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Tim Chapman, restorative justice practitioner, trainer and former chairperson and board member of the European Forum for Restorative Justice, comes to talk with Stephanie Van Hook on this episode of Nonviolence Radio. Together, they explore the practice of and principles behind restorative justice, the ways in which it is able to offer a kind of lasting resolution to all parties involved in a conflict — including the larger community in which it happened. Restorative justice is a way to “move out of that sense of antagonism,” often cultivated in traditional legal systems, and instead into a place where everyone listens, everyone is acknowledged and everyone tries hard to understand the stories of others. As Chapman explains,
I think in listening to somebody who you believe was your enemy and listening to his story, not necessarily saying it’s all true, I don’t agree with everything, but really trying to understand how they’ve come to that position that made them – is the beginning of a transformation away from that sort of simple label of “you are my enemy,” towards you are a human being.
It is only with a renewed sense that we are all human — albeit, with very different backgrounds and experiences — that we can act decently, hold ourselves and others accountable and truly forgive.
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Stephanie: Greetings everybody, and welcome to another episode of Nonviolence Radio. I’m your host, Stephanie Van Hook, and I’m here with my co-host and news anchor of the Nonviolence Report, Michael Nagler. And we’re from the Metta Center for Nonviolence in Petaluma, California.
In this episode of Nonviolence Radio, we speak with Tim Chapman. He’s a practitioner of restorative justice and a former chairperson and board member of the European Forum for Restorative Justice.
Stephanie: I first learned about Tim’s work through a podcast with Molly Rowen Leach called Restorative Justice on the Rise. I absolutely hope you’ll check that podcast out. It’s everything you ever needed and wanted to know about restorative justice from people in the field.
Tim: I just think it’s a disconnection in society. We’re more and more disconnected from ourselves and from others, and particularly from others who are different. And that is a great way to nurture violence, that disconnection.
And while Tim is a teacher and trainer and researcher and advocate of restorative justice, which all of that is interesting, the part of his work that I found the most interesting and the most intriguing is his work within cases of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. How do we handle justice with spiritual leaders who have engaged in abuse of people who were vulnerable and in their protection?
And if the criminal justice system, for whatever reason, cannot resolve these issues, people still need to have their stories heard. They still need to regain their sense of self and their identity and their full sense of humanity. And I think that’s where the power of restorative justice really can come in, because it brings all the other parts of our humanity to the table and allows for these difficult stories to be told and understood and heard, and also holds people accountable to making changes and transforming the situation for their own state of mind in the present, as well as what could happen in the future.
And I think that’s really an amazing part of restorative justice. So, in this interview with Tim, we will first start off with some exploration of what restorative justice is and how it works. If you’re new to this show or if you’re not new to this show, you might have heard of restorative justice already. But it’s always interesting to hear it from other people again and again, because different aspects of the work, you know, resonate more with certain people. So, it’s great to hear Tim talk about his work, and then he gets into some of the stories, in particular toward the end, about some of his work within the Catholic Church, which is quite interesting.
Do stick around and let’s turn in now to Tim Chapman on Restorative Justice.
Tim: I’m Tim Chapman. I’m speaking to you from Northern Ireland, which is a part of the world that’s seen a lot of violence. And I have worked both within criminal justice as a probation officer, in the most violent areas of Belfast, and also within the prisons. And more recently, I’ve been involved in restorative justice, as a practitioner, as a teacher and as a researcher.
And I think the common theme of my work has been relationships of power, and how those relationships can be abused. And often that abuse takes the form of violence and the terrible traumatic impact of abuses of power. Whether it’s in organizations, institutions, or interpersonal relationships, or in sort of major social conflict within a country such as my country.
I guess where I started in my sort of, exploration of violence was in the connection between violence and masculinity. Because the majority of people I was working with in the community who got into crime and in prisons were men. It just seemed to me that there was something about their experience as men had led them towards violence.
I was really keen to sort of help them to develop nonviolent ways of dealing with conflict. And they were up for considering that. I learnt you have to really talk from where they’re at rather than where you want them to be.
I would be, you know, talking about nonviolent alternatives to the way they acted. I enjoyed doing group work with people. So, quite often in the group, somebody would have the generosity to say, “Well look Tim, we understand what you’re trying to do, and we appreciate that. But the problem is you don’t live in my street.”
