The New York Times had this piece and is related to my previous post: Vietnam veteran’s Posttraumatic Stress Disorder rips family apart.

This piece is about Lance Cpl. Walter Rollo Smith, who was “profoundly shaken by his experiences in Iraq.” He returned from Iraq, and “disintegrated psychologically and ultimately killed his girlfriend and the mother of his twin children.”

Read the article here.

This is part of a series about of articles and multimedia “about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have committed killings, or been charged with them, after coming home.”

Part I: Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles.

Part II: An Iraq Veteran’s Descent; a Prosecutor’s Choice

Flash |QuickTime

Angelo and Angel Pinet were 10 and 11 years old respectively, when one day they began to wonder where their stepfather, Jose, had gone. He had always been around since as long as they could remember. Their mother, Jenny Carrasquillo, told them that he was away on vacation. Weeks turned into months and the children sensed something was wrong.

What the boys did not know yet was that they had joined the ranks of another 1.5 million American children with an incarcerated parent. But it was painfully clear to them that their lives had changed in ways big and small. Money got tighter with only their mother working, and Father’s Day was no longer a joyous event

With the passage of time, both boys, now 17 and 18, often ponder how Jose’s incarceration has affected them in ways seen and unseen. Angelo says he went into a dark depression and tried to commit suicide at school. Angel says that as the older brother, he started to see himself as the man of the family. He says he had to hold himself together as his family moral and finances crumbled because of Jose’s incarceration. The most difficult thing for him was to see his mother’s health decline with her growing anxiety over their financial situation and her constant crying.

Angelo and Angel continue to keep in touch with their stepfather. They speak to him on the phone and visit him in prison, but those short encounters do little to make up for his absence at home. Angelo attributes his lack of interest in school to his stepfather’s incarceration. Seeing other boys with their fathers is always a jarring reminder. For Angel, his achievements always have a twinge of the bittersweet. When he was promoted to manager at the restaurant where he works, he was happy for his success, but also felt that it added to the list of events that Jose could not enjoy with them as a family.

In this video interview, Angelo and Angel talk about their lives after Jose’s incarceration, and their hope that he will come home soon.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: How did you try to comfort the parent who was at home with you?

[Use the comments feature below or call (646) 867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

Flash |QuickTime

Every corner of Jenny Carrasquillo’s home bears the memory of her husband, Jose, who is serving a 32-year sentence for sexual assault. There is a large framed picture of Jose, 45, in a prison uniform posing with Jenny in front of a poster of a waterfall. His clothes still hang neatly in her bedroom closet, as if ready to be worn.

But despite Jenny’s efforts to downplay Jose’s absence , his incarceration has hit her hard. For the past six years, since he was convicted, Jenny, 41, has struggled to make ends meet to support her three children and to pay for Jose’s legal expenses.

“When he was sentenced, I lost everything,” says Jenny, whose children were 14, 11, and 10 when Jose was imprisoned. “I feel like this is a dream and I want to wake up from this nightmare.”
Jose’s own children from a previous relationship in the Dominican Republic have been bearing the brunt of his inability to earn money.

To ease their money troubles, Jose’s mother, Bibiana, 68, along with other family members, had to step in with financial help. They also regularly contribute to his commissary account to cover basic necessities, such as shampoo and deodorant, inside the prison.

click image for slideshow

However, the greatest difficulty for Jenny, Bibiana and their family has been paying for Jose’s defense attorneys, who charge thousands of dollars to take on complex criminal cases such as Jose’s.

From the beginning of his case, they have felt that private attorneys can do a better job of defending him and securing his freedom. They were distraught when, after paying for the best defense services their money could buy, Jose ended up losing at trial in early 2001.

Now, the family is once again pooling together their scant earnings from cleaning jobs, working at factories and babysitting to pay for a private attorney to re-examine his case. They are steadfast in their belief that he is innocent, and are doing all they can to put an end to what they consider a gross injustice.

Jose’s case is a recurring topic of conversation between Jenny and Bibiana, as is the pain of physical ailments that became manifest after Jose was arrested, and which they attribute to the stress of his entanglement with the law.

Flash |QuickTime

Bibiana suffers from nosebleeds and high blood pressure. She has come to depend on pills to calm her down before going to visit her son in prison. Jenny has developed diabetes and suffered through the shock of her youngest son’s suicide attempt shortly after Jose’s incarceration.

Though her children have learned to deal with their stepfather’s imprisonment, Jenny does not think they are okay and is saddened that they grew up without him. He raised them since they were small, she says, and they consider him their real father. They visit and speak on the phone with him occasionally, but continue to lament his absence.

The slideshow and videos in this entry show how different members of the same family are coping with a loved one’s incarceration. Jose’s mother, wife, and stepsons talk about what life has been like since he was imprisoned, and how they have are getting through such a difficult time as a family.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: How has the incarceration of a family member impacted your pocketbook?

[Use the comments feature below or call (646) 867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

Flash |QuickTime Part I: Lingering Effects

Janet Taveras has no pictures of her children when they were little. She missed the big occasions like birthday parties and the Christmas holidays. She never saw the intimate moments in their lives: when they spoke their first words or made funny faces.

She was far away–both physically and in spirit. When her children were born in the mid-80s, she was addicted to drugs and in and out of jail.

“I missed out on a lot of things,” said the 42-year-old mother. “I can’t tell you that I remember what it was to see my daughter walk.”

When she first went to jail, her son was three and her daughter was one. Seven years later, she had her drug problem under control and was finally out of jail. During her incarceration, family cared for her children. Raising them was a group effort, with Janet’s sisters pitching in.

“I am the oldest of seven,” said Janet. “My children were being raised by children, (by) my sisters who were probably twelve and ten.”

