The leaders of announced the founding of the Zehr Institute at the end of the fall 2012 semester, after persuading Zehr to let the institute carry his name. They also asked Zehr to remain a faculty member in a non-teaching role with the title Distinguished Professor of Restorative Justice.

Zehr has taught restorative justice at CJP since 1996. He also served as the center’s co-director for five years, 2002-2007.

Zehr, who shies away from the word 鈥渞etirement,鈥� says he always planned to stop teaching before he lost his edge, and he wants to make space for others to step in. 鈥淪ometimes the only way you can do that,鈥� he says, 鈥渋s to get out of the way.鈥�

The Zehr Institute will spread knowledge about restorative justice and be a resource to practitioners, while facilitating conversations and cultivating connections through activities like conferences and webinars, according to CJP executive director . The institute will be co-directed by Zehr and , assistant professor of development and justice studies at CJP.

Zehr and Stauffer say they intend for the institute to offer space to explore 鈥渇rontier鈥� topics, like the intersection of the arts and , and the ways that trauma and restorative justice are connected. They plan for it to tap the expertise of practitioners who aren鈥檛 scholars, but have much to offer.

And though the institute will not focus on academia, Stauffer believes it will benefit graduate students by growing a program in which students are not only taught the skills of restorative justice but are trained to see and respond to larger, systemic issues.

鈥淲e want to graduate students who鈥檝e studied restorative justice who could run a circle [process] or victim-offender conferencing or a family group conference,” says Stauffer. “At the same time we want them to apply their education to a whole system, so that they could walk into a school and say, 鈥榃hat would a restorative justice system look like here?鈥欌��

Restorative justice, both Stauffer and Zehr believe, is not a just a social service, but a social movement.

As he moves to quarter-time employment at EMU, Zehr is looking forward to a schedule where he spends less time in meetings and more time with another passion of his, photography.

Alerted by email that Zehr is wrapping up his formal teaching career, former students have responded with appreciative messages.

Fadi El Hajjar, a 2006 master鈥檚 graduate of CJP who manages a project in Lebanon, praised Zehr for his 鈥渃onsiderable contribution鈥� to the peacebuilding world through teaching, training and writing.鈥�

Mack Mulbah, a 2009 graduate working for , wrote to Zehr, 鈥淚 am sure you will be missed in the classroom, but glad that your new journey will open more doors for further moving RJ [restorative justice] to another level for us practitioners.鈥�

HARRISONBURG – Lonnie Yoder will long remember the story told him by a young woman from Haiti who survived the country’s horrific earthquake.

“She was a nursing student in [Haiti’s capital city of] Port-au-Prince, who survived when her school building collapsed,” Yoder said. “She talked about holding the one-year-old baby of her best friend as the baby died.”

Yoder, 59, professor of pastoral and counseling and the new associate dean at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, has an avalanche of accounts he could share from his recent visit to Haiti.

Yoder traveled as part of a group on a mission run by Mennonite Central Committee and the Virginia Mennonite Mission.

The U.S. mission also included Joe Arbaugh, a building contractor from Verona, Elizabeth Showalter, a cheese-shop worker from Stuarts Draft, and Shelly-Ann Peart James, a graduate school grad and lecturer at a seminary in Jamaica.

The group stayed at an MCC home in Port-au-Prince.

Yoder’s group spent May 17-24 in Haiti, a visit that included three days of meetings with quake victims in Port-au-Prince. The sessions were designed to help Haitians deal with grief and despair brought on by the Jan. 12 disaster by sharing their stories of the catastrophe, which claimed an estimated 230,000 lives.

The tales, Yoder said, were “incredible stories of pain, suffering and death.”

The mission of 90 participants took place at Quisqueya Chapel, an interdenominational church in the city’s northeast section. Still reeling from the quake, residents opted to gather on a lawn outside the building.

Going On With Life’

In a setting where tents serve as houses and rubble rules the landscape, Yoder and his party marveled at the locals’ unnatural grit.

“I was amazed by the ability of the Haitian people to go on with life, in spite of the incredible challenges,” he said.

“We focused on psychological and emotional issues, but this was a spiritual experience,” Yoder added.

Fellow group member Eldon Stoltzfus, a Mennonite pastor from Goshen, Ind., shared Yoder’s amazement at Haiti’s resilient people. Stoltzfus, 62, had seen such toughness in better times, when he brought his family on previous mission trips to Haiti from 1974 to 1987.

“Even before the quake, the Haitian people had gone through hundreds of years of suffering,” he said. “I was awed by their ability to put it all into the context of life – they felt blessed that they were still alive.

“So many people go to Haiti and say, ‘Is there any hope?'” Stoltzfus said. “My response is as long as there are Haitian people, there is hope. It’s going to be hard work – very hard work – but I trust that as a people they will work through that.”

Contact Tom Mitchell at 574-6275 or mitchell@dnronline.com

Works and his wife Marie suffered the ultimate loss when their daughters – 18-year-old Stephanie and 16-year-old Rachel – were shot by a gunman in the parking lot of their New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Author David Works (photo by Jon Styer)

Works was also shot twice in the Dec. 9, 2007 attack, but survived the ordeal.

