Prison psychologist writing true to her convictions


{ story.summary|safe|escape }

  • About the inside: Psychologist Isabel Stepanik tells about her experience of life and prisons. Picture: Jane Dyson

WHEN Isabel Stepanik rebelled against the Peruvian education system, she set in motion a series of circumstances that led to a new life overseas and to years working as a psychologist in Australian prisons.

Hers is a migrant success story.

She had wanted to study at Lima University, but wasn't accepted in spite of her high marks. Then she met a friend in the same situation who had started university after her father paid a bribe. Ms Stepanik knew she had to leave and on a whim, applied to study in Austria.

On her way to the embassy, she became lost and asked a policeman for directions.

The policeman poo-poohed the idea of Austria and told her she should go to Australia, and pointed to the nearby embassy.

With a two-year visa and a few half-truths told to soothe her parents' worries, she arrived in Sydney in December 1970, aged 19 and without a word of English.

Missing her nine siblings and extended family and living in a dilapidated hostel in Moore Park, Ms Stepanik didn't think Australia was paradise. But things got better.

She moved through a series of jobs — a nursing home, David Jones, a bank, the public service — and took on more study until she gained a psychology degree followed by a master's. And she married Czech immigrant Josef Stepanik and had two daughters.

Ms Stepanik's first stint in the prison system was in 1986-88 when she was a welfare officer.

Then she went to the Department of Community Services for eight years, looking after children at risk, before returning to the prisons.

"In Community Services, I saw the worst examples of families gone wrong . . . and one abused child was the same age as one of my daughters, so it was too close to home," she said. "After that, working with men in prisons was a relief."

Rather than becoming embittered by her prison experiences, Ms Stepanik, who is now in private practice in Hurstville, believes that everyone is capable of salvation.

"Everyone deserves a second chance," she said. "There is no black or white. Working in NSW correctional facilities over the past 15 years has given me a pretty good grounding in understanding the emotional turmoil inmates experience both inside the prison system as well as the even greater sense of displacement when they leave the jails."

Ms Stepanik has told her story in a book Welcome to Paradise, a title referring to her finding a life in Australia and to a common saying in prison.

"It's what custodial officers used to say to the prisoners, 'welcome to paradise — you must love it here so much because you keep coming back'," she said.

Her next book will focus on the problems inmates face when they get out of prison.

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