And it took me a while just to understand what they were saying. And there was a truth in that. You know, I come from a privileged background. I’m white, middle class, educated. I lived at that time in a sort of middle-class suburb of Belfast. Belfast was a violent city, but where I lived, there wasn’t much violence. But they were living with violence all around.
And I think what they were saying is, “If we accept what you’re saying and try to be completely nonviolent, we will not survive on the street that we live in. You have to sort of act tough. You have to be prepared to fight. You have to be. Because if you don’t, people are going to walk all over you.”
So, I had to be a bit more realistic. And in my engagement with prisoners and with people, you know, with young men in the community. Because it just sounded to them that I was preaching, that I was talking about my reality rather than their reality. And they were not privileged, middle-class, educated, you know, working people.
One of the sayings that I like tries to balance that. And in fact that an organization that I’m involved in, the European Forum for Restorative Justice, sort of adopted it on their website. And it’s “Let us be realists. Let us demand the impossible.”
And I think that’s what I find sort of resonates with me, that almost contradiction. Like a Zen koan, how can you be realistic and demand the impossible at the same time?
So that’s what I’ve learnt. You’ve got to start with the reality of people rather than come in and say, look, we’ve got the answer to your problems. You know, a writer that I like, African American, Isabel Wilkerson, she talks about radical empathy. As opposed to a more superficial empathy of, you know, I feel your pain type of empathy. She says, “You really have to understand another person’s reality, and that is hard work.”
Once I made that sort of breakthrough, I actually find it really interesting and challenging at the same time, but also, you know, quite productive to work within somebody else’s reality. And respect their lived experience and the authority that they had over their lives, rather than coming in to try and rescue people and convert them to nonviolence.
And, you know, I can tell you stories about how that worked quite well. Not with everybody, but, you know, with people who are willing to engage in that.
Stephanie: As you mentioned, radical empathy and your sense of awareness of needing to step into other people’s reality; not demand something of them but accept everybody’s agency. I can see that in a lot of ways, right? Like, I can see that as somebody who feels like they have some kind of a truth or an answer, or even if it’s not in the context of, ‘I’m going to offer a restorative justice workshop’, but just in the context of, ‘I’m in a really upsetting situation and this is my truth and I want everybody to know what my truth is. And I start deciding what other people’s experience is or has been based on my truth’.
When I’m hearing you say that I’m also hearing you asking, people who are trying to move toward a space of healing, that we have to let go of that imposition on our truth onto everybody else. And put ourselves in a space where we allow other people to tell their stories and explain what their experience is. Experience in any situation will not be homogenous.
How does that land with you?
Tim: Yeah, I think that’s very close to what I’m saying. I think it’s very close to the restorative process. Which is, you know, I have a model, you talked about truth. There’s a great Ted Talk. Loads of people have watched it and people will probably be familiar with it.
It’s called The Danger of the Single Story. And it’s by a Nigerian novelist called Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. And it’s a lovely talk. I mean, she’s a beautiful woman in spirit and very humane and warm. And she talks about, you know, being an African coming to America and finding that people had a single story about Africa. And that’s a huge continent with millions of people and with huge variety and diversity within it. But then she has the humility to say that when I went to visit Mexico, I found I had a single story of Mexico and Mexicans.
And I think that’s something I remember. You know, I have a single story about nonviolence and the importance of nonviolence and the terrible impact of violence that I have seen in my own country. And I’ve seen victims of abuse in my current practice.
The statement she makes during that really stood out for me is that she said, “Everybody’s story has truth in it. The problem is, it’s not the complete truth.” And that’s, to me, the essence of a restorative approach, that we listen to people’s truth with humility and respect, struggling really to understand the world that they live in and how that influences their perspective and their beliefs and values.
But also realizing that there’s limitations to that world and it’s important, I think, incredibly important in modern society that we have conversations with people who are different from us because they have a truth we don’t know.
So that’s in the model I use in restorative justice, I talk about dialogical truth. There’s a truth that comes out of two people or a group of people with very different experiences, realities, perspectives, values, talking about a specific thing and realizing that my story about it is incomplete. It doesn’t include what other people are saying.
And by listening to them, the truth within my story is enhanced. It’s richer, it’s a thicker story. It’s not a thin single story. And I think that’s, you know, the sort of essence of the restorative process, that you’re sitting in a room with somebody who’s harmed you, or you’ve harmed, and you listen to the other story until you really understand it. Doesn’t mean you have to agree with it, but you understand it. You listen.
