Victim support and trauma in sexual assault cases

Restorative Justice & Rape Victims

Restorative Justice

Restorative justice, according to Dr. Tom Cavanagh (www.restorativejustice.com) is a "value-based approach to responding to wrongdoing and conflict." The focus is on both the person who has been harmed and also the offender - along with the affected community. The wrongdoing can be healed, Cavanagh claims, by healing the "harm, particularly to relationships, that is created by the harmful behavior."

The Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking (CRJP) (University of Minnesota) asserts that "true peace" is not merely the absence of "hostilities" nor is it simply an agreement to end the violence / hostility. True peace involves one being willing to "see the humanity in one's adversary." The center also provides four general types of restorative justice; one, "victim-offender mediation" (also called "victim-offender reconciliation" or "victim-offender dialogue") normally involves the victim and offender in direct mediation facilitated by one or two "mediators"; two, "group conferencing" usually involved the victim and offender along with support persons for both sides - and possibly additional participants from the community; three, "circles" (that are also called "peacemaking circles") are usually similar to group conferencing only even more people are in attendance. There is, according to the CRJP, a "talking piece" that is handed around the circle to "designate" whose turn it is to speak. The fourth is called "other" and it may involve a restorative "board" or other formal community program that invites victims and offenders to come together to work out a way to respond to the offence.

One agency that is relating to the crime of rape in Denmark through the use of restorative justice is featured on the Nordisk Forum - it is called "The Centre for Sexual Assault" (CSA) in Copenhagen. The CSA, according to an article on the Nordisk Forum site, aims its energy towards "empowering women exposed to sexual coercion" (Madsen, 2004) so that the victimization she experienced during the trauma does not maintain control over her life.

The rape of a woman means, on the surface, that a man has taken control over her body; but the deeper hurt is that he has also taken control over her life. She has been "objectified" by the cruel, brutal actions of the other person, Karin Sten Madsen asserts in her article. And then there is the aftermath of the ordeal - the life she must go on living - which may well involve a huge struggle on her part to "regain power and autonomy," Madsen writes. When the system of law enforcement ("justice") is only concerned with the offence and with the person who committed that offense, the "damage done to the woman is not in focus," Madsen explains.

In fact, the victim becomes "a witness to the crime," and once her testimony is finished, "she has no more to say" in most cases, Madsen continues. Indeed her credibility is sometimes questioned, to the extent that "she feels she is the suspect and has no power to influence the outcome of the case." The crime, Madsen explains, is looked at as a violation of the law, not a violation of her body and spirit and life.

And in many communities around the world, especially in the West, there are now women's centers where a rape victim may receive medical and psychosocial care and attention, which is fair and nice. But, Madsen asks,.." is that enough?" Has justice truly been achieved, and a life restored? The legal system in many cases is about locating the offender and issuing an appropriate form of punishment. This is where restorative justice can play a major role in giving the victim - and the offender - a chance for some form of closure.

Madsen points to the case of "Lisa" who was a victim of "date rape" at a party in her own home; the offender was a friend of her brother. Lisa, who did not want to report the incident to the police, but she did want to confront the offender, had many questions in her mind that needed to be resolved. "...Was it me who was completely *****ed up that night" Did I do something wrong" Was I in any way provocative?" She recalls being asleep on her couch and then he approached her, and afterward she wanted to hear his response; she wanted to hear his side and tell her side to let him know "how angry and hurt I feel."

So, with the help of CSA, Lisa wrote a letter to her rapist; in the letter "she told him her story of what happened and the suffering it caused her during and after," Madsen explains. Lisa put some questions to him in the letter, and asked for answers. She also asked for a face-to-face meeting with him. She did not get a reply from the man who raped her. However, the CSA had prepared Lisa for this eventuality, and that even if there is no reply, such a letter is helpful. Lisa was quoted by Madsen as saying, "Had I not written the letter I think I would be even more scared than I am now to meet him." That is because she "would not have taken any action to confront him. Now I feel I have come out on top. I am in the treetop and he is a root in the ground."

Lisa now believed that she could (and would) walk up to her rapist and say, "Hi. I know you've read my mail and I didn't get an answer. Why is that?" She added that now she feels she has the strength to go through with that confrontation, in order to bring about a mediated session, and hence, bring the concept of restorative justice into play. In the event that the rapist was someone that was not known to the victim, and was not caught by police, it would be a very different situation; but having written the letter, Lisa definitely had taken her own steps towards restorative justice, and it made a difference in her life.

In the case of Marian Partington from Great Britain, the healing potential of restorative justice took more than twenty years, and it involved coming to terms with the rape - and murder - of her sister. On the Web site www.urbandharma.org, Marian tells her dramatic story, which is filled with pain and confusion and mystery. Her sister Lucy vanished right after Christmas, on December 27, in 1973, and for two decades, she writes, her family agonized about what happened to Lucy, who was 21 when she disappeared.

Talking about Lucy became almost taboo," Marian explained. There was no funeral, no formal announcement of ultimate departure, but the family "privately" acknowledged that Lucy was probably dead. One upside to the tragedy was that Marian said she had an intensified "awareness of the present. I really appreciated being alive," she said. She never again felt complacent about just being alive every day.