cc >> It's now my great pleasure on behalf of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters to
introduce our speakers. You will have an opportunity as well to question them. We hope that you'll wait for the
mic to be brought to you, just so that again, it can be taped and everyone will be able to hear your questions.
So, Janine Geske, hardly someone that needs an introduction, distinguished professor of law at Marquette University Law
School and director of the law school's Restorative Justice Initiative. Janine Geske is a former Supreme
Court justice, served on the Supreme Court from 1993 to 1998. She must have had very good relationships with her
colleagues, because there are several other justices here tonight as well. Justice Prosser is up here on
our right. I believe Justice Ann Walsh Bradley is here in front of me. We welcome you and appreciate
all the justices that have joined us here tonight. Thank you. Janine has also received so many
awards and accolades that it's difficult to know which ones to highlight. She has been honored as one of
the best lawyers in America for her work in alternative dispute resolution, not just once, but year after year.
To give you an idea of how varied her awards can be, in 2009, she received the Woman of Faith Award from the Sisters of
Divine Savior, the FBI Director's Community Award, and the Wisconsin Bar Fellows Award for recognition for contribution
to the Bar and the ideals of the American Bar Foundation. For over ten years, she has served as a member of the
faculty of the National Judicial College of Reno, Nevada. She frequently teaches at judicial legal and community
conferences on mediation and restorative justice, sentencing, evidence, the courts, spirituality, and work.
She leads retreats and workshops on spirituality in everyday life. She is a fellow of the American
Bar Foundation, the Wisconsin Bar Foundation, the American College of Civil Trial Mediators and we're proud to say a fellow
of the Wisconsin Academy. Justice Geske also graduated from Beloit College with a bachelor of arts degree and a
master of arts in teaching and received her law degree from Marquette University Law School. So, we'll welcome Janine in just
one second, after I introduce our second panelist this evening, conversationalist Scott Straus.
Scott is the associate professor of political science and international studies, and director of the Human Rights
Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His primary research interests include the study of
genocide, violence, human rights and African politics. He's the author of the book that I held up earlier, "The Order of
Genocide: Race, Power and War in Rwanda." With Robert Lyons, he's authored "Intimate Enemy: Images and
Voices of the Rwandan Genocide." He is also co-editor with Lars Waldorf of "Reconstructing Rwanda."
He has published articles related to genocide in a host of prestigious magazines and journals.
He's received several grants, including one from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Henry Frank Guggenheim Foundation,
the National Science Foundation, and others. In 2009, he was awarded the William Kiekhofer Distinguished
teaching award. He's a graduate of Dartmouth. Professor Straus received his PhD from the university
of California at Berkeley. So let's welcome these amazing Wisconsin knowledge sharers and we'll have a great conversation
together. Thank you. ( applause )
Janine Geske: Thank you. It's really a pleasure for me to be here for a number of reasons. First of all, to see a number
of my friends. My friends from the court and also Jerry Hancock, with whom I do a fair amount of
restorative justice in Columbia Correctional Institute. He's been a good friend for a number of years.
I look forward to this evening. I think it's going to be very interesting. Scott and I do not know each
other. We had our first conversation for about ten minutes yesterday on the phone, so it'll be an
interesting journey that we take. Asking me to talk about restorative justice
in ten minutes-- ( laughs ) Fill in the rest. It's very difficult for me
to do. So what I thought I'd do that would be helpful is to focus real briefly on the concept of
what it is, and then talk specifically about one of the many uses and processes that we use to help rebuild
relationships and/or to help repair harm. The concept of restorative justice is not new.
It comes from many, very old traditions, including Native American, some traditions in the Mennonite Church, Maori Tribe in
New Zealand, and a number of other tribes and communities. The United States is late in coming to restorative justice.
It's in the UN documents. It's in the EU documents. You see it, it's very, very prevalent in Canada, Australia,
New Zealand. Europe is using more and more restorative justice. And it's beginning to be used in
African countries. What is it? It's a philosophical approach to crime or harm.
I'm going to focus on crime for the moment. We all know how our criminal justice system works.
I never want to badmouth our criminal justice system. It's there for good reason. It's a protection of rights.
It's critical. We also know that in our system of justice, everything is focused on the offender, because
it's his or her constitutional rights we're protecting. Even Wisconsin reenacted the constitutional amendment for
giving victims rights, the victim's rights are primarily to know what's happening to the offender.
You know, it's not about them having an independent voice or a right to anything, other than some compensation in a fund.
You know, it took me quite a while, and actually, even time after I left the court to start talking to survivors and
understand the deep harm that survivors of crime have when the whole justice system is over, or the fact that they may never
have had it because somebody isn't arrested. Victims talk about the system not being there for them.
Victims talk about this anger, this rage, depression, all the things that happen to people who've been victimized,
particularly in severe violence, and really, no process to deal with it. The idea of restorative justice
is to look at harm and crime. It's usually drawn as a triangle. There are three points on the
triangle. The top one is what we call the victim or survivor, if there's an individual.
The second one is the community, small community and large community. The third is the offender.
When we look at somebody who's been harmed by crime, if you take a severe crime, take a homicide or a sexual assault, I
talk about the ripple effect. If any of you know somebody who's been a victim of one of those crimes or some other
severe crime, you probably can name 30 people that were impacted by that crime, whether it's family members, whether
it's parents, whether it's children, whether it's colleagues. There's a ripple effect.
There's all sorts of harm out there that the justice system never recognizes, but that doesn't mean, you know, it's not
important. Many, many marriages, after a violent assault, break up. Not recognized by the system.
So that's part of who's harmed and the harm. When I talk about community, I talk about small community and
large community. I describe it as you all know that if you have a number of burglaries in your neighborhood
suddenly during the day, and you don't know the victims, you don't know the houses, that will impact you.
You will act differently. You will make sure the doors are locked. If you have a dog, you make sure
the dog isn't running loose. You'll be nervous when you see somebody on the street. You've been impacted by those
crimes even though you don't know those people. In the more global sense, you have children that are abducted
out of their beds at night in California. It's all over the news. There are children all over this
country that are afraid to sleep in their own beds. That's a ripple effect of those crimes that we generally don't
recognize. Now, we take the offender, and the offender is always treated differently in all these
processes, because he or she is the one that made a decision to do something that set this harm into action, and sometimes
devastating action. But there are also all sorts of people around that offender that we often don't recognize that
are also harmed by his or her choices. Parents, children, neighbors, colleagues.
There are lots and lots of people that are affected by crime. The three questions you ask in
restorative justice are not who did it, do we have the evidence, and what do we do to them after we convict them?
The three questions are, who was harmed, what was the harm, and what needs to be done to help repair the harm?
The focus is on the harm. There's an accountability piece in there, and we can talk about that later.
But it really is focusing on the victim and the harm. The piece I'm just going to briefly talk about it, and then
Scott and I will have some conversation about it, is victim-offender dialogues. That is face-to-face meetings
between a victim and I'm going to focus on violent crimes, and an offender who's committed that act.
We do those at Marquette Law School, and a professor at UW also does some at the Madison Law School.
They are all victim initiated. They are family members of homicide victims and sexual assault survivors who make a
request that they want to sit down with the offender. I can tell you, when I was a judge somebody told me about
this and I thought that was the nuttiest thing, must be some left wing Madison thing, you know, because I can't
imagine it. Actually, Shirley and Ann both know that when I was on the court that Shirley was going to
appoint a task force on restorative justice and I said, I don't want anything to do with that.
Let Ann do it. And she did. So the irony is that I learned from victims that I was wrong on
that. There are a number of victims that want to do that. I just want to focus on why that
is. Many survivors of crime, years and years after the crime, who are still deeply impacted, have
a number of questions. Why did you do it? If it's a homicide, what were the last seconds of life of my
loved one like? What did she say? Did he struggle? Did he suffer?
Now, I often ask victims, what if the answer is the worst possible answer. And every victim said the same
thing to me, he or she can not hurt me anymore than they already have. I've already thought of whatever
it is that they've done, and I just want to know. I want to have that clear in my head.
So then they want to know, you know, who is this person. I mean, it's ten years ago. How did this person come to do
this crime? Who is this as a human being? What have they been doing since the time of the offense?
So, it's a long process in getting ready for these. It can take six months to a year of prep.
When we go visit the offender, generally in an institution, we explain the process. It's voluntary for him or her.
We don't put anybody into this that doesn't want to do it. But a great number of offenders do.
They often want to help fix or do something for what they've done, which they know is irreversible harm.
A dialogue is set up. Those dialogues are transformation. They're spiritual, if you have
spiritual base. They are an amazing discussion that happens. Because what happens during the
course of getting those answers to questions, most offenders and victim suddenly see each other as more human, that there are
more aspects to them than the victim's mother or the offender who did this act, but there's a whole life behind them.
What happens, ultimately in those meetings is that even if, and we're going to talk about the forgiveness word, which
victims call that the F-word, by the way. We're going to talk about that. But that's not necessarily part
of it. It brings victims and survivors answers, a sense of peace, and often, an ability to slightly
move on. So I'm just going to give you one slight example of one and then hopefully I'll have an
opportunity to do a little more storytelling. This is a woman I know from Texas.
Her daughter, who had a little girl and who also was pregnant, was abducted, raped, tortured and murdered, and left on the
side of the road. Many, many years ago. When the little daughter grew up and became a young mother
herself, I think in her late teens early 20s, she and her grandmother decided that they were going to meet with one of
the offenders. They wanted answers. They wanted to know what happened, what was the last
moments of her daughter's or mother's life. You know, how did you get there and all other questions.
The rest of the family thought that these two women were nuts. They absolutely thought no one should ever talk to this guy.
And the mother said to one of her sons, "Is there anything you want me to ask him?" And he said, "Well,
actually there is." Seventeen years. "I was responsible for tuning and fixing up my sister's car,
and I've always wondered if her car broke down, and that's the reason she got abducted. He was walking around with that
in his heart for 17 years. When the meeting happened, among other things, and it went on for hours.
The one question about did the car break down, the answer was no. They had been at a gas station,
there was an interchange and she had volunteered to get in the car to help him find something, so it had nothing to do with her
car. But as to the last seconds of life, and I'm going to end with this.
The offender, who was very limited mentally, looked at them and said, "I'll never forget what she said.
She looked at me and said, 'I forgive you and God will forgive you, as well.'" Then she died.
As much as you see film, this is videotaped, the mother and the daughter kind of fall into each other's
arms, weeping at this answer. The mother said later, it brought her peace to know that her daughter was in a place of
peace when she died. So I'm going to end with that. You know, we decided because I'm real specific, and Scott is more
the global and international-- and then after that, we'll have a chance to have a dialogue. ( applause )
Scott Straus: I'm incredibly honored to have been invited tonight, and incredibly honored to share the stage with Janine.
That was an incredibly moving and powerful story that you just heard. I can't wait to talk to you.
I'm going to switch gears a little bit and talk about the international realm. The big question that I'm going
to be addressing is, what is the role of justice and law and accountability in the aftermath of major atrocities.
My research is principally on genocide, on civil war atrocities in civil war, and so forth.
What has happened over the last 15-20 years since the end of the Cold War, is there has been a real change in the international
system, about the role of accountability mechanisms in healing and rebuilding after some time of terrible war, after
some type of atrocity. I'll go through these in a little bit, but there are a number of different
accountability mechanism. You have, at the very highest level, the International Criminal Court, down to very
local justice initiatives in communities and so forth. Often, people talk about this as transitional justice.
The notion is that justice, or some type of accountability mechanism is part of a transition from some type of
terrible past with atrocity, to some political order, some social order, that's better, and that justice and accountability
has a role in helping societies rebuild and heal after these terrible atrocities. These are incredibly hard and
challenging questions. I think even at the very local level, Janine just referenced that.
In the context of atrocities in war, you're dealing with huge amounts of suffering, suffering that can affect hundreds of
thousands, sometimes millions of people, people who've suffered terrible traumas, people who've lost family members.
People whose livelihoods have been destroyed. Infrastructure has been destroyed, often the real
devastation of societies. It's a very difficult question, first of all, how do you try to rebuild the societies that have
been devastated. And secondly, the more specific question that I'm raising here, what role does justice and
accountability play in the aftermath of these kinds of atrocities. I don't think there's an easy
answer to that question. What my sort of hummable tune, or my point that I want to make is I think that these different
justice mechanisms, which I'll talk about in a second, are important. They're a step in the right
direction. There are certainly some positive gains that we can register.
At the same time, I think that in the international community, anyway, we've tended to over-sell some of what these
different mechanisms can do. The experience over the last decade or so has taught us to be a little bit more modest in our
expectations. I think the second thing that I would underline, and this I think goes directly to some of
what Janine was saying, is that we should not be presumptuous about what survivors and victims, even perpetrators, or
people in communities, bystanders, want. That we should invest in asking them and finding out what the
needs are of communities, rather than presuming that we know what those needs are. So what are the different forms
of mechanisms? I thought I would give you a sense first of what the different mechanisms are, what
the different objectives are with these mechanisms, and then what I think we've learned. In the discussion and Q&A
period, I can talk about some examples from my own research and my own work in Rwanda. If you look around the world
today there are many different forms of accountability mechanisms. You have trials going on in
Cambodia now, trials going on in Rwanda, trials going on in the former Yugoslavia. There's clearly a trend that if
there's an end to war, or some past of human rights atrocity, the expectation today in the world is that there will be some
form of accountability mechanism. At the very broadest level, as I've said, you have the
International Criminal Court. This is a court that's been in existence for about a decade. It's a treaty-based court.
It came out of the UN system. It's set up to try the worst human rights atrocities in the world, genocide, crimes against
humanity, war crimes, and so forth. They also have ad hoc, international tribunals, which
also come out of the UN system, but are focused on particular cases. You have an ad hoc tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia, for Rwanda, for Sierra Leone, and now also for Cambodia. You have national trials where
you have governments that, in the aftermath of atrocities, will set up domestic court processes to hold accountable
former dictators or people who committed human rights abuses in the past, also very common, was especially common in the Latin
American traditions. And you have truth in reconciliation commissions. This is a less-prosecutorial
model, where you have a commission that's going to hear testimony from a wide range of actors, victims, sometimes
perpetrators, sometimes people who witnessed various things, that tries to establish a historical record.
It's seen as very important, the model being that if you have some kind of truth, that will help people heal.
Then there is a series of local justice mechanisms, where you have in different communities, you have people trying to get
together, sometimes in a judicial context, but sometimes not, and trying to come to terms with what happened in the past.
So there's a real range. I can talk about that and complexify that if you want in the Q&A, and so forth, but there
are a number of different approaches here. What's the purpose? What do people expect these
different mechanisms to accomplish? Well, one of the most common claims is that these mechanisms
are a deterrent, they're a form of deterrence. If you have an accountability mechanism after a human rights
crime of some sort, the next would-be perpetrator is going to think twice if there is an accountability mechanism in
place. That's sort of a broad claim. The second claim is that these different mechanisms are
critical for reconciliation, for social repair. That if you have some kind of accountability, you have some
kind of truth, it will help people heal their wounds. It'll help them move past what happened, and so forth.
That's, I think, another major goal of these different accountability mechanisms. There's also, I think the goal
of ending a culture of impunity. That is, if you have some kind of accountability, in a way, you're signaling to the country
that this period where people would commit terrible crimes, commit terrible human rights abuses is over.
And that in a way will help rebuild the society in the future. These mechanisms are also
thought to build the rule of law, to help stabilize countries, to help put them on a path to a more democratic, human
rights abiding future. Those are some of the kind of objectives, broadly speaking. I think they all, in a way, come
down to the idea of building a durable peace after atrocity, after conflict. That is, they're all a way of
helping people, and helping societies move on, reconstruct, and have a better future. Justice and accountability plays
a critical role. Do these things work? I think the answer to that question is, in some ways, we
don't know. It's oftentimes too soon to tell whether or not there is true reconciliation and true durable
peace in some of these communities. It's hard to know whether or not there is a deterrent effect,
because you don't know. It's invisible whether or not people who would've committed crimes didn't commit crimes
because they knew that they would be brought to the book, because it didn't happen. There is some evidence on the
positive side that these mechanisms of a different sort, in different ways, do help build the rule of law.
They do help countries improve their overall human rights record. I think that in general, it's an
excellent principle. But I don't know whether or not it works completely. At the same time, we've also
learned that there are some negative outcomes or negative effects of these different processes.
They have often become highly politicized, and very important to different actors, and in some ways have deepened conflicts
rather than helping people resolve conflicts. The international tribunals are very remote, sometimes, from
where the atrocities occurred. They're very foreign. They are formalistic legal procedures.
In some poor countries, where people don't have experience of formal law, it's a little bit foreign.
They don't feel attached to it. It doesn't have the effects that people say it does. They're expensive.
They're slow sometimes. In the truth and reconciliation process, sometimes these mechanisms open old wounds, and
survivors who want to move on are forced to confront something against their will. Anyway, I think we've also seen
that there have been some negative outcomes associated with this big push toward accountability after atrocity.
So just to kind of conclude, I think this has been overall a positive development in international affairs and
international politics. But we should be really modest about what it can accomplish, and be sensitive to some of the
negative effects. I think, listening to Janine, really learn from some of these restorative justice models,
which I think actually offer a really interesting alternative to some of the more formal processes that I've just been
describing. Thank you very much. ( applause )
Geske: Well, as I've indicated, I thought I would like to have you talk about forgiveness.
I'm just going to put that in the context of what it is that I do. In talking to survivors of
crime, forgiveness, first of all is an F-word for a number of victims, because people have this expectation if you only
forgive, you know, why don't you get better. You put it past you. Closure.
All those words. Victims go "whoa," I'm in a healing process, don't ask me to do something.
So, I find as I work with survivors that word means different things to different people.
For some, it has a religious connotation. For some, it's letting go of the rage and the anger.
I think Desmond Tutu talked about that, withholding that rage and anger hurts the person who's hurting, as opposed to the
other. So we have a lot of discussions about it in the field. Victims, many of them, have
this desire to do it, but don't know if they can, or why they should. I'd be interested in what role
it may play in some of the international or some of the national efforts of trying to get past atrocities or genocide.
Straus: My experience with it is at a much more local level. What I've seen, the emphasis on forgiveness puts a really heavy
burden on the survivors. Because they're the ones who've often suffered. They're the ones who've lost
family members. Their property has been destroyed. Then people come along and say,
if you could only forgive the people who did these terrible things, then it's a way of healing, and so forth.
They often, I think rightfully, don't want to forgive. They don't want to forget. It's something that's really
powerful in their own experience. So that's at a very local level. Sometimes I think the formal
justice processes that I was describing can sometimes interfere, certainly don't help these more emotional and
psychological aspects of healing, and make it very politicized, also make it about proving guilt in a court of law
or a formal respect, which I think gets us away from some of these issues. I don't know if that resonates
with your experience. >> Geske: I want to follow up on that for a moment. You know, you talked about
justice in a court. That's another word that has meaning to a lot of people. When the TRCs or the various
processes, when they're talking about justice, how is that defined? From who's perspective is it
justice? >> Straus: That's a good question. Again, it varies a lot.
Maybe I used the term a little bit loosely. I was really referring to, in a way, trials in their more formal
sense of a justice mechanism. >> Geske: But who are those trials serving, I guess? Is it the international
community, the national community? >> Straus: That's a good question.
