here will help them gradually reconnect with their families," she said.
The residents will all come from Iowa's three women's prisons, according to Witte, a professor of sociology and criminology at Briar Cliff. She said about 30 women who are released from those facilities come to the Sioux City area each year.
"It's a very stressful time," she said. The stigma of prison makes it difficult as they look for housing, try to find a job, try to pay bills and reunite with their families.
Witte said women who don't successfully rejoin the community typically fail in the first two or three months, usually for financial reasons. Studies show that women who receive good support in the first months after leaving prison succeed much more often. Of the 1,600 women who leave prison each day in the United States, she said. only 13 percent have any pre-release preparation for their new life.
'I've walked the walk'
Hennessey is certain her own prison experience will help her help Clare House residents. "I walked the walk," she said. "I know a bit about what it's like to be looked at and treated as an object."
She and her sister Dorothy Hennessey, now 93, and also a Franciscan nun, were among 13 women arrested in 2000 during in a nonviolent protest at the U.S. Army Infantry Center in Fort Benning, Ga.
Hennessey said 3,600 people were protesting the School of the Americas at the base, where they said the U.S. was training Latin American military who used their new skills to terrorize and oppress their own poor citizens to the benefit of the rich ones and multinational corporations.
She and her sister each received a six-month sentence and served it at a minimum security women's "camp" in Pekin, Ill.
She said most of the women there participated in the "community" of the inmates, supporting and encouraging one another. She said everyone hated prison, but many women admitted it had saved their life from drugs or other bad choices.
She said she knows even that, even more than instruction and life skills, the women who will come to Clare House need someone who believes in them, listens to them and who will be as compassionate as possible.
Michele Linck may be reached at (712)293-4227 or michelelinck@siouxcityjournal.com.
The public is invited to the Clare Guest House open house from 3 to 6 p.m. today, at 1918 Douglas St. The house is a project of the Sioux City Multicultural Neighborhood Project of the Sisters of St. Francis. The new transitional home takes its name from St. Clare, the counterpart of St. Francis and a woman known for her gift of hospitality.
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sandi wrote on Aug 26, 2008 1:36 AM: