Sarah Carabott spoke to two mums whose children were squeezed out of their lives by their all-consuming drug habit. But as they take the road to recovery, their motherly love has returned.

Maria* did not give going into prostitution a second thought when she ran out of money for heroin aged 14.

Several of her relatives, including aunts and grandmothers, were prostitutes.

“Now that I’m clean I do not even want to think of sleeping with a man for money, but when you are under the effect of drugs you don’t care,” the 25 year-old said.

The young woman was speaking to this newspaper while taking a break from her cleaning chores at St Iris House for the therapeutic rehabilitation of women at San Blas, where she is spending the last few months of her jail term.

It is hard to believe that this bright, young, determined woman sitting in front of me had spent half her life enslaved to a drug habit and managing to fund it through prostitution.

Maria had already enrolled for the rehabilitation programme a few years back on court orders but she had not been willing to see it through.

This time, however, she is adamant she wants to complete it. She succeeded in staying “clean” while in prison after becoming a mother and realising she was “tired”.

Asked how she had ended up in the vicious cycle of prostitution, she simply said: “When you grow up in that environment, you do not know anything different, and it is easy to do what you see others around you doing.”

Maria started taking heroin aged 12 – her boyfriend provided it for free. He was in jail by the time she turned 14 and she went out with another man who put her out on the streets to fund her addiction.

“I was only scared the first time. When I saw the money in my hand, I was eager to return to the streets the following day.”

By the age of 25, Maria had done six years behind bars. She spent her pregnancy in jail and gave birth when she was released. But when she was warned that her daughter would be taken away from her because of her addiction, she was unperturbed.

I had not yet accepted that I was becoming a mother. My priority was to get drugs

“When you have a drug problem, your first three priorities are yourself. I had not yet accepted that I was becoming a mother. My priority was to get drugs,” Maria explained.

“I had never experienced love. Only rejection,” she added at one point, matter-of-factly.

At San Blas, Maria has found love and support, while in prison she had only encountered people who broke her down, sold her drugs and reported her to the guards.

Now that she is coming clean, she wants her daughter back in her life and is forming a “nice bond with her”.

The prospect of having to be “a good mother” scares her but she is going to stick to her plan of getting a stable job, settling down and staying off drugs so that she will eventually be reunited with her daughter.

Another mother is Maria’s housemate Paula*, who has never been to prison but has several court cases hanging over her head.

Before starting rehabilitation, she was caught in a cycle of prostitution, drugs and usury.

Prostitution was her means to pay off her usury interest, created by her drug habit. It was also a way to fund her addiction.

But with usury interests set at 100 per cent, she too entered into a vicious cycle.

“I would pay off the interest with the money I earned from my first clients, and buy some more drugs with what I made throughout the early hours of the morning.

“I finally realised that I was not gaining anything but court cases and usury interest.”

The 45-year-old, who picked up the drug habit relatively recently, is a mother of four… and grandmother of two, she says enthusiastically.

Asked about her children and grandchildren, Paula said she looks forward to their weekly calls and was already making plans to spend time with them.

“I obviously think about them more often, now that I’m keeping my distance from drugs. When you’re under the influence, your thoughts are only taken up by drugs.”

*names have been changed

Addiction is bigger than the drug abuser

Drugs are a priority for severe abusers and most of them only realise the trauma their children have gone through once they start coming clean, according to the coordinator of Caritas’ Drug Rehabilitation Services.

“People who follow the rehabilitation programme have a severe drug problem, and this cuts them off from themselves and those around them.

“Their addiction is bigger than them and they no longer care about themselves or any others,” Anthony Gatt noted.

When they start coming clean, abusers start facing the consequences, and being away from their children is one of the first realities that hits them.

“When they come to their senses they are devastated by what they have caused, and through the rehabilitation programme we guide them to get to terms with the situation and move on.”

Mr Gatt, who is a psychologist by profession, noted that sometimes dependence was not brought on abusers out of their own will, because addiction could also be a mental health condition.

There are people who have been clean for 25 years and at times still feel a part of them craving drugs.

But while we need to see the abusers’ side of the story, he believes that the children also need protection.

Children of drug abusers go through a rollercoaster of emotions and while some could develop a caregiver’s nature, going on to find a partner who is an abuser, others could follow in their own parents’ footsteps.

Mr Gatt was speaking to this newspaper following the publication of a children’s book penned by Noel Tanti called Fil-Kamra ta’ Jonas.

This is the first children’s book in Maltese about a boy whose father is in prison, and Merlin Publishers will be providing Caritas with some copies for those following its rehabilitation programme.

Caritas runs a voluntary rehabilitation programme for men and women at San Blas, while it provides a similar service to inmates who have a drug abuse problem and are nearing the end of their prison sentence.

It also provides an outreach service, which is similar to an outpatient rehabilitation service for drug-users. In all, Caritas is in touch with some 700 people every year.

The book Fil-Kamra ta’ Jonas will not be handed to each resident because it could leave an emotional impact on them since they themselves could have gone through the trauma of having their parents jailed.

At the same time, just as inmates lose their liberty when they are put behind bars, those following the programme at San Blas have to give up their freedom and are separated from their children.

So instead of handing out the book to each one of the residents, it will be read out during therapeutic group discussions.

More information about Caritas’ services on www.caritasmalta.org/new-hope-foundation.

 

Your book is about a boy whose father is in prison. Why did you choose this particular issue?

Noel Tanti: I’ve always been interested in books for children that deal with specific social concerns. Years ago, while visiting libraries as part of my research for a Diploma in Library and Information Studies, one librarian told me that a number of books had been removed from his shelves. They included stories about children with separated or divorced parents who are starting a new relationship, and children who have a parent in prison – which impressed me most.

How did you come up with the story?

NT: It started off with an image I had of a child falling asleep standing up in front of TV, and his mum insisting that he goes to his room. As I was writing the story, the absence of the father became more and more conspicuous and the episode about those books being taken off the shelves spilled over into the story.

I have never actually spoken to children whose parents are in prison but I did read about these issues. I wanted to focus and capture the sense of loss and confusion that having a parent forcibly removed from a home setting brings about. When we read in the newspapers that someone is sent to prison, our initial reaction is always whether they deserved it or not. The people left behind to cope with the situation are rarely given a voice.