I was just listening to the radio today. And somebody said something that I really liked. They were talking about peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, and somebody – there was a discussion on the radio – asked: Well, what is it, and what is reconciliation?
And this guy said, “Well, my definition of reconciliation is when I can tell my enemy his story.” In other words, I’ve listened deeply enough to my enemy’s story that I can understand it and tell it back to him, and he will say, “Yes, that is my story.”
And I thought that was an interesting thing because that is about the dialog, and about entering into dialog with humility, respect and an open mind and, you know, listening.
I mean, at the moment I’m getting into hate crime now. And obviously, I have great sympathy with the victims of hate crime. But what I’ve been saying to them is if we’re going to proceed in this, you’re going to have to maybe sit down and listen to a person who has racist values and beliefs. And, you know, can you listen to that person and try to understand how come they might seem to really hate you because of your color or whatever?
So, in a way, restorative justice is asking a lot of people to sit in a room with people that hate them or that they hate, but to try and understand the other person’s story. And then vice versa, the perpetrator needs to understand the victim’s story.
Stephanie: That thing you heard on the radio about when reconciliation is when I can tell my enemy’s story. I think that’s the first part of it. I don’t know. How do you feel about, you know, the term enemy? I feel like when you get to reconciliation, I’m no longer telling my enemy’s story, I’m telling the story of somebody who I used to believe was my enemy.
Tim: I mean, that’s just the way he said it. I think you’re right. I think in listening to somebody who you believe was your enemy and listening to his story, not necessarily saying it’s all true, I don’t agree with everything, but really trying to understand how they’ve come to that position that made them – is the beginning of a transformation away from that sort of simple label of ‘you are my enemy’, towards you are a human being. And we have different views and that has resulted in violence or whatever.
So, I think it’s a step, but I thought it was an interesting way to put it because it’s not just sort of telling your story, it’s listening to other stories and then being able to, you know, show that you understand that story.
As I say, it doesn’t mean you agree with it. But you understand how another human being, a fellow human being, has come to that sort of conclusion. And what in their lives, their experience, their lived experience, influenced them to come to those conclusions.
Stephanie: Yeah. I mean, that’s true also, I think, you know, as you said, kind of meeting people in a reality space. Like not everybody is going to be ready to look at a person and, you know, not use the enemy language. Let’s just accept that as part of a reality that exists around us. As you said, hearing those openings, those cracks. Like when they’re, when they’re out there and grabbing at them, I think is, important because we, we get these threads, and then we weave them together into a different way, another possibility.
Tim: Yeah, I think violence and enmity depend on disconnection and separation. And restorative justice is about reconnecting. Again, another phrase we use in the European Forum for Restorative Justice is, ‘It’s all about connecting people to restore just relations’. So, you mentioned about the importance of relationship. And I think that’s right, but of course, some relationships are not just, you know, they’re oppressive.
So, it’s that notion that it’s not just restoring a relationship, it’s the quality of the relationship. Which could be, you know, a real reconciliation. Or it could – and in a lot of the cases I have facilitated, that people just agree after a harmful event, that if they meet each other in the street, they will be civil. You know, they will not shout at each other or be afraid. That, you know, they will just be civil, just, you know, they will nod and say hello and pass on. And they don’t have to be great friends. But just to move out of that sense of antagonism that they previously experienced and fear and anger and all that sort of messy emotional mix.
I think it’s about restoring just relations in society. And I do think that justice is one of the best ways of preventing violence. And by justice, I don’t mean the sort of traditional criminal justice of, you know, punishment. It’s about people feeling that they’ve been treated justly or whatever has been damaged, lost, or violated by the act of violence has been restored in some way to them.
Stephanie: Yeah. There’s these kinds of competing approaches to justice where there’s a justice that looks like criminal justice, looks like trying to reestablish power dynamics where somebody who didn’t have ‘power over’ now has ‘power over.’ Instead of, a kind of merciful justice, or a sort of – it’s almost like justice isn’t the right word anymore, but I was grappling with this the other day, what do you call it? But I feel like you’re also naming it as justice. So, I just call it Justice with a capital J.
Tim: Let me give you an example. The most recent case I was working on, what happened was this young man who had a drug habit, and he owed his dealer quite a bit of money.
And in Northern Ireland, dealers are usually part of what we call armed groups. They can be ruthless in their violence if somebody doesn’t pay up. And he was desperate. And so, he went into to a local shop, like a small supermarket in his own community. He sort of put a mask over his face. And he just took it like a kitchen knife, and he went up to this young girl at the cash and said, “Give me the money in your till, or I will cut your throat.” And the girl was scared stiff, so nervous she found it difficult to open the till, but eventually did and handed over the money and he ran out.
