1. The boy was scared, angry, insecure. His dad was away in prison, and the son didn’t know how to grapple with his loss.
“Everybody says my father is so bad, but I really love him,” the boy said.
Sharon Content still recalls that conversation -- a reminder of her life’s calling. She worked on Wall Street for five years before realizing that she needed something more meaningful.
“I just didn’t feel satisfied,” she said.
Content is the founder of the Brooklyn, New York-based Children of Promise organization, aimed at helping children cope with having a mother or father in prison. Her organization works with about 200 children between the ages of 6 and 16, all of whom have at least one parent in prison.
“I call them the silent victims of incarceration,” Content said. “They’re not the victim who the crime was committed against, but they are feeling the ramifications of their parents doing time.”
More than 2.7 million children in America have a parent in prison, according to a 2010 study (PDF) by The Pew Charitable Trusts. For the vast majority, there are few outlets for the kids. Children are left to be reared by grandmothers, aunts, moms -- themselves often already struggling below the poverty line. Sometimes, they fall into the hands of the state.
In some countries, children actually grow up behind bars with their parents because no one else can raise them and there isn’t a social safety net large enough to take care of them all. Pushpa Basnet, one of this year's top 10 CNN Heroes, runs a home in Nepal where dozens of these children can live a more normal life, even in their parents’ absence.
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