Restorative justice & restorative mediation

from Julie Speer's blog entry:

This past year I’ve had the good fortune of telling several stories related to restorative justice and restorative mediation. Colorado is leading the way with RJ (Restorative Justice), and has gotten a large grant from the Department of Justice to look at how using RJ can decrease the costs to the system. When offenders go through an RJ process, their rate of recidivism is astonishingly low!

Feb 23, 2011 Story, Case:DWI, Case:Violence, Case:Sexual, Case:Homicide

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Interview with Debbie, a rape victim of Robert Power

from the interview by Ines Aubert:

Ines Aubert was a pen pal of Robert Powers who had been sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. She discovered over time that Robert had changed profoundly and that he wanted, among other things, to extend an apology to any of his victims who wished to receive that. 

This took on some urgency at the end of 2010 as Robert neared the end of his life (he died of cancer on December 3). Ines contacted restorative justice consultant and RJOnline Correspondent Lisa Rea for assistance, but they were unable to find a way to reach out to Robert's victims. Lisa wrote about this in an earlier blog entry on RJOB.

Commenting on an article about Robert's death in a Florida newspaper, Ines wrote that he had wanted to apologize before his death but had been unable. Another reader -- one of Robert's victims -- replied to Ines that she had forgiven Robert. The two were able to connect, and Ines recently interviewed Debbie about her experience as a victim and the reasons for her forgiveness. The following is a short excerpt of an answer Debbie gave to Ines' question about how she felt when she learned that Robert had a pen pal.

Feb 11, 2011 Apology, Offender, Prison, Other, Case:Violence, Victim, Case:Sexual, Forgiveness, Country:USA

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Apologies help heal

from an editorial in the Abbotsford-Mission Times:

Last week, we wrote of the bravery of the 16-year-old girl who was the victim of an apparent gang rape at a rave in Pitt Meadows last September.

The young woman has issued a statement thanking both those who supported her and those who spread lies and bullied her in the wake of the incident. Both, she said, had made her a stronger person.

The victim was forced to leave school after images and rumours about the attack began circulating. She is now taking most of her classes online.

Feb 03, 2011 Offender, Case:Violence, Apology, Case:Sexual

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Restorative justice: Why I confronted the man who raped me

from Zoe Williams' article in The Guardian:

When Joanne Nodding met the man who raped her, the first thing she noticed, she says, was how scared he was. "He thought I was going to be angry," she says, "he was expecting me to shout and scream and tell him that I hated him. But if I had [been uncontrollably angry] they wouldn't have allowed me to meet him."

Instead she told the man, who cannot be named, how she had felt during the attack, and how it had affected her family. She explained that she had been terrified, while he was raping her, that he was going to kill her.

"That had a really big impact on him," she says. "He said 'sorry', and I did feel like it was a genuine 'sorry'."

Feb 01, 2011 Country:England&Wales, Case:Violence, Region: Europe, Case:Sexual

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