And partly what I meant by these processes have become politicized is that oftentimes, the trials have served the
interests of rulers who wanted to legitimize the people who came before them or their political opponents, so it gets
part of the struggle for who has power, and who's going to have power. I think one thing that I've seen
in Rwanda, where I spent most of my time, is that the trials also felt very distant from people's lives.
That is, they didn't, the survivors in particular, would have to come and testify. They didn't understand all the
rule of procedure. It was in a way a system that felt very alien to them in that context.
They'd never been in a court of law before. It wasn't something that was part of their family history,
and so forth. I think that's one thing that I've seen. But I think it's an excellent
question. Who do these serve? I think one criticism of the national community has been, it
failed to stop these terrible atrocities, then they come in afterwards and have a palliative tribunal or court case, and does
that make everyone feel better, from their perspective, when in fact the harm is done. And that's the real problem with
that. That's a good question. One of the things I wanted to ask you about as you were
talking, and not to put the focus back on offenders, but I spent a lot of time talking to perpetrators of genocide.
That's in my research. People often ask me, do perpetrators have remorse? Do they express remorse?
And do they humanize, this process of healing, will they humanize their victims. I just wonder if you have any
thoughts on that, and your experience with that. >> Geske: It's been my experience, working with
offenders in lots of contexts on this issue for a long time that many of them have this sort of intellectual sense that, you
know, I killed him on that day, and you know, I took his life. But he was a bad guy and I'm a bad guy, maybe, so one of us had
to die. But what these processes do is it humanizes the victim. I'm going to talk about the
offenders in the prison that have talked about, and that they've never thought about the bad guy's children.
I'm using "bad guy" in terms of the offender. Or the parents, or the other relatives, or the fact that 20
years later, there's still an empty place at the Christmas table, because that person isn't there.
That changes their whole perspective. There's actually a survivor in this room that comes and speaks
at Columbia. We have survivors that come and talk to offenders, not their own offenders.
And the offenders are just in awe listening to victims' stories, because no one has ever, in detail, explained
through a caring way, not a judgmental yelling at them way of all the implications, the depression, the rage, the
changing of the lifestyles that occur. It is through victims talking and them hearing them, I think,
that they become more human. Then I think they express more remorse. The offenders, at least the ones
we've worked with, and I suspect it's true on the international front, and I'd be interested in hearing from you, is that they
kind of understand when they hear victims talking from two standpoints. One, their own victims, but also
their own victimization, you know. When victims talk about all this trauma, you know, in my own way,
in my own life, I've had that trauma, and it was driven by rage. >> Straus: I have another
question that's a little related. Listening to you, I wanted to know, in your experience, what
has worked and what hasn't? What have been the encounters that have failed? And why did they fail, versus
the ones that have succeeded? That's a big question. >> Geske: Yeah, and it can be answered lots of ways.
In terms of the victim-offender dialogues that we do in crimes of severe violence, we probably only do around ten a year at
most. We're so very careful with those that I don't think there's ever a failure.
I've never had an offender or victim walk out and say, I wish I'd never done that. Now, at the lower level of
crime, so juvenile offenses and small offenses, where you can do similar kinds of dialogues, there is a lot of research.
In those cases, the victim satisfaction goes way up if they've had a chance to have that dialogue.
The juveniles get to know them and see them. The Native Americans talk about a realistic assessment of risk
of the other person. Restitution goes up and recidivism drops, so the sticks are really good.
At the high level, it really is just a matter of personal journeys, and you know, people impact other people.
Most victims that go through that process are very satisfied. Certainly, there's no closure. You don't "close" these events.
But you do get to a point where you feel like you can not be stuck, and more forward with your life.
One of the things, let me just look at my notes here. I was going to ask you about the term reconciliation was used.
I suspect, in my limited knowledge, is it's not really a reconciliation, because there never was a relationship.
So, how is it, what kinds of things are countries or groups trying to do to try to actually have people come together and
understand each other in ways they never have before. >> Straus: One of the things I took out in the interest of time
is, I think, the term reconciliation has proven to be not a very effective one. It implies that there was a past
that people could go back to, that was hunky-dory, and often that's not the case. It often does, I think, put the
onus on the survivors who have to reconcile with the perpetrators, because they're the ones that have to reconcile,
in a way, and so forth. I use that term, and that still is the term that many people use, but I think we've also
learned that that can be a problematic concept in some ways. But the way in which I would
answer that question, I don't think there's a consensus in the international realm. But one thing that I have looked
for is a durable peace, or even coexistence. The possibility. Sometimes maybe repair is too
strong. What people can do after a terrible atrocity, is they're living in the neighborhood of
someone who killed their family, is live and not expect to be attacked, or live and not expect that their well is going to be
poisoned. You know, not waking up in the middle of the night and remember what happened and afraid that
it's going to happen again. That, in some ways, is a little bit in my mind less than repair and less than reconciliation.
Maybe just people living together at some level. >> Geske: A little bit of reassessing the risk.
Straus: Right. >> Geske: What kind of processes work? I know you said you don't know,
but what kind of research is there that some processes on a local level have had impact in allowing people to be able to
live? >> Straus: I've often seen that it's the informal mechanisms rather than the formal
mechanisms that work. It's the initiative, maybe, of a local religious authority, who gets together families.
Sometimes, it can be outside of a courtroom or outside of a formal process, it can be a perpetrator going to
a survivor and saying, "How can I help you?" In Rwanda, you have sometimes these, often to the outsider,
perverse outcomes where a perpetrator who killed the husband of a widow is helping her rebuild her house.
Oftentimes, when I do this, is making sure we listen to the survivors. Listening to the people in the
community. Sometimes what people want is help harvesting their crops, and planting their seeds, and
weeding their fields, because that's their livelihood. It used to be that their husband and sons helped them, and they
don't have that labor anymore. It could be, you know, re-tiling their house or something like that, or re-roofing their house.
You know, really simple. >> Geske: That kind of repair, or at least move forward. >> Straus: I've often found, and
I don't have the research to back that up, but in my own observation and experience, it's those more informal processes
that are most effective. >> Geske: talk about informal processes, a few years ago I gave a talk in Nigeria, and I
was having dinner with a number of dignitaries, and there was this Nigerian woman who had been an ambassador to Sweden.
She was talking about having come to my talk, and she said, you know, I really thought I was going to sleep through it.
The ultimate compliment. ( laughter ) "But actually, I didn't." And she said, "That was
really interesting." You know, I'm trying to say, you know, a lot of these traditions come from
African traditions and tribal traditions. She said well, yeah, you know, I think about my village--
Are you ready for this? She said, there's an American television show that really depicts how my village handles
conflict. And you know, I'm thinking, okay. You know what it was?
