Bedford Hills equine program helps women make connections free of judgment
By MELISSA WHITWORTH
PHOTOS BY FRANCES DENNY
Goliath, a dark bay former show pony, is having his mane combed by a group of four women. He is so relaxed his eyes are closing and he is dozing off as Tamlyn Nathanson, a certified equine specialist in mental health and learning, teaches the three others how a mane would be braided in the outside world.
It is a heavy, humid July day and unusually still for a complex that houses approximately 580 women. Here, inside the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum security facility, in the shade of a four-story cellblock, incarcerated women are learning about horsemanship.
‘It doesn't make me feel like I am my crime. It makes me feel like I’m better than that.’ — ShaQuela Titley speaking about the equine program
A makeshift arena has been set up using orange traffic cones after a trailer loaded with two ponies makes its way through inspection and three sets of metal gates to a concrete yard. The facility’s laundry is being loaded and unloaded loudly in large wheeled gray vats. But nothing disturbs the horses or the small group of women.
A second pony, Spud, is a petite palomino with a huge blonde forelock. A volunteer and a social worker fill out the group. ShaQuela Titley, Krystal Allen and Jennifer (who asked that her full name not be used) are today completing a 10-week curriculum with Endeavor Therapeutic Horsemanship, which has been providing equine assisted services to veterans, children and other at-risk groups since its founding in 2014.
The course has been part therapy, part vocation. The women are dressed in dark green prison scrubs, and there are huge coils of barbed wire across every fence and gate, but for a moment — as they laugh over whose braiding is the most skillful — the women could be anywhere.
“I like that the horses responded to me,” Titley said of her time with the horses. “I liked learning how to take care of them. It doesn't make me feel like I am my crime. It makes me feel like I’m better than that.”
Titley served in the Navy and completed two back-to-back deployments. She came into contact with horses for the first time as a veteran, in a therapeutic program in upstate New York. “It was a really good experience for me. I was just so happy. I was a kid in a candy store. Years later, obviously I committed a crime, a very bad one, and I ended up in prison,” she said.
“Sometimes just standing there with the horses and being at peace will give them peace. And that’s the same thing with us. It teaches me how to breathe to match the breathing of a horse, because they feel what we feel. It teaches me to quiet my tone,” Titley said.
“Here’s the funny thing about it: we should do this around humans, too. I always incorporate what I learn from the horses to learn to be a better human, so that I never harm anybody or hurt anybody again. I’m grateful for this.”
PHOTOS BY FRANCES DENNY
The Bedford Hills program was started by Endeavor in April 2023 and it is also available to women at the Taconic Correctional Facility. Emily Bushnell, Endeavor’s founder and executive director, and her team offer in each weekly session both the rehabilitative aspects of interacting with horses, and a vocational curriculum. Bushnell asked Groom Elite — a national organization that provides formal horsemanship training for people to work, mostly in the racing industry — to provide their curriculum. The course qualifies the women to start at entry level positions and in the thoroughbred industry upon release.
It has been more popular than Bushnell could have imagined. The first time she went into the facility to gauge interest in the program, she found no one there as they parked the horse trailer and set up the makeshift ring. When she expressed disappointment that no one had shown up, a corrections officer said, “Oh, everyone’s in the gym.”
There, approximately 200 women were waiting to hear about working with horses. She was with them for two hours and answered 50 or so questions about what she and her team were planning.
In February of this year, Bushnell was invited to attend a meeting at the United Nations organized by Sharon Griest Ballen, chair of the Prison Relations Advisory Committee to the town of Bedford, and the program coordinator for the Interfaith Prison Partnership.
Griest Ballen brought together people from Bedford working proactively on rehabilitation opportunities for incarcerated populations, along with internationally and nationally renowned figures pioneering those same issues.
Endeavor has now completed four sessions with two groups of four women at both Bedford Hills and Taconic. The facilities consider all applicants and make decisions on an individual basis, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision told The Recorder. If applicants have a misbehavior report in the past six months, they do not qualify, a spokesperson said.
Bushnell and her team have also conducted individual trips to the women to help individuals in crisis.
Around 10 other programs around the country work with incarcerated people and horses. New York state has four, including the two in Bedford Hills. As a maximum security prison, the crimes committed by those at Bedford Hills are serious. But the issue of women and incarceration is complex, say both local and national social justice advocates. Incarcerated women have much higher rates of prior abuse, trauma and sexual assault than incarcerated men. It is here that Bushnell feels the work they do has the most impact: Endeavor’s work uses a trauma-informed approach.
According to the Marshall Project, more than two-thirds of incarcerated women have a history of mental health problems. Data from the American Civil Liberties Union shows that “the vast majority of women in prison have been victims of violence prior to their incarceration including domestic violence, rape, sexual assault and child abuse”; 79% of women in federal and state prisons report physical abuse and over 60% report past sexual abuse.
“Our goals are to be as much like the horses as we possibly can be: judgment free and a blank slate,” Bushnell said. “The change from the beginning to the end [of the 10 weeks] is profound. There’s a lot of guilt and negativity and feelings of hopelessness and despair. That is the type of energy, body language and words that we see in those first few weeks.
“The women that enroll in this program come in with the assumption that the horses are going to dislike them. One of the women said to me, ‘Even though I did a bad thing, the horse doesn’t think I’m bad.’”
Nathanson said the transformation in the women they work with is palpable as their work continues.
“It’s just organic. And I come back every week and realize, these animals are incredible. They’re just being in the moment, nonjudgmental, being themselves,” she said. “They have such an impact on the women. Each week I always leave feeling really accomplished that we’ve touched a life in a positive way and helped, even if it’s just for an hour of peace for them to be able to be themselves.”
Krystal Allen was another woman finishing the course that July day.
“I was never an animal person,” she said. “But on my first day with Spud I just felt this magical connection. I got emotional and I don’t know if I was getting his emotions, or he was getting mine. It was just amazing the transfer of energy that I felt at that time and I was like, ‘Wow.’ And that’s what kept me going.”
During the program Allen said her whole feeling about horses — that they are intimidating, powerful and potentially dangerous — changed when she learned they were prey animals in the wild.
“I had never looked at horses as being prey,” she said. “I’m a protective person. So I don’t know if learning that kind of drew me to the connection. I wanted to immediately try to get in that protective mode. Because I’ve been a victim and I understand what that feels like,” adding, “Now I feel like I’m more compassionate to people. I was already a social person, but I feel like I’m more understanding and more leveled out when it comes down to people.”
At the end of the session, Nathanson handed out paper certificates to the women, which showed they had completed training for an entry-level job in the horse business.
“Even though I’m here, I still have another chance to get it right,” Titley said. “I have one more day, one more year, one more moment to get it right.”
She said it was her 33rd birthday.
“I’m completing something. All my life I was a quitter. I never finished anything in my life. I had four or five months in nursing school before I got arrested and I quit,” she said. “Everything that I do in here, it’s a very stressful environment. If I could complete this here, then I feel like I can conquer the world anywhere.”