Invisible Sentence

With her husband behind bars, Verna McFelin set out to help the children of prisoners – with breakout results.

- Clare Delore

When police knocked on Verna McFelin’s door in Oamaru on the evening of July 12, 1983, her life, and her children’s lives, changed forever. There are big gaps in McFel in’s memory of the minutes, hours and days in which she absorbed the news that her husband, Paul, had been arrested for his part in the abduction for ransom of teenager Gloria Kong.

Thirty-five years on, the couple are still together and living in Christchurch, Verna at the helm of Pillars, an organisation she established based on experience gained raising children whose father was behind bars, and Paul, a builder in semi-retirement.

Currently, there are 23,000 New Zealand children with a parent in prison. Without Pillar’s help, McFelin says, they are more than nine times more likely than other children to end up in jail themselves. Pillars has developed a wraparound service to care for families of prisoners and to find adult mentors for children whose fathers are in prison.

Pillars was launched on May 19, 1990, the day the McFelins’ youngest child turned five and with Paul still behind bars – he spent seven years in jail for the kidnapping. May 19 was also the date Prince Harry and Meghan Markle married earlier this year and, by happy coincidence, Pillars is the recipient charity of a $5000 gift from the people of New Zealand in honour of the royal marriage.

The money will kick-start a scholarship fund and caps a successful year for the organisation, which was a finalist in the Mitre 10 New Zealand Community of the Year Awards. McFelin has always been community oriented and attributes that to her upbringing.

Tell me about your early life in Oamaru …