Burlington County Times

By Mike Mathis, BCT staff writer 
May 5, 2004
mmathis@phillyBurbs.com

MOUNT HOLLY - Rochelle got her first taste of the drug world when she was 8 years old.

In her Pemberton Township home, crystal methamphetamine was on the kitchen table instead of food, she said.

Everyone around her, including her mother, took drugs, she said.

Rochelle became a heroin addict, dropped out of Pemberton Township High School and gave birth to a drug-addicted daughter.

She had a succession of relationships with men who sold drugs and had criminal records.

One day, she left her then 2-year-old daughter with one of her boyfriends. He beat the child so severely, the girl suffered brain damage.

As a result, Rochelle was sentenced to seven years in prison for endangering the welfare of a child.

"All I cared about was getting high, and look where it got me, standing here in these khakis," Rochelle, 25, told a group of 25 teenagers during a presentation at Anna C. Heller School yesterday. "I never got caught as a juvenile, but I'm paying for it as an adult."

Rochelle and three other inmates are participants in Project PRIDE, which stands for Promoting Responsibility In Drug Education. The program is operated by the state De-partment of Corrections.

It enables teens to hear minimum-custody offenders who speak about their personal experiences with drugs and alcohol.

The presentation was part of Burlington County's celebration of Law Week when the first week in May is set aside to educate the public about the role of the law in their lives and in society.

"We want to try to educate these young children not to make the mistakes (the inmates) made," said John F. Renner, an Evesham attorney and Burlington County Bar Association member. "If they made different choices, they wouldn't be here."

More than half of the 25 teenagers who attended the session said they had committed crimes and were either on parole or probation.

Of the 30,000 inmates in the state prison system, 85 percent committed a drug- or alcohol-related crime, said project coordinator Tony Coluccio.

The average age of an inmate entering the state prison system is 22, he said, and the average sentence is seven years.

"Most of you are on the path to becoming one of them," Coluccio told the students as he stood with the four inmates, two women and two men, whose offenses included armed robbery and aggravated assault.

Erica, 16, said she stole $7,000 from her parents and went to Virginia with her boyfriend.

"I was on a lot of drugs," Erica said. "I put myself in a bad predicament."

Rochelle and the other inmates warned the teens to choose their friends wisely, because those friends could ultimately decide how their lives play out.

"Your friends make your future," Rochelle said. "If you want to continue to (do drugs and drink alcohol), you'll either be dead or you'll be in prison.

"Take a look at (your lives) now before you reach this side of the fence," she said.

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This article reprinted with the permission of the Burlington County Times