WAR ON THE FAMILY is currently in production. Below are samples from interviews we have conducted with formerly incarcerated women.
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| MISTY McQUEEN |
| "My grandmother basically raised me and my brothers because my mother had addiction problems. So pretty much it was like growing up was hard. Real hard. I was always a pretty little girl...and as I was growing up in my teens, I started to think being pretty was a curse. A whole lot of things led to my drug addiction, but I really believe that being pretty was one of the main things because it brought me so much pain..." |
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WENONA THOMPSON |
| "I got locked up at the tender age of 16 years old...I was expecting someone to come to me and ask, 'Why, young lady, did you choose to commit a crime and throw your life away?' But that person never came. And before long, I realized that I became part of a cycle, a system, that looked forward to seeing me there. And I was aware that, because of some of my circumstances, that I would be one of those people who fill up their prisons." |
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| BRANDY POWYSZYNSKI
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| "For me, my story begins when I was four years old. I was being molested by my mother's boyfriend. Then it went on to my mother's neighbor. He was molesting me and my brother. Then it went on to my uncle. By the time I was 9, 10, 11 years old, he was doing things to me, too. He was the one that turned my onto drugs. So I was 11 when I started getting high. My whole family got high. I was born into drugs..." |
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| MARGARET MARTINEZ
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| "I'm not blaming my mother because I recall how she was abused. And she didn't know, she was so young. She medicated herself. But there was a pattern, and I followed that pattern...I never felt worthy enough for someone to love me in the right manner. Someone who wasn't going to hurt me in some way, or love me without some consequences. It wasn't just love for me, they wanted something from me. Somebody always wanted something from me." |
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| YOLANDA OWENS
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| "I was stuck in that phase of my life when my mom was taken away from me. So I was preoccupied with the anger and the hurt that I felt inside. So my life began to be based on that. There was little or no happiness within me at that point. My sense of self worth and my identity was lost. I was just an empty shell...I was just stuck on that anger and it was festering and building and it was turning into this big ugly monster..." |
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| GLORIA EVANS
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| "What the government needs to do is to stop sending so many people [to prison], to find alternate places for them to go for certain amounts of time. Where they're not locked away from their children. Because they're breaking up families. Children, especially if they're small, you need that time to nurture them to be an adult...It takes a lot away from your life. A lot." |
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