Tania Cabral went back to prison.

It had been 11 years since she first used crack and six years since she was last behind bars.

It had been less than two years since she lost custody of her baby because of drug use. And it had been 20 months since she entered Rhode Island’s Family Treatment Drug Court, beginning a roller-coaster ride of relapse and recovery that ended with Tania in a rehab center, striving to regain custody of little Angelina-Joan.

Tania walked past the rolls of razor wire at the Bristol County House of Correction in North Dartmouth, Mass., on Dec. 14.

The sight of prison walls was familiar to her. But, she said, “As a visitor, it’s a little different.”

This time, Tania was the guest speaker.

ONE YEAR AGO, The Providence Journal published a seven-part series, “A Mother’s Addiction,” which chronicled Tania’s progression from cheerleader to crack addict to drug court participant. The series took readers inside a court where hearings and case files are usually secret. And it highlighted a massive national strategy that combines drug treatment with judicial accountability in hopes of reuniting children with their parents.

The series prompted pointed debate about how society responds when addicts have children. Some praised the drug court; others called it a waste of taxpayer money. Tania’s story disgusted some and inspired others.

In the battle between the instincts of motherhood and the cravings of addiction, success is by no means assured: Of those who begin Family Treatment Drug Court, 56 percent fail to complete the program. During her first year in drug court, Tania was a model participant for many months, and she regained the right to live with her daughter, A.J. But Tania relapsed twice and went on a crack binge, and the state took away A.J. while giving Tania one more chance at rehabilitation.

The series ended with Tania and A.J. reunited at a rehab center — with Tania saying: “I have hope.”

After sharing the 2006 Journal series with female inmates at the Bristol County House of Correction, Bernard Sullivan invited Cabral to talk to them.

BERNARD SULLIVAN, director of programs and spokesman for the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office, asked female inmates to read the series and write about how it related to their lives. Then he invited Tania to speak at the prison.

On the day of the speech, inmates filed past Tania into a cafeteria. “All right, I’m nervous,” Tania said. “I’m sweating.”

She sat behind a table, facing more than 75 inmates. “Hello, I’m Tania,” she began. “I won’t go into, you know, all the gory detail of all the crap that I went through. But just to sum it up: I grew up in a decent home and I went to a decent school. I was a cheerleader. I coached cheerleading. And I started smoking pot when I was about 15, 16, and I loved it. I went on to doing, like, acid, mescaline, mushrooms — just experimenting.”

During her senior year at Cranston High School East, Tania tried crack and became hooked.

“So I was 18 years old, summer right after I graduated, and I was in the streets now, running around like a nut. And years started to go by. I mean, at first, it was like: ‘I’m 18. I don’t have any kids; I’m just having fun.’ Then it went on 19, 20, 21,” Tania said. “And it took quite a few years to realize that I wasn’t having any fun at all, and I was, like, stuck. I was stuck.”

She talked about injecting cocaine and living beneath a Route 195 on-ramp in downtown Providence. She talked about becoming pregnant, at 27, at a time when she was smoking crack. And she talked about giving birth on April 2, 2005, testing positive for marijuana and losing custody of A.J. to the state. She saw drug court as the quickest way to regain custody of her baby.

In many cases, children live with foster families while their parents go through drug court. But Tania was lucky. Her father and stepmother, Anthony and Terri Cabral, happened to be foster parents, and the court allowed A.J. to live with them. Tania made steady progress in drug court and after about five months the court let A.J. live with her — at her grandparents’ house in Providence’s Silver Lake neighborhood.

But then Tania relapsed. “I was going to a house across the street, leaving my daughter — she was 10 months old — in her little Exersaucer for hours, sitting there in a wet diaper, a poop diaper,” Tania said, her voice filled with disgust for herself. “My grandparents are elderly. They couldn’t even pick her up out of there. My grandmother would be calling my cell phone. You know, I’d answer it: ‘Oh yeah, I’m coming right now, I’m coming right now.’ Then I’d just shut it off. And so there’s my poor daughter sitting there in poop and pee and like wondering where the hell her mother is, while I’m across the street getting high — like a big jerk.”

