RJC Survey response

Recently the RJC opened a survey for comment on the key principles under which it conducts its work. These are the responses I provided to the survey.

1. Restoration – the primary aim of restorative practice is to repair harm.

Yes or no : No

Comment:
The primary aim of restorative practice seems to be to put a pretty face on terrible harms. It seems that RJ and RP will forgive anything, even in the case where corrective action should have taken place ten, fifty or one hundred steps prior to the offense. I am thinking of the case in Florida, USA where Anne Grosmaire’s parents forgave Anne’s murderer and this act resulted in the murderer’s sentence being cut in half. Other cases include mass murderer, Anders Breivik who recived 21 years for mass murder in Norway, and the slaying in an historically black church in Charlston, South Carolina, USA. Church members have already forgiven the offender within three days of the offense.

The family member that spoke forgave the murderer FOR all relatives in the family and FOR all members of the church. These kinds of actions on behalf of others are subjugative because they use one person’s emotion and feelings to rewrite the master narrative for others. Those others are then disallowed to speak.

This is very similar to the subjugation practiced by the Truth and Reconciliation Council in South Africa. Past offenses were decriminalized for the purpose of storytelling and rewriting the narrative from the lens of pacifism. A trial does the same thing, but is more honest because it doesn’t pretend not to be leveraging human power. By invoking God, forgiveness, theodicy and the like, these “restorative” approaches use a deus ex machina to claim that forgiveness and illogic are better and more important than analysis and critical thinking.

Instead of murder simply being wrong in all contexts, for example, murder can be recreated as a plea for help, an expression of social ills, a necessary wound that a society needs to experience to realize the truth, or any other narrative cultural authorities want to construct. The actual harms are minimized and micro issues are emphasized. There is no longer a recognition that there may be competing sides, or reasonable conflict. The party line is expressed, and everyone is expected to follow.

Here is a link to an article on the use of RJ in Norway in the case of a mass shooting: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/a-different-justice-why-anders-breivik-only-got-21-years-for-killing-77-people/261532/

Here is a link to an article on the use of RJ in Florida, USA to decriminalize femicide: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/can-forgiveness-play-a-role-in-criminal-justice.html?_r=0

Here is a video documenting the family representative statements in the Charlston shooting: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/06/19/i-forgive-you-relatives-of-charleston-church-victims-address-dylann-roof/

It is important that victim statements are allowed, and it is also important that these statements do not sway the court into uneven sentencing based on surviving family feelings.

2. Voluntarism – participation in restorative processes is voluntary and based on informed choice.

Yes or no: No

Comment:
Many people who participate in restorative processes feel obligated to by decree of church or cultural norms. Someone raised in the culture of forgiveness may be as incapable of giving informed consent, just as an intoxicated person may be incapable of giving informed consent to a sexual encounter.

In the video recording of the families of the murder victims in Charleston, one family member is heard to say, “We are the family that love built. There is no room for hate, therefore, we have too forgive.”

This statement is based on false dichotomies, and is inconsistent with the research into mourning processes, which in some psychological circles are believed to require anger, if not hate, at stages within the process.

As it has been noted broadly in the literature, there are many cases where Restorative Justice results in further trauma (I won’t say re-trauma, because its actually a new trauma to go through something that has been sold to you as good, only to realize that it isn’t). I suspect that in many cases this new trauma occurs because the survivor/victim is going through the process without actual informed choice. I recommend research into the actual causes of Restorative Trauma.

3. Neutrality – restorative processes are fair and unbiased towards either participant.

Yes or no: No

Comment:
Satisfaction surveys have proven that offenders have greater satisfaction from Restorative Justice than survivors. James Patek writes in his introduction to Restorative Justice and Violence Against Women that:

“It is interesting to note that the original focus of RJ on the rehabilitation of the offender proved to run contrary to popular sentiment, which favored the most retributive aspects of the criminal justice system. In response to this political reality, RJ programs began emphasizing the restoration of victims and the healing of the community, thereby making RJ more palatable to the public (Marshall 1998).”

I suggest that no RJ is neutral. I suggest that “victim oriented” restorative justice is more “victim reorienting” from an ideological frame than actually serving the needs of victims. At minimum, “victim oriented” hasn’t been defined properly and has no consensus among adherents or practitioners.

