Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

["Abby Tassel" <>]

Whoops, I’ve been away for a few days so am still on the restorative justice
thing...  
I agree with all that Wendy Murphy wrote in terms of the danger of RJ
minimizing the severity of sexual assault and yet would still encourage
folks to look into what Mary Koss has to say about her work on RESTORE.  I
was absolutely, completely against any sort of RJ for survivors of sexual
violence until I heard Mary talk about this project. If our legal systems
were showing signs of serving victims adequately, I would feel differently.
But at this point, there are so few viable options, dismissing any of them
doesn't seem to serve victims well.  

Not being an attorney, I can’t really comment on the Title IX piece but from
my non-lawyerly perspective, it is always fascinating that we have to worry
about violating Title IX when we are doing something to help women but can
not effectively use it to increase institutions’ responsibility to protect
women from being assaulted in the first place.  (Oh, and while I’m on the
subject…why is it that institutions do their own investigations into Title
IX violations regarding sexual harassment?).  Somehow we (they?) have
created a system in which the choices of women are further limited by the
laws created to help them and institutional liability, i.e., money, takes
precedence over the rights of victims.  

I would also agree with Ms. Murphy on the problematic nature of looking to
RJ for healing. I think the conceptualization of RJ to "make a victim whole"
is offensive at best.  Anyone who has supported victims knows that they have
incredible resilience and certainly don’t need recognition from the offender
to regain a sense of power.  But what RJ may offer victims, is some sort of
acknowledgment of responsibility or caring from society/institutions.
Ideally, validation for victims of crime would come from the legal system
but so far it has proven woefully inadequate at helping victims of sexual
violence.  

Our society/institutions collude/s in the nature and prevalence of sexual
violence but then sorely mistreat/s the courageous (or naïve) survivors who
decide to report.  The criminal court system further victimizes survivors by
putting them on trial (even if the case never gets to an actual trial which,
in my experience it very rarely does), thus validating perpetrators while
not holding them accountable, and leaving victims worse off than before.  In
addition, civil law may be accessible to some but it requires money, a
(known) offender with resources, and a victim who would find some value in
receiving cash as redress for their victimization. It also expects the
victim to invest time and energy when it is in little supply and trust the
very system that has done nothing to support or assist them. On top of that,
there are few attorneys willing to take on civil cases for victims. 

Many of us have seen the damaging ways civil law has influenced college and
university policy. Victims are so defeated by the crime and society’s
response (especially if there is a judicial procedure that finds the
perpetrator “not responsible”) they don’t expect anything and just want to
try to graduate. Few will consider civil suits at that point.  Perpetrators,
still feeling entitled, sue the institutions if they are sanctioned, and the
institutions respond to offenders’ law suits by tweaking policy to protect
them from future liability. These policy changes make it more difficult for
victims to receive support or access to informed judicial processes in the
future.  

While this system is creating a new generation of outraged young women who
will go on to practice law and hopefully spark change, we haven’t come close
to having these changes implemented at this point.

So, I guess I’m saying:  until we, as a society, can do a better job of
believing and supporting survivors, investigating and prosecuting sexual
assaults, and creating a civil legal system that is accessible to victims,
we need to be able to offer something else.  It makes me think that
carefully and creatively investigating options like restorative justice,
might be worthwhile.  

Abby Tassel
Assistant Director
WISE
Lebanon, NH
Office: 603.448.5922
Toll Free: 866.348.WISE
Crisis Line:  603.448.5525
TTY: 1.866.889.8647 USERNAME: UpperValleyWISE
Fax:   603.448.2799


-----Original Message-----
From: 

[mailto:]
 On Behalf Of 

Sent: Friday, August 04, 2006 12:30 PM
To: 

Subject: Re: SAPC Digest, Vol 575,Issue 1 - restorative justice/mediation
polilcies

be mindful of the fact that mediation or restorative justice-based ideas
will likely provoke legal action under Title IX which prohibits such
resolutions for the most serious sexual assaults, such as rape.

also -- i would suggest taking a very restrained approach toward restorative
justice before adopting any of its policies for something as serious as
sexual assault.  Many critics of restroative justice see the idea as a
decriminalization model, designed to subjugate the nature of the harm
endured by women as a class.  This critique is bassed largely on the idea
that the philosophy is typically not applied to thiings like, robbery,
larceny or other crimes against men's wealth/property.  It may well be an
appropriate idea for first time youthful offenders of relatively minor
crimes -- but as applied to violence against women, it is a wolf in sheep's
clothing.  I say this because its popularity just happened to start growing
just as women finally got the criminal justice system to apprecate that
private harm is a public problem.  Restorative justice diminishes the public
nature of private violence by allowing the system to treat interpersonal
violence as something other; somethi
 ng less worthy of public resources than theft and property crimes.  thus --
while it has superficial appeal, it is politically insulting to women as a
class -- and activists will likely raise all sorts of challenges to schools
who adopt RJ policies and procedures by arguing, among other things, that it
violates Title IX to apply such an idea disproportionately to gender-based
harm if the same rules do not apply with equal force to other types of
crimes, including hate crimes perpetarted against certain classes of
students.

It is also worth noting that RJ is often promoted as a way to make the
victim whole -- and this is a worthy goal -- but there is no reason the
victim cannot achieve the same benefits of restorative justice in terms of
compensation and confrontation if the harm is treated as a serious
infraction.  She can still confront him in a criminal or school setting --
she can sue for damages if she wants to  -- so the idea that she should
trade on her right to have the crime against her treated as an offense equal
in seriousness to other types of crimes -- and accept a kind of second class
citizen status -- is - in my opinion - unconscionable.  

the ussct called rape the most serious harm to the self short of murder --
but we sometimes treat it like shoplifting -- and restorative justice
principles validate this maltreatment.

wendy murphy
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