Today Mum and I went to see a play called 'The Conversation' by the famous Australian playwright David Williamson. The whole play was a Restorative Justice conference. It was about a rape/ murder and the family of the victim confront the family of the offender. The conference was obviously really confrontational and intense.
After the play I asked Mum if she would be interested in doing Restorative Justice with Andrea. Initially she had no interest. She said that she wants a peaceful life after living and fighting with Dad for so many years. She says she doesn't like fights because they don’t resolve anything, as per with Dad, and that she is programmed to communicate like that because of their relationship. She is not interested in Restorative Justice because it’s so confrontational. Her life is peaceful now and she wants it to stay that way.
I said that sometimes speaking the truth can lead to a fight, but resolution can't come without speaking the truth. After talking for an hour, Mum agreed to try Restorative Justice. She doesn't believe that Andrea will agree though.
Written on 20 Mar 2006
Over 8 years since incident
Tags:
Restorative justice
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Joe & Giro Raphael | 28 Jun 2010
Sandra, We received a request from the Defence Lawyer for us to consider Restoritive Justice intervention . In the same letter it stated that Restorative Justice is usually used when the accused pleads guilty and takes responsibility for what they have done . Something my sons’s killer never did , Our son’s case took 4 years to come to trial and the request was made to us approx 2 weeks before the trial . We had 4 years worth of hearings where the accused would walk right past us and not utter a word, No apology from him , his family , his lawyers , or the company he worked for, none from a councillor or a priest on his behalf . The Restorative Justice letter was not even directed to us but directed to my Son’s son . Daniel did not have any kids when he died . In our eyes they couldn’t even get this right, in fact it made us really upset as it appeared to be a feeble attempt to show some remorse before the court and the start of the trial. It would have been very different if we received an apology 4 years ago .
After court there was a statment made by the accused after he was aquitted. This statment was made to the press not to us. We have never received a personal apology .
After the media presented our story the accused friends and we believe their family made derogatory ,scathing and hurtful remarks about us as and basically told us to get on with our lives and not to ruin theirs . It just confirmed to us that they were not apologetic or remorseful at all.
I don’t think a restorative justice meeting would do a thing to ease our grief, would It just create an angry confrontation as some people just don’t get it .