4. Safety – processes and practice ensure the safety of all participants and create a safe space for expression of feelings and views about harm that has been caused.

Yes or no: No

Comment:
At the 4th National Conference on Restorative Justice held in June 2015 in the United States I presented two cases that were wildly biased and unsafe. They were cases from a pilot program in New Zealand headed by Helen Bowen and Jim Consedine.

The first case utilized a Polynesian woman’s assertion that the cultural values of her father that put pressure on her as the first daughter to raise the money to take care of her siblings caused her to steal nearly $3000 US (adjusted for inflation) in a single month from her employer. The employer affirmed her position based on his own racist ideas, and asserted that her parents shouldn’t put her under such pressure and she should be able to buy herself nice things with her money, despite the realities that the family was destitute. In reading the case it is clear that the only person really expressing his values is the white male business owner, and that the offender is catering to his values in the hopes of a reduced sentence.

The second case, a granddaughter (young child) has been sexually offended against by her grandfather. The mother indicates it has been made clear to her how the family feels, and that her anger is not OK. It is also clear that ‘family togetherness’ supersedes any other attitudes or feelings. The three sons of the offender (one is the husband of the mother) bemoan the fate of their father. The father refers to the victim in the third person, and doesn’t “own” the child-victim as his granddaughter.

The facilitator doesn’t recognize these power dynamics going on in the conference, and so justice is steamrolled, and the powers that walk into the conference are the same powers that walk out of the conference, only rubber stamped by the judge and with suspended sentences to boot.

A single facilitator with a singular view on what a healthy outcome will look like is absolutely unacceptable. There are no checks and balances in this filth that has named itself “restorative.” A “restorative” process is a subjugative process that forces people to disempower themselves and accept disempowerment as healing.

5. Confidentiality – processes are confidential, subject to the requirements of the law.

Yes or no: No

Comment
The secrecy in restorative justice allows the movement to claim that it is good without proper review and out of the eye of the public. I would rather authorize waterboarding than Restorative Justice. It is safer, more honest, and the person subjected to it is allowed to keep their ideas, thoughts and values to themselves without the manipulation from the Restorative ideological frame.

Restorative Justice claims to be derived from native traditions, yet a chapter in Helen Bowen and Jim Consedine’s book,”Restorative Justice: Contemporary Themes and Practice” indicates that in traditional Mowri justice there is no expectation of privacy (Hakiaha in Bowen and Consedine, 1999, p 90-94). Why would RJ utilize secrecy in its process when the traditional systems of native cultures refute that and indicate that the whole person, the whole offender should be open to review and discussion, and open to the whole community?

The power that RJ wields is to keep the failures of RJ secret and to continue espousing unrealistic tenets about collective responsibility for harm, fellow-feeling, repairing harm and so forth. The reality is that RJ creates harm with a smile, and it polices not just the body and the behavior, but the mind of its subjects.

6. Accessibility – restorative processes are non-discriminatory and available to all those affected by conflict.

Yes or no: No

Comment:
In the case of Anne Grosmaire’s murder mentioned above, it became clear that RJ is only accessible to some. At the 5th National Conference on Restorative Justice Anne’s parents indicated that the only reason they were allowed to have a pre-trial conference is that the Sherriff over the jail where the offender was held was the brother of the prosecutor, and they already had involved an RJ facilitator, Sujatha Baliga, in talks with the prosecutor.

This back-door approach to mitigating sentences has been long practiced and is exemplified in the earliest examples of Restorative Justice in Canada where Mennonite religious groups influenced the courtroom work group based on age bias and other mitigating circumstances to trigger pity in the judge for offenders.

In the United States these influences are part of the cause of unequal sentencing for white and minority offenders. White offenders have historically been let off based on church and community testimony and willingness to solve the problem privately and behind closed doors. In this regard Restorative Justice is merely another smokescreen for injustice.

Additional Questions:

Are there any areas of restorative practice that you think should be reflected in the principles that are not currently covered?

Comment:
Self Blessing: The cornerstone of Restorative Justice is that facilitators believe they are doing good and that they should never be questioned.

