When a life is violently taken, the person most deeply impacted is typically the mother who gave it. That is why a local victim's impact group called "Mothers with a Message," vows to break the cycle of violence by rehabilitating offenders from the inside out. KPBS's Maya Trabulsi has the first of a 2-part series.

When a life is violently taken, the person most deeply impacted is typically the mother who gave it. That is why a local victim's impact group called "Mothers with a Message," vows to break the cycle of violence by rehabilitating offenders from the inside out. KPBS's Maya Trabulsi has the first of a 2-part series.
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VO: It's a busy morning at Mount Hope Cemetery in San Diego. A freshly dug grave awaits its new resident, while others are being prepared for theirs.

VO: It's a familiar place to Bevelynn Bravo.

BEV: "This is where my, my son is buried."

VO: 7 years ago her 21-year-old son, Jaime Jr., was stabbed and left to die as he walked out of a friend's house in City Heights.

BEV: "They didn't know my son, but I believe that day was a some sort of gang day."

VO: Her pain as raw now as it was then and during the 5 years she spent in court until two men were finally convicted of Jaime's murder.

BEV: "I went into court crying for the son that I had lost, and I left that courtroom crying for the young people that decided to take my son's life."

NAT: "I took so many pictures of him when he was little."

VO: She used her own tragic story to effect change. Together with other moms of murdered sons and daughters, she formed a group called Mothers with a Message.

BEV: "It's a mother's pain. We carry our child for nine months and when that child is taken at whatever age that may be, something inside of you dies."

VO: The women took their grief into the community, hoping to divert youth before more murders took place, but also after - within the correctional system itself.

NAT: "Look at how many people that you've hurt, because of your choice."

VO: And that is exactly where Dennis Martinez knew their message would be taken most to heart.

DENNIS: "When I heard that story, when she shared that time for the first time, you could hear a pin drop and I knew that this was going to be a success."

NAT: "Hi, I'm former US and world skateboard champion, Dennis Martinez. I lost everything."

VO: He turned a life of addiction-fueled crime into prison ministry.

DENNIS: "I don't care if they're blasted with tattoos, or whatever crime they've committed, If they're willing to change, I was willing to work with them."

VO: He now runs a faith-based residential treatment center in Spring Valley for offenders entering back into society.

NAT: "When you go to prison your family goes to prison, your wife goes to prison, your kids go to prison."

VO: Training Center is a state-licensed facility that offers housing, counseling, and workshops designed to help transition men back to life on the outside.

DENNIS: "You can never go back in time and change what took place, but you just sure darn can change this moment right now and move forward to make sure that it never happens again. And that's my job is to get these guys prepared to come out. And so I need the right tools to accomplish this. So I'm going to, I need the shotgun blast. And the mothers with a message is my shotgun blast."

VO: Together, Martinez and Mothers with a Message created a curriculum of rehabilitation which they then brought inside the walls of the California prisons.

DENNIS: "You would see hundreds of inmates come. They would stop what they're doing and they would listen to what the moms had to say. And then they would talk about what it was like to lose a kid and then they would talk about what it was like to lose a kid. And they hear I forgave that person who killed my kid. They hear forgiveness, they hear redemption."

VO: For many offenders it would be years, even decades in prison, before they can humanize their victim.

(So if you have something to say, look at the mom's right here and pretend that that's your victim. What would you say? And Man, I'll tell you what, it is so powerful to watch these men, their lips quivering.)

"A lot of them break down because a lot of them want to get to their victims, you know, families and say they're so sorry for what they've done, but they don't know how to say it. And so they get there and they hear this and they break down. The hardest of the hardest criminals crying."

NAT: Conant rapping as an inmate CUT to him rapping as a free man.

VO: Matthew Conant was 19 when he entered the prison system.

CONANT: "I shot and killed somebody. I was arrested, convicted, and sent to prison on a 20 to life sentence."

VO: He served 25 years mostly in maximum security facilities, before finally earning parole. But he says it took most of that time and a long list of behavioral infractions before he would change his mentality, never expecting to be released.

VO: He says the mothers, and their message, finally give him a vicarious look at his own victim's family.

CONANT: "And if you're any bit of a human being or have any humanity left in you, when you hear their story, you can't help but realize what you did and, and despise what you did. So the class is priceless."

VO: Now as a free man, Conant, also known by the rapper name 'EMCY,' joins Martinez inside the prisons and at the Training Center testifying to other prisoners how he was rehabilitated from the inside, before he was let out.

NATS: EMCY on prison yard.

Maya Trabulsi, KPBS News.

Music and video fade to black.

Optional TAG: Tomorrow in Part 2 of this story, KPBS's Maya Trabulsi will take you inside Centinela State Prison and introduce you to inmates so moved by their experience with the mothers, they crossed racial lines to give back to new victims of homicide.