Austin, TX
Austin nonprofit helps female inmates find courage to tell their stories
Truth Be Told programs in Texas prisons
Austin nonprofit Truth Be Told works with female inmates in the Texas prison system to help them have the courage to share their stories as well as offer them connection and opportunities.
DEL VALLE, Texas – An Austin nonprofit is helping female inmates at Texas state prisons find the courage to tell their stories.
Every week, facilitators with Truth Be Told drive up to two hours each way to bring a group of inmates together for a couple of hours, giving them a sense of reprieve from the concrete walls that bind them.
The volunteers aren’t receiving gas money or a stipend – or any wages from their work. Instead, they’re getting strip-searched or patted down.
“I’ve had facilitators come into class in tears because the guards that checked them in were so abusive to them verbally — and yet they still kept coming back,” Lainey Lefeve, a Truth Be Told graduate said. “It was that loyalty to us that really softened my heart because my heart was really hard for a long time.”
These classes are held at the Dr. Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, the Coleman Unit in Lockhart and Travis County Correctional Facility in Del Valle.
“You don’t survive in prison by being soft,” Lefeve said.
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As the volunteers’ bags, filled with loose-leaf paper and pens, are searched, they hear comments from the guards.
“I’ve heard a couple of them say, ‘I don’t know why you try. They’re not going to change,” director of operations and programs Rutanya Pearson-Mitchner said.
An announcement is made over the PA system and the women start to file into the room.
First, there’s a check-in. Everyone describes how they’re feeling in a word or two – and the class recites their name and their feeling back. Then, the instructors play a song. For the length of the song — inmates complete a “dump writing exercise” on loose paper that gets torn up and thrown away.
“Trust is not readily available in prison; you learn really quickly not to trust anyone,” Lefeve said.
The purpose of the ‘Talk to Me’ program is to use expressive writing as an outlet and to teach public speaking skills. It’s a therapeutic process that teaches them more about themselves. While they individually uncover more about themselves, something even greater happens when the group comes together.
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“Unfortunately [the women] had to go to prison in order to get an idea of what a safe community was,” Pearson-Mitchner said.
For many of these women — their stories start with a sense of feeling unsafe — many of them suffered abuse and other traumas growing up.
“There was stuff I shared in that room I had never told anyone,” Leslie Whiteside, another Truth Be Told graduate, said.
The women are asked to write down their stories – a story of who they are outside their crime. They are never asked to reveal what they did to bring them to incarceration. It’s up to the women to decide if sharing those details is right for them.
It’s an eight-week long course. At the end of the program, one woman from the group will share her story in front of a group of respectful witnesses. And the support continues after graduation.
For Pearson-Mitchner, she’ll answer the phone for a graduate at any hour of the day.
“It’s like the family you never knew you needed,” Whiteside said. “There’s a woman sitting in the back of a cop car right now and she doesn’t know that we’re coming for her,” Whiteside said.
Michele Deitch is the director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Deitch not only studies the issues plaguing the Texas prison system, but receives writing from inmates about their experiences.
“They have to put toilet water on the floor, to wet the floor to make it even vaguely tolerable, they talk about the feeling of their skin just burning up, they feel like they’re being cooked alive,” Deitch said.
Texas inmates without air conditioning
This summer, nine inmates in Texas prisons died of heart attacks while being held in cells without air conditioning. That is according to members of a prison advocacy group, who called on the governor to help those serving time in hot cells.
A lack of staff leads to less recreation and programs, along with unsafe conditions.
More than two-thirds of Texas’ 100 prisons do not have air conditioning. There was a proposal from the Texas House of Representatives to invest about a half a billion dollars into air conditioning prisons in May — the Senate shut that down.
Johnathan Hudson is a system-impacted Texan.
“Everybody knows when the heat comes, there’s going to be a lot of fights,” Hudson said. “It’s dreadful. It’s not the heat that you’re worried about, when you’re around 100 men in a room – from the testosterone to the anger. The heat keeps you from sleeping. The sweat will drip down your stomach and you’ll hit it like it’s a bug or something.”