Jerry Springer. ( laugher and groans ) I almost fell off my chair. But she said, you know,
there's this explosion and people attack each other, and then there's peace. And I thought--
( laughter ) You know, we can -- these processes, too, to a certain extent.
I always love that story. I thought, okay, next time I'm trying to think, okay. But it really is interesting.
When I was in Nigeria, I was helping a priest who was trying to deal with an issue. There had been a young woman in
the parish who had been raped by another parishioner. There was not going to be a criminal prosecution for
whatever reason. The whole parish community, which was very large, was divided.
You know, so I talked to him about talking to the young woman and her family as to whether or not they would like to have a
dialogue with the young man who admitted that he did it. It was interesting. None of what I'm telling you
would fly in the United States, I mean, none of this. But you have to decide culturally if it works, and in
the environment. Anyway, he went through all the processes and he wrote me later. He said it was actually a
wonderful meeting. She had an opportunity to talk about the devastation to her, the impact on her family and her
father, about the shame, and everything. And the young man who was there with his family got on his knees
and apologized to each one of them, and that that was such a profound moment. They agreed that he had to stay
away from the parish for six weeks, which again, in our culture, well, oh, my gosh. But he said that brought peace.
So that's really an example of listening to the survivor and letting them be able to have a say, and then adapting to the
culture. >> Straus: Yeah, absolutely. >> Geske: Go ahead. >> Straus: You talked about this
in your opening remarks, but I'm wondering if there's any pattern to what survivors often want when they have these encounters.
It sounds like knowledge was one thing. >> Geske: There are lots of different themes depending on
the meeting. But the two consistent themes are, one, they really do have a desire to look in the face of
the person who did it and say this is what you've done to my life and my family. In the homicide cases, we sit at
a table and we have an 8x10 picture of the victim sitting on the table. I recently did one, a homicide
by intoxicated user case, that ended quite well. But during the course of that meeting, the mother read from
the autopsy report to the offender, and how her son had bled out completely at the scene.
There was no blood in his body when he got to the hospital. She also shared pictures of him in the casket, as well as his
baby pictures. To be able to have the offender look at those pictures, sometimes crying, some react,
and really deeply understand the harm is really, it's a truth and reconciliation in a very different context.
Victims that want to do it often want that. Sometimes they were 14 when they committed the crime and now
they're 28, and they'll say, who is this man, and what's he been doing? A lot of them really want to
know that it really did impact the offender. They'll say, what do you do on the anniversary of the murder,
because I go to the cemetery, what do you do? And it's interesting, because most offenders, murderers will
say I'm very aware of the date. I know it's coming. I don't want to look at the clock, because I know the time.
Just that expression of him recognizing the harm he caused helps the victim with some healing.
Straus: Fascinating. The more I listen to you, I wish there was space for these kinds of encounters, let's say
in Rwanda, that I know well, where it's been so formalized, a lot of the processes, that these kinds of encounters and people
being able to say the things that they want to say to the face of the perpetrator, or people learning why it is the
perpetrators did what they did, just hasn't happened. I think it's really created an obstacle in some ways to these
more informal ways. >> Geske: I really think there has to be both. There has to be the national,
whether the treaties, or the agreements, or the major justice processes. But that won't necessarily help
the village and the people in the village. >> Straus: Right. >> Geske: I don't know that
there's much dialogue between people that do this work and the people that do the national work.
Straus: I think that's right. One other thing, and I guess this may not have come up in your work, but I'm curious if it
did. When I spent time with perpetrators, and I'm talking about genocide, so you know,
full state apparatus devoted to the extermination of a population. But when I'm with low level
perpetrators, people in villages, you know, people who killed their neighbors, and this kind of thing, one of the things
that they often say is look, I made a choice, but it was not my initiative. It came from the top, our
political leaders, and they're the ones responsible, and now I'm the one sitting here in jail, and they are a refugee
somewhere else and doing just fine. I'm just wondering if that question of hierarchy has come
up, and degrees of responsibility. >> Geske: Well, it's not the same context, but many offenders
that you encounter believe that they're the victim. It's not necessarily the victim of being ordered to commit the
crime, although you can have that in gang activity, but the victim of the system, or the victim of the police.
That's one of the things, until they have an opportunity, and if they're willing to have the opportunity, to hear a victim,
then they suddenly think, you know what, I really hurt somebody else. It changes their frame of mind.
I think people often think, you know, if you trip on a sidewalk, you're looking to who's fault it is and who you can sue.
I think that we have that culture that we try to look to blame somebody else. That's not uncommon, it's just a
different context. >> Straus: Interesting. I wanted to say maybe we can take questions at some point,
but on the question of tradition, one of the things I saw in Rwanda is that what happened is that there was a
traditional mechanism of justice called Gacaca, and the notion of it is justice on the grass, meaning that you come to a
public setting and people get together and talk about what happened, determine what happened, determine who was a
victim, and come up with a remedy. Now when people talk about Gacaca, they point to Rwanda and
say look, it's a form of traditional justice. But it's not. It was taken over by the
government and made into a formal, national process that didn't allow for these more informal exchanges we're talking
about. But one thing I would say is that to be on guard against when people say this is traditional,
how it may have started out as traditional, but in certain contexts it can change can serve certain interests, and so forth.
Geske: I think it gets back to listening to survivors. Each community, each area of the country, each nation has a
different way of looking at, you know, what it means in terms of conversation. I know that I talked to someone
who was doing a lot of work studying the TRCs, and one of the things she remarked is, you know, some nations really want
to forget. They don't want it in the history books. They don't want to talk about
it. People don't want it. It's just sort of culturally, I mean, not everybody agrees with
that, but culturally. There are other countries that have, you know, memorials and statues and museums, and
everything. Have you seen that? >> Straus: Yeah, I've seen-- I mean, I'm a political
scientist. I think, in politics, I've seen different ways of instrumentalizing memory.
Sometimes, you know, the memorials and these kinds of things can be used as a way of driving home a political
message, unfortunately. That's what I've seen. In Rwanda, for example, some of the memorials are really
awful. They are rows of skulls and bones that basically the state has put together.
You talk to survivors, and they find it terrible that they can't bury their dead. So I would say, you know, some
of it may be cultural. I don't know the answer to that question. But what I have seen are ways
in which the memory can be used for political purposes. That does vary. Even in Cambodia, there are
stacks, and I think they still exist, the last time I was there, of skulls. The Vietnamese, when they
invaded Cambodia, through the Khmer Rouge, put them up as a way of signaling how bad the Khmer Rouge were, for their own
purposes. But I don't know that that was helpful for helping Cambodians heal in some ways.
