Removing Bars to Parenthood : O.C. Class Gives Convicts the Keys to a Healthy Family

IRVINE —  Kim Arrighi hid her trembling lip with the coat lapel of her prison fatigues as she described the last time she saw her 2-year-old son, Damon.

“He came to visit, but he was so distant,” said Arrighi, 21, serving a year sentence on a drug conviction. “He doesn’t seem to know me anymore, he’s just . . . far away. He doesn’t call me ‘Mommy’ anymore.”

Around her, the other female prisoners attending the jail’s weekly parenting class nodded in knowing empathy. Being separated from their children is the most painful part of being a jailed parent, but it certainly is not the only challenge facing the troubled men and women who seek help in the class.

Studies show youngsters raised by criminals and drug users are far more likely to turn to illegal activities themselves. While the cycle is insidious, it is not inevitable, said Susan Bellonzi, who teaches the class at the low-security James A. Musick Branch Jail in Irvine.

“What we try to do is show them what got broken in their own lives,” Bellonzi said. “You can’t fix what’s broken until you know that. Then you can try to keep those things from happening to your kids.”

Convicted robbers, gang members and drug dealers file through the door on Wednesday nights, many of them high school dropouts who have little nostalgia for classrooms. Still, they listen to the Rancho Santiago College instructor’s lessons and politely raise tattooed arms to ask questions, or candidly share their own tragic, sometimes harrowing, stories.

There’s the 29-year-old mother, a self-acknowledged crack addict, who had had her quivering, cocaine-addicted newborn taken from her by authorities before she could hold it. And the 33-year-old father who shamefully recounted a beating he gave his wife in a motel room while his wide-eyed, frightened son watched.

Dysfunctional families, walkaway fathers, abuse, drugs, poverty--all of the demons that can haunt young lives can be inventoried in a typical class. All the more reason, Bellonzi said, to teach tactics that will hold fragile families together.

“The last thing we want to do is warehouse these people and return them to the streets with nothing more than resentment for having done jail time,” said Bellonzi.

The lessons range from communication exercises to pure informational lectures on subjects such as the effect of drugs and alcohol on unborn children. One week, alternatives to corporal punishment may be a topic, while the next it might be a discussion of building successful relationships.

There are four parenting teachers for Orange County’s five jails, and last year about 1,070 prisoners attended, averaging 12 hours in class, said Assistant Sheriff Jerry Krans.

Prisoners generally learn of the classes by word of mouth, and a waiting list for Bellonzi’s courses is testimony to their popularity. The program is paid for with profits from the jail commissaries and state funds channeled through Rancho Santiago College.

“We can’t just look at suppression of crime; we have to look at ways to prevent it, and this is the type of program that helps us intervene early,” Krans said, alluding to the effort to keep offenders’ children away from crime. “We want to keep people out of jail.”

That goal may be reached by making wayward parents better nurturers and role models, Bellonzi said. That is no mean feat, considering the students most often are raising children in environments fraught with turmoil, distractions and drugs, Bellonzi said.

“There is a lot we have to contend with,” she said. “Teaching parenting in here is a different ballgame than it is on the outside, where you would stress communication. You’re dealing with a lifestyle here where Mom might not be home for four days, so your concerns are going to be more than just ‘Do you know how Jenny is doing with her homework?’ ”

Drugs, Bellonzi said, are so pervasive among the students that the subject of substance abuse needs to be incorporated into every lesson. Rarely do prisoners describe their home lives to the class without alluding to drugs such as alcohol, cocaine and heroin. Most often, it is methamphetamine, the growing drug of choice on Orange County streets.

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Christine Justus, 30, knows firsthand the nefarious effects of methamphetamine, also known as speed, on a family. She had struggled for more than five years to raise three children on her own but saw her family dream again begin to unravel when she fell in with a speed-using crowd.

Even the children saw the quick change in her life. “I felt like such an ass,” she said. “My kids were like ‘What’s with all the traffic, Mom?’ ”

Soon that traffic drew attention, and Justus was arrested and sentenced to four months on drug charges.

Justus said the jailhouse class, and Bellonzi’s counseling, have helped her cement a decision she was already making in her now drug-free mind. No more speed, and no more drug users in the house.

