Welcome to Paradise

By Isabel Stepanik

Isabel Stepanik was barely 20 when she left her large warm extended family in Peru and crossed the world to Australia. It was the seventies and she found a country where men wore long socks and shorts, ‘siestas’ were unheard of, and the streets were empty after 5 – very different from the lively culture she had left behind.
The young Peruvian adventurer planned to just stay for two years. She never dreamed that she would make Australia her home, and certainly not that she would end up spending much of her working life behind the walls of Sydney’s prisons, first as a welfare officer and later as a psychologist.
Isabel’s story is one of culture shock, and of a young woman’s determination to succeed in a new country. It’s also the story of life inside prison walls, of the realities and challenges of trying to help inmates to turn their lives around. It’s the story of a woman who believes everyone deserves a second chance

• Language: English
• Publisher: Isabel Stepanik
• Release date: Jul 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301279982

Isabel Stepanik

Isabel Stepanik was born in Lima, Peru, her homeland that she frequents regularly. However, having migrated to Australia in her early twenties Isabel has well and truly made Australia a country she calls home.Isabel is a registered psychologist and has been working in this profession for the past 15 years. Her professional experience includes 11 years in the NSW Correctional Gaol System. Her work in these Correctional Units has given Isabel exposure to long-term intervention with sex-offenders, acute self-harm/suicidal and serious offenders. In addition, she has counseled inmates with mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, stress, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Attention Deficit & Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and schizophrenia among others.In a broader sense Isabel’s experience covers the treatment of clients with substance abuse issues, marital conflict, anger issues, suffering or inflicting domestic violence, self-harm/suicide, physical and emotional abuse, and other behavioral disorders.Her therapeutic experience includes 8 years counseling with children at risk, who were emotionally, physically and sexually abused, as well as providing counseling to their families on a wide range of issues such as grief and trauma, drug and alcohol abuse, and relationship problems.With her Latin-American background, Isabel’s specialist skills are frequently sought after by the Spanish/Latin American community organizations within Australia. Ms. Stepanik has also led numerous Professional Study Overseas Tours to Spanish Speaking Countries and other overseas countries as well.Although, dealing with a variety of groups- her personal mission has always held firm:“To be a force for positive change and inspire others to succeed in life.”Isabel’s popular public profile within the Latin American Community has granted Ms Stepanik radio interviews with SBS and publications in the Transcultural Mental Health Diversity text book series on topics concerning Spanish speaking inmates within the prison system and their issues of isolation and imprisonment traumas.Her passion is to work with CALD groups and people from Non-English speaking backgrounds, since her professional strength is the ability to understand and interpret different cultural idiosyncrasies.Isabel has decided to start writing in order to share her wealth of knowledge and experience with a larger audience. In her own way be that “force for positive change and inspire others to succeed in life”.Currently working at her private practice in the St. George areas of NSW.

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Welcome to Paradise

By Isabel Stepanik

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 by Isabel Stepanik BSc., MA (psych), MAPS, J.P All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or produced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact the Author on PO Box 259, Hurstville NSW 1481 Australia.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing about my life and work has been a long-held dream for me and I wish to express my sincere gratitude to many people for helping me make it a reality.

I am forever indebted to my parents for their understanding, endless patience and encouragement when it was most required. My heartfelt thanks to my late husband, Josef, for all the support and love during our marriage; and to our beautiful daughters Jennifer and Vanessa. Jennifer’s example in writing her own books has inspired me along the way. Thank you both for being the rock, love, support and inspiration in my life.

I want to thank my nine siblings: Freddy, Mery, Willy, Luis, Ofelia, Zully, Daniel, Flor and Rocio and all my family in Peru. Some of you are far away and we don’t see each other often enough but your love and support and the happy childhood we shared give me confidence and peace of mind.

I would like to convey my thanks to my editor, Annie Hastwell, for being so patient and committed to the editing of this book. Also, I would like to take this opportunity to thank following people who have shared with me their wisdom, love, support and compassion: Clair Marslen, Josephine Swiggs, Yuliya Richard, Fenia Kaufman, Saroja Srinivasan, Renate Wagner and Trang Thomas.

This book would not have been possible without the support of many people. I am also grateful to my colleagues and friends from many correctional services in Australia, South America and the USA.

To the many inmates and clients, I can’t say thank you enough, for allowing me an insight into your lives and struggles you have given me a much broader and more compassionate view of what it means to be human.

This book would not have been possible without the kind support and help of many individuals. My thanks and appreciations to my family, friends and colleagues for their interest and encouragement, whose privacy I wish to respect by not naming them here, but whose contributions to my life are greatly appreciated.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 How did I end up here?

Chapter 2 Off to Australia

Chapter 3 The Working Life

Chapter 4 Falling in Love

Chapter 5 A career takes shape

Chapter 6 Working with families

Chapter 7 Back to Gaol

Chapter 8 The Hard Cases

Chapter 9 Different world, different rules

Chapter 10 Safer inside than out

Chapter 11 South American gaols, the good and the bad

Chapter 12 The Californian Experience

Chapter 13 Reflections on returning from my international gaol tour

Chapter 14

INTRODUCTION

When I look back on my life I still can’t believe the series of strange coincidences that led me to work in the Australian prison system. It certainly wasn’t the sort of place in which a nice girl from Peru would have expected to end up, but my stubborn and determined personality has led me on an unconventional path through life. I don’t like being told I can’t do something, and when I found that as a woman and a migrant to this country, certain doors were closed to me, I just kept on knocking until they opened.

I’ve called this book Welcome to Paradise because that’s a phrase I would hear often inside prisons. One high-ranking custodial officer I worked with used to say it cheerily to the recurring offenders, inmates that would keep coming back to gaol. Oh, Jason, (or Bill, or Scott), he would say, Welcome to Paradise. You like this place so much that you keep coming in here. The young inmates would have a big smile and would give us a lot of excuses why they were returning to gaol, but the truth was they usually took up using drugs and alcohol again as soon as they were released from gaol, and it wasn’t long before they were caught and ended up inside again.

Welcome to Paradise is the story of a world that most Australians know nothing about, the somber world inside the walls of prisons. Working at first as a welfare officer and later as a psychologist, I spent hundreds of hours talking to inmates about their lives. I gained insight into how they think, and why they had ended up on the wrong side of the law. Over the years I came to realise that the way someone is treated in prison can make all the difference to what happens when they are released; whether they get their lives together, or go on to commit more crimes.

I strongly believe that if a prisoner is given the opportunity to reflect on what they have done, if they are eager to change inwardly and are willing to take advantage of the professional help, psychologists, teachers and drug and alcohol counsellors, available within the Australian prison system, then there is real hope for them.

All inmates, especially those with substance abuse, mental health or other problems, need help in order to be able to return to their communities at the end of their sentence. Imprisonment has an enormous impact on the person and his or her family. Most inmates leave gaol with no savings, no stable housing, and very limited job possibilities, so it is very hard for them to make a new start. Without adequate preparation and support for life after prison, the chances are high that they will just return to their former situations and lifestyles. This commonly means drug and alcohol use, possible infection with HIV, re-arrest and return to prison. Good rehabilitation within gaol offers the best hope of breaking this vicious cycle.

As I became more deeply involved in my work within prisons, I grew more and more interested in how gaols are run. I visited similar institutions in Latin America, North America and England. No two were alike. In Latin America for example, prisoners don’t have TVs and many of the other comforts and opportunities that Australian prisoners have, but they are treated in a more human way. In North America some gaols are