There have been at least 16 homicides in Texas prisons so far this year. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice says the homicides are connected to trafficked drugs and that a statewide lockdown was issued earlier in September to complete comprehensive searches of the 129,000 inmates in Texas.
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During a lockdown — movement is limited. Inmates can sometimes feel more isolated and lose their ability to participate in recreational activities. The meals change from hot options to things like peanut butter and jelly and bologna. The opportunity to shower is limited.
Deitch says people deteriorate mentally when they’re locked in their cell. Issues with understaffing regardless of the lockdown also adds more opportunities for someone to harm themselves or each other.
For people dealing with cases of mental illness while behind bars — the situation is dire. Robert Lilly’s brother Conrad is serving a 30-year sentence in Texas for aggravated robbery.
“We always talk about mental health after someone is dead,” Lilly said.
In order for him to properly qualify for release he has to demonstrate that he is not a threat to the public. The issue for Lilly’s family is that he is not being given the care to help his situation — and his brother says he is stuck in a vicious cycle. If Conrad acts out — he is punished by losing his phone call privileges — one of the few things that can bring him support.
“Sending him to a place that dehumanizes him subjects him to constant fear — you’re not helping him — you’re not helping society — you’re not rectifying the harm that was caused by his behavior and it’s perpetuating the harm in our community,” Lilly said.
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Lilly would like to see something called a “second look” for people who are dealing with mental health challenges so that people like his brother are not held to the same standards as someone without these challenges.
In order for people to be successful outside the prison walls — they need access to their rehabilitative programs and educational opportunities, like Truth Be Told. The ultimate goal is to keep women out of the prison system for a three-year benchmark. According to Truth Be Told, 50% of people who are released from U.S. prisons are incarcerated again within three years.
Meanwhile, The Insider Prize announced the winners of a literary award at Huston-Tillotson University on Thursday. The award recognizes exceptional writing — solely from incarcerated people in Texas penitentiaries.
The contest is organized by American Short Fiction — an Austin-based literary magazine. Each writer gets a written response assuring them that someone is listening to their unique story.
“I think it’s the honesty of a voice, the commitment to a singular vision is really what stands out and when you get a story like that, and we get so many of them through our submissions you can just really sense the human being on the other side of that story,” Adam Soto, the Director of Insider Prize said.
The topics of the stories vary but are all works of fiction or memoir writing.
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“It showed me that no matter where we are often and how we look at people, and sometimes we find ourselves judging, some of them – they can outpace us,” assistant English professor Tommy Mouton said.
Mouton was a professor for a group of inmates in California, teaching them for the opportunity to earn college credit. Many of them were high school dropouts, some of them middle school drop outs.
“They’re just as grounded as we are but just unfortunately find themselves in unfavorable situations,” Mouton said.
Insider Prize is now running submissions for this upcoming year’s prize.
Austin, TX
Texas push to mandate Ten Commandments displays in public school classrooms clears key vote
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas would require all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments under a Republican proposal that cleared a major vote Saturday and would make the state the nation’s largest to impose such a mandate.
If passed as expected, the measure is likely to draw a legal challenge from critics who consider it a constitutional violation of the separation of church and state.
The Republican-controlled House gave its preliminary approval with a final vote expected in the next few days. That would send the bill to the desk of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has indicated he will sign it into law.
“The focus of this bill is to look at what is historically important to our nation educationally and judicially,” said Republican state Rep. Candy Noble, a co-sponsor of the bill.
Louisiana and Arkansas have similar laws, but Louisiana’s is on hold after a federal judge found it to be “unconstitutional on its face.”
Those measures are among efforts in many conservative-led states to insert religion into public schools. The vote in Texas came after the U.S. Supreme Court in effect put an end to a publicly funded Catholic charter school in Oklahoma on Thursday with a 4-4 tie after a string of high court decisions in recent years that have allowed public funds to flow to religious entities.