As a result of a peacebuilding seminar that Works attended the previous year at 草莓社区, he decided not to continue the cycle of violence by seeking revenge. Instead, he and Marie chose to work toward forgiveness and restoration. They share their story in the book Gone in a Heartbeat: Our Daughters Died… Our Faith Endures (Focus on the Family).

Works is returning to Harrisonburg to participate in a week-long STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilence) training program at EMU. While here, will speak in several settings on the family’s journey of grief, loss and reconciliation.

He will speak at a pastor’s and local leaders breakfast 8 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 12 in room 123 at Eastern Mennonite Seminary on the EMU campus. A light breakfast will be served; admission is free.

Works will do book signings 2-3:30 p.m. at Family Christian Bookstore, 1621 E Market St., and from 7-8:30 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, 289 Burgess Rd., Harrisonburg. Works will speak at the opening of the signing and be available to interact with customers.

He will share in two public presentations on Sunday, Sept. 13. He will speak at Immanuel Mennonite Church, 400 Kelley Street, at 10:30 a.m. Sunday morning. The service will be followed by a potluck. All are welcome. Phone 746-8844 with questions. Sunday evening he will speak at 7 p.m. at Park View Mennonite Church, 1600 Park Road. The following Friday, Sept. 18, he will speak in a university chapel at EMU’s Lehman Auditorium. All are welcome.

"We are grateful that David has been a part of our Center for Peacebuilding community here at EMU," said Lynn R. Roth, CJP executive director, "and we hope persons will take advantage of the opportunity to hear his story. He is an inspiration as he and Marie have sought restoration and healing from the tragic family experience," Roth added.

For more information on any of these events, contact EMU church relations at (540) 432-4589.

Alexander hopes restorative justice can help that boy, his family, the young gunmen, and the entire community – all of whom become, in restorative terms, “stakeholders” in setting things right.

She’s one of four community leaders from Memphis taking a class at EMU’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute on “Restorative Justice: the Promise, the Challenge.” Their classmates have worked in trauma healing on several continents.

(L. to r.): Michael O’Neal, Howard Zehr, Frank Black, Johnnie Hatten, Brenda Alexander and Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz enjoy some interaction between their SPI class on Restorative Justice. Photo by Jim Bishop

The Memphis activists have been seeking a more effective approach than traditional criminal justice.

While advocating in court for abused children, Frank Black became convinced “The court system is making the mother the victim, or the child the victim, so the court system becomes the offender.”

‘Peace being broken’ in schools

In a school where Johnnie Hatten taught for five previous years, she says, “You’ve got peace being broken every day, among the kids and among the administrative staff.”

As a father, the disproportionate numbers of African Americans in jail worries Michael O’Neal. He and his three colleagues from Memphis’s black community perceive both internal and external causes.

When employed as a pre-trial release counselor, Alexander – whose husband is now minister of a church considering a restorative program – saw a succession of young black men “processed through the system.” Absence of rehabilitation, and frequent imprisonment for nonviolent crimes, made her job “very depressing.” Police often took white youth home when they had gotten in trouble, but locked up blacks in similar circumstances.

Hatten suspects a holdover from slavery both in such disparities and in offenders’ self-destructive behavior.

Repeat offenders sending a message

She sees repeat offenders sending a defiant message to the correction system: “You didn’t ‘correct’ me.” While working in a juvenile facility, she observed residents blaming their trouble on circumstances beyond their control – saying, for example, “If he hadn’t been home, I wouldn’t have shot him.”

Rather than a lenient approach, she adds, “Restorative justice is about taking responsibility.”

The Memphis group cites Jean Handley, of the conflict-resolution team, Turning Point Partners, for her restorative work in Memphis, including with Alexander’s family. Handley, who located there from New Orleans after Katrina destroyed her home, has participated in other workshops organized by EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, which operates SPI.

While criminal justice focuses on punishing the wrongdoer, restorative justice asks “Who has been hurt?” and seeks ways to “heal and put things as right as possible,” wrote class co-facilitator Howard Zehr – a founder of the movement – in his “Little Book of Restorative Justice.”

Perhaps the best-known aspect of restorative justice involves stakeholders – victim, offender, community – gathering to heal and move on from a harmful event, though Zehr notes that is only one aspect.

Hatten recently conducted practice “circles” – exercises in dialogue among youth, seven to 17. Yet she describes the core of restorative justice as deeper: When a hungry person steals, “I must be able to say, ‘Come work for me and earn your food.'”

Co-facilitator Stutzman Amstutz of MCC

In one class session, co-facilitator Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, who works with the Mennonite Central Committee, showed a “20/20” documentary segment in which a family confronts a troubled teenager, Jesse. He’s served time for badly vandalizing their home two years earlier. Meeting through a facilitator, the family express pain and anger. Jesse apologizes.

Stutzman Amstutz divided the class into three groups to look at that conversation from the perspectives of victim, offender and facilitator.

Some found the anger vented excessive. Alexander, assigned to the victims’ group, said, “I could identify with the victims in every way, except that there was one point where I asked, how long is this kid going to go through this?”