Intentions speak louder than outcomes: Because Restorative Justice believes it is good and that the criminal justice system is bad, it believes that it should not be held accountable for any harms it causes. It even calls Restorative Trauma “retraumatization,” as though somehow, magically, a harm from the past was retriggered, rather than the reality that a new trauma has been caused due to the so-called restorative practitioner failing miserably. The reason the movement uses this rhetorical strategy is to attempt to remove liability from its actions.

NACRJ: Celebrating 38 Years of Parental Forgiveness for Heinous Crimes

It was a chance occurrence that placed the 5th National Conference on Restorative Justice in Florida, where a Restorative Justice conference resulted in reducing a sentence of 40 years to life to 10-20 years, including parole for Connor McBride, a 19 year old domestic abuser who murdered his girlfriend, Anne Grosmaire, when he shot her in the face with a shotgun in March, 2010.* This chance occurrence resulted in two hours of the conference focused on forgiveness and the impact of spirituality in cases of violent crime.

“It’s hard to believe they talked for two hours and not once did they mention DV,” (Domestic Violence), a campus victims advocate said.

I was at the airport following the conference with a group of attendees including a lawyer, campus domestic violence advocate, and two community members. Everyone nodded in agreement.

“Connor’s behavior, from the New York Times Magazine article has always seemed to me to indicate a pattern of escalating violence,” I responded. Connor acknowledged hitting Ann multiple times, and a point of continued contention was Anne’s enjoyment of going out and socializing in the evening. The pattern was isolate, subjugate and violate. And then he killed her.

As an outspoken opponent of Restorative Justice, possibly the most outspoken opponent in the world, the group at the airport was interested how my case could relate to the current practices of Restorative Justice today.

My parents forgave a man for sexual offenses against me in a family circle. The man had been freed through the intervention of a Community Justice and Restorative Justice organization and placed in my home through the work of the nonprofit and local churches. In the weeks that followed I found a television stolen by my offender hidden in our basement, and when that offense was reported, the man’s suspended sentence was revoked, and he was sent to prison.

That circumstance has had a lasting impact and harms on me, which has included a hospitalization in 2014 for stress when triggers from this experience began to intermix with current work stress plus the stress from unsuccessful attempts to get my parents and the Community and Restorative Justice organization’s founders and facilitators to acknowledge the harm and to take responsibility for their actions through a Restorative Justice conference.

To compare my experience to current practice, I compared it to the case of Anne Grosmaire’s murder.

“In both cases RJ facilitators gained unreasonable access to the courtroom workgroup. In Iowa in the 1990’s the state passed a law that churches couldn’t influence the court pre sentencing because it was generating such divergent outcomes, and the organization that freed my offender hired employees from law enforcement and changed its focus to probation supervision following courtroom proceedings. If you heard Andy Grosmaire, he mentioned the only reason the conference was allowed to happen was the prosecutor is related to the sheriff that oversees the prison. That’s an ethics violation that cannot be overlooked.”

Everyone nodded again.

Ann’s case represents the power of nepotism, the access white communities have to influence the courts, age bias (being 19 he is an adult, but there is a willingness to cast him back into adolescence) and male narratives (Connor’s story is the only one that tells what occurred at the time Ann was shot – no forensics, no timelines to put his assertions into context). In Restorative Justice all of these critical questions go out the door so that illogical and emotional narratives such as the theodicy of St. Francis, which the Grosmaire parents have repeatedly indicated bore heavy influence on their actions, fill the void.

These realities are nearly identical between my case and Ann’s case. My offender was white, 18 (on the cusp of adulthood) when he committed his initial felony property offenses that initiated the nonprofit’s intervention, had unreasonable influence from religious and nonprofit groups on the courtroom workgroup, his story dominated because of my age and inability to express my experience, and illogical and emotional narratives such as “turn the other cheek” overwhelmed participants, resulting in unreasonable outcomes.

I had prepared a question to ask the Grosmaire parents and the facilitator that worked on implementing Restorative Justice in the case of Anne’s murder.

“In 2010 and again in 2014 the United Nations published guidelines on writing legislation and utilizing effective prosecution to protect women from forms of violence including femicide, as in this case, as well as such offenses as genital mutilation and domestic violence among others, offenses that often emerge from and are reinforced by communities. For that reason the UN indicated in 2010 that no pre sentencing meeting should influence the outcome because sentencing has to stand in the face of communal minimization of the harm to the victim, and in 2014 they allowed for RJ, but only when protections for a domestic violence survivor are equal or greater than through the courts. In this case the survivor is dead.