Geske: Is there a good example that you've seen, in terms of the policy of a country that tries to, you know,
host TRC, or a process, tries to really work toward justice, or reparations, or whatever it wants to be called, for some of
the survivors of the atrocities? Is there a good example of something that looks better than maybe the others?
Straus: It's a good question. I think from what I know, the experience in Sierra Leone has been better than in some other
places. Maybe not on the question of reparations. But one of the things that
people learned from the International Criminal Court in the Rwanda and Yugoslavia tribunals was how distant and
remote these processes were. So the first thing that happened with Sierra Leone was they put the court in the country where
the atrocities occurred. Then they invested very heavily in outreach. That is, the court processes
were publicized. They really made the court-- Spent a lot of time, energy and money on making sure the people
in the country knew what was happening. I also think in Sierra Leone, a different kind of conflict, but
there was really accountability for all sides to the conflict. It wasn't that the accountability mechanism became
simply a way of de-legitimizing one party to the conflict. I think that was very important. I'm sure there are problems with
it that I'm not aware of. And I don't think it handled the reparation very well. But that's one that I think
there's been some gradual progress of learning on the international level. >> Geske: I have a friend that
teaches in El Salvador, and they have decided, the university, because they have their own radio station, to do it's own
TRC hearings. People can come, and people all over the country are listening. The government didn't want to do
it. So it's another opportunity for people, just even with atrocities that happened a long,
long time ago, to be able to share. >> Straus: I think it's very important.
Sometimes these TRCs, Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, for those of you not familiar. You've got to know the lingo.
Sometimes they can be part of a process that can lead to, you know, very targeted trials, in the process of accounting for
the past, you determine that there are some leaders who are especially responsible, that can lead to the trial of them.
I think that, in my experience, the more targeted trials are the better option let's say than having maximum justice, and
everyone who was responsible has to pay in some way, particularly if it was mass crimes. >> Geske: Should we?
Straus: Yeah, I'd love to take questions. >> Geske: Any questions? There's a question over here.
Hi, I'm Nancy Young. I spent a couple years working with Dane County victim-offender conferencing with teenagers, so
I appreciate what you're saying. It was all voluntary, so that made it difficult, actually, because sometimes they didn't
show up. However, my question for you is, have you ever thought about bringing a perpetrator with you
to do a presentation? A perpetrator and a victim to do a presentation, like you're doing tonight, so we could hear
firsthand from them what this has been like for them? >> Geske: The answer is sort of no.
The reason it's sort of no is that in my course, when I teach law students, there is a young man that I met who was in prison
for a homicide, and who now has actually graduated from Cardinal Stritch with a 3.9 average, and is a teacher in Milwaukee.
He was convicted as an adult at 14, and spent time in the institution. And I do bring survivors.
But that's a good idea, to try to bring a matched pair. The problem is that on those violent crimes, most of those
offenders aren't out and are not getting out for a long time. But you know, there certainly are some that would be
remarkable. I'm just going to share another story about that. We did one on another homicide
by intoxicated user. The victim actually was a student at UW, a lovely young woman who was in the car with
her friend, coming back from the Twin Cities. They slowed down on I-94 because there was an accident.
It was a clear day. A young man who had been smoking some marijuana, fell asleep, didn't look and crashed into
them at 70 mph and killed the young woman. It was really interesting. It kind of goes to listening to
victims, because one of the questions, the parents of the young woman came and wanted to meet with the offender about a
year or two years after it happened. We asked, why do you want to do this?
The answers are very different. The father said, and I will never forget this. It still gives me chills.
He said, he's a professional in Milwaukee, he said, "Almost the minute she died, I decided to make this young man's life
better, so there was meaning to my daughter's death." You know, I'm just in awe of people.
It's really just an awe. The mom was probably more where I was. She was, "I don't know why
I want to meet. My husband wants to," and I'm going with him. We went on a long journey
that took well over a year. At some point, some correspondence went back and forth.
She was so moved by his letter that he was so remorseful. She wrote the most beautiful letter to him, talking about
comparing grief and guilt, and how she learned to get through her process, and she was encouraging him to do it.
They had a wonderful meeting. In fact, Jerry Hancock who's here shared his church for that meeting.
They met. They had a wonderful meeting. They went out to lunch afterwards.
Just about a week ago, we got a letter from the young man. Very sensitive that he didn't send it to the victims, because
we never know if they want to get another letter, just talking about how great he is, how he's really caring.
He has a picture of the young woman he killed next to his computer in his office, so he never forgets.
Yeah, it would be good if at some point we could do that. Other questions?
I'm Gil Halstead. I just wanted to mention one quick thing about Cambodia, and then ask a question because you
raised it. I've been to Cambodia a couple of times and talked to some Cambodians about specifically
this, those piles of skulls. There was a proposal, I believe, at one time that I was told about that I think
Prince Sihanouk proposed. It never happened because of the government, which was to have a national cremation ceremony,
basically, and gather all of those skulls, because people are cremated at death. Since they could never take them
back to have them in their villages, this might be a kind of not reconciliation, but a move towards healing.
Unfortunately, it didn't happen for political reasons. But the question I have, you talked about the formal and
informal structures. I wonder, the boundaries of both of these structures are different, but they all have
boundaries. Even this restorative justice approach, you have a structure. It may be informal.
What are the possibilities, and is it happening at all that there is some margin or impact of the restorative justice
processes on the more formal trials and other justice processes? >> Geske: One of the things that
I've noticed, I'm part of a group of some scholars, I'm not a scholar, I think I'm the odd duck that they brought in, but
we look at negotiation and mediation. They've written, you know, one is from Georgetown.
There's one from MIT. There are number of people. They have always focused on the national mediation model.
We'd have this annual meeting, and I would talk about my odd work, and you know, they were always interested.
But I have noticed, in the last several years, there's a crossover, and that's answering your question, of that whole
field, at least in the alternative dispute resolution field in the United States, and the negotiation, all the
research that's been done on it. And they are being called in to countries to say, are there processes we could set up, not
only they're going to do the sort of political solution, I think it's just brand new. But I it was interesting,
because suddenly, all these scholars are really being called to travel around the world and consult with groups about trying
to set up some processes, so I think we're getting there. I think it's going to take a long time.
Straus: I would second that. One case I would maybe point you to would be northern Uganda. Here you have terrible
atrocities of the last 20 years, where you have an organization called the Lord's Resistance Army, which has been terrorizing
people of northern Uganda, capturing kids, taking them into captivity and making them into child soldiers.
The government of Uganda referred the case to the International Criminal Court, which in turn started to
investigate and issue indictments, if I remember correctly. Now, in northern Uganda, there
was such a backlash against that, because they said what we need are for these boys and girls to come back and stop
fighting, and give up the Bush, the language of it. And the ICC and the threat of prosecution, you know, may in
fact be an obstacle to them coming back into the communities and giving up the fight in some ways.
