LIFE AND SALVATION "IN THE BOX"
By: Father Shay Cullen

The inspirational "KAHON" theater play by the children rescued from jail which drives guests, including judges and court personnel to tears. The Play shows the children's' lives and conditions behind bars. This week, the hardest days in the life of Max, Kaloy and Buboy was poured out on the floor of the Preda center through a moving theatre drama entitled “Kahon”, meaning "The Box”. They were the lead players in a stunning performance before an astonished group of Swiss and Swedish students and researchers at Preda. They had come to study the amazing transformation in the lives of the young people recovering from life behind bars and reforming their lives at Preda therapeutic community through theater and emotional expression therapy. It was an emotional presentation as the stories of the three unfolded, there were teary eyes among the audience.

The story of these three kids from prison form part of the theater piece “KAHON”. Prison is like a small box into which the young boys are crammed with seasoned criminals, rapists, and murderers. The boys live in fear and terror of rape, abuse and prison slavery. They tell how they suffered the humiliation, abuse, hunger and hardship of sleeping on concrete floors with rats and cockroaches running around and sometimes having to endure brutality by the guards that was tantamount to torture.

The play is a fast moving heart-wrenching drama made up by the boys with the help of the Preda theatre directors. The purpose to is to develop public awareness and advocacy for a change in the policing practice that still imprisons children in jails despite the law forbidding it. As I was writing this article, I received a long text message from Shiela, our social worker on the rescue team - “Hurray!! Freed one more boy in jail, 8 months there, orphan, no birth certificate but tooth dating shows he's about 16. He stole for food. Now free at last, coming home”.

That message summed up the bitter suffering of an abandoned street boy who ached with hunger looking at overfed customers in the fast food joints and not even a left over or a few crumbs was given to him. Shiela's text message had a spark of joy in saving a destitute and abandoned child from the dungeons of despair. His name is Jimboy and when he recovers from skin diseases, malnutrition and loneliness, he will be telling his story of his salvation through acting in “The Box”.

The reenacting of their suffering in jail is healing therapy in itself. The audience is healed too - from apathy and indifference to human suffering. They come to realize that their stereotype image of the “delinquent youth” as a criminal intent on harming and destroying others is generally wrong . The truth is that these kids are just starving for love and food. They have been rejected and abused, castaway, unwanted, unloved by irresponsible parents, abused by adults, the society, authority, church and state and thrown on the garbage heap of discarded people. They are illiterate, homeless, jobless, hopeless and they steal to survive. And now [there] are on top of that long harsh prison sentences.

In the Preda Home for “Children in Conflict with the Law”, all that is abolished. The children stay voluntarily in the open home with no desire to leave. They are trained to discover their own inner value, human dignity and hope. There is no need for beatings, punishment and all that abuse that is so damaging and detrimental to children's well-being. Some parents and authority figures who have failed as human beings and parents may quote “spare the rod and spoil the child” and they are utterly wrong. They who believe in that axiom must be devoid of common sense about human love, friendship, understanding and can never bond with their children. They need therapy and to come to terms with their own deprivation of parental love in their childhood. What we need is not more punishment and cruelty but compassion, friendship and affirming the inherent goodness in the youth.

The KAHON play is powerful because it reminds of these realities of our own past and present unfulfilled human needs. It shows that cruelty and injustice is not a way to rehabilitate these kids. Showing them respect, concern and giving inspiration and encouragement to change will help these young people to reform, grow in virtue and honesty and have respect for themselves and others.

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