Recovery Spotlight: Stephen

Stephen C. Dees

Born November of 1969 in Cincinnati Ohio. My earliest memories of mom and dad was of violence, drugs and alcohol. By the age three or four, dad was out of the picture and mom was me and my two sisters were living with her father in a two-bedroom apartment.

It was late at night and as I was laying on the top of the bunk bed, I could hear my two sisters breathing as they slept. My mother’s bed was in the middle of the bedroom, and I could hear her breathing was labored. As I climbed down from my bed to hers, she angrily told me to get back to my bed. I knew something was wrong. Her breathing was getting more shallow. I once again climbed down onto her bed only be told for the second time to get back on mine. I lay there listening and crying, knowing something was wrong with my mother and I could not help her. Then it got quiet, I could not hear my mother breathing at all. This time I climbed down out of the bed and went to get my grandfather. I sat on the bottom bunk watching the EMT’s working on my mother. Chest compressions, breathing bag, chest compressions, breathing bag. Then they took her to the hospital. I was too young to really know what was happening, I just knew mom wasn’t home, then three days later she came through the door. My sisters and I surrounded her, there were hugs, kisses and promises of never going anywhere again. That night we to bed feeling as if everything in the world was right, then, we wake up in the morning with the window open and mom gone again.  This began the next six years of living with family members, children’s homes and foster homes where we experienced verbal, physical and sexual abuse. Around the age nine is where my sisters and I were separated. They had chosen to live with my father, and I kept running away until I was taken out of the home and placed in St. Josephs children’s home in Cincinnati Ohio. It was here where my mother came back into my life when I was approximately eleven years old. My mother and the man she had married jumped through all the hoops the state had in place and within a year I was living with them in Corinth Kentucky. Everything on the outside looked like a normal home, but it wasn’t long before the dysfunction manifested. The drugs the alcohol and the extreme violence of my stepfather. Fast forward to thirteen years old, more physical, verbal and sexual abuse, a young boy with pent up anger and nowhere to release it. A fit of rage, broken windows, walls tore out, then the gasoline. A thirteen-year-old boy with an arson charge sitting in Boone County detention center.

I’m not quite sure how long I was there before I was sent to Northern Kentucky Children’s Psychiatric Hospital for a thirty-day evaluation. Thirty days turned into close to a year. Another year in in Louisville children’s home. My first week there I was expelled from public school for fighting. Then to an alternative school. I eventually graduated that home and was sent to Holly Hill Children home in Northern Kentucky, where I attended Newport Alternative school where I attained my GED. It wasn’t long before the State of Kentucky wanted to send me back to my mother, where she was still living in the same dysfunction as before. I decided against this decision and took off on my own. From Newport Kentucky to Manchester Ohio. Sixteen years old and on the run. A year and a half later, eighteen years old, I found myself in a bad situation. I had befriended some men at the local bar where I would shoot pool for beers, one of them had this great idea of robbing a house where those who lived there were gone. This decision turned out to have serious consequences. Aggravated Robbery, Aggravated Burglary and Abduction charges, the short of it was six years nine months on what could have been 25 years. Eighteen years old one hundred and thirty-five pounds in a big boy prison, Mansfield Ohio. 6th tier cell 48. I remember the day they came the cell and handed me paperwork through the bars. No less than five years, no more than twenty-five years. Max out date, April of 2013, it was 1988. I was confused, scared and had to adapt rather quickly. I was living like I was not going to ever get out. It approximately three years into my bit when a counselor from B, Mr. Todd had called me into his office. Mr. Todd asked what I was doing, then he started to explain how the point system worked for the parole board, how at the time my score was high, but, with some anger management, some N/A, A/A, a college class or two and my aggregate score would go down. I applied what was said and a total of six years and nine months I was released on parole. Finishing the thirteen months of parole, I headed to Tennessee, following a woman.

I wasn’t long in Tennessee when I met the mother of my children. When we found out she was pregnant I went to welding school. I was very excited and thought of all the ways I was going to be a good provider, a good protector, a good father. We worked hard at getting everything together. Our beautiful baby girl, Corrina Marie was born March 14, 1996. Our joy was short lived, Corrina Marie passed away from SIDS on April 21st, 1996. this totally devastated the both of us. It was shortly after this I was introduced to methamphetamine; it killed all the pain I was feeling, spiritually, physically and emotionally. By the time my son was born, June 18th,1997. I was in full blown addiction. I walked away from my son and his mother. This kicked off approximately fourteen to fifteen years of addiction to meth, cocaine and crack. As we have all heard before, my addiction has taken me places I didn’t want to go and kept me longer than I wanted to stay. The lifestyle of relationship to relationship, hotel rooms to being homeless, in and out of various county jails from Ohio to Florida. Fast forward to 2010 Lakeland Florida, Polk County jail, I was facing another thirty years in jail. Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon x2. I had been up for about three weeks, going through some changes with the woman I had been with for six years. I assaulted this woman and the man she was with. What I had done I am ashamed of; I do not share this to glory or revel in what I had done but to share in the man I had become in my addiction. I was forty years old and had become all the things I had told myself I wouldn’t. I had abandoned my children, I had been to prison, I have become an intravenous drug user, a liar, a thief, and a woman beater. I hated myself, I could not stand the man I had become. I wanted to die.

Then the tap on the shoulder, a voice from one of my cell mates, hey Stephen, I think you should go to church with me tonight. I did. I am not going into detail about all that happened, but I will testify of the power Jesus Christ in that moment. I was delivered from a thirty-year sentence. I still had time to do, not just there but other counties also. Tennessee did extradite me back to Bradley County. It was two and a half years of in and out of county jails and another eighteen months in Tennessee prisons before I finally landed in True Purpose Ministries. I stayed clean in prison and have not used since February 23rd, 2013.

This year will make ten years sober from drugs, alcohol and nicotine. Today I am an Ordained Minister, Pastoral Counselor, happily married, homeowner. I cannot due to time, tell of all the blessings since my release from prison, but all credit goes to my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.