What spurred in northern Uganda were more local based, I wouldn't necessarily call them informal, but local ways of
trying to have repair and reconciliation, or some of those terms, a hearing, even some kind of accountability.
I don't know the details of it. But that, I think, was where you had an international process, very formal, triggering a more
local response.
I'm Bill Williams. I have been very much interested, for all these years, in Germany and --.
I have studied in some detail the people, and what struck me, having read about all of Hitler's henchmen, what struck
me after having studied this, is it's the only instance I know of in history where almost every one of the people who were
responsible for the atrocities committed suicide. It was part of the procedure. They manufactured their own--
( inaudible )
Straus: I didn't know that. I just used the example of Germany to make two slightly related points, but different
points. I didn't know that. That's interesting. I don't know why that would be
the case. The model for the international trials was Nuremberg. The difference with Nuremberg
and the tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and so on and so forth, has been to have some kind of impartial international
justice process, rather than a process that would be set up by the winners to the conflict, as Nuremberg was.
So, when all of these mechanisms at the international level, when these mechanisms were crafted, Nuremberg was very much in
people's minds as a really important start, but also a flawed process. Now they're looking back, there
are many things to admire about Nuremberg that I think we shouldn't move over too quickly. It was fast.
It went after top-level people. There was a clear decision. And even though it was a form of victor's justice, it also
accomplished things, I think, in important ways. That's my view. I don't know if that's a
commonly held view. The second thing about Germany is that I am struck at the social level in Germany, and
again, I don't study Germany, so I'm just going to give you an impression from a distance, at how much willingness there is to
recognize the crimes of previous generations. That is, if you go to Germany, and what's happening in Germany,
people want to acknowledge the Holocaust, and what caused the Holocaust and so forth, particularly maybe my
generation, or two generations downstream of the perpetrators. I have not seen that elsewhere. I haven't seen, and maybe it's
too soon, but I haven't seen that this whole scale recognition, adoption and acceptance that we committed, in
this country, terrible atrocities, and we're sorry for it, and we don't want anyone else to do it, either.
I think in some ways, Germany has lessons that are potentially, or its healing and its recognition of the past has
some lessons for other countries. That doesn't exactly address your question, but I thought I
would make those points. >> Hi, I'm Ally. I'm a PoliSci major here. You've been talking a lot about
restorative justice after conflicts. But I was curious about a situation like Sudan, where you
have ICC and -- while he's still committing atrocities. I was wondering, Professor Straus, your opinion on whether
it makes sense to continue to work toward arresting him while the conflict is ongoing, or as some people say, to wait until
there is a longer lasting peace after the upcoming elections, to work on justice. >> Straus: Good question.
So for those of you not familiar with Ally's question, the ICC, the International Criminal Court, its most controversial
decision to date is to hand down an indictment of a sitting president. This would be President Omar
Al-Bashir of Sudan, for crimes committed in the Darfur region, crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity in particular.
It's been controversial in a number of ways. I'll answer your question. It's controversial because,
first of all, for an international organization, for an international court to hand down an indictment of a sitting
president is a very drastic move that poor countries around the world look at and say this power of this court has gotten out of
control in some ways, that they can hand down an indictment for a sitting president. I think the question is what, in
a way it comes back to something we were talking about earlier, what is the purpose of these mechanisms?
Is the purpose to try to get peace, or resolve the conflict, or help societies resolve the conflict?
And I don't know that handing down an indictment of a sitting president, the head of the army, effectively, is going to help in
that process. On the other hand, you know, probably the president is responsible at some level for
these terrible crimes that have been committed, and it makes sense if you are going to investigate the crimes in
Darfur, it makes sense to go to the top. So I don't know the answer to that question.
It's a great question and I don't know the answer to it. I guess, that's what I have to say.
It's a good question. >> Geske: I'm just going to add, we've done a little work, not much, but there's a group called
the Parents Circle out of Palestine and Israel. That group, Palestinians and Jewish, Israelis often, who have
lost loved ones in the conflict, you know, sons, daughters, spouses. This particular group shares
stories, meets. Sometimes they meet with the murderer of their son's family. They go across borders.
One of the women from Israel talked about going into a Palestinian school, and the children never having seen an
Israeli not in uniform, and to try to break it down. They are trying, in their own way.
They attempt not to take a position other than they want peace, that all families don't want to have your family torn
apart by the violence. So there are those things that happen while it's going on, trying to work.
It's very difficult. It's very challenging. A lot of people are critical of it, because, you know, you're
not, they're not the enemy, whichever the enemy may be. But I think that those are important pieces of it, to help
try to build the peace in the first place.
Esther Heffernan. I'm thinking particularly in terms of something that you said about when the offender sees
himself as a victim, and then blames any number of people. I kept thinking as you were talking about genocide and so
forth, what can occur when you are basically involved in what can only be described as legitimating violence?
It's legitimating violence so that the violence you commit is in one sense perceived as not yours, but a reflection of power
and politics of the state. >> Straus: When I interviewed perpetrators of genocide in Rwanda, that's basically what
they said. And we can criticize that, but I think they have a point at a certain level.
Christopher Browning has a really powerful story of the Holocaust called "Genocide: Atrocity By Policy."
That is, you know, what you're saying. It's legitimated violence. It's the state authorizing its
citizens and its different wings of the military or paramilitary organizations to go out and commit these crimes.
That's what the state is telling people to do. We can hold people accountable, we should hold people
accountable for the choices that they make, and hope that they will be able to say no, that's not right, I won't do it.
But in my experience in Rwanda, that's a lot to ask of an ordinary farmer up on the hill who earns $100 a year, and has
very little social power, when the force of the state comes crashing down and says this is what we're doing, you need to
come along. It's hard to resist. It's doable, but it's difficult. It's doable but difficult.
For genocide crimes, I think that is worth taking seriously, and why I think a maximalist approach, that is, prosecute
everyone who was involved is problematic and doesn't allow people to say, I didn't want to do this; I did it; I take
responsibility, but the initiative for it came from somewhere else. I think that's valid.
That would be my position.
Dave Leeper here. What I'm wondering is, usually we hear about situations where people who are in power, have
taken power from someone else and are demanding some kind of justice or reconciliation. And I'm struck by the idea of I
think it was McNamara in the "Fog of War," when he was talking about the air raids on Tokyo, and he was saying, I
suppose if we'd lost the war, we'd have been tried as war criminals. What do you think?
