If ever there was a person with a rightful claim to victimhood, it is Melanie Washington. She has experienced many profound losses throughout her life, many more than any one person should have to bear. Yet she has managed to use these negative experiences to create something good in the world.

This inspiring woman is founder of the nonprofit youth organization MATFA (Mentoring, A Touch From Above) in Long Beach, California. The program goes inside California Youth Authority Detention Centers for youths between the ages of 10 to 25 to mentor them, develop them, and help them prepare to re-enter society. In the past 10 years more than 200 young men have participated in MATFA. Of the 30 men in the program who have returned to society from prison, only one has gone back, compared to a state average of some 55 percent. The success has grown out of Melanie's tragedy and her unwillingness to allow herself to sink into victim hood.

At the age of 10, Melanie witnessed the murders of her mother and sister at the hands of her abusive stepfather. Melanie was spared only because his pistol jammed. She blamed herself for their deaths because just a few days prior to the murder Melanie had revealed to her mother that her stepfather had been sexually abusing her and her sister, so their mother had left him.

"I lived with the burden for many years that their deaths were my fault. I didn't have a life after that. Just a child on this earth, scared about which way to go and mad at myself for telling on my stepfather, and just angry in general. I didn't talk or share anything with anybody, or tell on anybody because I was afraid someone I really cared about would die."

At the age of 18, Melanie ran away from home and married her boyfriend. "Two months into my marriage he was beating on me, but I took the beatings as a punishment for telling on my stepfather. Through two pregnancies he was beating on me, kicking me in the stomach. He gave me hepatitis and I was in the hospital for 22 days and almost died. After delivering my second child and living with his abuse for so much time, I finally realized that I was not supposed to live like this." Melanie found a new home for herself and her children. She filed for divorce and eventually began dating again. She had a child with a new boyfriend, but a year and half later he was dead, murdered by his best friend.

"I began to feel as though I couldn't go on any more. It felt like it was just one bad thing happening after the next. I started using drugs and alcohol to numb my pain, but it didn't work. I asked my sister to take me to a church. She laughed at me because I was a drug addict and everything else, but she did take me and I liked it. I started attending a church where they took really good care of single moms with children. I was still on drugs and alcohol for about a year until I woke up and I said to the Lord, 'Hey, I want to believe in you, I want to trust you and rely on you. I want to get some kind of life.' From that day forward I didn't do any more drugs or alcohol."

"The day I turned to God for help was a turning point for me. I wish it could be that I just said, 'Oh, I'm just going to change now,' but it didn't happen that way for me. I started building my self-esteem even more. I started realizing that you can make the right choices and you don't have to accept anything and everything that has been told to you. You can walk a straight path. So I started working with kids in my community. Working with them really gave me a lot more hope. These kids were coming in droves because they said, 'You've been through so much and look where you are today.'

Melanie's trials were still not over. As she rebuilt her life, news came that her stepfather, the man who had killed her sister and mother and abused her, had died. She found it in her heart to forgive him and gave the eulogy at his funeral. Several years later even more forgiveness would be demanded of her. Her middle son, a U.S. Marine, was killed by a young gang member he had been mentoring.

"I went to meet with the boy in prison. She asked him how he could do such a thing to someone who was trying to help him. He didn't have a response. I told him 'I know that my son loved you and because he loved you, I love you. You have life in prison with no chance of parole. You will never see those streets again but I want you to have hope in prison. You can be helpful to someone else in prison; to the other young people that I'm talking to. You need to tell them what it's like to murder like that and what's going on in your heart. How do you feel about that? You are going to have to do something with what you did. You just can't sit here and rot away. You have to be able to touch other lives from here. I forgive you. I love you. Today you are my son.

"All he could do was start crying. He couldn't believe me. He asked me 'Why do you forgive me? Why do you care about what's happening with me? Why do you write and send books and do these things?' "I said 'Because I love you. My son loved you and he must have found something in you that he thought was worthwhile and that's what I'm looking for in you.' So this young man has been writing letters to kids in prison and he is doing wonderful in prison and getting his life together. He even graduated college while in prison.

"I want people to understand that we can make it out of situations. We can change our minds and make a choice that is much better for us. We can stop running around feeling sorry for ourselves and pick ourselves up and say 'No, I'm not going to do this anymore!'"

Melanie lost her mother, sister, husband, and son to violent deaths, all of them killed by repeat offenders who had no support system when they had been released from prison for previous crimes. She wanted to make sure that young people had somewhere to go and someone to guide them after they came out of prison, so that they wouldn't repeat the cycle of violence. That passion created MATFA.

"I don't want these kids coming out and hurting anybody else's children, so I'm in there showing them a better way and helping them to get into school and getting them jobs when they get out." The young men get job training and placement, preparation for the work world, educational assistance, scholarships, family counseling and drug and alcohol rehabilitation within one year of their release. They also assist crime victims' families.

Melanie Washington is a perfect example of someone who could have chosen to take on a victim mentality, but instead decided to use her negative experiences to strengthen her resolve to make a positive difference in the world.