Additional open-ended questions emerged:

Where were Jesse’s accomplices, and his family? Why did the facilitator mostly remain quiet? Why did Jesse wear a t-shirt sporting the message, “BOSS”? (As “armor”?) Why, O’Neal, wondered, hadn’t the facilitator advised him on clothing?

A student from Uganda said the vandalism reminded him of a massacre in which killers scrawled victims’ names on walls in blood. Yet a woman from another part of the world criticized the newscast for conveying “the sacredness of property.”

Was Jesse truly contrite? Stutzman Amstutz responded by questioning whether that was necessary to the process. She recalled occasions when she, as facilitator, had to restrict angry language, and times when victims of theft said, “I never thought you’d pay this back, so thank you.”

“Americans don’t really know how to apologize to each other,” Zehr commented.

Without family or community support, one student reflected, “There could be many Jesses coming up.”

Alexander, however, expressed relief that after meeting Jesse, a child in the victims’ family stopped considering him “a monster.” Restorative justice, she noted, “shines” on all stakeholders.

Chris Edwards is a free-lance writer from Harrisonburg.

On Monday, June 2, Atyam told her powerful story of hate and desire for revenge changed to forgiveness toward those who devastated and traumatized her and many others.

SPI director Pat H. Martin introduces speaker Angelina Atyam from northern Uganda, citing “the testing her soul has gone through and finding the courage and grace to forgive others.” (Photo by Jim Bishop)

Atyam, 57, spoke at a “Frontiers in Peacebuilding” luncheon as part of the third session of the 2008 Summer Peacebuilding Institute at EMU. The 93 SPI participants from 35 countries were joined by many EMU faculty and staff and community persons for the presentation.

Tens of Thousands Kidnapped

“Uganda is a beautiful country of 24 million people, but we have not enjoyed peace for many years,” she said. The east African country moved from a British colony to independence in 1962, but protracted civil war has spawned refugee camps and a special problem – young boys snatched from their homes to be trained to fill the ranks of rebel armies and young women to serve as sex slaves. Over the past 20 years, some 26,000 children have been documented as kidnapped and more than 6,000 others are unaccounted for.

In 1987, an anti-government group calling itself The Lord’s Resistance Army – “not the Lord that I serve,” Atyam noted – stormed St. Mary’s College, a boarding school for middle and high school students at night, taking close to 150 girl students hostage.

The assistant headmistress followed the rebels and pleaded repeatedly for their release. Eventually, the rebel leader agreed to let one group of 109 girls go and kept the remaining 30 girls. Atyam’s daughter, Charlotte, 14, was among the latter group.

Atyam was devastated by the situation. She recalled “seeing stoic men crying openly,” bemoaning the loss. Families who had lost a child banded together for support and prayer. During one prayer meeting, the group repeated the Lord’s prayer, and one line jumped out at Atyam – “and forgive us as we forgive those who sin against us.”

‘God was at work among us’

“I was convicted of the need to first deal with our feelings of hatred and to pray for forgiveness toward the rebels – we had put a curse on them. Praying for those who had wronged us became our sacrifice,” she said. “And we began to experience a lifting of our burdens. God was at work among us.”

The period of mourning and the commitment to fervent prayer prompted Atyam and others to form the Concerned Parents Association (CPA) to address the tragic issue of kidnapped children. The group’s motto – “Every child is my child.” The organization grew to include members – Christians, Muslims and non-believers – in seven districts across the country.

Atyam decided to visit the mother of the rebel leader who had taken her daughter as his wife. People were amazed at Angelina’s willingness to forgive the woman, her son and her tribe. “What do we gain by wishing the death of our enemies?” she asked. “God wants us to be forgiving, practical peacebuilders.”

Trauma Healing, Recovery

In the midst of the loss and great uncertainty, Mennonite Central Committee workers inquired what the organization could do to help. Atyam expressed gratitude that “MCC people came with offers of assistance but didn’t tell us what to do.”

The Concerned Parents Association invited MCC to work with them in focusing on trauma healing for parents and extended families of abducted children. Training sessions were held in the various districts with the aim of training persons who in turn would educate others in trauma recovery.

“We can’t do anything without also addressing the problem of AIDS and HIV-infection among the many displaced people,” Atyam told the audience. “We have many traumatized people who are unemployed, with nothing to do, and that creates its own problems.”

Twenty four of the 30 kidnapped children eventually were returned to their families, including Atyam’s daughter Charlotte. She came back, however, with two children she bore during her seven years and eight months in captivity.

While some criticized her for accepting back her daughter and grandchildren, Angelina could no more abandon these children than could her daughter. “These children sustained my daughter because they gave her love,” she said. “They are now my flesh and blood as well.”

What does Atyam desire most of all for her country?

‘Weapon of prayer’

“The priority is for God’s intervention in people’s lives,” she said. “We carry the weapon of prayer everywhere we go – even through checkpoints.”

Persons from Community Mennonite Church pray for Angelina Atyam and for the people of Uganda after she spoke in the Sunday worship service there June 1. (Photo by Jim Bishop)

In 1998, Atyam received a human rights award from the United Nations for her work on behalf of thousands of kidnapped children in Uganda. Following her time at EMU, she will travel to the UN and also meet with government officials in Washington, D.C., speaking on behalf of abducted children. Her connections are being coordinated by MCC’s New York and Washington offices.