Texas lawmakers also have sent to Abbott a measure that allows school districts to provide students and staff a daily voluntary period of prayer or time to read a religious text during school hours. Abbott is expected to sign it.
“We should be encouraging our students to read and study their Bible every day,” Republican state Rep. Brent Money said. “Our kids in our public schools need prayer, need Bible reading, more now than they ever have.”
Supporters of requiring the Ten Commandments in classrooms say they are part of the foundation of the United States’ judicial and educational systems and should be displayed.
Critics, including some Christian and other faith leaders, say the Ten Commandments and prayer measures would infringe on the religious freedom of others.
The Ten Commandments bill would require public schools to post in classrooms a 16-by-20-inch poster or framed copy of a specific English version of the commandments, even though translations and interpretations vary across denominations, faiths and languages and may differ in homes and houses of worship.
Democratic lawmakers made several failed attempts Saturday to amend the bill to require schools to display other religious texts or provide multiple translations of the commandments.
A letter signed this year by dozens of Christian and Jewish faith leaders opposing the bill noted that Texas has thousands of students of other faiths who might have no connection to the Ten Commandments. Texas has nearly 6 million students in about 9,100 public schools.
In 2005, Abbott as state attorney general successfully argued before the Supreme Court that Texas could keep a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of its Capitol.
Vertuno and Lathan write for the Associated Press.
Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Texas lead our favorites to win Women’s College World Series
The Oklahoman’s Jenni Carlson breaks down the top teams to watch in the NCAA softball tournament, looking at the Aggies, Sooners and Longhorns.
Texas softball kept its season alive in a hard-fought win on Saturday to force a win-or-go-home Game 3 against Clemson in the Austin Super Regional.
Texas and Clemson were tied at 5-5 at the end of the seventh inning, forcing extra innings. The game extended to the 10th, until the Longhorns took a 7-5 lead in the top half of the frame after a pair of singles scored Katie Stewart and Leighann Goode.
Perhaps the story of the game, however, was ace Teagan Kavan, who was dominant in relief for the Longhorns. Kavan, who was tagged for five runs by Clemson on Thursday night, pitched 5 1/3 innings in relief, allowing no runs on four hits with seven strikeouts.
In a back-and-forth game, Texas prevailed despite a valiant effort from Clemson. The series-deciding game on Saturday is shaping up to be quite the matchup, with a Women’s College World Series appearance on the line.
Here are the highlights from the Longhorns’ 7-5 extra-innings win on Saturday:
| TEAM | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | F |
| Texas | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 7 |
| Clemson | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
Texas hangs on for the win, keeping its season alive and forcing a win-or-go-home Game 3 for a spot in the WCWS on Saturday. Buckle up.
Ashton Maloney gets an infield single, which scores Leighann Goode from second base. The Longhorns take a 7-5 lead in the top of the 10th inning.
Katie Stewart hits a leadoff single, and eventually makes her way to third base, then scoring on a sacrifice fly by Kaydee Bennett. Huge sequence for the Longhorns.
Teagan Kavan has been nails for Texas, picking up her fifth, sixth and seventh strikeout in relief tonight. Texas and Clemson have gone four consecutive innings without scoring, as the Longhorns bats come up in the top of the 10th inning.
The Tigers get a pop up to end the inning, setting up another chance for them to earn a walk-off win. Clemson needs one run to earn its first WCWS appearance.
There’s some momentum for Texas, as Scott hits a two-out triple in the top of the ninth inning. The hit sets up a huge spot for Reese Atwood, but Atwood gets intentionally walked.
Josey Mitchell coming up to bat with Texas runners on first and third.
Clemson had runners on second and third with no outs, needing one run to win, but Texas and ace Teagan Kavan get out of the inning after a strikeout, a lineout and a groundout.
Not ideal for the Tigers.