Tania told of testing positive for cocaine and handing A.J. back to the state. And she told of coming back from the oblivion of a crack binge when a bed opened up in January 2006 at SSTARBIRTH, a rehab center in Cranston where women can live with their children.

Talking to female inmates at the Bristol County House of Correction in December, Cabral said she was anxious, "All right, I'm nervous. I'm sweating."

AFTER PROVIDING that background, Tania told the inmates what she’d come to realize while at SSTARBIRTH. When she first arrived, she was still looking forward to the day she could smoke pot again. But after about six or seven months, she began to seriously follow a 12-step antidrug fellowship program.

“I actually got into it and started to take a look back at my life,” she said. “And then I realized that I’m not really addicted to crack, I’m not addicted to weed. I’m addicted to not being straight.”

It dawned on her that when she was just smoking pot, she had a job, paid her bills and appeared to have her act together. But, she said, “If I didn’t have my weed, I was miserable. I was rotten. I mean, I had to smoke on my way to work, I smoked on my way home from work. I smoked to go to the frickin’ store.”

So Tania decided she wouldn’t smoke pot anymore. For some, that wouldn’t be a big deal. For Tania, it was monumental. She didn’t like pot — she loved it. She’d spent years viewing pot as no big deal, no worse than beer, a cheap way to escape and laugh. But now she was identifying pot as a major threat, a daily addiction, something that sapped joy from her life and made her “rotten.”

Tania told the inmates that living with a bunch of other women and children at SSTARBIRTH could be difficult, but she learned to value their support. And after being goofy and laughing with the women, she realized she could have fun without drugs or booze.

Clearly, that revelation came as a surprise to Tania. “Seriously,” she told the inmates, “clean people know how to have fun.”

As the months passed at SSTARBIRTH, “a light bulb went off in my head. And I was like: ‘Oh, my God. I don’t have to live like that ever again. I really don’t.’ I was like: ‘Wow, I can be clean.’ ”

Tania emphasized that she is not “cured.” “There are people with 25 years clean who all of a sudden pick up.” But her motivation was clear: “I need to stay clean or else I’m not going to have my daughter. I’m not going to have anything.”

Tania said she used to steal from her family to feed her drug habit, and now she wants to show them she has changed — especially her grandparents, Anthony and Angelina Giardino. “I want to make them proud, I really do, because I know they don’t have that much longer with me,” she said.

Tania told the inmates that she’d just been voted treasurer of her 12-step group. “A year ago you wouldn’t have given me a frickin’ penny and expected me to bring it back to you. Really.”

Tania wrapped up her speech, saying, “I’m still in rehab and, like I said, it sucks. But this is honestly the happiest I’ve ever been in my life — since I was a kid — because I forgot how to be happy.”

She said she’d come to a simple but significant realization: Happiness doesn’t come from pot or boyfriends. “It comes from me.”

AS TANIA TALKED, the inmates heard the curses and the charm, the gripes and the thoughtful insights, the self-loathing and the self-confidence that have made Tania a candidate to either relapse with split-second disregard — or to use her charisma and intelligence to succeed, even to inspire.

At one point, Tania told the inmates that she is the heaviest she has ever been. But it wasn’t a lament. Her point was that she’s comfortable with herself — at peace for the first time in a long time.

“People are like: ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ And I’m like: ‘I’m all set right now. I’m working on myself — myself and my daughter,’ ” she said. “I look in the mirror, and this is the biggest I’ve ever been in my life. But you know what? I’m damn sexy. You know what I mean? I like myself. Seriously. Don’t think I’m conceited, but I feel good about myself. We are all pretty damn sexy in this room, actually, now that I look around.”

The inmates laughed and began asking questions.

What do you have to do to stay clean? “I know I have to go to my meetings,” Tania said of the 12-step program. “And I need my sponsor, who is there to call me on my s---; you know what I mean, pick me up when I’m down and say: ‘Why don’t you try doing this like this?’ And I need my clean friends.”

What was the hardest part of recovery? “For me, the hardest part was dealing with feelings and guilt,” she said, emphasizing the word guilt.