She is one of about 20 people from 14 countries whom MCC sponsored to attend SPI 2008.

During her time at SPI, Atyam also spoke at local churches – Shalom, Community Mennonite, New Beginnings, Park View Mennonite and Charlottesville Mennonite Church.

A specialist in trauma healing at EMU has edited a book on the subject, published by University Press of America.

Barrett S. (Barry) Hart, associate professor of conflict and trauma studies in the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) at 草莓社区, compiled the 362-page volume, “Peacebuilding in Traumatized Societies.”

Dr. Hart’s work examines trauma, identity, security, education and development as central issues related to peacebuilding and social reconstruction in the aftermath of large-scale violence.

This violence “takes the form of war, mass-killings and genocide as well as structural violence that has humiliated and impoverished millions of people across the globe,” he noted.

Global Focus

The book examines these issues in theoretical and practical terms through case studies and descriptions of training and problem-solving procedures in Rwanda, the Balkans, Columbia, and the Philippines.

These examples illustrate the multi-layered dimensions of struggle to recover from individual and community trauma, move forward the social reconstruction processes and negotiate the demanding path of peacebuilding to break the cycle of violence.

Transitional justice, leadership, religion, and the arts are other crucial issues that are included in Hart’s analysis of violence and its transformation.

The book “explores how each issue can be independently addressed for transformational purposes, but argues for their active interdependence in order to more effectively help individuals, communities and societies emerge from violence and begin the rebuilding process,” Hart said.

Leading peacebuilding practitioners have contributed to the book, including a chapter by Hart’s CJP colleague, Lisa Schirch, “How the U.S. Can Recover from 9/11 Using Media Arts and a 3D Approach to Human Security.” Dr. Schirch is professor of conflict studies at EMU.

Author’s Other Efforts

An EMU faculty member since 1996, Hart is also academic director of the Caux Scholars Program, a month-long summer academic program called Conflict Transformation: From Personal to Global Change, in Caux, Switzerland.

He has conducted workshops on trauma healing and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and among Rwandan refugees in Tanzania and has lived and worked in the Balkans, where he developed and lead trauma and conflict transformation programs for schools, communities and religious leaders.

He is currently working on a joint project between EMU and the University of Hargeisa to establish an Institute for Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding in Somaliland.

Hart holds a Ph.D. in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University.

The book is available at the EMU bookstore and on line at .

Dr. Howard Zehr

“I HAVE A DREAM,” intones the gentle, bespectacled man at the podium. “Dr Martin Luther King said he had a dream that justice would roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. I share that dream, but I want to add my own twist . . .”

Dr Howard Zehr, Professor of Restorative Justice at the 草莓社区, Virginia, was closing the fourth International Winchester Restorative Justice Conference at the city’s Guildhall – an event in October that brought together senior police and prison staff, academics, politicians, chaplains, youth-offending teams, educationalists, business people, and judges, from as far away as New Zealand, to discuss “restorative” alternatives to the present “retributive” Western criminal-justice system.

Dr Zehr is known as the grandfather of restorative justice (RJ): they could equally call him the godfather. As a Mennonite, he was one of the first to experiment with alternative ways of resolving conflict and of “restoring” victims and offenders to their communities after a crime had been committed.

“RJ is usually traced to a case in Ontario, Canada,” he tells me over coffee, “where two Mennonites – a probation officer, Mark Yantzi, and a community volunteer, Dave Worth – were meeting with a group of other Christians about how you could do justice-and-peace work in real life.”

The pair were involved in the case of two young men who had vandalised 22 properties in a small town. “The town was up in arms, and they realised the victims weren’t going to get much out of the usual process, while the kids were just going to go to jail.”

As a result of the discussion, Mr Yantzi and Mr Worth suggested to the judge at the trial that the offenders, instead of receiving a traditional sentence, should meet the victims. The judge agreed. “So they took these two guys door-to-door,” explains Dr Zehr.

They received a range of responses, he says. “But they did so well that it started this whole movement and this whole field.”

Dr Zehr, who coined the phrase “restorative justice”, helped to conceptualise the process. In 1990, he wrote the movement’s Bible, Changing Lenses, which linked restorative practice to the Old Testament notion of shalom.

“I began to realise how distorted our understandings of justice in the Western world are,” he says. “The whole mentality of justice on the streets is tit-for-tat. If someone does something to you, you have to ‘waste’ them. And the criminal-justice system emphasises the mentality, on an institutionalised scale.”

SIR CHARLES POLLARD agrees. As Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police for 11 years, until 2002, he was responsible for introducing RJ to this country, after losing faith in the present system.

“Three out of four people come out of prison and offend within three to four months. Brilliant system! But why would you expect it to work if some of the most important people – the victims of crime – aren’t engaged in helping to sort things out?”

Although RJ techniques vary, most retain the objective of holding offenders personally to account for their crime in a way that benefits victims, reduces reoffending, and re-engages with communities.