“I feel a lot better about myself now, and I don’t want those people, those non-contributors around anymore, especially around my kids,” she said. And what would she do if she found her oldest, now 13, with speed? After a long pause, she said her daughter would get help just like she’s had. “And cry. I would probably cry too.”

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While Justus says she will do her best to make her kids follow her advice, not her past example, some experts say that may be a difficult trick. Susan Quinlan of the Connecticut-based Families in Crisis clearinghouse said children learn by what they see more often than what they hear.

“How do you teach children right from wrong when they can see, clearly, that you have made these serious mistakes in your own life?” Quinlan said. “Children learn what they live, sometimes despite themselves. It’s like the children of alcoholics who say they will never drink, but in reality they’re prime candidates to become alcoholics themselves.”

Denise Johnston, director of the Pasadena-based Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents, said the trauma of absent parents is where offenders’ youngsters suffer the most.

Typically, the children will react to a jailed or lawless parent by becoming more aggressive, verbally or physically. That fury is often expressed through rebellious behavior, or by turning to gangs and drugs for release. Feeling betrayed or punished by their parent’s situation, the children unwittingly begin following in their footsteps.

“There’s no evidence, really, that parenting classes can change this cycle,” Johnston said. “I’m not saying they have no value, but there’s no reason to think they are going to make everything better.”

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Greg O’Brien, 25, said he was drawn to the class by a desire to see his 6-year-old son grow up without the drugs, brawls and petty crimes that crowded his own teen years and spilled into his adulthood.

The class has helped him overcome his anxieties about child-rearing, O’Brien said, and it may help him show his son a path he couldn’t find. First, though, the young father said, he needs to be with his son, not behind bars, so he can use the lessons he’s learned.

“I can see what I want for him when I’m in here, with a clear head,” he said. “I want to spend more time with him. My dad left me 20 years ago, so I know what it’s like. I toss and turn in this place at nights thinking about it.”

O’Brien said his presence at home “always puts a smile” on his son’s face, but it will be awhile before he can have a chance to test his new resolve. Now serving 1 1/2 years for possession of burglary tools, another in a long line of crimes, O’Brien will miss his son’s birthday for the fourth year in a row.

If the Santa Ana man doesn’t return to his son’s life, the lasting impression the boy has of his father may be exactly the type that promotes a new generation of problems.

“He already doesn’t like cops; he’s seen them jack me up and treat me rough, so he’s against them,” the father said. “It’s bad. He’s already turning tough.”

While O’Brien and many others in the classroom on Thanksgiving eve said the festivities would be just a painful reminder of what they want and where they want to be, for Richard Chaparro, 31, the holiday marked a joyful homecoming.

The beaming 31-year-old Anaheim man drew hoots of approval and mock derision when he announced at the start of class that he would be released that very evening. “I can’t wait to see my kids!”

After six classes, the jovial Chaparro said he felt he had found new ways to think about discipline and communication that would make him a better parent. In Bellonzi’s descriptions of dysfunctional and abusive families, he said he saw a startling familiar face.

“When I came in and she talked about how these terrible things were passed on, I recognized myself,” he said. “I was the oldest; I was always getting pounded. I thought when I had my own family, and I was in charge, that there would be no problem.”

But there were problems. Communications were poor, and family tensions grew and went unresolved. The situation was dramatically worsened by Chaparro’s use of speed, which also landed him in jail for eight months. “I was always uptight, angry. It made everything worse.”

Now, after three months of being clean and sober, he said he’s ready to return home to his wife and four daughters, ages 8 months to 12 years. “The love was always there, but I was stressed too much.”

A short while later, while the group of 25 felons participated in a lively discussion on infant care (“If they’re crying because they’re grumpy, put them in a car seat and put it on top of the washing machine,” one grizzled convict offered. “The motion puts them to sleep”) a static-filled announcement comes over the room’s speaker; time for Chaparro to catch a bus out of jail.

“All right!” he yelled, bounding toward the door amid cheers and whistles. He paused to exchange his jail-issue shoes with a buddy wearing a shoddier pair, and to answer one last question. When he got home, where a Thanksgiving meal was already being prepared, how long would the hug with his wife and daughters last? Ten minutes? Fifteen?

“No, No. Forever. I’m not letting go this time. Forever.”