Friday December 20th 2013

I'm all for forgiveness and friendship, getting another chance etc... but this absolutely shocking!!!

A BRITISH mum under fire for encouraging her young daughters to write letters to murderers in prison says it teaches them a valuable lesson about forgiveness.

Julie Paris, from Mancot, Wales, has set her seven-year-old twins Ellie and Molly up as pen pals to American prisoners. The move has angered the rest of her family who say she is putting the girls at risk, The Sun reports.

Ms Paris has been writing to Australian and US prisoners for 13 years, and runs a website matching penpals with lonely inmates. She says she can identify with the loneliness of prisoners behind bars because of her time spent in state care after her parents’ divorce.

When some of her 25 penpals wrote asking about her young daughters, Ms Paris encouraged the girls to write back.

The twins now spend hours writing letters and drawings for their prison penpals, speak to the men on the phone and are even travelling to the US to attend a family wedding of one inmate.

“It’s really fun. I like getting letters in the post. It’s exciting,” said Ellie.

Molly corresponds with two convicted murders in the US – a 46-year-old man who murdered his ex-girlfriend and a 40-year-old man doing time for murdering his wife.

Lonely...Ms Paris says she can identify with the isolation felt by prisoners because of her time spent in foster care as a teenager.

Her twin sister Ellie writes to a 48-year-old US murderer who was jailed for killing two paedophiles who harmed his niece.

The letters from the convicted killers are often dotted with drawings, cartoons and hearts and often urge the girls to be good and listen to their mum.  Ms Paris says she vets every letter.

“The girls know prison is a bad place. I don’t tell them what the prisoners have done,” says Julie. “I don’t think they are old enough to understand and am worried it might scare them. I just say ‘they were naughty when they were younger’ and leave it there.”

Ms Paris said she has been criticised by family members, but believes her girls are learning important lessons about forgiveness, as well as bringing comfort to lonely prisoners who have no one else to turn to.

“I don’t care what people say. Some people will criticise me but I don’t see anything wrong with it. It teaches forgiveness,” she said. Ms Paris says she spends hundreds of dollars a year on postage - including $110 on Christmas cards this year.

“We’re really making a difference to the prisoner’s lives," she said.

Some of Ms Paris' prisoner penpals are currently on death row in America, but she insists she can identify with them and is willing to write to anyone except for sex offenders.

“It is unbelievable what a difference it makes to these men to have someone write to them.”

Read more at The Sun.