Sir Charles initially sought new ways of working with young offenders, by introducing conferences between offenders and their victims in cases that did not have to go to court. Today, restorative justice offers an increasingly accepted form of intervention for police officers and youth-offending teams.

Since the introduction of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, RJ has been built into the youth-justice system. The majority of first-time court appearances result in a referral order that allows the young person to see the effects of their behaviour on others.

In Winchester, we are shown a practical example of RJ in action. Five boys had sprayed graffiti over several properties. They were identified by a local constable, and faced final cautions. They agreed, along with those who lived in the area, to meet for a conference.

There, two of the boys, Arran and Ryan, listened to members of the community who had suffered at their hands. “It really hit home, the extent of the damage, and seeing how people had been affected,” said Arran. It was agreed that the boys would remove the graffiti and clean up the area.

Most of those gathered at Winchester seem to agree that it is one thing to talk about RJ, but another to experience it. “You can be logical and academic about this, but it has to drop 12 inches from your head to your heart,” says Peter Woolf, who is in Winchester with Will Riley, a city investor.

They first met five years ago when Mr Woolf, a drug addict on parole, broke into Mr Riley’s house. A fight ensued as Mr Riley tried to apprehend the burglar. Mr Woolf was sent back to prison, before the opportunity for some RJ brought them together again.

“You can’t read or write about RJ,” says Mr Riley, with passion. “You have to go through it.

“Finally, I could tell people – my wife, my friends, Peter – what it made me feel like. I’m a big man and I couldn’t even defend my own house. Finally, I could tell him how bloody annoyed I was. From a victim’s standpoint, this was incredibly important; incredibly powerful. But for Peter, it was like a train had hit him – he was clearly physically affected by what I had to say.”

Mr Riley decided that a good agreement would be for Mr Woolf to come off drugs and report to him every six months about how he was getting on. Mr Woolf duly complied, and the two are now friends. Both are passionate about the benefits. “I was on a bus telling the guy sitting next to me about RJ,” said Mr Woolf. A serial offender from the age of ten, he has not committed a crime since.

Restorative justice may not be widespread – Dr Zehr suggests that its presence is still “piecemeal” in most countries, including the UK – but its reach is wide, from dinner ladies who are trained in “instant RJ” in schools, to work among prisoners on death row in the United States. As Sir Charles Pollard explains: “It is a set of principles that can work anywhere you’ve got harm.”

DR ZEHR was invited to work with victims of the Oklahoma bombing, when many were called to give evidence in the second sentencing trial of Timothy McVeigh. He helped to provide a link between the witnesses and the lawyers, and offered assistance to those victims who were opposed to the death penalty but felt alienated because of their beliefs.

As a result of this, and the work that followed, “most of the big high-profile cases in America now have victim-outreach workers,” he explains, which can sometimes affect the outcome of the sentence.

“Sometimes, the work will result in a plea agreement; the victims will say, some of us are in favour of the death penalty, but here’s what we really want: we want him to tell us what he did and take responsibility, not make any money from it.”

Dr Zehr believes this may have happened at the trial of the alleged bomber of 11 September, Zacarias Moussaoui. “That sentence came out as life in prison, instead of the death penalty, and some people say it was because of this work,” he says.

Believers and practitioners are working hard in the UK to spread the word and the practice. There are seminars in Winchester about RJ and domestic violence, hate crime, sexual offences, and even the arts.

Valerie Keitch tells how she chairs the country’s first (and only) community justice panel in Chard and Ilminster, Somerset. She, and trained community volunteers, use RJ conferences for smaller offences that might otherwise end in court.

She tells the story of Georg
ina, who attacked her partner with a bottle at a pub. It turned out she had been a victim of domestic violence. She was asked to attend a conference with the landlord of the pub and others who were there when the incident happened. The panel agreed that she should work at the pub for two days a week to see the effects of drunkenness. The landlord was so impressed with Georgina’s attitude that he offered her a job; she also found the strength, as a result, to leave her abusive relationship.

While most of those who gather in Winchester are believers, some are not – such as David Davies, the Conservative MP for Monmouth. He was a victim of burglary and is still “very angry about it”, as he tells the conference. “It left a mark on me and my family, and I did not want to see the man back in my town. Restorative justice is an easy option which isn’t going to work.”

Judge Fred McElrea, however, has helped to pioneer restorative justice in New Zealand since seeing the benefits of similar family-group conferences among young people since the 1990s. “If you give people the chance to experience this process, they nearly always have a different attitude to the offender, and to what’s happened, perhaps because they’ve been released from the grip of that wrong on them; in their generosity, they want to see some good come out of it for everybody.”

The idea, he stresses, is not that punishment should be entirely removed from the process, but that it is moved from its heart.

“A young Canadian man killed his two best friends drink-driving. Instead of going to prison – which is what normally would have happened – the parents of the dead boys came up with a proposal which was supported by the court, where he went to speak to high schools in that part of the world about what it was like to kill your two best friends. It was such a powerful process. The death toll dropped dramatically during the next summer.”

The battle, he says, is to overcome the predominant adversarial ethos of the criminal-justice system – which sustains an industry of professionals and dominates Western judicial models – as well as the notion that

RJ is simply a soft form of community service.

