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Mother uses clemency as chance to help others
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By Bruce Walton
BOARDMAN
Shauna Barry-Scott – convicted felon, former drug dealer, community activist, organizer, returning citizen, wife and mother – has a lot to be thankful for this year.
She served just half of her 20-year sentence after receiving clemency from President Barack Obama in 2015, chosen out of more than 3,000 applicants that year. Now, she finds herself with her husband, four adult children and more than 15 grandchildren.
She said she’s most thankful to spend time with her children, whom she couldn’t watch grow up.
This year was the first Thanksgiving the 53-year-old spent in her old home – with her children and grandchildren – since her incarceration; last Thanksgiving she was living in a halfway house.
Early this month, Barry-Scott stood before U.S. Magistrate Judge George Limbert for evaluation for the Re-Entry STAR (Successful Transitions-Accelerated Re-entry) program.
Her parole officer testified to her constant community outreach and employment.
The judge approved Barry-Scott’s phase one evaluation with honors.
“I’m sure she’s going to be missed in that program, and I think she’s impacted a lot of people’s lives in a positive way,” the parole officer said.
The past year has been a steady climb since her clemency, but getting past phase one was a big hurdle.
The phase requires intensive supervision, monthly visits sometimes without warning, seeking or maintaining employment, attending drug and alcohol counseling, mental health counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy classes and obeying the law.
She now works as a driver for a ride-sharing service.
For the rest of phase two, she’ll no longer need to attend monthly progress sessions, but will still be supervised for another six to 18 months.
If she passes phase two, she’ll receive a recommendation for early discharge from supervision to complete freedom.
In 2005, the Youngstown native was sentenced to 20 years at Federal Prison Camp Alderson in West Virginia for trafficking in crack cocaine and drug possession charges.
As a nonviolent offender, Barry-Scott was shocked at the severity, while two attackers who shot her oldest son dead in 2002 earlier received sentences so short that her children would see the two men walking free before their mother.
She wants to use her second chance at freedom to help heal the Youngstown community through volunteering and charity.
She feels “excited, kind of inspired,” she said, “like new opportunities are presenting themselves,”
Barry-Scott plans to continue on the right foot and by aiding youths and returning citizens in Youngstown.
Her contribution started after she contacted Home For Good Re-Entry Resource Referral Center and the Alliance for Congregational Transformation Influencing our Neighborhoods, or ACTION, after reading about them in The Vindicator.
She soon became friends with Rose Carter, ACTION executive director, and Lola Simmons, Home For Good re-entry coordinator.
“I am very proud of the progress that Shauna has made even after the pardon, and I still feel that she is an example of a returning citizen that can make a positive impact on the community,” Carter said.
She became a volunteer for United Returning Citizens and a member of the Mahoning County Land Bank board, which helps find housing for people recently released from prison. She also became a member of ACTION’s Crime and Safety Committee.
Barry-Scott had lived in the Westlake Terrace housing project, where she married her husband, Lester Scott, and had five children.
She was a woman who wanted to help the city she was living in and created the Dare To Dream Children’s Foundation in the 1990s, a small local charity to raise money for inner city youths, fund-raising for school programs or to afford equipment and supplies.
Just at the turn of the new millennium, Barry-Scott said she was having trouble keeping her foundation afloat and made the conscious mistake of raising money for her charity with the very drugs that fueled the chaos in her own city.
She was arrested in 2001 after selling crack cocaine when police obtained a search warrant to find bags of crack cocaine, prescription pills, marijuana and a narcotic cough syrup in her home.
Barry-Scott said she understands the mistakes she made in the past and understands how some in the community will have difficulty trusting that her turnaround is genuine, but says her actions will speak for themselves.
“Everything I did [to help the community] before was 1,000 percent sincere, I just funded it the wrong way,” she said.
Now she said she’s funding herself properly and with the help of grant writers and a crowd-funding site to earn her money honestly with the community, instead of against it.
She’s helped by her son, Lester Scott II, who was 12 when his mother was sentenced to prison.
In addition to her positions in the community, she has also recently reinstated the Dare to Dream Children’s Foundation, to help inner-city families with food and rent; and is searching for a location for the New Freedom Project, which will help educate and rehabilitate returning citizens.
Barry-Scott has her second chance at freedom to thank for these new opportunities and said she doesn’t intend to waste it.