What made you want to tell your story? “Well, they had asked me when I first went to drug court. Because, like I said, I had a positive urine for pot, so they looked at it like: ‘Oh, it was only weed.’ I was going to go through drug court with flying colors, pat me on the head, graduate me. It was going to make drug court look really good.”

Tania said that when she relapsed, she reconsidered. “I was like: ‘Screw it. I’m not going to do the story anymore. Everybody’s going to know I picked up.’ But then I was like: ‘No, you know what? It’s a real story. This really happens. And just because somebody relapses doesn’t mean that it’s over.’ ”

Speaking with female inmates, Cabral says she's realized the power of telling her story, how it has inspired other women she has met, and how that inspires her in her continued recovery.

Do you think being able to talk about it helped you? “Absolutely. I mean, sitting here right now is helping me. Because even if one girl in this room relates to something that I say, it’s all worth it. Just like the story in the paper. I mean, I had a lot of negative stuff on the Internet. People were saying I should be sterilized, locked up for the rest of my life, they should rip my kid away from me.”

But, Tania said, there were also a lot of positives. She was smoking a cigarette outside SSTARBIRTH one day when a woman drove by, wheeled around and pulled up, saying, “Oh my God, you’re Tania.”

“I just want you to know,” the woman told Tania, “I checked myself into treatment because of your story.”

TANIA DIDN’T mention it during her speech, but a couple of months earlier she’d nearly been booted from SSTARBIRTH. Again, it was a snap decision, a bad choice that could have carried serious consequences for Tania — and for A.J.

When Tania appeared in Family Treatment Drug Court on Oct. 10, Magistrate Jeanne L. Shepard said, “All right, Tania. What happened? Talk to me.”

Tania said, “There was a girl bothering me, kind of taunting me there.” She said the woman was making fun of A.J.’s lazy eye and repeating things that Tania had said at group meetings.

Rather than calling a meeting with counselors, Tania let her anger build up “to the point where I reacted.” Later, Tania explained that she ended up chest-bumping the woman.

“I almost got kicked out for it,” Tania said. Instead, she was bounced back to the first phase of the program, delaying her progress for a month, she said. She lost privileges, such as leaving on weekends.

Shepard told Tania, “The world out there — it’s full of all kinds of things that make you angry every single day, every single morning. Driving to work is annoying.” She told Tania to write “some sort of reflection, some sort of plan, so that doesn’t happen again.”

Tania wrote a four-page letter, detailing the things she had realized at SSTARBIRTH. “I am so grateful that I wasn’t discharged,” she wrote. “I’ve made it this far and I deserve a graduation. I owe it to myself, my daughter, my grandparents especially. If a negative situation may arise in the future, I will promptly take care of it in a mature, assertive nature.”

When Tania returned to court Dec. 5, Shepard asked her what she would do after she left SSTARBIRTH.

Tania said welfare would be her only income at first.

“So at some point you are going to have to get back into the work force,” Shepard said.

Tania said, “Oh, absolutely. The assistance that I get is wonderful. I mean, I don’t know what I would do without it, but it’s …

“It’s transitional,” Shepard said.

Tania said, “Yes. I want to be able to support myself and my daughter on an income, my one income.”

Tania said she might get a waitressing job “for right now” but she talked about going to the Community College of Rhode Island to pursue a career.

“You have to be very disciplined to care for a child, maintain a home and go to school,” Shepard said.

Tania agreed, saying, “I’m starting slow. I don’t want to become overwhelmed with it.”

ON JAN. 12, about 50 relatives, friends, fellow residents and staff members gathered to watch Tania graduate from SSTARBIRTH. It had been nearly one year since she checked in.

Tania Cabral is congratulated by her sponsor, Rhonda Ellman, during her Jan. 12 graduation from SStarbirth, a residential program for chemically dependent mothers in Cranston.

At SSTARBIRTH, each woman has her own graduation ceremony, so that all attention is on her success. Fellow resident Krystal K. Whitfield recalled the day Tania first walked in the door, fresh off a crack binge. “I knew if you made it, I could make it,” Whitfield said, prompting laughs. “It’s been a pleasure watching you grow and watching you with your daughter.”