Part of that battle is to gather evidence for the success of restorative justice, which is where Lawrence Sherman, the Wolfson Professor of Criminology at Cambridge University, comes in.

In February, the report he co-wrote with Heather Strang, Restorative Justice: The evidence, suggested that RJ has substantially reduced the number of repeat offenders (but not all); reduced post-traumatic-stress symptoms among victims (and their related costs); provided more satisfaction for both victims and offenders; reduced victims’ desire for violent revenge; reduced the costs of criminal justice; and lowered the rate of recidivism among adults.

He argues that RJ is “ready to be put out to far broader use, perhaps under a ‘restorative justice board'” that could then “grow RJ rapidly as an evidence-based policy”.

But even he agrees that there is still no substitute for personal experience, which can be profoundly spiritual.

“If people went to RJ conferences as supporters, victims, or offenders, they may get many of the same kinds of benefits that we associate with churchgoing, in terms of being able to absorb the challenges of life,” Professor Sherman tells me. “Maybe we can make the criminal-justice process a more constructive process to everyone concerned if we recognise the truly religious dimension of what helps to make RJ work.”

Is it not hard, however, to talk about spirituality in a culture that wants to be tough on crime and its causes? “It may be hard to speak publicly about spiritual values in a way that the Daily Mail will appreciate, but when you listen to someone such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaking about ‘no future without forgiveness’, and the values of ubuntu theology, in which we all exist by our connection to all others, I think the public supports people who stand for principles, and the non-sectarian values that can be connected to a deep and abiding faith.”

It is a view shared by Dr Zehr. “It’s interesting to me just how many of the people who get involved in RJ who aren’t necessarily religious say it’s a spiritual experience,” he says.

“This is an urgent situation. Our criminal-justice system is bankrupt. It seems to me that, in the long run, if we are going to keep this on track, the Church is going to have to be something of a conscience for it.”

Professor Sherman sees a clear chance for faith-based communities to play a part. “We need a larger coalition that goes beyond the state-funded agencies – the police, probation, youth justice – where the movement for RJ has been concentrated for at least the last decade in this country. Perhaps if the Church itself could convene a more inclusive discussion with other faiths, and with the agencies of justice, and citizen activists and volunteers, that could be a way to get us to the tipping point.

“What could be a better way to make the world safer for people of all faiths, than to unite around one principle that all faiths may agree on – and that is, how you respond to crimes in ways that are consistent with the possibility of atonement and forgiveness?” he asks.

“I have a dream,” says the bespectacled man at the podium. “I have a dream that when we talk about justice, we will no longer have to prefix it with words such as ‘restorative’.

“I have a dream that we won’t have to talk about ‘restorative justice’, because it will be understood that true justice is about restoration, and about transformation. I have that dream.”

On Sept. 1, 2004, terrorists linked to the Chechen independence struggle took more than 1,200 people hostage in a school in the town of Beslan. Shootings and bombings on the final day of the standoff left 186 children among the casualties.

Fairweather, the administrative assistant for the masters in counseling program at EMU, created a homemade basket from dyed reeds, complete with a grapevine handle, as she prayed for the many people directly affected by the horrific event.

Russian Counselors Come to EMU

Three years later, she was able to give this symbol of her care to a delegation of Russians during a week long visit in Harrisonburg to learn about ways to address psychological trauma on a community-wide level.

Fairweather gave her basket to the group at the close of an interchange with faculty members of the master of arts in counseling program Wednesday, Dec. 19. It will be given to a mother in Beslan whose daughter was killed at the school.

Brenda Fairweather presents her homemade “prayer basket” to the Russian delegation (l. to r.): Naida Vagabova, Vladimir Rud, Fatima Berezova, Liudmila Domashenko and Grigory Yarygin (at right) of St. Petersburg, representing the Open World Leadership Center. Photo by Jim Bishop

“It was an incredible experience to meet these wonderful people and to sit in their meeting with my EMU colleagues,” Fairweather said. “They were visibly moved by this gesture.”

All four delegation members – Liudmila Nikolayevna Domashenko, Fatima Aleksandrovna Berezova, Naida Muratovna Vagabova, and Vladimir Nikolayevich Rud – are mental health professionals, some of whom worked with survivors of the three-day Beslan school hostage crisis, one of the most horrific terrorist incidents in recent history. All work with children or young people in Russia.

Asked what has impressed him most in his brief time in the community, Vladimir Rud said through an interpreter. “The people we’ve met. They are open and caring. It has been interesting to hear about practical techniques and methods used in mental health treatment here.”

“I appreciated the opportunity to stay with local families,” said Liudmila Domashenko. “I realized how quickly language barriers can be overcome in these kind of settings.”

Visiting Counselors Attend STAR

During the week, the delegation attended sessions in EMU’s STAR (Seminars on Trauma Awareness and Resilience) program, met with faculty in the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and conferred with mental health specialists at Rockingham Memorial Hospital.

“We were asked by the National Peace Foundation, organizers of the Open World Program, to give this Russian delegation broad exposure to the work being done by the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding on community mental health issues,” said Amy Potter, a CJP administrator and organizer of the local visit.