Now, when I talked to that girl, she was so frightened. She had not gone back to work. And you could say, well, that, you know, she was threatened. You know he was going to kill her if he didn’t get some money from her. And as a consequence, she was scared to go back to work. So that was something, one aspect of her. But then when I sort of talked to her about, you know, tell me your story about that.
She said, “I’m working,” like she was a young girl, she was still at school, so it was just like a part-time job. She was about to do her exams, so she was saying, “Since this has happened, it’s really hard for me to sort of work and prepare for my exams. And I really want to do well in these exams. And the other thing is, I’m working in this shop to save some money because after the exams, myself and my friends are going to go on holiday. So, if I don’t have money, you know – and I’ve been really down and depressed ever since this happened, I find myself crying. And my friends are basically beginning to think I’m a bit boring and, you know, stop going on about this. And also, they’re saying, ‘Well, if you don’t have the money, you won’t be able to go on holiday.’”
So suddenly, there’s a whole lot of things other than somebody came in and did something violent that needs to be restored. You know, she needs to sort of – something needs to happen so that she will not be so frightened so that she can have the courage to go back to work, save the money, go on holiday, pass her exams.
And if that was dealt with through a court – the guy was caught. If it was dealt simply through the formal system, none of those issues would have been addressed. Her only satisfaction might have been to see this guy go to prison. But that actually wasn’t on her mind really. That wasn’t what she wanted to talk about.
So, through a restorative meeting, the guy, who was genuinely remorseful. He’d never been in trouble before, this was the first thing he’d done. It was out of desperation, and he explained why he was so desperate.
And he actually said, “I chose you because I thought a younger person wouldn’t get so upset. Because it was an older lady on the other cash till. And I thought, no, she’ll get more upset, I’ll not choose her, I’ll choose you.” She said, “But I did get upset, you know?”
And he said, “You know, what I can tell you is, I will never do this again. I won’t – and particularly to you, you do not need to be afraid of me anymore. He also got an opportunity to say, “Look, I’m struggling with drugs and I don’t know what to do.” And so, you know, it was his opportunity to request some support and help to get off this drug habit.
And, you know, I just realized that in that dialog that the two of them had, she began to understand why he did it, and she didn’t see him as somebody who was going to kill her anymore. He was a human being in desperation, and she could understand that. I mean she wasn’t happy about it, but she, you know, she could understand it. And she was able then after that meeting to go back to work. And so, she didn’t lose all the stuff that she thought she was losing.
You know, she wasn’t particularly worried that he’d taken some money out of the till. She was worried that she wouldn’t be able to earn money to go on holiday with her friends. It’s interesting when with the first question, I said, ‘“How is this affecting you?” She said, “I just feel my life is over.”
She’s 16, so she’s sort of dramatic. And I said, “What’s that about?” “It’s just because I don’t know if I’m going to pass my exams. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to go on holiday with my friends. And I don’t know if my friends will still be friends with me because they think I’m boring because I just can’t talk about anything else but this.”
And from a 16-year-old, that is your life is over. You know, I mean, it’s almost like she had been killed, in a way. But the restore process sort of brought her back. You know, from that horrible ‘my life is over’ feeling. So. And that’s a very simple story. Very simple case.
Stephanie: Thank you for bringing the simple – I mean, the simple stories matter too, though. And yet what I hear in that is that she was having a traumatic response, that trauma can be healed through restorative practices.
Tim: Because her story was attended to, but she also got some understanding of why it had happened. Because if you don’t understand the sort of human motivation and you just think this is a crazy guy who came in and wanted to kill me for not very much money. Because, I mean, there wasn’t a lot of money involved.
And the guy went on to say, “You know, that money, I gave half of it to pay off my debts, but I also used half of it to buy more drugs, so I’m still on this sort of, you know, treadmill that I can’t get off.” So, through that dialog, their stories changed. You know, he was offered a way out of that story, at the end of it. He was offered, we’re going to get you in touch with some sort of rehab program.
So that is just – yeah, as I said, just a very everyday example of how violence can be understood and how the victim of violence can be less traumatized by dialog than they would have by going to court and just seeing the guy, you know, maybe get sentenced to prison.
