Prison chaplain privileged to serve the marginalised
Local
Mel Monfries was awarded a Meritorious Award by the Department for Correctional Services earlier this year in recognition of her work as chaplain to incarcerated men over the past 20 years. At 78, she has lost none of her passion for helping the underdog.
As a lay Catholic prison chaplain, Mel Monfries is happy to be jokingly called ‘padre’ or ‘vicar’ by inmates but one label she won’t accept is ‘do-gooder’.
Rather, she says it is a “humbling experience to be trusted by people who some would say ‘how can you even talk to them’?”
Her response to those people: “Why are you afraid of them? They are just another person like you, cut them and they will bleed.”
Mel first started working in men’s prisons in 2004 when a friend, former Franciscan priest Paul Finnane, asked her to accompany him as the Catholic chaplain to the Remand Centre once a week.
At the time Mel was working at the HIV/AIDS centre run by the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide and prior to that she was coordinator of a drop-in centre at Semaphore for 15 years.
During this period she enrolled in theology studies “out of sheer interest” but when her marriage of 29 years ended it opened doors for her.
Voluntary roles suited her while she was married and raising two daughters, but once she began supporting herself she needed an income and when she heard the Catholic chaplain at Yatala Labour Prison was retiring she immediately put her hand up.
“I rang the Diocese and said ‘I’m already working at the Remand Centre, I’ve got all the approvals, can I do Yatala?’”
More than two decades later, she is still working four days a week at Yatala, Mobilong and the Remand Centre.
Being a woman hasn’t been a barrier. “I think the men approach and talk to us (female chaplains) in a way that’s quite different…they are very respectful.”
“I have never ever had any intimidating comments or anything from the prisoners,” she adds.
“They swear like troopers in front of you and then say ‘sorry, sorry’.”
Mel says “the vast majority” of incarcerated people have come from a traumatised background.
“They haven’t grown up in a place where boundaries have been set with a gentle touch; it’s by a kick, a boot, a belt, whatever, violence is the order of the day.
“When you grow up with that, it’s what you know.”
She says the prison population is a “whole mish mash of people” with 18 year olds in the same unit as 88 year olds and minor offenders alongside someone charged with murder.
“One advantage of being there as long as I have is you get to know some of the young guys when they first come into the adult system. I can ask another, longer term man to ‘just keep an eye on that young guy and make sure he joins in but don’t let some people get near them’.
“Prison is an awful place to be, there is no privacy, you don’t get to choose who you share your cell with…so many incarcerated men have mental health issues, it’s absolutely appalling, they should not be in prison.
“Or they are addicted, or have PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) – I don’t understand why we don’t treat the underlying issue, although I do realise they have offended and are in prison.
“Drugs are the worst thing in the world, people commit the most horrendous crimes under the influence of drugs and yet they think they know how to control it.”
While she doesn’t ask prisoners about their crimes, Mel accepts that some want to tell her and describes this as both humbling and a privilege.
“I realise I need to have the compassion to hear without judgement…I’m not dealing with the crime, the courts are,” she says.
“I’m dealing with the human being – the body, mind and spirit – not the offending, that’s the activity they’ve done.
“Often I am the only person from the outside world they see, and when they get to know you, when they tell you the truth about what they did and say ‘I’m not proud of it’, you can see the relief on their face because they have actually told you the truth, they haven’t embellished it, it’s ugly but it’s there.”
“It’s such an honour and a privilege to have people trust you enough to tell you truthfully what they’ve done and to know that you won’t walk out.”
Each workday, Mel has bookings with a varying number of prisoners, depending on whether there have been any lockdowns, and she covers about 10km as she moves between the different units.
One-on-one meetings are conducted in an interview office and while there are cameras in the room, Mel is conscious of being responsible for her own safety.
“You have to try not to let anyone get under your guard and you are very aware all the time that you are in a prison and your own security is up to you in a way,” she says.
Mel gives Catholic inmates communion on request and at least once a month she conducts the
Sunday worship service at Yatala.
But any discussion on religion has to be started by the inmate and if they ask about her God she simply says “He’s my friend”.
Nor does she push the Bible on them but they are available on request, along with the Quran, texts from other faiths, prayer mats and beads.
She never tries to convert prisoners, stressing that they are vulnerable and in a “very tender state emotionally”.
“You can’t ram some form of God, your idea of God, on them,” she says.
If someone wants to become Christian or Catholic, there are avenues for this outside the chaplaincy program.
Mel was bemused when she received her award, saying “I am paid to be a chaplain” but her colleagues were quick to remind her that she goes “above and beyond”.
For example, when she first started going to Mobilong it was in a voluntary capacity, and when Bishop Greg O’Kelly SJ asked her to help out in the Port Pirie Diocese she travelled thousands of kilometres to visit Port Augusta, Cadell and Port Lincoln prisons in a voluntary capacity, in between her regular work in Adelaide.
Mel concedes that “not anyone can be a chaplain”.
“You do have to have a sense of compassion for other people, you’ve got to be very aware of what your own capabilities are and be very secure in what your faith means to you, so you are not wedging that down someone else’s throat,” she says.
“You’ve got to know where you stand with your God. It’s only when you can do that, I think, that you can actually bring other people to the full realisation of who they are, what worth they have in being a human being before their God.”
Relevant qualifications are vital: “We don’t want to go back to just being God botherers, do-gooders, sky pilots or whatever which way you get called.”
A good friend of Mel’s once told her he wasn’t surprised she worked in prisons because “your whole life has been one of helping the underdog, people shunned by society”.
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