Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Tracy Kestner, left, and mentor Evelyn Newsome pray together as part of a program run by Lydia's Place at the Allegheny County Jail.

By Cristina Rouvalis
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Victoria Humphries can barely get the words out.

Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Audio slideshow: Women sent to jail face an especially bleak reality in which they can lose everything, including children and home, says Vernetta Byrd, program coordinator with Lydia's Place, a nonprofit group that helps women in jail. In this presentation, Ms. Byrd provides an insider's persepctive to scenes captured in photos by the Post-Gazette's Martha Rial. Click image for link to slideshow. Related content More pictures by Martha Rial to accompany this story in the daily photo journal Day One: When mom's behind bars / A life of alcohol and drugs has robbed Michelle Minko of a normal life with her children. More pictures by Martha Rial documenting the experience of Michelle Minko.

"I love heroin as much as my daughter," she says in a near-whisper to a circle of other women at the Allegheny County Jail. "I don't understand why I love it so much."

"That's being honest," says Vernetta Byrd, program coordinator with Lydia's Place, a nonprofit group that helps women in jail.

"It's sickening," Ms. Humphries says.

Like many in this group, Ms. Humphries, a soft-spoken 36-year-old, is tired of running on the streets, tired of going in and out of jail, tired of not acting like a mother.

Lydia's Place, Uptown, was founded in 1993 by a group of county jail volunteers alarmed at what was happening to these women and their children.

The goal of the faith-based group is to help women in jail make the transition back to the outside world and to help their children cope with a mother behind bars. The group's name is from the Bible, Acts 16:40: "After Paul and Silas came out of prison, they went to Lydia's house." Its annual budget of $400,000 is a mix of county aid, private foundation money and funds it has raised itself.

The group reaches out to jailed mothers through volunteer mentors and the steely compassion of Ms. Byrd.

"You have a choice between drugs and your children. And you are choosing drugs," Ms. Byrd says in her best don't-kid-yourself voice. "Shouldn't the child get a chance?"

Called Miss Vern or Miss V, she helps women trapped in cells stay mothers, letting them record bedtime stories that she sends to their children, for example.

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette A Lydia's Place session ends with a prayer. From left, Karen Murphy, Dedra Cambric, Tracie Gardner, Jamie Hoy and Starr Kirk. Click photo for larger image.

She talks to the mothers about the pain in their own childhoods -- drug-addicted parents, destructive relationships and sexual abuse. (All but two of the 20 women in a recent Lydia's Place class said they had been sexually abused.)

Ms. Byrd forges an almost sorority-like camaraderie among the women, who have to watch their backs elsewhere in jail, where rivalries break out among the 300 or so women -- about three-fourths of whom are mothers -- incarcerated at any one time.

If anyone spreads confidential information heard in class, she is out of the program.

Period.

You don't cross Ms. Byrd.

The 56-year-old mother of two levels with them, telling them that judges are no longer lenient to women just because they have children. Mandatory drug sentencing changed that. There is a possibility of losing their parental rights if they have no interaction with their children for 15 months during a 22-month period.

Martha Rial, Post-Gazette At graduation, inmate Jolyn Smith displays a portrait of the group that she drew as a gift for Lydia's Place program director Vernetta Byrd. Click photo for larger image.

"It's not fair to the child to worry about what happens to their parents, to worry whether you are alive or dead," she says. "They love you as a parent and hate what you do to them."

Ms. Byrd never used drugs or took more than one drink because she never liked the sensation of being out of control. Yet she is often the biggest ally to women who have totally lost control.

From the time she was a teenager who found God, she has helped inmates, first singing to male prisoners with other young parishioners, then as a tireless volunteer at Lydia's Place. When she retired as transportation administrator at Equitable Gas Co. in 1998, she was offered the Lydia's Place job.

Three times a week for 2¹/₂ months, Ms. Byrd teaches a group of 20 women who will be freed in the coming months and are selected based on their willingness to change.

Week by week, the class shrinks as women are released into an exhilaratingly free but scary world.

Breaking the cycle

The baby of the group, a doe-eyed 21-year-old named Alisha, is due out any day.

"I can't wait to get out and smoke crack," she says.

"Do you want to come back?" Ms. Byrd says between clenched teeth.

"Hey, I am going to stay clean as long as I can," Alisha says unconvincingly. "I am just being honest."

Ms. Byrd brings Alisha face to face with 50-year-old inmate Sheila Webb.