And I’ve spoken – I’m doing research into victims. And victims are not necessarily against people going to prison, but what they always say to me is, “It’s not the end of my problem. It doesn’t bring closure. I’ve still got a lot of questions and a lot of, you know, things that I need to address for me to feel I’ve had justice, you know?” Which is, you know, to really get back what was taken from you.
Stephanie: And can I ask a process question about being in that room as a restorative justice facilitator? What was that like? Were you alone as a facilitator? Did you have another facilitator with you? How did you get them talking to each other? Can you just bring us into that process a little bit and how it might be different in different situations?
Tim: Yeah. Well, the model I use, it’s not just a simple sort of victim-offender mediation. We call it a restorative conference. So, I asked both parties who would they like to have in the room? And so, the young woman who was robbed, she wanted her mother to come, and she wanted somebody from the shop to come.
And the guy who committed the crime, he wanted somebody there who could offer advice about what can you do if you’ve got a drug habit? Because he was just, you know, in many ways quite innocent. He’d got into drugs, and he didn’t really understand how you get out of it.
And he also wanted somebody from the community. Because the other thing that he felt was, you know, although it was an act of desperation, it was a very serious thing to do, to threaten a young woman with a knife and then to say, “I’m going to kill you if you don’t give me money.” And of course, that had got round the neighborhood.
So, he wasn’t the most popular person on the street, you know, and he was really just staying in all the time. And he wanted witnesses to hear his story, but also to see that he wanted to repair what he had damaged, as well as getting support with his drug habit. He agreed that he would do some work for the community in the community center.
So that he really wanted people to say he had faced up to it, taken responsibility, and was trying to pay back for what he’d done. And he was trying to take steps so that it wouldn’t happen again.
So, it was important for him, in a funny way for him, for the community, almost for the gossip about this to get round in a positive way, if you know what I mean. Because usually the gossip is, “That guy should be in prison. You know, he’s threatened the young woman with a knife, saying he was going to kill her if she didn’t give him money.” And you know, that would be the single story about him in the community.
But he wanted to give them a more real and more rich story than that. That this guy made a huge mistake out of desperation. And he’s owned up to it. He’s made things right with his victim, and he wants to repay his debt to the community, you know? And to do that in a visible way. And he wants people to talk about that.
Stephanie: Yeah. That was so strategic.
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Hey, everybody, you’re here at Nonviolence Radio, and we are speaking with Tim Chapman about restorative justice. He’s a former chair and a former board member of the European Forum for Restorative Justice. A major trainer, activist, researcher in the field of restorative justice. And it’s great to hear from him. So, let’s tune back in.
[Music]
Stephanie: I think I remember when I heard you with, Molly Rowan Leach. I think you said you invite people into the room, and then you basically just let them empty their cup of their story. And so, can you talk about how you get them to, to share and what that process is like?
Tim: I’ll give you a sort of sense of it. And again, it’s going back to really having – and this isn’t something, you know, I was always like, it’s something I’ve learnt really through practice.
And, people telling me, you know, like the young man that used to say, “You don’t live in my street.” They’re always giving you lessons, better than you would get from university or from books. And I’m an academic from the university.
It’s really respecting the lived experience of other people. Even people who have done bad things. And people who’ve had bad things done to them.
So, I call my approach to restorative justice ‘narrative dialog’. So, I’m interested in people’s stories. Rather than have a script of questions, I’m going to ask them, I want to have a conversation with them and listen, I don’t want to seem like an official that is going to interview them, because I think that takes away the sort of human interaction.
So, I will start off with a very specific question. This is the only question I have planned. “Would you like to tell me what you want me to know about what happened?” It’s not just what happened. It’s what you want me to know. So, in that, I am respecting their authority over their story. And I think that goes to the principle that goes back to one of the originators of the restorative – the modern restorative process, Nils Christie, who says the problem with professionals is they often steal the conflict, as he put it. We often steal the story.
You know, as a probation officer, I didn’t listen to people’s stories. I interviewed them to get information I needed to make an assessment that I could relay to a judge. And that’s very different. So now I just let them talk. And they might, some people, if you ask that question, can talk for an hour without me saying anything and taking notes. And I will have questions at the end of it. But all of those questions do not arise from my sort of clever thinking and academic knowledge. The questions come from their story. “Could you tell me a wee bit more about this? This is interesting to me. You said this.”