“The example of Ann’s murder and the forgiveness of her offender clearly reinforce a uniquely American subjugative narrative, that a good girl can save a bad boy, but only if she is willing to sacrifice enough. This case clarifies that it is not enough for her to accept his demand she isolate herself, not enough that he throws a jealous rage and she forgives him, it’s not enough that she meets his demands when he threatens self-harm. It is only enough if she pays the ultimate price and allows him to murder her so that he can be forgiven and redeemed.

“Why should the community accept an outcome that maintains such subjugative positions for women?”

This was the second question I wrote after throwing out my first, much more simple question, as unreasonable: “My parents would cream their shorts at the chance to forgive someone for murdering me. Would you be willing to come down from the stage to shoot me in the face with a shotgun?”

I was unable to ask either of my questions. The Grosmaire parents and Sujatha Baliga, the facilitator of the conference spoke in two sessions, each an hour long. The first was a plenary session with no questions, and my presentation was scheduled during the following hour, where a “circle” was conducted with more informal conversation. I had a choice: skip my presentation to heckle, or give my presentation to a much smaller subset of attendees. I chose to present.

The first hour of the two hour forgiveness fest was a plenary session, a presentation to all conference attendees with no competing activities. The stage was filled with a couch for the Grosmaire parents and two chairs. The chairs were occupied by Sujatha Baliga, the RJ facilitator of the “restorative” conference held in a Florida prison that resulted in the murderer’s sentence being cut in half. The second chair was occupied by Azim Khamisa, whose son was murdered, and who has forgiven the boy that murdered his son and started a nonprofit with the grandfather of the offender. There was nothing on the stage to represent Ann, or Azim’s son, for that matter.

Recently I have been reading about cases where sexual offenses were covered up by offenders lighting victims on fire, as in this case. My father indicated that while incarcerated, my offender was transferred to maximum security after lighting another inmates room ablaze.

I ask myself, what would the 5th National Conference on Community and Restorative Justice been like had my offender killed me? For Restorative Justice my existence is inconvenient. Instead of me trying to get them to acknowledge the harms caused by endangering me, subjugating me, putting their ideology of restoration above protections for those without power, they could have been up on the dais celebrating the power of 38 years of parental forgiveness. The only challenge they would have had was in fitting enough couches and chairs up on that little stage and producing a banner that said, “NACRJ: Celebrating 38 years of Parental Forgiveness for Heinous Crimes.”

* Correction 6/10/2015 An earlier version of this blog post suggested Florida was chosen as the site of the 5th National Conference on Restorative Justice to highlight the use of RJ conferencing in this case.It was brought to my attention that the planning for the 5th National Conference began prior to the New York Times article and that the case did not have bearing on the scheduling of the conference.

Restorative Case Analysis from Brazil

During the opening plenary at the 5th National Conference on Restorative Justice Dominic Barter discussed a case where restorative justice was used with a young man who had participated in a flash kidnapping of a man parking his car.

To contextualize the environment in Brazil Barter discussed the economic and social scenario within which Restorative Justice is attempting to operate. He showed a video of a group of teens, about 15-16 years old, on patrol with AK-47 rifles to protect a territory controlled by drug lords that are in ongoing combat with US trained troops from the School of the Americas, a paramilitary training ground that teaches strategies and tactics for South and Central American troops to engage guerilla warfare. The path that the boys were patrolling in the video overlooks the two atolls between which the resorts and beaches where wealthy western vacationers stay. This contextualization effectively highlighted the way power and conflict reinforce patterns of disparity.

With this groundwork laid, Barter described how youth engage in risky and violent behavior. Flash kidnappings, a strategy where a person of some means is grabbed, taken to an ATM to withdraw funds, and released. The young man who became part of an RJ conference had seen a man trying to parallel park his car. Because his awareness was narrowed and focused on pulling in to the parking spot, the young man and his friends saw an opportunity. They subdued the man, frisked him and took one gun off of him, and headed in the car to an ATM.

