Healing memories that hurt

William Jones never knew his biological father. Jones, 53, grew up in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains with eight siblings and a stepfather he said physically abused him and his mother. He remembers seeing his mom “physically knocked out” by her husband but said she was too afraid to try to stop the violence.

Jones was 21 years old when someone told him his biological father had died. It was only then he learned his father had lived less than a mile away all along and never once came to visit.

The discovery stoked a rage in Jones. Anger became a driving force in his life and sent him into a spiral of drug abuse.

In 1994, Jones moved to Louisiana to, he says, “pretty well run wild.” Ultimately, his actions landed him in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as Angola, with a life sentence without possibility of parole. (As a condition of the interview, WORLD agreed to change his surname for this story.)

Stories like Jones’—marked by abuse or other traumatic life events—are ­pervasive among prisoners. Experts say unresolved pain often plays a role in fueling the behaviors that get them incarcerated in the first place. As prison programs give more attention to the role of trauma, Christian chaplains, volunteers, and trained inmates are also seeking to help break unhealthy cycles—including through a growing Biblical trauma-healing program now offered in prisons and jails across the country.

Trauma is a response triggered by “physically or emotionally harmful or threatening” events that cause long-term damage to a person’s physical, emotional, or spiritual well-being, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Although study results vary widely, some estimate trauma incidence among inmates is as high as 90 percent for women and 87 percent for men.

“If that trauma is not properly addressed and healed, basically, rehabilitating and reforming those incarcerated individuals becomes much more challenging,” said Sung Joon Jang, a criminology research professor at Baylor University.

Joy Stevens is a chaplain with Good News Global and a leading proponent of the trauma-healing approach for prison ministry. She’s a silver-haired grandmother of seven who developed a passion for prison ministry while leading a jail Bible study in 2001.

Over her years of chaplaincy, Stevens listened to countless inmates share their stories and noticed trauma as a common thread. She says it warps inmates’ view of God: “They see life through the grid of their pain and their suffering.”

Although the Federal Bureau of Prisons has developed a trauma treatment curriculum, the Resolve Program, the agency assigns only one coordinator to each prison. And the program doesn’t address trauma from the spiritual perspective Stevens believes is vital for true healing.

So, it was a eureka moment when Stevens stumbled across an American Bible Society course designed to help people address personal trauma from a Biblical perspective. She reached out to the nonprofit and helped it adapt the materials for the prison setting. The program officially launched in 2017, administered by Good News and ABS.

The volunteer-run course, called “Healing the Wounded Heart,” spans five days and walks inmates through fundamental questions like “If God loves me, why do I suffer?” Instructors teach students to view their trauma in light of Biblical concepts of sin and suffering and God’s power to forgive and redeem. The class culminates on Day 4 when facilitators encourage students to write down their traumatic experiences and cast them on Christ—the suffering servant of Isaiah 53.

By the time Jones walked into an Angola-based “Healing the Wounded Heart” class in 2022, he had already made positive changes to his lifestyle, dedicating his life to Christ, earning a GED, and enrolling in the prison’s seminary. But he still found himself harboring unresolved bitterness.

He expected little from the trauma class aside from another “piece of paper” to place in his file. He sat down and set to work on a “lament exercise,” jotting down painful memories from his past.

But as he wrote, something shifted deep inside him. He began scribbling down everything that had happened to him as a kid. “The more I wrote, the more real it became,” Jones said, recalling how tears streamed down his face as he talked with class facilitators. He said it was the first time he had spoken openly about what he suffered as a child.

After that, Jones started to see a marked difference in his thought patterns and reactions. “I was able to actually recognize that was a source of my pain,” Jones said. He said the experience helped him find closure and healing.

Professor Jang and two colleagues at the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion conducted a study of the outcomes of the trauma-healing course at the request of ABS and Good News Global. They looked specifically at the program’s effect on inmates in Riverside Regional Jail in North Prince George, Va.

The results of the 2021 study showed the course “significantly reduced PTSD, trauma-related grief, and negative emotions” among participants, according to the researchers. They added that “these effects were still significant three months after program completion.” Jang and his co-authors argued effective trauma interventions are “essential” to reduce recidivism.

That doesn’t mean the process is easy or works on unwilling inmates. Ardic Fields, a former inmate who facilitated “Healing the Wounded Heart” at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, La., said while many people abandon their “hard, exterior shell,” others simply aren’t ready or willing to address their pain. “And their response is what it’s always been,” Fields said. “It makes them angry.”

Back at Angola, Jones now helps teach trauma-healing concepts to other inmates.

Angola chaplain Liz McGraw says inmate-to-inmate teaching is one of the beauties of the program. “I can share these things with them,” she said, “and they do open up. … But it’s so much more effective when they’ve been through similar circumstances.”

McGraw invited Stevens to teach trauma healing in the prison in 2022, and since then, they’ve introduced the curriculum to five of the state’s eight prisons. Worldwide, about 110 prison and jail facilities now offer the course.

Stevens has made it her long-term goal to get the program into every prison and jail. “I keep saying to God, ‘Why didn’t you help me start this sooner?’”