Rheann Kelly
Photo by Andy Spear.
Master Dog Trainer
Rheann's greatest passion is training service dogs for adults and children with disabilities, and she is brilliant at it. She and other women in the excellent service dog training program at the Indiana Women's Prison spend two years with their dogs as their constant companions, training them to provide a remarkable range of services, such as detecting and responding to diabetic shock, turning light switches on and off, retrieving food and medicines from refrigerators, helping clients dress and undress, and detecting and responding to panic attacks and other signs of PTSD.
Photo by Andy Spear.
One of those dogs was Kitt, a beautiful yellow lab that Rheann trained to be a companion dog for an eight-year-old boy, Josiah. Here is what Josiah’s mom wrote:
Rheann put so much into Kitt for the love of Josiah. The service dog skills are amazing from walking up and down stairs in unison, to opening doors with a tug and anticipating tricky public situations. Rheann’s skill, sacrifice, and confidence made for an excellent transition. Rheann has remained our friend ever since.
Rheann, thank you, for being there when we needed you to help bring Kitt into Josiah’s life. And now a new transition, the first book of its kind! Rheann, you are an amazing person and we are so proud of you!
Josiah kissing Kitt while giving her a treat.
A long-time supervisor of the service dog training program at Indiana Women’s Prison wrote that,
Rheann was and is the most gifted dog handler that we have had in the [service dog training] program. She seems to have an intuitive understanding with her dogs. Moreover, she was always so kind and gentle working with the people who were going to receive her dogs. They loved her.
When Rheann gets out of prison, she hopes to continue training service dogs. We can’t wait!
Scholarship
Education has been Rheann’s other passion while incarcerated. She has earned two associate’s degrees and two bachelor’s degrees (from Oakland City University, magna cum laude, and from Marion University, summa cum laude) in prison and has been a pillar of the History Project from its inception.
Photo by Brandon Wright.
Her research on Indiana’s House of the Good Shepherd has provided important insight into how these Catholic prisons for women and girls were run and how they sustained themselves through forced labor.
When The New York Times ran a scathing article in October 2017 about the horrors of the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, The Lost Children of Tuam, Rheann, Christina Kovats, and Natalie Medley immediately responded with, What About the "Lost Children" (and Mothers) of America? which was published by the History News Network and The Marshall Project. They wrote:
In “The Lost Children of Tuam,” The New York Times tells the tragic story of “mother and baby” homes in Ireland, facilities for unmarried mothers where infants died by the hundreds. Those who survived were forcibly separated from their mothers and routinely abused. The mother and baby homes were closely related to and preceded by Ireland’s infamous Magdalene Laundries, Catholic institutions that enslaved thousands of “fallen” women during the 19th and 20th centuries. What the Times article missed is the story closer to home: Magdalene Laundries existed in the U.S. nearly as long as they did in Ireland. They were at least as numerous in this country and just as brutal…[read more]
Rheann has presented her research to some of the top academic conferences in the nation. Here is the paper that she presented to the American Historical Association’s annual conference in 2019. Although no video survives of that presentation, you can watch Rheann present to the Indiana Association of Historians in 2019. These papers were the precursors to Rheann’s chapter, “Poor Stray Sheep” in Who Would Believe a Prisoner?
Constructing Our Future
In 2016, Rheann co-founded Constructing Our Future, a re-entry program for women leaving prison that was designed by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women. Rheann was the original wordsmith of the program, writing beautifully crafted letters and grants that led the Indiana General Assembly to vote unanimously in favor of the program in 2017. Rheann wrote, “Incarcerated women are like abandoned houses in that we’re perceived as having no value. Our hope is that we can attain value in the community through our works, one woman, one project, one house at a time.”
When COF was incorporated in Indianapolis in 2018 by women already out (led by Michelle Daniel Jones) with a board full of corporate and community leaders, Rheann became an active member of the board despite her continued incarceration.
The Founders of Constructing Our Future
Back row, left to right: Natalie Medley*, Chardae Avery, Sarah Pender, Dominique Parks, Christina Kovats* Front row, left to right: Vanessa Thompson, Michelle Daniel Jones*, Kristina Byers, Rheann Kelly*, Toni Burns
*Co-authors of Who Would Believe a Prisoner?