Flash |QuickTime Part II: Facing the Obstacles

Now more than a decade after her release, Janet still feels the repercussions of her incarceration on her relationship with her children. Her relationship with her son is fine, she says, but there is simmering tension with her daughter.

“My relationship with my daughter, to be honest, is a little bit strained because my daughter wasn’t raised with me,” she said.

Janet attributes this strain to losing custody of her daughter during her legal woes. During those long and difficult years of separation, her family adopted her daughter.

Janet’s predicament is similar to that of thousands of other women inmates across the United States who lose custody of their children when in prison and then struggle to regain it once they are released.

In the United States, there are close to 110,000 incarcerated women, and about 85 percent of them are mothers. Many are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes, serving an average jail term of 36 months. A majority of these mothers are held in facilities more than 100 miles from their family, making visits from their children difficult and rare. This lack of involvement with their children, paradoxically, often results in the termination of their parental rights under federal law despite the hardships caused by the distance.

Flash |QuickTime Part III: Guns & Drugs

As in Janet’s case, incarceration has long-lasting consequences on a family, particularly when the courts terminate parental rights. In the following interview, Janet talks about how her incarceration split her family and how she has struggled to bridge the gulf with her daughter since leaving prison.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: Long after his or her release, what lingering impact has a family member’s incarceration had on you?

[Use the comments feature below or call (646) 867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

Flash |QuickTime

Makeba describes how children form impressions of the incarcerated parent when he or she is missing from the child’s daily life.

In her previous column, Makeba discussed how she would raise children but why she is not quite ready for that responsibility herself. In her first column, she introduced her mother as the two prepared to spend their first mother’s day together.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: What are some impressions you have formed about your incarcerated parent? And when you visit, how true is that impression compared to the real person?

[Use the comments feature below or call (646) 867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

If you are a child of someone who is incarcerated and you have a question for Makeba, you have three options:

1) Post a question in the comments section below,

2) Send an email to questions@livesinfocus.org,

3) Call (646) 867-1891 to leave a message.

Makeba also welcomes questions from others who might simply be interested in knowing more about how the life of children is affected when a parent is incarcerated.

Ana Maria Toro, a graduate student at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, has joined Lives in Focus as a multimedia reporter for the summer. I would like to thank the school for allowing her to meet the internship requirement by working for the “Family Life Behind Bars” project.

Ana will be reporting and producing pieces using audio, video, photographs and text to help broaden the coverage.

Ana has been a student of mine for the past two semesters and independently of this project has been covering the criminal justice system. She is a determined reporter who has some experience working for the Spanish language press in New York. (Click here for her bio.)

The summer always winds up flying so I plan to keep her very busy. I know she is going to get a lot out of this experience. But more than that, Ana is also actually getting paid by the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism (as are other students at non-paying internships) so there is no exploitation involved!

Ana’s first piece will be posted later today.

Jay Coleman, the man we met in an earlier piece, spent 25 years in prison but tried to stay as involved as he could in raising his children. In addition to monthly family visits, he spent time with his kids on the telephone, trying to give them a sense that they had a father.

In this second interview clip, explains what impact the telephone calls had on him and his children.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: How important was the telephone for your relationship with an incarcerated family member?

[Use the comments feature below or call (646) 867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

Flash |QuickTime

In this week’s column, Makeba Lavan describes her childhood being raised by her godparents. While she says she loved them dearly, she said they often upset her when she was growing up by speaking poorly in front of her about her incarcerated mother. Still, her godparents provided the kind of stability that most children of incarcerated parents severely lacked.

“I feel like I was very blessed to have them,” says Makeba. “A lot of kids, when their parents are incarcerated or are just not there for other issues such as drug issues, a lot of times they don’t have people to look after them.”

In this video column, Makeba also talks about the kind of sense of responsibility young men and woman should have before they consider becoming parents.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: Did someone other than family raise you while a parent was incarcerated? What was your experience in that situation?

[Use the comments feature below or call 646-867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

If you are a child of someone who is incarcerated and you have a question for Makeba, you have three options:

1) Post a question in the comments section below,

2) Send an email to questions@livesinfocus.org,

3) Call (646) 867-1891 to leave a message.

Makeba also welcomes questions from others who might simply be interested in knowing more about how the life of children is affected when a parent is incarcerated.

Lives in Focus is launching a new weekly video column by 23-year-old Makeba Lavan, a young woman whose mother was incarcerated until late 2005.

Makeba is a passionate public speaker and advocate for childrens’ rights. Using her personal experience as a child of an incarcerated parent and the experience of youth that she has come in contact with, she works to expose the current injustices of the legal system while also calling for reforming the U.S. penal system.

If you are a child of someone who is incarcerated and you have a question for Makeba, you have three options:

1) Post a question in the comments section below,

2) Send an email to questions@livesinfocus.org,

3) Call (646) 867-1891 to leave a message.

Makeba also welcomes questions from others who might simply be interested in knowing more about how the life of children is affected when a parent is incarcerated.

While Lives in Focus will produce Makeba’s columns and offer some editorial guidance, she is free to express her thoughts and sentiments unfettered by the bias of those of us who have not experienced what she has since childhood. But please keep in mind that Makeba’s views do not necessarily represent those of Lives in Focus. We have loaned a camera to Makeba bought using the generous funds raised earlier this year from our audience.

In her first column, Makeba introduces us to her mother as the two prepare to spend their first ever Mother’s Day together.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: What was your experience spending Mother’s Day with your mother after she was released?

[Use the comments feature below or call (646) 867-1891 to leave an audio message.]

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Please let us know if you do place this promotional link on your site by emailing your URL to info@livesinfocus.org.

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Thanks for helping Lives in Focus inform others about this important topic.

Here is the code (it only looks scary).