Sister Lee Ann McNally, RSM, understands the concept of tough love. She gives a healthy dose of it every time she teaches a class at the Pulaski County Regional Detention Facility in Little Rock.
She gives her students compassion and respect, but they also get the truth without excuses.
Following the June 13 “Relapse Prevention” class for women, Angela, an inmate at the jail spoke with Arkansas Catholic. She will be tried on forgery charges next month. Angela, 36, has attended Sister Lee Ann’s classes for more than three months.
“She’s that sort of in-your-face person that’s not going to let you get by with it,” Angela said about Sister Lee Ann. “She’s not going to pat you on the back and say it’s OK. She’s going to get in your face and tell you, you were wrong.”
Angela said she was repeatedly abused as a child and started drinking alcohol at 15. Then after a surgery in 2004 she got addicted to OxyContin and started forging prescriptions to get more. Eventually she forged checks from her employer to pay for her $1,500 a week pill supply. “I was high and drunk when they brought me to jail.”
“Everyone’s felt so sorry for me my entire life,” Angela said. “No one ever just said, ’Hey, you can’t live this way. You got to pull it together. When you get to Sister Lee Ann’s class you got no choice but to pull it together.”
Fellow inmate Shelly, 43, has been going to classes for eight months. She is charged with theft of property and her trial date is in August. She said she is also an alcoholic and drug addict.
Shelly said she appreciates Sister Lee Ann’s bluntness and respects her for it. To her the sister is “someone who’s coming in from the outside that’s not judging you, that actually cares about you, and you can go to when you get out of this place, God willing.”
Sister Lee Ann, 61, has been teaching classes at the county jail for women for nearly five years. The education program is just one of four components of the Center for Women in Transition, a ministry she started in 2004 when her jail work became full-time.
“The more I got into it, the more it was very clear that this is where God wanted me,” she said.
Before she started CWIT, Sister Lee Ann led Sophia’s Center, a spirituality center for women in the Diocese of Little Rock, which she founded in 1998. It has since closed.
CWIT is patterned after a similar program in St. Louis, also founded and run by a Religious Sister of Mercy. Sister Lee Ann serves as executive director of the Little Rock CWIT, but does not receive a salary. In 2006 she was named Volunteer of the Year by the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office.
Sister Lee Ann, who attends Our Lady of the Holy Souls Church, also visits women regularly in three state prison facilities in Newport, Pine Bluff and Wrightsville.
She said the majority of women in her classes at the county jail have two things in common: abuse and drug addiction. The drug and alcohol use tends to stem from physical, sexual, emotional or psychological abuse.
She teaches four classes each week for women with the goal of helping them address the root causes for their bad choices, as well as find positive ways to deal with life and develop self-esteem and self-respect.
The classes include “Reinventing Your Life,” which is based on a book by the same name; “Relapse Prevention;” “Anger Management;” and “Behavioral Modification.” She also offers this last class to men once a week at the jail.
She said an average of 30 people attend each 90-minute class on a voluntary basis.
Sgt. Robin Ballard, director of inmate services, said about 20 percent of inmates in the 880-bed facility are women. Nearly 30 percent of those taking classes are violent criminals as opposed to 95 percent of the men that Sister Lee Ann teaches.
“We are created good and every single person has the right to be treated with respect so that goodness can come out,” Sister Lee Ann said.
Besides education, assistance with basic needs upon re-entry into society is another component of CWIT. The center networks with other agencies to help recently released women get clothing, housing, jobs, medical or dental care and identification cards.
Next is the advocacy component, which is not yet fully developed. And finally is the mentoring program. When women get out of jail, they are partnered with a trained volunteer who will help them “stay focused on healthier life choices,” she said.
Mentors meet their partners once a week at the center for the first six weeks and talk on the phone once a day during that time. The women are expected to attend weekly support group meetings at the center as well.
According to CWIT mentor coordinator Daphne Brunson, after being mentored for a year, women are invited to become trained mentors. Currently the center has 11 mentors, five of whom are formerly incarcerated.
“Being a mentor is nothing more than showing an interest in somebody who’s a human being and deserves to be treated with respect,” Sister Lee Ann said.
That’s what she did for Brunson, who had been to prison six times and was on her way to a seventh when she took a class with Sister Lee Ann at the county jail in 2004.
A troubled childhood led Brunson into drug and alcohol addictions. Through the years she received convictions for drugs, shoplifting, prostitution and theft of property.
Grief over losing her 14-year-old son, Cleon, to gang violence, as well as her fiancé to a stroke, made everything worse.
Brunson attended Sister Lee Ann’s classes for six months before she went to the Arkansas Department of Correction’s McPherson Unit in Newport for 11 months. During that time they stayed in contact.
Brunson was released into a transitional living substance abuse treatment facility in May 2006. After 30 days in rehab, Sister Lee Ann hired Brunson to work part-time for CWIT. By November she was full-time.
Brunson, 43, said Sister Lee Ann believed in her and that made it possible for her to believe in herself. And her success made her want to give that hope to others.
“I get overwhelmed sometimes. Who would ever think I would be in a position to help someone else?” she said. “If I can change, anybody can change.”
Sgt. Ballard, who asked Sister Lee Ann to teach at the jail, praised the results so far.
“I think the impact she has on people in general is tremendous,” Ballard said. “There’s not a dollar value you can put on the instructions and kind-heartedness and true caring that she gives the individuals that she teaches.”
The center’s funding runs out June 30. New Sister of Mercy grant money will arrive in July, but it will not be enough to cover the program’s $102,000 annual budget.
“If we are to continue as a center doing the work that we’re doing, which is good work, then we need to be able to find some good money,” she said.
For information about becoming a mentor or making a donation, call (501) 372-5522 or visit www.cwitlr.org.