The Tigers kick off the bottom of the eighth with back-to-back singles, putting runners on first and second with no outs. Teagan Kavan’s wild pitch then advances both runners, giving Clemson a golden opportunity here.
Clemson sets down Texas in order and sets up another chance at a walk-off victory in the bottom of the eighth. Both teams are scoreless since the fifth inning.
Teagan Kavan puts up another zero, resulting in free softball at the Austin Super Regional. Texas and Clemson are tied at 5-5 heading into the top of the eighth.
What a play by Texas’ Katie Stewart, who throws out Julia Knowler at second base after Knowler tried to extend her hit to the outfield into a double. The Longhorns keep Clemson from having a leadoff baserunner in scoring position.
Clemson puts up a zero in the top of the seventh inning and now looks to earn a walk-off win in the bottom of the seventh with the score tied at 5-5.
Can the Tigers take Game 2 and earn their first WCWS berth?
Teagan Kavan has been perfect in relief for Texas, with no hits or walks issued through 1 2/3 innings of work. Texas hitters coming up in the top of the seventh with the score still tied at 5-5.
Brooke McCubbin escapes the fifth inning after allowing a pair of Texas singles, striking out two hitters to end the inning. McCubbin was fired up after her inning-ending strikeout, letting out a yell with her teammates.
Teagan Kavan, who started on Thursday night, is entering in relief for Texas as it looks to keep its season alive.
This game keeps going back and forth, as Clemson ties it at 5-5 on the solo home run by Macey Cintron. The ball is flying out of the park tonight.
Joley Mitchell comes up huge, as she launches a two-run double that nearly gets out of the park. Texas regains the lead, taking a 5-4 advantage in the top of the fifth inning.
Reese Basinger’s night ends after four innings, allowing three runs on five hits with no strikeouts. Brooke McCubbin has a 2.59 ERA in 132 1/3 innings this season and has typically come in relief during the postseason.
Citlaly Gutierrez forces a fly out on a 3-2 count to get the Longhorns out of the inning. Clemson did its damage, however, as it plated two runs to take a 4-3 lead heading into the fifth inning.
Sophia Simpson walks Maddie Moore, which gives Clemson a 4-3 lead. Simpson’s night is over after walking two Tigers hitters, as Texas is turning to Citlaly Gutierrez with bases loaded.
Gutierrez pitched two innings and allowed a run on two hits on Thursday night.
Sophia Simpson issues a four-pitch walk to load the bases with two outs for Clemson. The Tigers’ best hitter is up to bat, too, as Maddie Moore is looking to do some damage here after hitting a mammoth home run earlier in the game.
Senior right-hander Sophia Simpson, who has thrown only 4 2/3 innings this season, is coming in relief of Cambria Salmon. Salmon’s night ends after 3 2/3 innings pitched, allowing six hits and three runs with two strikeouts.
Clemson 9-hole hitter Jamison Brockenbrough comes up big, driving in a run with two outs to tie the game at 3-3.
The Tigers started the bottom of the fourth inning with back-to-back leadoff singles, before Texas got two outs.
Texas regains the lead on a solo home run by Reese Atwood, who sneaks one just over the fence to give the Longhorns a 3-2 lead. Atwood’s home run is the third of the game by both teams.
Clemson’s Maddie Moore absolutely crushes a pitch from Cambria Salmon to left-center field, tying the game at 2-2 in the bottom of the third inning. Moore got every piece of that ball, and even delivered a bat flip after.
Texas legend Cat Osterman, one of the best softball pitchers ever, is in the building for Texas-Clemson. She’s currently in the booth being interviewed on the TV broadcast.
Texas coach Mike White’s decision to start Cambria Salmon is paying off so far, as the true freshman has been nails through two innings so far. Meanwhile, Reese Basinger has also been solid despite the two-run home run.
Texas shortstop Leighann Goode launches a deep fly ball to left field, resulting in a 2-0 lead for the Longhorns.
Much better start for Texas than in Game 1.
