Moons Launch Prison Ministry Once-Troubled Couple Provides Faith-Based Books To Inmates

Felicia Moon once accused the criminal justice system of meddling with her family life after she charged her husband, NFL quarterback Warren Moon, with beating her.

Now, one year after a jury acquitted Moon, his wife is back in that system. This time, she wants to be there, ministering to inmates in the state’s prison system.

“I feel what the trial did was really free me to be able to help other people,” says Mrs. Moon. “When it was over, my heart wanted to give back and do something for people like me and my husband who have made mistakes.

“I often tell people I don’t think there’s much of anything you can’t overcome.”

Next month, Moon and her husband, just released by the Minnesota Vikings, will launch their Rock of Faith Prison Library Project, which will place faith-based libraries in prisoners’ reach.

The first one, 1,000 volumes, is scheduled to be in place March 15 at the Jester Units in Fort Bend County, where the couple lives with their four children.

“When someone comes from outside and believes in us, it gives us hope,” says Isaac Smith, serving time for a robbery-by-threat conviction.

Moon tells the prisoners she counsels that a person cannot hide from tough times.

“If you mess up, face it, deal with it and move on,” she says.

Moon did not want to prosecute her husband over the July 18, 1995, incident at the couple’s home. Prosecutors pursued the case, even though the Moons said they were reconciled.

Now she uses that experience.

“They feel like they can look at me and know that I’m somebody who has gone through some of that same pain a woman who knows that her husband’s committed adultery, for instance, or a woman who has had problems with alcohol, drugs or depression or violence.”

She says she found that people “want to talk to somebody who has survived these issues, I guess, and come out a lot stronger.”

Although she admits having periods of rage and depression in the sometimes stormy marriage, she denied prosecutors’ contention that she is a battered woman. Mrs. Moon said she attacked her husband and provoked the physical confrontation by hitting him in the back with a heavy candleholder.

“People were just really telling me I needed to leave Warren, I needed to walk away from him and I needed to turn my back on him,” she says.

“But what people don’t understand is he stood by me, and he was there for me many, many years when I was addicted to drugs, when I was addicted to alcohol. I think that’s what marriage is about.”