So, it is really, really trying to respect their authority. The thing that I teach my students is to ask people’s permission. Don’t assume anything. You know, ask them, “Do I have your permission?” At each stage, to ask this question or to offer an explanation of how restorative justice might be an important next step in your story. Not in my story. I’m not inviting you into my reality. But would you give restorative justice permission to come into your life?
And I think that’s partly because, I think people who are violent often do it because they want to have power over others. But to me, when you scratch the surface, often people who are violent are quite insecure underneath and feel that they don’t have a lot of power in their lives. And of course, what they do is they impose power on another human being. So that human being, the victim, experiences a loss of power and control.
So, the whole process of restorative justice for both parties should be about how do we enable your choices, your narratives to be respected? So that you can regain control over your life. And that, I think, is as important to the perpetrator as to the victim.
Stephanie: So, let’s get into a bit more difficult issue then. How can restorative justice work in the case when somebody has abused their power, in the way of sexual abuse. And where maybe the victim doesn’t realize that it was sexual abuse at the time. And later, when they’re adults, you know, maybe it happened when they were younger. Maybe it happened when they were under the influence of this person’s power and didn’t realize that it wasn’t appropriate.
You’ve worked with people in these situations, and so you have a lot to say. So, I just want to throw that in there and hear what you would do with it.
Tim: Yeah. At the moment I’m working with people who were abused as children many years ago. They’re actually, you know – oh, it happened in this boy’s school in Ireland, which was run by a particular congregation of the Catholic Church. And during the sort of 70s, 80s, 90s, there was a lot of sexual abuse by priests, and some laypeople as well, but mainly priests.
And this group of victims asked me if I could facilitate meetings between them and the hierarchy of the congregation because most of the priests had died. I think there’s one or two who might still be alive, but they’re like late 80s. They’re pretty frail. I’m not sure if they’re ever going to be made accountable.
So that has been an extraordinary – I’ve been working at this for about three years now. About 100 victims, survivors, have come forward to this process. I had to take on some help. I got four other experienced facilitators to work as a team with me to do this.
So, we’ve met over 100. Approximately half of those have had restorative meetings. Some just wanted to tell their story and didn’t want to take it any further. You know, it’s quite amazing the amount of people who have said to me, “You are the only person I’ve ever told this story to.” So, they’ve carried this story, and the child within them, for maybe 40 years and never told anybody.
There were others who did tell or made complaints, and they were punished because they were told, ‘no priest would do that’.
So, some just want to tell their story. I just want to give my testimony, have it on record, and I don’t need to meet anybody. I just want it acknowledged and to get it out there.
Others we’ve referred, we’ve sort of advised that they need to do some therapy before they go into a restorative process. You know, they’re not ready for that. And therapy would be better. But around half have gone to a sort of formal meeting with the head of this particular congregation.
it’s been an extraordinary thing for me because they are people that look like me. There’s sort of – and they talk like me, so I have a sort of rapport with them. But once I say, “Okay, what would you like me to know about what happened?” Suddenly, this sort of mature, articulate, well-educated man is transformed into the eight-year-old boy that was raped by a priest.
And, you know, the face sort of crumples. Suddenly they’re struggling to get the words out of their mouth, tears. It’s remarkable that this child within them has never got peace. And they’ve used a variety of ways of dealing with the trauma, alcohol, drugs.
But interestingly, a lot of them would’ve said to me, and it took great courage, I think, to say, “I became a very violent person because of this. I have harmed people as a direct…” You know, several of them just said, “I have this terrible rage inside me, and half the time I don’t know where it comes from. And sometimes I just need to go downtown and go to a bar and get into a fight.”
So that’s taught me a bit about violence. People that are condemned for violence, what’s their story, what’s behind it? And there’s a lot of research to say a lot of very violent people are traumatized. And that child has never felt safe, has never been heard, has never been protected. And they’re still looking for that.
I’m working with one guy who wants the church to apologize. Not to him, but to the child. To little him, that’s how he talks about it. And to write a letter as if it was straight to him as a ten-year-old, because he needs that child that he carries within him to get some peace, to sort of stop suffering.
So, it’s been remarkable to me, you know, just the variety of ways people have coped with trauma. You know, the abuse itself is depressingly similar. Because these different priests had different MOs, the way people have coped with it has varied. As I said, the priests aren’t there to be held accountable, but what they do is hold the church accountable for neglecting their duty of care to protect children.
It’s emerging that the authorities within the church were aware that things were going on but did not do enough. They were more concerned with protecting the reputation of the church than protecting children.