Cambria Salmon allows a two-out single to Clemson 3-hole hitter Julia Knowler but gets out of the inning unscathed.
Longhorns and Tigers are tied at zero through the first inning.
Reese Basinger allows a leadoff hit to Ashton Maloney but sets down the next three Texas hitters. Clemson’s 1-2-3 due up next in the bottom of the first inning.
Reese Basinger fires the first pitch for Clemson, and game two of the Austin Super Regional is underway. The Tigers are serving as the home team.
- 3B Alex Brown
- 2B Maddie Moore
- 1B Julia Knowler
- DP Macey Cintron
- C Aby Vieira
- SS Marian Collins
- RF Taylor Pipkins
- LF Kylee Johnson
- CF Jamison Brockenbrough
Reese Basinger in the circle.
- RF Ashton Maloney
- CF Kayden Henry
- 3B Mia Scott
- C Reese Atwood
- 1B Josey Mitchell
- LF Katie Stewart
- SS Leighann Goode
- DP Vanessa Quiroga
- 2B Kaydee Bennett
Cambria Salmon in the circle.
Texas is giving the ball to freshman Cambria Salmon, after Teagan Kavan gave up five runs on Thursday night. Salmon has thrown 55 1/3 innings this season to a 2.02 ERA, and is making her first start since March 10.
Clemson hasn’t lost since April 19, when it was upset by Boston College 5-2 at home. Since, the Tigers are 11-0, with wins over Texas, Florida State, Virginia Tech and Tennessee.
Clemson is playing its best softball at the right time and is looking for its first ever WCWS berth.
- Date: Friday, May 23
- Time: 9 p.m. ET
- Where: Red & Charline McCombs Field (Austin, Texas)
Game 2 of the Austin Super Regional between the Longhorns and Tigers is scheduled for a 9 p.m. ET start.
Texas and Clemson’s super regional game will air on ESPN2. Streaming options include the EPSN app (with a cable login), ESPN+, ESPN’s subscription streaming service and Fubo, the last of which offers a free trial.
The Texas Longhorns have put themselves in a challenging position in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
After losing the first game of the Austin Super Regional to the Clemson Tigers 7-4, the Longhorns will be facing elimination from the tournament in game two and will have to win two straight games against the Tigers to keep their season alive.
The biggest struggle for Texas was defensively, especially in the third inning, allowing the Tigers to score three runs and gain the momentum in the ballgame. After a couple of errors from the shortstop allowed for a run to come in and a misjudged fly ball dropped in left field, allowed for two more runs to score, Clemson gained the lead and never looked back.
Not much offensive help was given to the Longhorns’ pitching staff, who struggled to get many of the Clemson batters out. Starting pitcher sophomore Teagan Kavan forced a lot of weak contact, but it still resulted in nine hits and six earned runs with just two strikeouts in her five innings of work.
The Longhorns’ batters could not get much working at the plate, aside from a solo home run from senior Mia Scott, a fielder’s error that led to a run, and a two-RBI base hit from sophomore Kayden Henry. Much of the explosive offense from a week ago was stifled. Texas had two opportunities with bases loaded in the fifth and sixth innings, but could not capitalize on the big opportunities.
All hope is not lost for the Longhorns as they are no strangers to playing with their backs against the wall, as they were in the same situation a season ago. Texas dropped the first game of last year’s Austin Super Regional to the Texas A&M Aggies 6-5 but bounced back resoundingly, winning the next two games both in nail-biting fashion, 9-8 in game two and 6-5 in the decisive game three.
Staring down elimination, the Longhorns will need history to repeat itself to advance to their second consecutive Women’s College World Series appearance.
Here is how to watch and listen to game two of the Super Regional matchup:
What: No. 6 Texas Longhorns vs. No. 11 Clemson Tigers
Where: Red and Charline McCombs Field, Austin, TX
When: Friday, May 23 at 8 p.m.
How to Watch: ESPN 2
How to Listen: Sports Radio AM 1300 The Zone, SiriusXM 84
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