We know the United States has power. We know that we've done a lot of bad things, from Native American
genocide, slavery. Couldn't we set a whole new example of how a person in power can take some initiative?
Straus: I think it's a good question, and I don't have all the answers to these questions. They're good questions.
One thing just to say is that the idea of setting up a court like the International Criminal Court, in principle, is that you
have a neutral party, or the United Nations setting up a court, is you have a neutral party that adjudicates, so it's
not a victor's justice. That is part of the lesson from World War II, whether it be McNamara's point, or the
Nuremberg example I gave earlier. In practice, however, politics always plays a role, and that
was sort of one of my points. I can give you the concrete example of Rwanda. In the Rwandan case, there was a
genocide committed by a Hutu led government, against the Tutsi civilian population, but it occurred in the context of war.
It was also true that the rebels, who were Tustis, also committed atrocities. They weren't genocide.
But the tribunal that was set up should have investigated crimes on all sides, and only investigated the genocide
crimes. Part of the reason for that is, and I'll come back to the United States in a second, but just to
make the point, is that Rwanda, the government, threatened to withhold any cooperation if the tribunal proceeded to
investigate the people in its government. By threatening any cooperation, it meant no victims, no
witnesses, no investigations in the country. They effectively threatened to shut down the tribunal.
In that sense, even though these are set up theoretically to be neutral bodies, they're often not immune to political
pressures and power balances in the world. To go to your question, two points.
One is, other people, a student of mine came up to me the other day when I was talking about the ICC and he said, you know, why
is it that it's always poor countries that are investigated? Why isn't it that the United States, or Britain for the
terrible things that happened in Iraq, why isn't the International Tribunals, why aren't they investigating the
United States? And I can give you a technical answer to that question. The technical answer is that
these systems are set up to kick in only where domestic remedies have been exhausted. So if you have the possibility
of domestic remedy in the United States or in Britain, it won't bump up to the International Criminal Court.
On the other hand, it's impossible for me to imagine that the ICC would ever hand down an indictment of George
Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, it's just not going to happen, for some of the reasons that you indicated. So to get to your other
question, could the United States set an example? I think it could. And I think in the human rights
community, one of the things that's so hard about the debate around torture in this country was that the US, which for many
people around the world, is a symbol of freedom, really took a step backwards on questions of human rights, and said look,
human rights in a way is really secondary to questions of security. I think that sent a very
powerful message to the rest of the world about the value and place of human rights. I think that was a real missed
opportunity for the United States. I hope that gets to your question.
Geske: I'm just going to give an example, again little pieces of it. A friend of mine who is a
researcher and a scholar, and and expert on truth and reconciliation commission, and another colleague of hers has
been asked, and I'm not going to name the state, but an eastern state, like the Bureau of Children Affairs for the state
has agreed with Indian tribes to do a TRC on the issues of how Native American children were treated.
My friend, the scholar, said, I'm not so sure the government knows the road that it's walking down, and what's going to
happen. But anyway, she's just starting that process. There's often discussions of
trying to do those. There is a community that did one in the south on a variety of issues.
But there's resistance, political, for the most part. But it really does provide a healing process where people can
be recognized and heard about the harm that's happened to them and their families.
This may be a very offbeat question, but it follows up what this gentleman asked. Professor, do people in your
field of study ever look to the American Civil War and its aftermath for any lessons on rebuilding after terrible war
and casualties? >> Straus: That's a great question. I think probably they do, they
might. I can tell you that in my direct field of study is sort of the causes of violence, why do these
things happen in the first place. And I would say there, there answer is clearly yes.
There's even new research now coming out on the Civil War that I think is informing other students, other studies of other
Civil Wars, and so forth. Just today in a graduate seminar, we were talking about the end of the Civil War, and
the way in which the northern generals were using coercive violence as a way to hasten the end of the war.
But anyway, that's a point. I think in terms of understanding the dynamics of conflict, people actually are
going back and studying the American Civil War. But your question was about reconstruction.
I haven't seen it that much in the literature, but it's a good insight, and I imagine someone out there is looking at it, but
it's not often talked about. Usually, the points of reference are World War II forward.
Hi, I just have a question about the triangle you discussed, about how it's the victim, community, and offender.
I know for many cases, especially sexual assault, the victim is unaware of who the offender is, but the person is
still very alive in their mind. So how do you address those situations? Do those come up?
Geske: I can tell you, at least what we've done. There are a number of times where it's not appropriate for
survivors to meet face to face. Sometimes they just don't want to. They want to do something, but
it's not that. For some survivors, they've never been arrested. And for some, you know, they
would like to make a difference, some healing, what we've done, and Jerry Hancock and I have done in a Columbia prison, is we
do basically a talking circle. Survivors, who want, can come and tell their stories to offenders who committed those
kinds of crimes, but are not their offenders. That in itself is very healing to most of those speakers.
Most of those speakers come again and again. We've done that in the domestic violence field as well.
Men in a batterer's treatment program, and bring in some survivors of domestic violence, not theirs, because they've got
that whole power thing going on and risk, but come in and share their stories. We did one a number of years of
years ago, and I'll never forget. The three survivors all talked about getting sexually
transmitted diseases from their partners, and being convinced it was their fault by their partners.
One of the men got the talking piece and looked at the group and said I want you guys to know they're telling the truth,
because that's exactly what I did. And for a survivor to hear that she has that kind of impact on
an offender in itself is healing, and yet not having to confront the individual. The other answer to your
question is that when I first was setting up our project, I went and talked to people at the Healing Center, which is victim
services for sexual assault, and I talked to survivors about, you know, just to tell them about the process, and no one should
ever do this if they don't want to. And you know, what would help? And some of them said we really
would like to do a face to face with the arresting officer. That's who we'd like to talk to, because he gave us a hard time,
he questioned my clothes, he questioned why I was there. It turned out to be a serial rapist, and I would like to go
back and have that discussion. I've not succeeded at that. I've had discussions with the police department.
But you know, it isn't always the direct offender. Sometimes it's the system offender, or the government
offender. So that's again where you get back to listening to survivors. What is it that they need?
And what is it that's going to help them most in terms of healing?
Thank you so much to our two guests for joining us today. I think we ended on a nice note, because there are so many good
lessons from what you've taught us tonight, about how we can resolve conflict in our everyday lives as well.
So I hope you'll join me in thanking our speakers, and that you'll be back with us again very soon.
Please feel free to take a brochure on your way out that has a listing and schedule of all of our activities in the
sciences, arts and letters. We do try to integrate those. I know there are members here tonight that also attended a
members-only tour of the gallery that's up on the third floor here in the Overture Center. So please join us, and join me
in thanking these very special contributors tonight. ( applause )