{"id":44654,"date":"2013-06-24T08:20:37","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T07:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/how-i-forgave-my-sons-murderer\/44654\/"},"modified":"2013-06-24T08:20:37","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T07:20:37","slug":"how-i-forgave-my-sons-murderer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/how-i-forgave-my-sons-murderer\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Forgave My Son\u2019s Murderer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo Credit: \u00a9 trekandshoot\/ Shutterstock.com<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

June 17, 2013<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>
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The death of a child is every parent\u2019s worst nightmare. On March 21, 1996, I received the call every mother fears the most. My 21-year-old son, Christopher, had been murdered. In a senseless fight that quickly escalated out of control, Christopher was shot four times by his roommate. He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. <\/p>\n

The violence and anger involved in my son\u2019s death is simply not understandable to me. I\u2019ve done a lot of thinking about it and I am still baffled about how any person can get angry enough to kill<\/em> someone. <\/p>\n

I had to do something to keep from losing my mind. I had to deal with my anger and my pain, my unremitting sense of loss and grief. <\/p>\n

Within two weeks I had joined Compassionate Friends, a nationwide organization that provides support and care for families who have lost a child. It was the first step in healing myself and eventually forgiving my son\u2019s murderer. It took me a few years to come to terms with Christopher\u2019s sudden death and I still work on it every day. Joining this organization was immensely beneficial for me as part of this process. <\/p>\n

When Christopher was murdered, I had never heard about the concept of restorative justice. Then I met Jacques Verduin, at that time the executive director of the Insight Prison Project. Jacques explained that restorative justice is an approach that focuses on the needs of the victims and the offenders, as well as the community. Victims take an active role in the process, while offenders are encouraged to take full responsibility for their actions, “to repair the harm they’ve done\u2013by apologizing, returning stolen money, or community service.” I realized that these were principles I had always lived by, and wanted to continue doing so. <\/p>\n

After taking classes with the Insight Prison Project and volunteering at San Quentin State Prison, I decided to pursue a one-on-one victim\/offender dialogue with my perpetrator. I needed to know that the person who had murdered Christopher was human enough to feel the pain of what he had done; to realize what he had taken from our family by murdering my son. <\/p>\n

The purpose of the dialogue is to provide victims of crime the opportunity for a structured meeting with their offenders, in a secure, safe environment, in order to help them with their recovery process. A dialogue provides the offenders the opportunity to fully understand and take responsibility for the impact of their crime, which can help in their own recovery as well\u2013if they are truly open to doing the heart\/hard work required. <\/p>\n

The more individual offenders understand themselves, and the more the impact of their victim(s) becomes personalized, the greater hope we have to reduce recidivism and prompt offenders to make the necessary changes to live meaningful and productive lives. At the end of their intensive eight months (this can be up to a year) work with the facilitator, the offender is ready to meet face-to-face with the victim(s). It is ultimately the facilitator\u2019s decision when the inmate is ready; sometimes he never is. <\/p>\n

In preparation for my dialogue, I began meeting once a month with a licensed psychotherapist and victim offender mediator. During the eight months we met, this therapist also met with Mark Taylor, the perpetrator, at the state prison in Coalinga, to prepare him for the dialogue. Mark would ask questions through her and I would respond and\/or ask questions back. <\/p>\n

During this process, I came up with some questions I wanted to ask Mark when I saw him, as well as a few things I wanted to share. I wanted to know if Mark was just \u201cdoing time,” or if he was “using time” (contributing to his prison community in any way). I wondered if he had ever considered jumping bail and what the anniversary of Christopher\u2019s murder was like for him. I also wanted to share a dream I had that he had rung my doorbell and when I answered, he told me, \u201cI\u2019m free and I just wanted to say I\u2019m very sorry about what I did.\u201d <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: AlterNet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo Credit: \u00a9 trekandshoot\/ Shutterstock.com June 17, 2013 \u00a0| Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. The death of a child is every parent\u2019s worst nightmare. On March 21, 1996, I received the call every mother fears the most. My 21-year-old son, Christopher, had been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-44654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}