Another fellow resident, Lakisha Fernandez, said she was smoking crack and had just found out she was pregnant when her mother showed her The Journal series on Tania. A lot of people had tried to get her to stop using drugs, and when her mother gave her the newspaper, she just thought to herself: “Here she goes again.”

But one day when she was high, Fernandez read an installment and asked her mother for the other parts. “It really touched me,” Fernandez said. “She’s from Rhode Island like me. She had the same feelings — feeling alone and rejected, and she used [drugs] to hide from her problems.”

Fernandez said to herself: “Maybe I can do it, too, before I end up losing my child.” She checked into a drug rehab center, and a few months later, she moved to SSTARBIRTH, where she lived with Tania and A.J. and the other mothers.

At the graduation ceremony, Fernandez told Tania that she “was one of the few people that cut through the fog of my addiction.” She said, “I’m glad and I’m blessed that you’re in my life.”

Melanie Brown, a good friend of Tania’s who runs an organic gardening business, attended the ceremony and said people too often view drug addicts as less than human. Brown, who describes herself as a spiritual person, said, “God has made Tania who she is to inspire other people.”

But even Tania’s biggest supporters say Tania’s continued success is not a given. Brown said Tania needs to go to college, get a good job and feel she is bettering the world. “The thing with Tania is she’ll go a long, extended period doing fine and all of a sudden she relapses, so she needs to keep progressing.”

Several speakers said Tania could always make it look like things were going smoothly. The question, they said, was whether she would just maintain appearances. In the end, they said, her recovery was genuine.

When it was her time to speak, Tania said, “As a few people had mentioned, I knew all the right things to say. Because, I mean, I did. I had my own idea of how things were going to go. And I was just going to put the façade on and fool everybody because I’m an actress, so I can do that. But it’s cool that I actually did start to believe it, and I actually started to live it.”

Tania said people believed in her when she’d lost faith in herself. “I just want to thank everybody for being here and for being behind me.”

At her graduation from SSTARBIRTH, clinical supervisor Judy Gorman, left, and Yolanda Lawrence join Cabral in the "Powerless Dance," a dance the former cheerleader invented for those occasions when 12-step fellowship program participants realize circumstances are beyond their control and they need to feel better.

With that, it was time for the Powerless Dance, a routine that Tania, the former cheerleader, had fashioned from elements of the 12-step program to boost the spirits of residents. (The program’s first step is admitting you are powerless over your addiction.)

Two other women jumped up and joined Tania, dancing and singing: “I’m powerless/I’m powerless/I’m powerless/I’m powerless/Give it on up/and give it on up/Give it on up/And give it on up.” The crowd cracked up and cheered.

AFTER LEAVING SSTARBIRTH, Tania lived with her godmother for a couple of weeks, and then she and A.J. moved into transitional housing arranged through Crossroads Rhode Island. She is paying $150 a month for a small house in Providence’s Smith Hill neighborhood, and she and her daughter can live there for up to two years.

Tania moved in on Feb. 2, unloading a U-Haul on a narrow street bordered by chain-link fences and cinderblock garages tagged with graffiti. She had help from an old friend, Rodman Howland, who at 6-foot-5, was responsible for the heavy stuff.

Howland is best friends with a guy named Robb, who lived with Tania for a couple of years before Tania’s crack use destroyed their relationship. As he unloaded things from the U-Haul, Howland said, “I wish they’d get back together. I think they’re made for each other.” But, he said, Tania’s drug abuse broke Robb’s heart.

Tania said she remains friends with Robb, but as far as romantic relationships are concerned, “I’m still getting settled into real life.”

Tania has until June before her welfare benefits run out, so she plans to get a job and attend CCRI at some point. She’s working with a job counselor at the Rhode Island Family Life Center, a nonprofit that helps ex-offenders reintegrate into the community. Also, she attends 12-step meetings three times a week, sees her grandparents regularly and enjoys time with A.J.

Cabral settles into a Providence transitional home with her 2-year-old daughter, Angelina-Joan.