The man the boys had abducted was a police officer who had a second gun on him. Barter indicated that the officer later told the group that during the ride he had determined he would kill the boys and his primary concern was how to do that without getting blood on the upholstery of the vehicle, but that at one point during the ride, the man saw something of his son in one of the boys and changed his mind.

Upon arrival at the ATM, the officer drew his concealed weapon, shot the boy that ended up in the RJ conference three times at point blank range in the leg. The second boy in the abduction fled and apparently escaped prosecution.

Barter described the judge who worked with the young man to give him the option to choose Restorative Justice. “You can either stay with me and we can go to trial, or you can go into that other room with the victim and a community of representatives, work it out, and come back to me to see if I approve the outcome.”

The young man chose Restorative Justice.

In the conference the young man learned about the officer, his thoughts during the abduction, the fact that at one point he was a dead man walking, and he also spoke about his experience. After he was shot and his comrade had fled, the officer had turned to him and approached. The boy thought he would be assassinated, and he described a moment of relief. He had lost his mother to suicide recently, and he thought to himself, “at least I’ll be able to see my mother.”

“You did it because you missed your mum,” a conference participant concluded.

This was the emotional turn, something that every RJ conference seeks, and it is one of the things that I am most concerned about in the practice. As a person who grew up within a family with high emotional expression where forgiveness, turning the other cheek, and community were ideals that were put first under the eye of a watchful God, I question the use of emotional bonds to entrap offenders into future good behavior. Many people take years to get out of these emotional “double binds” to a point where fact and logic rather than faith, hope and spirit drive one’s actions. Why would we approve government to use such techniques to control populations?

As I pointed out in my presentation at the 5th National Conference on Restorative Justice, the double bind was explored in the 1950’s by Gregory Bateson in an attempt to find a social cause of schizophrenia. Bateson noted that families with higher rates of schizophrenia had higher levels of expressed emotion, and he postulated that emotion was used as a form of power and manipulation, the bonds of which were so powerful they could break down normal mental processing. Though there was a correlation, Bateson and his team were never able to identify causation in their assessment of the double bind. Schizophrenia is much more complex, however, the double bind is quite helpful in understanding stress, anxiety and PTSD from what can become cult like social pressures. In this case, the first double bind used was the judge telling the young man he could go with the courts (bad) or choose Restoration through emotional manipulation (good). The second double bind was the idea that the criminal behavior was directly caused by the youth missing his mother. The pressure to accept that assertion or go back to court must have been immense, and the illogic of the statement is unreasonable.

The reality this young man lives in is one of hierarchy, class, poverty and conflict. These power scenarios are not represented within the conference, and by addressing only the issue of emotional drive without any checks and balances on that pressure are unreasonable.

The philosopher Michael Foucault argued in his book on the Criminal Justice system, “Discipline and Punish,” that corporeal punishment was better than incarceration because it allowed the mind of the offender to be his or hers alone. He argued that incarceration was used to break the body to control the mind and spirit of the individual and he believed the ownership of the mind and spirit was a fundamental right. With Restorative Justice and other forms of community justice we replace the bars of the prison because people have found ways to control and coerce the mind and heart without incarceration. In short, Restorative Justice disallows us to own ourselves. We must agree, we must comply, and if we don’t, there’s always someone who will give and remove love until we do.

Restorative Justice and Sexual Harm

This week I attended the 5th National Conference on Restorative Justice held in Ft. Lauderdale Florida. I was there to speak on challenges or problems in the Restorative movement that may result in creating, extending, or concealing harms rather than creating justice.

The conference was opened by Mara Schiff of Florida Atlantic University who introduced the first plenary speaker, Dominic Barter. Internationally renowned for his implementation of Restorative Justice in the Brazilian criminal justice system, Barter trains practitioners in facilitating the processes that have become associated with Restorative Justice. As he spoke about the benefits of Restorative processes Barter brought up that as rules are created for Restorative Justice and Restorative Practices, the process of creating the rules can block or exclude people who don’t accept, can’t meet, or who culturally engage in different manners than those who are establishing and preparing the “restorative” process. These comments opened the door for me to raise some of my ongoing concerns with Restorative Justice.