"Can you see yourself in her? It's staring you straight in the face. It's you in 30 years if you don't change," she tells the young woman.

But breaking the cycle is a daunting task.

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette A painful conversation about their childhoods ends in an emotional embrace for Starr Kirk and her cousin, Laurie Kirk, both inmates at the Allegheny County Jail. Click photo for larger image.

Though no statistics are available for the county jail, about 37 percent of female offenders in Pennsylvania state correctional institutions released in 2001 returned within three years.

Lydia's Place has trouble tracking what happens to female inmates once they get out of jail.

Of the 836 women the group helped last year, only 70 came to Lydia's Place after they were released, says Vicki Sirockman, executive director. The staff helped them find jobs and apartments and three-fourths of them stayed out of jail.

Even though the doors of Lydia's Place are open to all of the women, most vanished from sight, many returning to the streets.

As Ms. Byrd puts it: "They get amnesia when they smell the fresh air."

Out of chances

Karen Murphy knows she is down to her last chance.

She's an addict and a 50-year-old grandmother who blew it with her daughter and is trying to find a way back into her 8-year-old granddaughter's life.

Ms. Murphy, who let her mother raise her daughter, knows she has to stay clean this time. She knows how to get clean. The problem is staying clean, but she is resolved to do it now. Her daughter has run out of patience. She has a choice -- get clean or get out of her granddaughter's life.

"I want to be a nana. I am depriving my grandbaby of a chance to have a nana.

"Look at me," she tells the younger women in the group. "Every time I come here, it gets harder and harder to get out. You all still have your kids. You still have a chance to have a relationship with your kids."

The trouble with visits

Many jailed mothers are aching to see their children. But it is wrenching to see a child, from behind a glass partition, falling apart emotionally.

A mother had to cut off visits after her daughter cried so hard she started hyperventilating, said Claire Walker, executive director of the Pittsburgh Child Guidance Foundation, which did a survey of parents in county jail.

Another mother stopped visits when her 6-year-old boy said he "couldn't bear the glass between us."

Just waiting for a visit in a jail lobby can be traumatic for a child and draining on the person who brings them there.

"Some kids get itchy," Ms. Walker said. "If they start running around, the guards get quite upset and the parent gets upset. There is always a threat you can lose the visit."

A new child-friendly lobby of the county jail, expected to open later this month, aims to alleviate some of the stress. It will have a craft area, video nook, reading nook and climb-and-slide area. There will be a mock visitation booth that enables children to role play seeing their parents behind a glass partition. A resource desk will answer questions about how to prepare a child for a jail visit.

Other mothers stay in contact with their children through collect calls, which include a surcharge. Sometimes the relatives have to cut off the expensive calls, angering mothers.

But Ms. Byrd tells the mothers that relatives are already spending money to take care of their children.

She tells the jailed mothers to write their children instead of calling.

Anger and withdrawal

Mothers in jail often get troubling tidbits of their children's lives back at home.

Melvina Jackson, 37, gets upset after getting word that her teenage daughter has stopped going to school.

A mother from Castle Shannon learns her son is waking up two or three times in the middle of the night.

"He was always such a good sleeper," she says, breaking into sobs.

Ms. Walker interviewed children of inmates, and heard about the deep sense of grief for their parents, "whether it was parents with whom they lived or the parents they never had."

Their grief often comes out as anger or withdrawal. Children of incarcerated parents are more likely to do poorly in school, repeat a grade, be referred to counseling, be a substance abuser and commit delinquent acts, said Ms. Walker. But as a group, she said, most children are resilient, especially if they have good support at home and in their communities.

Troubled reunions

After all the waiting, some mothers can reunite with their children, once they find a job and place to live.

But Ms. Byrd warns them that they cannot just go pick up where they left off.

"We are talking about your kids being angry. You may not think they are angry, but you weren't home for the holidays," she said.

Many children blame themselves for their mother abusing drugs, thinking if only I had been good enough, if only you loved me enough.

"The other biggest fear is that you are going to leave again. This is not the first time they have heard you say you are never going to do it again. But you did," Ms. Byrd says. "To a child, you either lie or you tell the truth."

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Correction/Clarification: (Published May 11, 2006) The woman pictured with Lydia's Place mentor Evelyn Newsome in this story as originally published on May 8, 2006 about mothers in jail was misidentified. She is Tracy Kestner.