One afternoon in February, Tania and A.J. watched a DVD of the 1982 movie Annie, which was Tania’s favorite when she was a kid. A.J. was enthralled as the orphans sang, “It’s the hard knock life for us.”

Tania talked about how things had changed. Last year, when she turned 29 on Jan. 31, she’d been off drugs for just five days, she’d just arrived at SSTARBIRTH and no one called her to wish her happy birthday — except her grandmother. This year, when she turned 30, she chaired a 12-step meeting and afterward went to Gregg’s Restaurant in Warwick for dinner with friends, relatives and her sponsor.

“I’m not where I would like to be at 30, but I’m not where I was,” Tania said. “I’m clean, and I have my daughter in my life.”

TANIA RECEIVED a jolt in February when A.J.’s father, Jason A. Tench, filed a motion seeking joint custody and visitations with A.J. in state prison.

Tench grew up in Silver Lake, as did Tania, but they first met in 1998 when he saved her from being raped. Six years later, Tench sold crack to Tania, and they fell for each other. They lived together for about four months before Tania became pregnant. It wasn’t planned. Tench was in prison when A.J. was born, and when he got out, Tania threw him a welcome-home party. Less than a month later, he was charged with assaulting Tania.

In 2005, Tench pleaded no contest to the assault charge and received a six-month prison sentence as a probation violator. Last year, Tench was charged with, among other things, assaulting and threatening a sheriff’s deputy. He pleaded not guilty and awaits trial. But based on those charges, a magistrate on March 27 sentenced him to four years in prison for violating probation, imposing a suspended sentence from a prior larceny conviction, according to the attorney general’s office.

Last year, Tench wrote letters to Family Court Chief Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah Jr., who heads the Family Treatment Drug Court, telling him Tania “plays the courts” and predicting she “will relapse once again.”

In his handwritten motion in February seeking permission to have A.J. visit him at the ACI, Tench told Jeremiah: “I’m so sorry for saying those meanful words in my letters.” He also apologized “for not looking at my problem or my responsibilities.”

Tench, who had tested positive for cocaine after a February 2006 Family Court appearance, said he was willing to accept “help for my addiction,” and was taking parenting, drug-prevention and domestic violence classes in prison.

When Tench appeared before Jeremiah on March 8, the judge asked how long he was going to be in prison.

“I think four years,” Tench replied. “I am willing to do whatever the court asks and will earn the right to be a positive and stable influence in this child’s life. I am her biological father, and I don’t want to be known as a drug addict who was a sperm donor.”

Jeremiah said, “How can you be the father when you’re in jail? If you had done things, you wouldn’t have any problems.”

“And you’re 100-percent right, your honor,” Tench replied.

Denise C. Aiken, the Rhode Island Legal Services lawyer representing Tania, objected to Tench’s motion, saying, “All we’re getting is the same letters over and over again of what the father is going to do in the future. And I haven’t seen anything being done.”

Ellen R. Balasco, the Court Appointed Special Advocate lawyer representing A.J., said, “Moreover, chief, there is still a restraining order in effect” that prohibits Tench from contacting Tania and A.J. Jeremiah set Tench’s next court date for June 4.

ON APRIL 2, Tania came to the courthouse for a hearing with Jeremiah. A.J. was with her, wearing a shirt that said “Cutie Pie” and a pin that said “I’m 2 years old today.” Tania’s mother, Phyllis J. Novak, was visiting from Florida, and she came along to meet the judge, who has been actively involved in Tania’s case.

"I'm not where I would like to be at 30, but I'm not where I was. I'm clean, and I have my daughter in my life."

Before the hearing, Novak talked about her daughter’s progress. “I’m happy for her,” she said. “Her attitude has been 100-percent positive. She’s never been able to keep a 100-percent positive attitude no matter how good things are going.”

Novak said Tania calls her more often, and they talk a couple of times every day. “She’s thrilled with being a mother,” she said. “She’s learned to take what comes. I’m looking forward to her getting training, education and some kind of job.”