When Dominic invited questions I waived my arm in the air and was called upon immediately. Because there weren’t microphones circulating among the 500 attendees I stood and approached the podium. Mara found a microphone and handed it to me and I introduced myself to Dominic.

I stood about fifteen feet from Dominic at the center of the packed hall and engaged him in a dialogue.

“I thank the committee for accepting voices of dissent at this conference. My name is Alan Murdock, and I am the first victim of Restorative Justice.”

No one has ever accused me of being incapable of starting a conversation.

Dominic greeted me and asked me what had occurred.

I said something like, “In 1977 a restorative and community justice group freed my offender, placed him in my home, and while he was there he sexually offended against me. When my parents reported the offense to the group, though the court documents indicate they were responsible to manage the offender while he was out on release, they concealed the offense. Later, when I found a stolen television in our basement he was returned to prison. I experienced that the television was of significance while what happened to me was not. I would like to hear how you would respond to a situation like this.”

I chose to leave out the fact that my parents forgave my offender in front of me in a family group circle. The Grosmaire parents were in attendance at the conference who forgave the murderer of their daughter, Ann, despite the fact that his conduct demonstrated a classic pattern of escalating domestic violence. I wanted to hear their comments the following day without that statement, which might influence how they would talk about the act of forgiveness.

Dominic responded, describing to the audience how he prepares the ground for a conversation. I will not speak for him to describe that process, and he can write or talk about his conversation with me if he would like. He did say that what he wants to find out is what the participants have done so far, what has worked and what has not worked. He asked me what that looked like in my case.

“What has happened since the last conference… in the past year I spent four days in the hospital just looking at the ceiling due to stress – a combination of work, trying to deal with my parents, trying to get resolution from RJ…. The different types of stress started to overlap and combine until one night when I was trying to lecture to students and I stopped being able to interpret their questions and make a meaningful response. I went to the computer and just started clicking through my PowerPoint slides. The doctors thought it was physical until all the tests came back negative.

“Things that have not worked… Since the last conference,” I turned and gestured toward Mark Umbreight who was sitting in the front row, “I emailed Mark twice and left him a voicemail. He never called me back.”

The audience gasped.

Mark knows Lynette Hanthorn, the founding employee of the nonprofit that freed my offender and who is named in the court documents as responsible for my offender during release, and, according to personal communication with Lynette, he helped her establish Victim Offender Mediation through Hanthorn’s organization. At the 4th National Conference on Restorative Justice Mark had suggested a particular type of restorative process he thought might help me, but when I indicated that Lynette would not even recognize administrative mistakes in the case he excused himself and went back into the conference room where a session was ongoing. In my emails and voicemail I had asked Mark to assist in the outreach and coordination of a restorative process.

“My father spoke with a prosecutor in Des Moines, Iowa named Fred Van Lew who told my father he thought he could help me. I said, ‘great’ and sent him a list of the outcomes I would hope to come to from a restorative meeting. He emailed me back and told me what I need to do is to get over it. Engaging with restorative justice has been unsuccessful.”

I turned back to Dominic on the stage and said, “I don’t call this ‘Restorative Justice,’ I call this ‘The Cult of Restoration.’”

I paused. “You can say everyone is included, so everyone should sit in a circle until a dissenter is emotionally pressured to agree? There is one outcome? Conflict is reasonable. This is ideology. I should accept the tenets of Restoration on what grounds? Faith? This is religion.”

I gestured to the screen where a picture representing a court approved restorative conference Dominic had described was projected, “If this is religion, why should it infringe on government?”

There was a moment of silence while we let that question hang in the air.

“Things that I’ve done that have been good? Two weeks ago I blocked my parents on social media. They are just too much. They start spinning and I needed to create some distance. Establish some boundaries.”

Dominic responded that he can hear the hurt and feel the accusation: bad people doing bad things, in a sense. He wants to recognize these things in such a circumstance, “and then I would continue in this way to explore the things that are working and those that are not working to try to find more that work. I feel that this remains unresolved.”

“Yes.”

Dominic thanked me for the question. I thanked him and returned the microphone to Mara.

During the conference many people approached me to ask or make comment about my interaction with Dominic on the first day. One woman asked me, “Was that prepared in advance? Because I don’t feel Dominic really answered your question, he used it to highlight his practices.”

