MILWAUKEE — Raped four times between the ages of 15 and 25, living on the street for 14 years "druggin’, drinkin’ and prostitutin’," Janie had fallen about as far as a person can go.

This was her third attempt to kill herself. She ingested all the drugs and booze her body could hold and scratched out a suicide note. But she woke up the next morning with the note still clutched in her hand.

"Shit," she said, "I can’t even die. The devil doesn’t want me. God doesn’t want me. Nobody wants me."

But someone did want her. Someone cared. Two men in a van. Not johns. Not pimps. Capuchin priests.

Frs. Robert Wheelock and Michael Sullivan conceived their inner-city ministry in the summer of 1995. A year later, with a rented van, they took to the streets here, a counterpoint to the pervasive violence they witnessed all around them prostitution, domestic abuse, child neglect, youth gangs.

They named their ministry Franciscan Peacemakers. With Francis of Assisi as their model, they seek to sow seeds of hope and peace in a community that is much more familiar with turmoil, deprivation and despair.

The two priests have targeted three major groups for their ministry: prostitutes; clergy and others who need skills to help victims and perpetrators of domestic violence; and youth involved in or "at risk" of getting involved in gang activity.

‘The bottom line is they gave me the chance to get my life back.’

Today Janie has a steady job with a bindery company, a roof over her head and a church. She has been free of drugs and alcohol for more than a year.

"Today I wouldn’t dare try to touch my life," she said, "I’m going to win this thing. I love [the Peacemakers]. The bottom line is they gave me the chance to get my life back. They believed in me, they trusted me."

Janie is one of the success stories of Franciscan Peacemakers, but not all their "clients" have fared so well. The priests point out that it takes time and patience to gain the trust of those on the street. Tonette, a prostitute and heroin addict with seven young children and an eighth on the way, has yet to take the necessary steps to reclaim her life.

"We’ve been a big band-aid for her a thousand times," said Wheelock. Each time the priests thought they had a commitment from her to go into detox and begin a 12-step program, she has backed out.

Then there was Precious, the first hooker they worked with. When Sullivan walked into a house of prostitution and found her strung out on crack, he knew he needed to bypass detox and rush her right to a hospital. "If I don’t go now, Im going to die," she told him.

"She was with a guy who called himself ‘The Prophet of God,’" Wheelock recalled. "He was pimping her and felt he had to beat the hell out of her."

The priests took her to detox two or three times. Once she jumped out a window. "At least she’s alive," said Wheelock. "We thought she was killed."

The Peacemakers began their street ministry on a Good Friday, with little thought of what they might encounter or what they could offer. "We roamed around and stopped at the corner of 16th and North," recalled Sullivan. "It was random; it could have been any corner. Two prostitutes were between tricks that night."

"When we first stopped," said Wheelock, "we told them right away, ‘We’re not a flick.’ They must have thought we were real wackos."

For a year and a half, the priests have returned to the same corner five evenings a week, to what Sullivan describes as "an ocean of need." Gradually, the ministry has taken shape. The Peacemakers minister to 80 to 100 people at the street corner each evening, bringing food, clothing and other essentials, but this is only a small part of their daily activity.

They visit people in their homes and along the streets and arrange for services, such as alcohol, drug and HIV counseling, classes for earning high. school equivalency diplomas. They help connect people with transportation, child care and battered-women shelters. The main objective is to take the most needy and despised of the poor and help them acquire the tools and motivation to become whole and responsible members of the community.

Pamela is another prostitute who, like Janie, had been addicted to drugs for nearly half her life. She admits that she had "hit the bottom" after she lost possession of he son and started in prostitution.

"I was totally physically, emotionally, spiritually bankrupt until the day I met them,3 she said, recounting her life prior to her contact with the Peacemakers. Now she has been sober for a year and is about to start a job. She has regained her son as well as a new sense of confidence in her ability to control her destiny.

The Franciscan Peacemakers operate from an office in the rectory of what was once St. Leo’s Catholic Parish at 24th and Locust The parish buildings are now home to a church of God in Christ and the Catholic Urban Academy. Three years ago, 11 of the 13 Catholic parishes in Milwaukee’s central city closed.

