Every day IPMW works with women who are ready to move out of violent histories into flourishing futures. We have found that experiences of sexual assault and domestic violence are often at the root of why women end up in prison. Coping with the experience of violence leads to substance abuse, the economic instability that leads to theft and fraud, loss of children, and mental health concerns. Some women are even incarcerated for their attempts to fight back against their abusers. IPMW believes that women can only live their best lives and enact their best futures when they are given tools to heal from these experiences.
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IPMW Chaplaincy Services takes a holistic approach to healing. We offer a wide variety of services that address women’s healing at the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical levels because all of those have been shown to impact recovery from traumatic events domestic violence.

To address histories of abuse in 2018, IPMW Chaplaincy Services has offered:

• A full-day Breast Cancer and Domestic Violence Awareness Event that included stories from survivors, presentations from health professionals and law enforcement, active leadership from incarcerated women, and a Healing Walk around the prison grounds.
• Evidence-based classes that sit at the intersection of Chaplaincy, clinical psychology and social work that help women heal from traumatic histories. So far in 2018, IPMW has offered Forgive for Good (Luskin, 2002) and Facing Ourselves, a moral injury curriculum developed by an IPMW chaplain and social worker
• Body-based healing through opportunities for creative expression in a variety of modes. We have groups for dance, song, visual arts, drama, and crochet.
• One-on-one pastoral care, available at resident request 5 days a week. IPMW Chaplains are clinically trained, educated, and ordained to offer a space for women to process histories of abuse within the safety and privacy of one-on-one care. We see roughly 80-115 incarcerated women for one-on-one care each month. ​

Want to know more about how Domestic Violence impacts incarcerated women? Check out:

• "Reading Jael's Story In A Women's Prison," in The Christian Century, by IPMW Ch. Sarah Jobe
• Free Marissa Now Fact Sheet
• Domestic Violence in Prison
• Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women by Susan Burton and Cari Lynn
• “‘Joey Spit on Me’: How Gender Inequality and Sexual Violence Make Women Sick” in Can’t Catch a Break: Gender, Jail, Drugs, and the Limits of Personal Responsibility by Susan Starr Sered and Maureen Norton-Hawk

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Please help us continue these services by donating to IPMW today. 

• Your gift of $25 could fund one woman’s visit with a chaplain to discuss her history of abuse.
• Your gift of $100 provides staffing for one week of dance, song, drama and crochet groups.
• Your gift of $175 could cover one week of an evidence-based healing curriculum for a group of 15 residents.

Every dollar you donate will help women move out of violent pasts into the bright futures they are beginning to imagine for themselves.