Stephanie: Do they have stories of disempowerment too? Like, what could we have done? We tried everything. We did everything that was within our power. Because there’s a lot of hierarchy in churches. With hierarchy comes senses of disempowerment. And people’s own trauma of hearing what they feel like they can’t believe or can’t fully believe.
Tim: It’s a really good question. It’s a really good question, Stephanie, because it goes to the heart of the matter. I mean, what you also need to realize is the hierarchy now was not the hierarchy then. The guy that’s the head of this congregation was a junior sort of priest when this was going on and he would say he didn’t know anything about it. So, they’re being held accountable. I mean, it’s really the institution that is being held accountable, and they’re just representing the institution.
Now, what I would say is, you know, the way I structure the meetings is the first part is the storytelling. And I would say that the church has responded with compassion. They have apologized. They’ve said something really important to victims, “We believe you.” And they’ve expressed compassion for the suffering. They’ve offered to pay for therapy. They’ve offered to write personal letters of apology. And that is very, very comforting to the victims. You can see that takes a load of the shame off them.
You know, the church is very clear to say, “You should not be ashamed of what happened. You were an innocent child. It was our priests that did this. They are 100% guilty.” And that’s important because victims do often blame themselves, you know, “Why did he pick on me? What was, what was it about me? Or what did I do?”
So, that part is really good. But then, you know, in your question of sort of how is the church been traumatized by this? They’re very reluctant to talk about that. And victims would love them to. The victims do not want to hate the church. They do not want to punish the church. They want to reconnect with the church. Because it’s an important part of sort of their identity. And it’s a sense of belonging, but this abuse has, again, torn them away from the church.
And I’m also always saying to the people who represent the church, you know, “You need to tell your story,” but they’re reluctant to. They’re sort of anxious about it. And, you know, I have to be frank, they’re advised by lawyers not to say too much because of civil action. And that’s a reality. It’s not restorative, but it’s a reality that they have to deal with because they’re responsible for running an organization, running an institution and keeping it going.
You know, the victim will often say, “I need some sort of repayment for this,” sort of compensation. Or quite often they say, “I need a refund.” It’s interesting, because they feel a sort of grievance that their parents struggled – this is a fee-paying school, so their parents struggled to pay the fees. But they always said, “It’s worth it because this is a good school. This is going to, you know, help you have a good career and make good connections, etc.”
So, they will say things like, “My parents paid you a lot of money so that I can have a good education. What they were really paying for was so that I could be abused. So, I’m asking for a refund at today’s prices of the fees.” And to me, it’s a very reasonable request to make, you know. But the church gets all formal then and legalistic and says, “Well, look, what you need to do is get your solicitor to talk to our solicitor, and I’m sure we can work out something.”
But lawyers are not restorative. In the restorative process, a plausible story will be believed. But lawyers work on the evidence. And they’ll demand, you know, “How can you prove you were abused? How can you prove the impact of that abuse, the impact on your life was due to the abuse, rather than other things?” And it’s retraumatizing. It’s making people tell the story through a legal framework that is very painful for them.
So that is the tension. That the church, I think, quite rightly, are effective at being compassionate towards victims of their violence, but they find it much more difficult to be accountable for the violence.
Stephanie: Has anybody talked about the possibility of structures, checkpoints, guardrails, to keep this from happening in the future? Like that seems to me that could be an outcome of a restorative process.
Tim: Yeah. Victims are interested in that. So, they will ask, “So, can you convince me that this won’t happen again?” And I think they do have a good case because in the 70s – 80s in Ireland there wasn’t a strong understanding of child protection and safeguarding procedures and policies. But in the 90s and into this century, things have moved on.
So quite often, a victim will ask if the current principal of the school could be present because he wants to know what you are doing to make sure no child is being abused at your school right now. And, you know, they have a pretty good response to that. You know, they can talk about the procedures, the training. Children are, you know, encouraged to report anything that they’re anxious about.
And also, the fact is that in the 70s, almost all the teachers were priests. Now, none of the teachers are priests. They’re all lay people. That’s not to say that there aren’t pedophile lay people get into schools, but I think victims are reassured that steps are now taken.
The church will bring their safeguarding officer to the meetings to reassure them that priests are now, you know, trained. And priests are – there’s a much, stronger level of accountability and monitoring. So, I think that is reasonably well handled. It’s just very difficult for them to accept full accountability for what happened in the past.