"It looked like the Catholic church walked away," said Sullivan, who is the pastor of St. Benedict the Moor, one of the two remaining parishes. "This is where the church needs to be, among the poor, the destitute, the human debris. I believe the church needs to be here because society has thrown these people away."

Two evenings recently spent with the priests at the street corner were without incident, but the sounds and signs and reminders of violence and desperation were everywhere. There were boarded-up homes and stores, glass-littered empty lots and the long line of children at the Peacemaker van, eager for a sandwich or an apple.

At one point, a gunshot rang out just a block or two away. A little later, a police wagon and an ambulance came racing down the street. Directly across the street from the Peacemaker offices is the site where one woman had stabbed another.

The absence of fathers in the inner-city is often raised when the subject turns to inner-city ills, but Wheelock and Sullivan admit they were initially shocked at the shortage of loving, caring mothers.
Trapped in addiction, a ruthless "me-first" attitude often prevails. The children, meanwhile, alternate between yearning for love and burning with anger and rage.

Janie, who had suffered much abuse and violence as a child said she "was feeling so much hatred. I was like a walking time bomb. You can’t have peace when someone doesn’t love themself."

Sullivan and Wheelock neither romanticize nor excuse those they reach out to, but rather view them as both victims and perpetrators of violence.

"They have to hit the bottom" before they can be helped, said Sullivan. "When they say, ‘I’m ready,’ then we can act."

After dealing with the immediate crisis — usually placement for treatment of alcohol or drug addiction — the Franciscan Peacemakers follow up with ongoing therapy provided by volunteer professionals, employment counseling and procuring safe housing.

Fr. Michael Sullivan, a Capuchin priest with the Franciscan Peacemakers, talks to neighborhood residents on the corner of 16th and North in Milwaukee’s central city. The peacemakers visit the corner five evenings each week as part of their outreach ministry to prostitutes and youth.

Sullivan and Wheelock find it easier than some to empathize with the addict because both come from dysfunctional families that were afflicted with violence.

"I understand the chaos in a way that those who haven’t been through it can’t," Sullivan said.

"At times, I was in need, and the church had nothing to offer. I was told, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother.’ What I heard from that was ‘God was on their side.’"

The two priests began to realize that many clergy and parish leaders were poorly equipped to minister to victims or perpetrators of domestic violence, sometimes compounding the despair of victims rather than providing comfort or hope. Sometimes, they learned, the wrong words from a well-meaning minister might encourage the perpetrator of violence or put the victim in imminent danger.

"We found, early on, that the most deadly person to go to if your husband was beating you up was your clergy person," said Wheelock. "We heard it over and over from people of all religions."

Wheelock began to develop a network with women’s groups addressing problems of domestic violence and sexual assault, and he volunteered at a home for men who were batterers.

The Peacemakers offer workshops on domestic violence to parishes. The goal is to break through the denial that often exists concerning domestic violence, and to train clergy and laity to respond effectively to survivors of domestic violence and help them find safety and healing. The hope is that each parish will form a group to work on domestic violence problems.

The Peacemakers have developed a vast network of parishes, programs and agencies that support their mission. These include the St. Camiflus HIV/AIDS Ministry, which donates social work services and provides testing, counseling and hospice care, and the Milwaukee County Detox Center.

Several Milwaukee parishes regularly contribute food, clothing and supplies as well as financial grants.

Members of St Frances Cabrini Parish travel 30 miles each Saturday to assist with the ministry. Members of the parish could talk passionately about "the poor" prior to their experiences on the street corner. But now, Sullivan said, "the poor have a name. They’ll never look at these issues the same again."

Meanwhile, those being helped by the ministry strive for self-sufficiency, a status defined by accomplishments ranging from the seemingly mundane, like owning a chair or sofa, to the more significant, such as having a written budget, being clean and sober for a full year, and no arrests for violence, child or substance abuse or prostitution.

Pamela, a former prostitute who now is a member of a support group that meets each Saturday, is anxious to share the good fortune she has found. She wants Peacemakers to "bring more people in from the streets."

"It can be done," she said. "We are living witnesses."