On April 19, Tania received a federal Pell Grant that will allow her to attend CCRI full-time, beginning in September. “I’m excited. Oh, my God,” she said after opening the letter that morning. But she immediately began worrying about daycare for A.J.

Later that day, Tania went for one of her regular drug tests and ran into Magistrate Shepard at the courthouse. She told her about the Pell Grant and her daycare concerns, and Shepard talked about how she used to bring her then-6-month-old-son to classes when she was in law school and couldn’t find day care. Tania recalled that when she was young, she went to classes with her mother at Rhode Island College. And by the end of the day, Tania was determined to make it work, saying she would try to find a work-study program.

“This is something I really want to do,” Tania said. “I want to get somewhere. All the time I wasted doing drugs and whatnot — I really want to do something with my life.”

On April 25, Tania interviewed for a job at the AAA Southern New England call center in Providence. The job, which pays $10 per hour for 25 hours a week, would last through September, which would be perfect because that’s when Tania hopes to start classes at CCRI. She said she would find out this week whether she gets the job. She said the government would pay for daycare for A.J.

“Everything is falling into place,” Tania said, giving thanks to God and noting that she’d been striving to improve her life.

On April 26, three days ago, Tania was scheduled to graduate from Family Treatment Drug Court — two years to the day that she entered the program.

First, she had to take a drug test. Balasco said one or two parents have made it all the way through the drug court program and then on graduation day, with the cake waiting, tested positive for drugs.

But Tania passed her test. The only bad news came from those unable to attend her graduation ceremony at the Garrahy Judicial Complex.

Judge Jeremiah had a medical appointment in Boston. But he and his wife sent Tania a huge bouquet of flowers. Jeremiah said, “I’m very proud of her. She sets an example for everyone else who appears in our court. I hope the success she’s had continues in the future. From now on, it’s totally up to her.”

Tania’s grandparents also were unable to attend. Her 93-year-old grandfather, Anthony Giardino, had vertigo, and a handwritten note in the window of his barber shop read: “Tony is ill — under doctor’s care.” Tania’s 89-year-old grandmother, Angelina Giardino, said she was proud of Tania. “The baby has done a lot for her,” she said. “The baby means everything to her.”

Before the graduation ceremony, Rosemary Soave, director of the Vulnerable Infants Program, said Tania is one of five women who have agreed to be volunteer mentors for those entering Family Treatment Drug Court. “I felt Tania showed a lot of courage and has the ability to understand what people are going through,” Soave said. “And she has leadership qualities.”

The graduation brought together the circle of support that has seen Tania through the past two years. Child welfare workers and lawyers, care coordinators and court officials gathered around as Magistrate Shepard read a decree declaring that Tania had successfully completed the drug court program.

On April 26, exactly two years after entering the court program, Tania Cabral walks out of Family Treatment Drug Court hand-in-hand with AJ.

When she entered drug court, Tania admitted to neglecting her child, but during the graduation ceremony, Shepard wiped out that finding. From a legal standpoint, that was the main advantage of going through drug court. In regular Family Court, the neglect finding would have remained after Tania’s case was closed. Shepard explained that the finding could have been used against her in a case involving another child or in applying for certain jobs, such as in child care.

A.J., wearing a pink-and-blue plaid sundress, pink patent-leather shoes and frilly white socks, spent much of the ceremony bringing flowers around to people. Each person in the circle spoke to Tania.

Soave told Tania, “It took you a lot of courage to have your story become public, and I think you’ve been an inspiration for many people.”

Balasco said, “At times it was a struggle, to say the least. But, I had no doubt,” she said, choking up, “no doubt today would happen. And I’m really pleased.”

Linda Lynch, Family Court’s executive director, said, “It’s been a long up and down, but you have been the epitome of what we hoped this program would be.”

Aiken told Tania, “I will never give up on a case because of you. I will never give up on somebody because of you. You gave me a run for the money, girl. But you proved what I said a year ago: It takes brass ovaries to do this.”

Janet BarryRogers, a VIP care coordinator who happened to be Tania’s counselor in high school, told Tania, “Welcome back to life, Tania. I’m so glad to see you again.”

efitzpat@projo.com