It’s a common problem. You know, it’s like in many of the Western countries, the call for some sort of accountability and reparation for slavery and how that is difficult for people to get their heads around. And yet, it’s very important for people whose ancestors were slaves.
So, it’s that difficulty of historical abuse. And yet for me, it’s not really historical because I can see that the abuse is still active within the victims. You know, they’re still suffering. So, it’s in the present. But unfortunately, the people who were directly responsible for it are not about to answer.
Stephanie: And your sense, too, is that there’s hope for the reformation, in that school in particular, like the restoration of that school. That they don’t have to shut the school down as a way of honoring those who have been severely harmed and continue to experience that harm. But rather, if there can be a transformation in accountability, leadership, and support for, whistleblowers, victims. Because I imagine that those in power would be afraid that they would have to shut the thing down, basically, at that point.
Tim: Yeah, I mean, I think that they do fear that or that they would have to hand over responsibility for the school, you know, take it out of the church. And that’s been suggested.
But very few victims, you know, would want that to happen. You know, it is recognized as a good school, the problem was that a significant number of children were abused at it. You know, it’s remarkable, some victims have sent their own children to the school because they feel that it is safe.
And there are other victims that cannot even go near the school, they’re triggered by the school. You know, there’s one was telling me, “I can’t. You know, if I’m driving and the shortest way is to drive past the school, I’ll take the long detour to avoid driving in my car past the school,” because they’re so triggered by it.
Stephanie: And I imagine for the wider community as well, as we know in restorative processes, that it’s not just the victim offender, as you talked about in the first story, it was the neighborhood, too, that realized there’s somebody in the neighborhood who is willing to kill for drugs. So, you know, just as bystanders, in some way, with some kind of involvement, having some transparency about what kind of safeguards and safe rails are in place to ensure this doesn’t happen.
Tim: It was interesting at the beginning of the project, you know, the bystanders were sort of like the past pupils of the school and people at the school right now. And this school has a good reputation as an academic school. And at first, a lot of the past pupils, and there’s Past Pupils’ Associations and alumni, were very negative towards this all coming out because they thought it was damaging the reputation of the school.
But as the stories came out, it’s very interesting, they had to accept there was a real problem that the school needed to deal with. And the Past Pupils’ Association have now actively been supporting the victims in very constructive ways. So, it’s actually brought the community together. And there is a committee looking at a memorialization – is that the right word? – a memorial of this. And trying to think how can we, you know, remember that this happened, and commit to ensuring that nothing as terrible will happen again?
Stephanie: How beautiful. Where would you send people to get support for restorative justice in the kind that you’re talking about?
Tim: Obviously, if a lot of your listeners are in America, what I can maybe do is try and find, you know, restorative practitioners in America that they could engage. It just really depends on where they are geographically.
And, you know, I can always have a Zoom meeting with somebody to listen to their story and then say where they could go with whatever it is. Yeah, I think if anybody’s been listening, and they feel, oh, that’s brought things up for me. I’m happy, Stephanie, for you to give them my email address and for them to contact me.
Stephanie: What is that?
Tim: It’s info@TimChapman.eu. And you know, I can’t guarantee that I can engage with them over a period of time, but I might be able to identify somebody that is closer to their home that would be willing to talk to them. But I’m happy, you know, for people to contact me with any questions or, anything they want.
Stephanie: Thank you. And do you offer trainings?
Tim: Yeah, I’m a trainer as well, and I offer training. I’ve been all over the world, including the States, but mainly in Britain and Europe, I offer training. But, yeah, if anybody’s interested in finding out more about the sort of courses I offer, they can contact me too, at that email address.
Stephanie: Hey, everybody, you’ve been here at Nonviolence Radio. We’ve been speaking with Tim Chapman, former chair of the European Forum for Restorative Justice. And it’s been great hearing from him today about his work.
On today’s show, we weren’t able to fit in our Nonviolence Report, do do go over to the Metta Center’s website to have a listen to the full nonviolence report with Michael Nagler, where you can get a little bit of the nonviolence happening in the world today. that’s over at mettacenter.org/nonviolencereport.
We want to thank our mother station, KWMR. To Matt and Robin Watrous, Annie Hewitt, Sophia Pechaty, to Bryan Farrell over at Waging Nonviolence, where the show is syndicated and also the transcription will live after this, thank you so much. To the Pacifica Network, who helps to syndicate all the different stations on that network, thank you. And to you, our beautiful listeners, until the next time, please take care of one another.