What do you think of restorative justice?

[Omg20]

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/27/restorative-justice-confronted-rape

What do you think of this?

I think if it helps victims it is a good idea as long as the victim agreed to it. This isn't completely restorative justice as the offender doesn't get out of their sentence but it does let the victim get closure.

What are your thoughts?
Would this help?
Would it be good to give victims the option of doing it?

I found that article quite disturbing but I can't really articulate the reasons why. Perhaps I'm missing the aims of the process and I think that's because the word "justice" is misleading. I'm glad the process helped her, of course, and perhaps it needs a different name if that is the goal.

Maybe it's just the sugar rush after scraping out the cake mix bowl.

For me it felt odd (maybe disturbing) because it concentrated as heavily on the rapists feelings and emotional state as it did the victim's, putting him on an equal footing.

Also holding up the woman forgiving her assailant as a great outcome seems wrong to me. Women react all sorts of ways and should not be made to feel that this is the rigth response.

I was also thinking about it this morning and it struck me that this isn't the first "victim forgives rapist" story I've seen in the papers. As if he says sorry, she says fine, and that's it no harm done. And somehow that as he's sorry, he didn't really mean it in the first place, he's not a bad guy really - feeding into rape myths.

Yes it made for uncomfortable reading. Although to reiterate it is really good that this particular woman feels she has had closure from this process.

Exactly, SQ. I think that restorative justice could be useful in crimes where the objective of the crime is to gain property i.e. where harm to another person is a (ugh, need a better phrase) side-effect of the crime. So, a meeting like the one in the story could be useful for both parties, with the criminal potentially facing up to the personal impact of their actions and hopefully thinking twice in the future.

In rape cases, the harm to the woman is the point of the crime, except in cases where the rapists just doesn't care. So, meeting with her after the event to hear how the rape has had an impact on her will either have no effect on him or will surely feed into the sense of power held by the rapist. I think that's the particularly disturbing bit for me.

It reads as if she had to be a good girl and not be angry to be allowed to be in the room with her rapist, and now she is being held up as a frightfully good example to all of us because she's forgiven her rapist.

Well, women being quiet and good and forgiving men who harm (or even try to kill) them may be good for the individual woman here, but this is not how women "should" behave at large. It's just paving the way for an easy life for rapists! Raped a woman? Well if she's at all cross or nasty about it, don't worry we won't let the angry lady at you, and if you do meet her the correct reaction from her is forgiveness of the execrable crime you committed. Isn't that nice?

I find the story very creepy.
glad she got a kind of closure that worked for her, but it makes my blood run cold the way she's so identified with his needs and emotions.
encouraging this seems like it could be a very dangerous thing for rape victims. Who, frankly, have already suffered enough.

I can imagine some rapists getting off on this sort of thing.

I'm disturbed about it for the same reasons everyone else is - the encouragement that women have to identify with men even above their own feelings when those men have done them significant harm; the approval she gets for identifying with him and the endless propaganda for forgiveness which we are bombarded with the whole bloody time - we are always told that we need to forgive for our own psychological well-being aren't we? It's almost like a promotion for the repression of women's rage isn't it?

I was thinking about that vicar whose daughter was killed in the 7/7 bombings, who resigned from her post because she felt unable to forgive her daughter's killers. But I don't quite know what thought is formulating in my mind which indirectly connects with this story, perhaps someone else can dig around in the recesses of my mind and tell me why I'm thinking of that...

Oh and something else has just occurred to me. I was out recently with some friends, one of whom was in an abusive relationship for some years. One of our other friends was telling her that she needs to forgive the abuser and I said that she doesn't owe him forgiveness and she doesn't have to forgive him at all, and in fact it's impossible to forgive someone who doesn't acknowledge that they have done you wrong (which her xp doesn't) but they all said it's for her own psychological well-being.

Which got me thinking about forgiveness, because that is the standard line we are fed isn't it, that it is in our interest to forgive, more than that of the perpetrator of whatever it is that has required forgiveness. Reading Susan Forward's Toxic Parents talked me out of that idea, but this whole thing of restorative justice is connected to taht widespread belief isn't it and it's also all bound up with christian doctrine of turn the other cheek.

Rambling now...

Do you know what the focus of this is all wrong.

In the rare case where a man who has raped someone feels genuine remorse and upset about what they have done, then it might well be helpful for the victim to hear that. That's he's sorry, and means it. That might help.

Nothing to do with forgiveness on the part of the victim though. Does the woman in this article feel better because she forgave him, or because he said sorry?

