The number of Colorado female prisoners diagnosed with psychological disorders has risen sharply to more than twice the level of male prisoners.
The women are almost without exception victims of severe sexual and physical abuse, experts say. They cycle through jail and prison, often because they don’t get adequate treatment or community support.
“The trauma histories are extreme,” said Theresa Stone, chief of mental health at Denver Women’s Correctional Facility. “It’s hard to hear what these women have been through.”
While most women are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes, a certain percentage of them are committing increasingly violent acts, Stone said.
“Women are in many cases extremely violent,” she said. “I think we’re seeing the impact of abuse and mental illness.”
The state prison system has in recent years taken great strides in diagnosing and addressing the needs of mentally ill women, Stone said. There is drug counseling, psychological treatment and group therapy. Some women live in highly structured therapeutic communities in special pods. The first step was identifying the true scope of the problem, Stone said.
In 2001, a Colorado Department of Corrections review determined that 39 percent of women incarcerated in Colorado were diagnosed with some type of mental illness. A Dec. 31 report says that 67 percent of those women are mentally ill.
That is slightly lower than the national rate of women incarcerated in prison. According to a December 2006 Department of Justice study, 73 percent of women in state prisons nationally have some type of mental disorder. Within the general population, 12 percent of women have a diagnosed mental disorder, the same report says.
The percentage of men in Colorado prisons with a diagnosed mental illness also increased dramatically in the same time frame — from 18 percent to 30 percent — but the ratio is less than half the level of female inmates.
The percentage of female prisoners suffering mental conditions, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression, has always been high but many women hadn’t been diagnosed, experts say. Many of the women also had declined to seek treatment until they were behind bars.
Carol Lease, executive director of The Empowerment Program, which helps chronically incarcerated women in Denver find therapy, jobs and housing, said incarcerated women share strikingly similar backgrounds.
Nearly all of them were emotionally, physically and sexually abused as children. Many turned to prostitution and mask the pain with cocaine, Lease said. They often get arrested on felony drug dealing charges, she said.
Four inmates at Denver Women’s prison recently opened up about their own traumatic histories of abuse and their struggles with mental conditions.
One expressed concern about her own prospects.
“I’m scared because I don’t know how to live a normal life,” said Shawn Snyder, 42, a career prostitute.
Snyder ran away from her Lincoln, Neb., home, where her mother’s boyfriends molested her, and where her mother pulled her hair out, threw her down stairs and frequently beat her. She began a life of prostitution in Omaha at the age of 11.
Snyder gave birth to a daughter at 15, and when she lost custody of the infant, she went back to prostituting herself to survive. Free-basing crack cocaine made all the pain go away, she said. Along the way, she had relationships with men who beat her. She moved to Colorado in her early 20s, and a pimp introduced her to Colfax Avenue.
What scares her about her impending release from prison to a halfway house near Colfax Avenue later this month is that she knows it would be so easy to make a lot of money selling her body. She’ll be tempted even though she has had brushes with violent johns, including serial killer Richard Paul White, who killed Snyder’s street friend Annaletia “Angel” Gonzales, 27.
Snyder, who is serving a prison term for auto theft, has been diagnosed with severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. She takes various medications. She has also taken treatment programs in prison.
“What will I do when I get on a bus and my ex-dope dealer gets on?” she asked. “I’m scared that I will fail.”
For another inmate, creating a new self-image has become the focal point of her rehabilitation.
Michelle Cawthra, 36, is serving a 24-year prison sentence for embezzling $10.8 million from the state. The former Colorado Department of Revenue supervisor created fake businesses and then funneled millions to her lover for land, diamond jewelry and cars.
Cawthra said she grew up in a psychologically abusive home and was repeatedly physically abused by boyfriends. She was diagnosed with PTSD and has severe flashbacks.
“I had black eyes and broken noses,” she said. “I had sordid relationships. When you feel worthless, you don’t care how people treat you. It becomes so ingrained.”
In prison she has signed up for every recovery and self-help program available. She has a new, healthier self-image and a plan for avoiding future setbacks. She can’t say that her abuse directly led to embezzlement, but it did send her down the path.
Drug rehabilitation is key to almost all of the women.
Melissa Allen, 26, of Lakewood, said she began using crack cocaine and methamphetamine after a succession of stepbrothers sexually assaulted her as a child.
“I was molested for a very long time,” said Allen, who is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. “I was confused. I ran away from home. I tried to commit suicide. I did everything that you could probably think of out there.”
At 15, she brought her father’s gun to school. She has since been in and out of mental hospitals, juvenile youth facilities and prison. She’s serving a nine-year prison term for robbing a liquor store.
She’s in the same therapeutic community as Cawthra, where drug rehabilitation is combined with psychological treatment. Keys to her recent success in avoiding trouble in prison, such as fights with other women, have been her drug sobriety and involvement in therapy, she said.
Another inmate said her life has revolved around the same bad influence.
On three separate occasions, Denise Huereña, 40, stabbed the same man — first in the head, then in the hands and finally in the chest. The encounters — each with a steak knife — came after she kept returning to the side of her abuser, even after jail terms for assault.
Huereña, the mother of an 11-year-old girl and a 21-year-old woman, recounted a lifetime of sexual and physical abuse. She said she was sexually molested by an uncle and physically abused as a child. Her boyfriend nearly choked her to death and repeatedly beat her. The third encounter got her a prison term.
“He was beating me in the head with a golf club,” she said. “I grabbed a steak knife and stabbed him in the lung. He almost died.”
She is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, manic depression and PTSD.
“I have a whole bunch of different medications,” Huereña said. “They help me out. I’m much more calm.”
She is also in a building devoted entirely to women with psychological- and substance-abuse issues. It’s a therapeutic community where she gets treatment and learns skills to cope with traumatic situations, including domestic violence.
Stone said women undergo dialectical behavioral therapy, which teaches women how to react to poverty, physical abuse and other challenges in a positive way.
“We learn different coping mechanisms,” Huereña said.
In group therapy, women share their traumatic experiences and talk about ways of handling abusive situations. At first, Huereña was reluctant to open up about embarrassing episodes in her life.
“It’s not shameful to admit because they went through the same thing,” she said of other women in the group. “We support each other.”
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206, Denverpost.com/coldcases or twitter.com/kmitchelldp