From EMU, the group headed to in Akron, Pa., to learn more about how the Amish community responded to the school shooting on Oct. 6, 2006, in which five Amish girls were killed.

The sponsor of this visit, the Open World Leadership Center, is housed at the Library of Congress. Founded in 1999 by the U.S. Congress, the Open World Program has brought more than 10,500 people from Russia, Lithuania, the Ukraine and Uzbekistan to sites in all 50 states.

Delegates range from mayors to journalists, from nonprofit directors to small-business owners, from political activists to high-court judges.

“When personal trauma is not healed, aggression and increased violence may be the result,” says Virginia Foley, the widow of a U.S. government official who was assassinated in Jordan in 2002. “This is true of societies as well as individuals.”

Virginia and Larry Foley in Jordan in 2001. Foley was on assignment for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) when he became the victim of a terrorist attack on Oct. 28, 2002. Virginia Foley credits her STAR experience in 2006 as a major step in a long-term healing process. Read more …

Foley credits STAR

A former Virginia prisoner studied with peacebuilders from around the world in a May course, “Restorative Justice: The Promise, the Challenge.” In a June course, “Looking Through Both Lenses: Restorative Justice Through the Eyes of Victims and Offenders,” that student told his experiences to learners who also heard a rape survivor

The service closed with candlelighting and opportunity for the campus community to pray individually and in small groups, remembering the Virginia Tech community’s tremendous loss in the wake of the Monday morning shootings on their campus, just three hours distance from EMU.

Campus ministries staff and pastoral assistants were available to minister to persons as needed.

Opportunities for Prayer and Support

• Watch the WHSV News Video Coverage of the Prayer Ceremony

  
  EMU will join other schools and organizations in observing a moment of silence at 9:45 a.m. Monday, Apr. 23, marking the one-week anniversary of the Virginia Tech campus shootings and loss of 32 lives.

• Candlelight Prayer Vigil:
  A prayer vigil scheduled for Wednesday, April 18, as a response to the showing of Invisible Children (Uganda) will now include prayers for the greater Virginia Tech community. Please meet on the front lawn at 9:30 p.m.

• Hokie Hope Day:
  Friday is Hokie Hope Day across the nation. Wear maroon and orange all day in solidarity with the VA Tech students, faculty, staff, families and alum.

• Talk with the Pastor:
  Campus Pastor Brian Martin Burkholder will host the campus community on Wednesday, April 18, in the Northlawn residence hall from 4-5 p.m. for prayer and support for the Virginia Tech community, as well as any EMU community members who may have direct connections to people affected by the tragedy.

• Sign a Banner:
  Students, faculty and staff are invited to sign a banner for VT that will be hand-delivered to Tech’s campus. The banner will be on display for at least the first hour of Springfest on the front lawn. The greater campus communities of JMU, Bridgewater, and Blue Ridge Community College are also participating.

• EMU’s Counseling Center continues to be available to students, faculty and staff in need of support. Call (540) 432-4317 for more information.

Campus Responds

“We are deeply saddened by the events unfolding on Virginia Tech’s campus in Blacksburg, Va.,” wrote 草莓社区 provost Dr. Beryl Brubaker in a campus communiqu

The kids here, they’ve all lost something. “I have an 8-year-old referred to me for depression, anxiety, not sleeping and not eating,” says Nanette Katz, a psychotherapist in New Orleans.

This boy’s home, she explained, was swept away like everything else in the 9th Ward.

What’s more, she says, “his story is typical.”

That was a year and a half ago, when hurricanes first drowned their city.

Slowly, New Orleans is recovering, rebuilding, rebounding – but people need restoration, too, Katz says.

That’s where a group from 草莓社区 hopes to make a difference.

Vesna Hart

Vesna Hart spearheads a program created to help youth heal from the trauma in their lives, whatever its source may be.

It’s called Youth STAR because the program branched off EMU’s , a trauma program for adults.

The program’s latest training has focused on the needs of New Orleans. STAR has partnered with local organizations, hosted a youth retreat – and perhaps most importantly – trained others to spread its comprehensive approach to trauma healing, Hart said.

For that, Katz says she’s grateful. She consults with one of those partner organizations. That’s how she knows the needs of these kids. She’s seen the depths of their struggles.

That same boy, she said, also lost his dogs in the storm.

“They drowned. This is what haunts him,” Katz said. He can’t sleep alone; he can’t have lights out.”

Things are no better outside his home. The third-grader is failing math, like 10 others in Katz’s caseload.

The reason? “Math requires a high level of attention that so many of these kids cannot practice,” she said. “I walked into a classroom last week, and there were 8-year-olds sleeping on their desks, sucking their thumbs. ‘Please help them!’ the teacher asked me.”

“I can’t,” Katz replied. She can only see the ones who qualify for Medicaid.

A ‘Healing’ Spirit

There’s hope for these kids, Hart says.

“Trauma happens in all of our lives,” Hart said. “You can’t avoid it. But we can all do something to help.”

Community involvement is a core tenet of the program. “We believe everyone has a role in supporting youth who were traumatized,” Hart said.

