“WITHIN THESE WALLS”

Letting Go of the Pain  (Courtousy of Lifetime Television)

“I don’t like people’s lives to be wasted. I want them to find a meaning to their existence.”

--Sister Pauline Quinn O.P.

“When you’ve had a hard life, you have all this pain inside and people just don’t understand if they never lived through the experience,” said Sister Pauline Quinn. The Dominican Sister knows what she is talking about. Her true story served as the inspiration for the LIFETIME Original Movie “Within These Walls” starring Academy Award and Tony Award-winner Ellen Burstyn (“Requiem for a Dream,” “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”) and Academy Award and multiple Emmy Award-nominee and Golden Globe-winner Laura Dern (“Rambling Rose,” “Ellen”). The movie, about a hardened prisoner without hope (Burstyn) and a determined nun (Dern) who sets out to prove, through a dog training program, that even the most violent and unrepentant criminals can turn their lives around, premieres Monday, August 20 at 9 PM (ET/PT) on LIFETIME Television.

“Not everyone will take the time to understand what you’ve gone through,” Sister Pauline explained. “But Ellen really cares and understands about the program and the dogs. It’s important to share what happened, because there are a lot of wounded people in the world who feel like everything is hopeless, when it’s not. I just want them to be brave and to persevere and know that there are possibilities for them out there.”

Because of sexual, physical and emotional abuse as a young teenager, Quinn ran away from home, became homeless, was in and out of institutions where she experienced more abuse and was raped. After becoming pregnant from the rape, Quinn gave the baby up for adoption. The nuns who ran the hospital were concerned when they discovered that the only way Quinn could deal with all the pain she had suffered was by self-mutilation. “She was so beaten down that at one point she could not even talk to anyone unless she stood behind the person so they could not see her,” Burstyn said. “It was the love of a dog that brought her around.” She eventually stopped the self-abuse, became a Catholic, and ultimately, a nun.

Quinn was living on the streets when she befriended a dog. “My dog Joni helped me in my life by showing me unconditional love. As I became more healed, I wanted to share my experience with others,” Sister Pauline acknowledged. So she became a dog trainer and started a pilot program in a nearby prison. “In order to experience love you have to be able to relinquish the pain you’ve had in your life,” continued Quinn. “Dogs care so much and are always happy to see you. A person is more willing to deal with pain when they feel loved, without judgment. It is important to feel and be loved and a dog can do that for you. This is the first step in healing, then you can continue on and grow to even greater things,” Quinn explained. The training program was so successful that it has since spread to prisons all over the United States and other countries.

For Burstyn, the dogs are at the heart of the amazing alteration in Quinn’s life. “The transforming element is love,” the actress said. “I think dogs really are here to love us and teach us about love, and they do. For my character, Joan, caring for a dog is the first time she has ever had someone loving her without any conditions attached.” The natural consequence of the interaction represents a turning point for everyone in the training program. “Self-acceptance is something that’s very difficult for a lot of people,” Burstyn noted. “Self-acceptance is almost unavailable for people who have lived a life of crime and drugs and end up in prison.” In that respect alone, Sister Pauline Quinn’s dog training program for prisoners “brings people who are spiritually dead back into the light of life,” Burstyn added. “For Joan, her feelings have been her monster, her demon—what she’s most afraid of. Her most courageous moment comes when she cries, when she is really able to feel the pain that she had inside of her and express it and not run from it. That’s when she can change.”

“Having a connection with a heart that’s safe in a really unsafe environment, like a prison, is incredible,” observed Laura Dern, who portrays Sister Pauline in the movie. “The program and the love go hand-in-hand. Working with the dogs is deeply affecting, and from the program you acquire discipline and a purpose to your life.” Quinn found that the bond with a dog is quick to form. “It’s hard for people not to want to pet them,” Quinn said, smiling, about the prisoners’ first encounters with the dogs. “There is a better interaction between the guards and the prisoners, too, because the focus is on the dog much of the time and the dog becomes an icebreaker.”

Most crucially, for Quinn, the dogs serve as a social bridge to people in the outside community. “The work with the dogs gives the inmates a chance to focus on things other than themselves,” said Quinn. “That’s the key to change, when you can reach out to other people.” The fact that inmates are training the dogs to assist the disabled is the crucial last step to self-acceptance. “It makes them feel useful in life,” Quinn affirmed. “They’re doing something positive to help another group of people who sometimes feel like they’re in prison, too. Nobody ever wanted to spend the rest of their life in a wheelchair.”

“There’s something we can all gain from learning about this program, and about what one woman did with her own life,” Dern said. “I’m affected by the story because it reminds me how fortunate we are to be touched by anyone--by a story, by a book, by a friend or a pet. To watch a movie in which someone’s life is full of trauma and invasion, then to see that person find the ability to pull all that hurt together, putting her own experience back out into the world so other people can heal -- that is the most inspirational thing I know.”

* This article was reprinted courtousy of Lifetime Television.