May 14, 2001
Crime victim discovers retribution doesn't heal
___By Ken Camp
___Texas Baptist Communications
___AUSTIN--It took 600 stitches and several years to piece Ellen Halbert's life back together after a brutal assault.
___Now she is devoting that life to helping other victims--and offenders--repair what crime destroys.
___Halbert participated in a peacemaking panel discussion on "Connecting Offenders and Victims" at the eighth annual Restorative Justice Ministry convention in Austin. The Baptist General Convention of Texas co-sponsored the May 4-5 meeting in conjunction with the Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church, the Catholic Diocese of Beaumont and the Episcopal Diocese of Texas.
___In 1986, an 18-year-old intruder, covered head to toe in a black ninja suit, broke into Halbert's home and lay in wait for her. He sexually assaulted her, stabbed her four times, beat her with a hammer and left her for dead.
___Halbert's experience with the criminal justice system in the months that followed convinced her that a punitive system built solely on retribution is pointless.
___"Punishment by itself does absolutely nothing," she said. It offers no healing for the victim, and it does nothing to instill a true sense of accountability in the offender.
___Halbert, who was appointed by then-Governor Ann Richards to a six-year term on the state Board of Criminal Justice, now works in the Travis County District Attorney's office.
___In that role, she has been instrumental in introducing "circle sentencing" to Austin in the last two years. Circle sentencing is a dispositional hearing involving all of the parties involved in a criminal case.
___"Circle sentencing brings together the victim and his support group, the offender and his support group and representatives from the system and the community, all in the same room. They literally sit in a circle and talk," Halbert said.
___"I have seen miraculous things happen in the circles as empathy is created. It's an amazing process."
___The problem with the criminal justice system is that it focuses on the criminal and abandons the victim, according to panelist David Doerfler of the Victim Services Division, Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
___A mediation process involving victims and offenders can bring about healing, but the victim must initiate the process, he said.
___"Victims and offenders each have their own stories--stories of pain that will buckle your knees and shame that will send you to the darkest corners," Doerfler said.
___Only when those stories are told and offenders come face to face with the harm they have caused can they truly understand the severity of their crime, he added. "How can one be truly accountable when the offender does not know all the pain he has caused?"
___Compassion for victims demands that society also take steps to restore "excluded and alienated" offenders, according to Judith Fullingim, a volunteer prison minister and non-practicing attorney in Lubbock. Otherwise they will continue creating more victims.
___"Unless we keep our eyes on the necessity of restoring those who have offended, we have not done the victim any service. There will only be more victims," Fullingim said. "We continue to be in the victim-manufacturing business unless we set that right."
___Fullingim discussed the victim/offender reconciliation program piloted by the Mennonite Church in Fresno, Calif. That community-based model not only involves the parties directly affected by the criminal offense but also brings a volunteer mediator from a local church into the process.
___Participants in the Fresno-based program report reaching a mutually satisfactory agreement in 98 percent of the cases. Restitution was performed in at least 90 percent of the situations.
___"The process itself is transformative," Fullingim said. "It engages both parties in the process of repairing the harm. And the victim holds absolute veto power over the resolution."
___The faith-based reconciliation program is "upside-down" to the approach followed in the conventional criminal justice system, she noted. That radical departure, she observed, is "just like Jesus."
___The proper place for the church is in the middle of community conflict, according to Jim Young, director of community ministries with the BGCT. That is where transformation takes place, he observed.
___"Peacemaking is intentional in nature. The church needs to step forward and work in the middle of conflict, to make peace take place," Young said. "Jesus never said, 'Blessed are the peace lovers.' He said, 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.'"
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