At the most recent training, the curriculum was taught to a group of 18, mostly teachers, religious leaders and community workers, said Susan Beck, the marketing manager at EMU’s , where STAR began.

The group met twice, once in February and again in March.

For school counselors like Patrick Tubbins, the curriculum revealed hands-on tools suited for the situations he faces working in a New Orleans “recovery school.”

“I always look for tools to help children,” Tubbins said. Those tools include role-playing, artistic expression and conversation. They’re everyday things, but they help, he said.

Katz agreed.

“Listening, just listening to these kids helps,” she said. “The experience of empathy helps the children heal. Their biggest help is their own resilience. It’s amazing how the human spirit can heal.”

Stopping The Cycle

Recovery is happening “very slowly,” Katz said.

Tubbins has seen it at his school, where he counsels 15 youth a day. Bit by bit, he’s seen a few kids open up.

“You could really see the trauma she experienced,” Tubbins said of a teen who lived in the Superdome for a few days.

Too often, though, he says the kids stay silent. “Even though you may not be hearing the stories, we’re in crisis,” he said. “Trauma can be passed from generation to generation. We want to stop the cycle.”

Often, parents don’t know how to help their kids because they’re learning to deal with their own trauma, Katz said.

“Families are very busy rebuilding their homes, dealing with new jobs and new neighborhoods and they don’t have time or emotional resources to deal with their depressed or anxious children,” said Katz, who, like many of her clients, still lives in temporary housing.

“The storm changed everything,” she said. “We are trying to not give up.”

As co-leader of STAR Feb. 12 to 16, Heggen will bring her experience with people traumatized by natural and humanmade disasters in Pakistan, Nepal, and India, as well as with traumatized migrants, prisoners, and survivors of sexual abuse and family violence.

A former STAR training participant herself, Heggen recalls the joy of participating with persons from all over the globe. Two attending university professors of religion commented to her that “this place is mind-boggling. Here in this small town, this small university is doing some of the most creative healing work in the world.”

STAR works with adults and youth in these areas: common responses to trauma; breaking cycles of victimhood and violence; trauma interventions for individuals and communities; self-care for providers.

Personal Journey to Hope

Heggen, who has a Ph.D. in counseling psychology, shared some of her own experiences and own journey to find hope amid devastation. One of her experiences: After the devastating Asia tsunami, Heggen spent two and a half months near the epicenter of the quake, tending to survivors

How do people process such violent acts, whether victims themselves or onlookers from a distance?

Kaethe Weingarten, a renowned trauma expert, psychologist and Harvard Medical School faculty member, will give several presentations on the theme, “A Compassionate Response to Violence, September 11 and Beyond,” on Sept. 11 and 12 at 草莓社区.

“People are inundated with images of others experiencing various levels of trauma, from observing gruff interactions in the grocery store to televised news reports from Lebanon,” noted Ken L. Nafziger, vice president for at EMU.

On the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, “We wanted to provide some tools and learning opportunities for people – especially students – to figure out what to do with the intensity of feelings and other reactions they have as witnesses of trauma,” Dr. Nafziger explained.

Weingarten’s presentations at EMU are funded by a grant and will aim to “give participants realistic hope in light of the plight of others,” he added.

In addition to her work as associate clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Weingarten is founder and director of the Witnessing Project – an organization that helps people move from passive witness to effective action () and teaches at the Family Institute in Cambridge.

Weingarten will speak 7 p.m. Sept. 11 in Lehman Auditorium on “From Fear to Hope: Individual and Collective Contributions to a Post-September 11 World.” Her presentation is open to the public and will link with EMU’s vision statement from Micah 6:8 to “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God.”

An opportunity for dialog with the speaker will immediately follow in the Common Grounds coffee house on ground floor of the University Commons.

Weingarten will speak 9:30 a.m. Sept. 12 on “Hope in a Time of Global Despair,” in Martin Chapel of the seminary building at EMU. She will present seven actions that “make doing realistic hope easier, assisting us in sustaining a compassionate and affirmative life amidst the pain and suffering we hear about every day.” Seminary chapel is open to everyone.

EMU faculty and staff will attend a luncheon talk noon-1 p.m. Sept. 12 in the west dining room titled “Extending the Circle of Compassionate Care to the Caregivers.” While noting that caregivers choose to expose themselves to the pain of others, Weingarten will offer suggestions on how caregivers can include themselves in the circle of care.

A central component of Weingarten’s time on campus will be an afternoon workshop 2-5 p.m. Sept. 12 in room 211-212 of the University Commons for student leaders, “Practical Steps to Enhance Resilience and Sustain Hope.” Participants will identify their unique “resilience profile,” learn how those strengths can be used in a team approach to healing and hope, and learn ways to sustain hopefulness over the long haul.

Weingarten’s most recent book “Common Shock, Witnessing Violence Every Day,” received the 2004 Nautilus book award for social change ().

A reception and book signing for the speaker will be held 7:30 p.m. Sept. 12 in the Brunk-Maust lounge on the ground floor of EMU’s Campus Center.

For more information, contact the student life office at 540-432-4135.