I responded to her, “The emotion is real, the facts are real. My voice was really shaking and I was having real difficulty in front of that many people. At the same time Dominic is a trained speaker. So am I. I teach my students to pitch and speak in front of audiences under high pressure.”

“The first lesson to any speaker is how to take a left field question – and I ask deliberately left field questions in such circumstances – and to turn it toward our topic and to answer the question in a way that enhances and supports what we have already said.”

The person asking the question understood that, but also felt disappointed because it left her feeling like the outcome was less real than it could have been. I told her that I was Ok with it because my concern is to be heard and for my critique to be taken seriously. I want my experience to impact and reform weak areas of the movement to create better outcomes and to mitigate risk, and I felt, and feel, that by accepting me to speak on my own topic and by allowing me to ask the question and engage with Dominic that the board of NACRJ, including Mark Umbreight, are opening the door for my critique to lead toward that result.

I was also approached by many survivors of sexual violence and child sexual abuse (CSA). Many thanked me for courageously engaging my concern, and most told me a little bit about their story. What struck me is the diversity of experiences that survivors have, the reality that this diversity is not represented in the media and conversation about sex crimes, and the reality that the harms from CSA, domestic violence and sexual assault are ongoing and cannot be resolved through singular acts such as a circle or conference.

Many survivors also indicated that messages promoted at the conference such as Azim Khamisa’s comment, “you (speaking to himself) are responsible for the plane of existence you engage in, and are you using meditation to get the tingle up here or are you residing down here at a lower level?” are often unhelpful and sometimes even received as oppressive.

Regardless of whether people say this message is an “individual choice,” or not it is still privileging spiritualized responses over the full tapestry of other reasonable responses to harm. In fact, in the traditions of Buddhist meditation of which he was speaking, the actual tradition creates a distinction between monks and laity. Laity are never expected to engage meditation or internal states in the manner that monastics are, and in the Soto Zen tradition which I practiced for 10 years, their religious responsibilities and responsibility to self-enlightenment can be as simple as supporting monastics through alms and lighting incense. Let’s cut the enlightenment bullshit right now.

I believe that the community that has formed under the umbrella of Restorative Justice can create an opportunity for dialogue amongst survivors and researchers about the experiences of CSA survivors, domestic violence survivors and sexual assault survivors without beginning with ideological assumptions about harms, responsibilities and righting wrongs. Those assumptions are already an agenda that gets in the way of figuring this whole thing out. I propose that there are sub demographics within this larger survivor community that are similar to the diversity in what once was simply known as the gay community. What began with the Stonewall Riots in June 1969 as the gay rights movement is recognized today as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Allies and Pansexual community. That’s a mouth full (and not in a Freudian slip kind of way).

My point is that we can’t begin with an assumption of what harms and healing look like, and that there may be nuance that has not yet emerged within the discourse. In fact, I don’t think there is a discourse. There are news reports. There is outrage, minimizing, ignoring, isolating, expectation and moralizing. There are also victim advocates, but that is one on one help from one person to another that isn’t a discourse. Oprah Winfrey recently interviewed the founder of Male Survivor, and there have been periodic news stories and work done around domestic and sexual violence, but none of that is a comprehensive and ongoing discourse.

Advocacy itself can in its own way facilitate silence because it is one on one and encourages people to “heal” i.e. keep their story quiet and become normal so others don’t have to be faced with discomfort.

Similarly Sujatha Baliga’s story of forgiveness of CSA may be limiting to discourse unless we bring forth other important stories. At the same time, please look her story up online. While I react to it in my own way, if we are to have discourse, Sujatha’s story must be included. I experience her story as, “Survivors can come forward, but only if they are at a point where we and our new master narrative of restoration are supported.” Her story includes forgiveness. Mine does not. I don’t know what “forgiveness” could even mean given that just last year my experience of harm from CSA, Restorative Justice, and unstated pressure to forgive from my family contributed, along with work stress, to hospitalization for four days. Sujatha and I have not been able to find a way to communicate effectively, and that is something I don’t think either of us like.

The 5th National Conference I felt was a breakthrough in hearing a concern about its practices that surround sex crimes and the risk of exacerbating harms through “Restoration.” I hope that conversation can continue and result in something more.