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Transformative justice is but one of many restorative justice models aimed at healing the wounds created by crime in our communities. But it is one of the most remarkable, because it seeks to heal the wounds between the families of murder victims and the murderers. The case of Thomas Ann Hines, a white Texan whose son was shot to death by a young black man in a car-jacking attempt, may demonstrate the power that lies in forgiveness, as opposed to vengeance.
Thomas Ann Meets Her Son's Murderer
Thomas Ann recounts that for the first seven years after her son's death she prayed for that murderer to die. We are well versed in the wish for vengeance. It is the backbone of our criminal justice system.
But Thomas Ann came to realize that it was she whom she was killing with her prayers for vengeance. So she entered a transformative justice program and began a year-long process, with the agreement of her son's murderer, preparing to meet him. In correspondence prior to their meeting, he warned her not to expect him to say he was sorry or to cry over what he had done.
How an event affects us is a matter of how we respond to it.
How we respond to it is a matter of choice.
When that day arrived, Thomas Ann did not know what words she could possibly speak to the man who had taken so much from her. She describes how they were seated across from each other at a small table, under the watchful eye of guards in the prison where he was incarcerated. She began to tell him about her son, the things they had done, how precious he, her only child, had been to her. Her defenseless honesty began to disarm the man to whom she spoke.
"I didn't realize . . . how stupid it was," he began to say. He confessed that he had given no thought to any of this, before or since that defining night.
As their meeting was coming to an end, she heard a voice in her head say, "Reach out and offer your hand to him." Her reply, in her head, was, "No, that's the hand that held the gun." The voice again said, "Reach out and offer your hand to him." She thought in response, "I can't do it by myself."
Thomas Ann closed her eyes and bowed her head, then extended her hand across the table. The man who had ended her son's life reached out and took her hand. In that moment, he put his head down on those joined hands and wept. The bitterness, the misunderstanding, the distance between these two human beings from vastly different worlds, vanished. And the life of each began anew.
Before that moment, the young man had had 148 major violations in prison. He had been a problem prisoner. Since their meeting, he has had only a couple of minor violations. And Thomas Ann's life went from one consumed by darkness, self pity, a small life at best, to one of extraordinary giving, passion and commitment, teaching others the ultimate forgiveness she has learned.
She spends many hours talking to prisoners about what happens to the victims of their misdeeds. In her defenselessness, not standing in judgment of them, they hear her and many understand. Remorse, true remorse, becomes possible.
The winners were Thomas Ann, the man to whom she reached out and every individual whose life they touch. When we look beyond our own self interest, we have no idea what can be achieved. This is a holonomous approach.
The Results
There are added benefits with no added price tag. Thomas Ann has come to forgiveness, but not in the usual sense. The forgiveness she experiences is in that place of knowing that there is nothing to forgive, that all is in Divine Order. She believes that, on some level, her son willingly gave his life so that she might live, not the dark life she had known, but a life embraced in love.
And for the young man she touched, true remorse for that fleeting moment that now and forever, in our vengeful minds, defines him as a "murderer," has given birth to a commitment that such moments are forever banished from what is left of his days on earth. Each day he is blessed by Thomas Ann's prayers that no harm come to him. Out of something tragic came transformation, for them and for a tiny corner of our world.
Perhaps it takes great wisdom to understand that within the breakdown of human relations is a seed that, if nurtured, germinates into full-blown love and that vengeance destroys that seed. Perhaps we are not yet ready, but in a world view yet to be born, one now only understood by a few elevated minds, this is the face of justice.
Imagine walking into a court of law where healing and restoration were the goal. Imagine the world that would emerge if even a small number of lawmakers understood the power that lies within this approach and seized upon it to turn the tide that seems to be sweeping us toward even darker days.
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