Betrayal, fear and separation often supersede traditional camp themes when Girl Scouts meet in the cafeteria at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility.
Laura Squair cried and buried her head in her mother’s arms as she contemplated what life must be like behind bars during a biweekly Girl Scout meeting Saturday night.
In a household where she is the youngest of six children and the only girl, 12-year-old Laura relishes the minutes she spends with her mom, Katie Squair, even though it’s frightening to pass through layers of security fences topped with rolls of razor wire.
“It’s a very humbling experience,” Katie Squair, 52, said as her daughter wept and the two held hands. “I don’t want my kids to have to come here. I hope it will teach the kids to always do right.”
Squair is serving two- and three-year prison terms for two theft convictions.
The Girl Scouts Mile Hi Council formed the Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program in 2000 after the success of a similar program in Maryland, council spokeswoman Rachelle Trujillo said. Girls from five troops participate.
For the adult women in the program, meeting with their daughters (ages 5-17) for an hour every two weeks is welcome respite – one that program advocates say improves the mothers’ behavior in prison.
“As soon as they realize they can have a special relationship with their daughters, they work to keep that,” said Capt. Kathleen Arnold, who coordinates the program for the Colorado Department of Corrections.
To participate in the meetings with their daughters, prison inmates must be free of “write-ups” for six months, Arnold said. If they get into a fight, they can lose privileges for 90 days.
“It happens,” Arnold said. “There is a level of sadness when it does – they didn’t follow the rules again.”
But more frequently, women do better in prison, she said.
The girls get more out of the program than increased one-on-one time with their mothers – they also spend time with peers who can relate to their experience. And, of course, they go camping, as well, Trujillo said.
They also share time with positive role models who serve as program leaders, such as Karrmyn Strama, who has a master’s degree in art therapy and is a trained family mediator, Trujillo said. One chief goal of the program is to break the cycle of criminal behavior in families, she said.
In addition to teaching values to the girls and showing them how to build a campfire and sew, the Girl Scout leaders of the prison program help mothers and daughters rebuild trust in each other, Trujillo said.
“Some girls don’t even want to call their mothers ‘Mom,”‘ she said. “We explain to the mothers that their daughters have a right to have feelings like that.”
Even when their mothers are released from prison, their Girl Scout daughters continue attending troop meetings every other week at a community center. In addition to the two to eight daughters who now visit the prison, 15 other Girl Scouts whose mothers were previously in prison attend the outside meetings.
On Saturday night, a prison security officer counted each sewing needle the leaders brought into the prison for an activity. She counted them again when they left to make sure none stayed behind.
At the beginning of each meeting, mothers are given about 15 minutes to speak privately with their daughters.
Dazha Williams, 12, playfully scolded her mother, Cheniece Mason, 38, about doing her homework. Such a role reversal often surfaces when it’s the parent’s actions that hurt their children. Mason is serving three- and seven-year prison terms for attempted theft and escape.
After the greetings, the two Girl Scouts who attended Saturday talked about bullying.
Their mothers, who shared their own prison experiences with bullying, talked to their kids about ways they should respond. Then they all sewed heart-shaped cloth pillows they called “huggable hearts.”
The mothers and daughters stuffed into the pillows slips of cloth featuring ideas on how to respond to bullies.
In indelible ink they wrote: “Take a hot, soothing bath,” “Walk away and ask the Lord for guidance,” “Think happy thoughts” and “Be a better woman and apologize.”
The Girl Scout meetings offer lessons to mothers and daughters alike, Mason said: “This is reality. Even though I made the bad choices, it shows (Dazha) right from wrong. She’s getting to take on responsibility.”
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