Plus, if she did feel better because she forgave, is she a religious person? Like HerB there are religious overtones to the importance and value of forgiveness.

Gosh the concepts opened up by this thread are complicated, interesting and mightily disturbing.

It would appear that we are in the realms of 'closure' and 'forgiveness'.

Sounds like so much bullshit to me.

Rape is not forgiveable and 'closure' (whatever the fuck that means) is not a useful goal on its own. Call me cynical but I think this sort of 'closure' is much more about the rapist than it is about the victim of the rape.

I would like the OP to explain to me why on earth a rape victim should agree to that and for what benefit.

If I were offered the opportunity to meet with a man who had raped me I would either;

a) Decline (thanks but don't need the added additional trauma and couldn't give a shit about how the rapist feels).

b) Accept- on the condition that I could express my hatred, anger, disgust and rage on my own terms.

And even in the case of b) I don't see the point for me (unless I am allowed to come to the meeting with a gun!) and suspect that such a meeting could only lead to confused feelings; such as suppression and denial on the part of the victim, as she is socially conditioned and encouraged to suppress and invalidate her perfectly valid emotions. (Double speak - much?)

If the women in question has gained something then I am glad for her - I find it hard to believe that she has gained much more than a semblance of 'you should/must feel better now 'cos you have done what it takes to survive in The Patriarchy - well done you little laydee you'.

Not good enough IMO.

It's this whole fucking thing of "here's your chance to save someone"

Men are never offered chances to save someone and told that this will make their lives better.

There's a reason why women have throughout history, been the worshippers while men have been the authorities, in patriarchal religion. Because they are selling us this piss-poor version of life - you can get fulfillment by sacrificing yourself and saving sinners. You will feel so sanctified and on a higher plane by that, that it will make up for the fact that your participation in all that life on earth can offer, will be so severely trammelled that the only way you can bear it, is by trusting that when you die, you will be able to live a full life instead of the half life we'll allow you for now.

This kind of shit buys into all that kind of shit, for me.

And meanwhile that JLS song is going round and round in my head: "Will it always haunt you baby, that you missed the chance to save me"

Like it's a fucking treat for women to pick up losers and dust them down and save them. Fuck!

Rambling again...

Anyway - here's a better idea.

I take inspiration from a TV programme I saw a while back about drunk drivers. (Whilst I say that I am in no way comparing rapists with drunk drivers in terms of motivation/deviancy.)

The drunk drivers in question were taken to a morgue and obliged to look at the human devastation of actions like theirs. Some of them vomited, some of them cried, some of them shook, they all were seriously shaken up by their experience and vowed that it had made them think.

We need an equivalent for rapists - one that does not require rape victims to suppress their anger and thereby damage themselves.

Rehabilitation of rapists is not the responsibility of rape victims.

I don't think there is an equivalent though beachcomber.

The drunk drivers didn't set out to kill people.

The rapists raped on purpose. They meant it.

So there's no equivalent is there. Show then shattered lives and terrible consequences and they won't care, chances are they might be pleased. Show them women who have picked themselves up and got on with their lives and what does that achieve.

I confronted the man who raped me in a pub, when I saw him. I cornered him by the bogs and tried to tell him off, ask him why he did it. He laughed in my face. That was a success then

This article is looking at that most rare of things, a rapist with a conscience. And on that basis alone it's bollocks. The vast majority of them don't give a fuck.

Sorry that reads wrong! He didn't rape me in a pub, that's where I had a go at him. Fat lot of good it did me.

Forgiveness? Bollocks. Women who have been attacked need to experience their own genuine emotions in their own time. Thinking about it people often come onto this topic and accuse people of being "angry" as if it is an insult. Too bloody right this stuff makes me angry, for me and my daughters and my friends and all of the women around the world who are putting up with all this shit. Anger is the only appropriate response.

I wonder if the fact that the rapist changed his plea to guilty made a difference for her. Had he plead not guilty and it went to court (supposing he was found guilty), I would imagine that it would be harder to go through the process.

I agree, HerBeX, about the forgiveness thing. There is a big push in talking therapies, self help books, Oprah type shows, 12 Step groups et al. It's like the desire to see someone held accountable for their wrongdoings is unnatural somehow. Though I can see how forgiveness can be a release in lots of ways. Ties me in knots.

Beachcomber, I would love there to be a way of doing something similar for rapists but don't see how it is possible without risking a situation where the rapists get off on that kind of power over their victim.

How do they know the perpetrator will care? Not just find it funny or exciting?

I'm a bit confused about it all TBH!

Slightly longer account by Jo