Marian House offers second chance to Baltimore women

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Jun 4, 2005 by Kristen Keener

After being incarcerated for 13 years on a charge of murdering her children's father, Juanita Felicia Brown wasn't sure where she would go when she was released.

Months before she was set to leave the Maryland House of Corrections, Brown attended a seminar at the jail about transitional housing and learned about the Marian House, a wellness and residential program operating in the Waverly neighborhood of Baltimore.

I hadn't been in society for all those years. I knew I needed stability, somewhere where I could grow, said Brown, who'd lost touch with family and friends during her long incarceration. Something about the Marian House stuck in the back of Brown's brain, she said, and eventually led her to write to the program's coordinators to become a resident. Six months before her release date, she was interviewed, then interviewed again and finally accepted into the program.

On Monday, April 12, 2004 - two days after being released from prison - Brown showed up at the Marian House. When she walked in that first day, the ladies where there, and they opened their arms to me. - I was reborn, Brown said.

A little more than a year later, she is working full time as a pharmacy clerk and deli clerk at a Giant Food store in Baltimore, and she has reconnected with family, which includes her five daughters (ages 15 to 29) and seven grandchildren. Brown lives with one of her daughters and a grandchild at the Marian House.

A year or two ago, I never would have thought I'd be where I am today. It feels good to get up and go to work. It feels so good to come home and put that key in the door. - I'm proud of myself, she said.

The Marian House was founded in April 1982 jointly by Sisters of Mercy and Sisters of Notre Dame who had been doing outreach to women in Baltimore City's jails. The sisters saw women coming back repeatedly through the penal system and thought that if these women had support, the vicious cycle could be broken.

The program's mission is to empower women at risk, namely those who are homeless, addicted, who were imprisoned or who suffer mental illness. Marian House provides shelter and services such as meals, transportation, personal and job counseling, life-skills training, GED tutoring, drug/alcohol screening, addictions recovery supervision, financial guidance, scholarship aid and assistance in finding permanent housing.

Basically, we help women clean up past trash in their lives, said Rita Martin, who's been the intake counselor and volunteer coordinator at Marian House since 1988.

The success rate - measured in the number of clean and sober women who have decent housing, a steady income and the emotional balance to deal with life's problems when they leave the program - ranges pretty high, like in the 90 percent range, according to Martin.

In 2004, the Marian House served 100 residents - 29 women through the basic program and 56 women and their children in the advanced stages of the program.

What Juanita Felicia Brown and other women at the Marian House might not know is that they have a 19th-century religious sister to thank for the opportunity they've had to turn around their lives.

Returning the gift

The Marian House is a cousin of sorts to Mercy Medical Center, Stella Maris, Mercy High School, House of Mercy, Mount St. Agnes Theological Center for Women and the Sisters Academy of Baltimore (see sidebar for organizations' purposes). These seven organizations, or ministries, are all run by the Sisters of Mercy or are co-sponsored by the sisters and other religiously affiliated groups.

The various missions of these organizations can be tied to the vision of one woman: Catherine McAuley, an Irish Catholic laywoman who in the 1830s and 1840s ministered to the people of Dublin, despite prodigious prejudice against Catholics at that time. At age 48, McAuley inherited a considerable fortune from a family she'd befriended, and she used the money to build a house where she and other women could provide shelter and skills training to homeless women and their children.

It was not McAuley's intention to found a community of religious women, but neither the spiritual nor the secular communities at the time were comfortable with the mission of the walking sisters - McAuley and likeminded women who were not bound to a convent nor to the strict doctrine of a religious community. She was both advised and coerced into starting a religious institute. In 1831, McAuley and two other women professed their vows, thereby founding the Sisters of Mercy.

How the sisters wound up in Baltimore has a lot to do with Irish immigration to the United States in the 19th century, and their journey included a layover in Pittsburgh. But for 150 years now, the sisters have been founding health care institutions, schools and social organizations in and around Baltimore and beyond.

Since 1855, our role has been to serve people who are poor, sick or uneducated. That's one of the vows we take, said Sister Patricia Smith, vice president of the Sisters of Mercy's Baltimore Regional Community.