Forgiveness News

Mother Forgives Those Who Beat Her Teenage Daughter Beyond Recognition

Winnipeg Free Press, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada – A 16-year-old Winnipeg high school student was attacked and beaten so badly last Friday night that her mother couldn’t believe it was her daughter when she first saw her in a hospital intensive care unit.

“I didn’t recognize her,” Julie Harper admitted. “I didn’t think it was Rinelle. But every day, she’s getting a lot better. I believe it is the prayers (from people touched by Rinelle’s attack) which pulled her through.”

Police said Rinelle was out with friends that night but became separated from them. She met two men in the south Broadway area who started talking with her and she walked with them to the riverwalk. That’s where the pair attacked her and tossed her into the river near the Midtown Bridge.

The girl was swept downstream, but when she managed to get out of the frigid water, she was attacked again and left for dead. A passerby discovered the unconscious teenager the next morning and called for help.

On Tuesday, thanks to tips from Winnipeg citizens, a 20-year-old man and a 17-year-old boy were arrested and charged with the teen’s attempted murder and aggravated sexual assault.

“When I first heard there was two arrests, the first thing that came to me was to forgive right away,” Julie Harper said after a news conference Thursday. “If any family members (of the accused) are listening, I forgive them. That’s what I was taught to do by my late grandparents. It’s hard, but I truly forgive them.”

Rinelle was moved from intensive care into a regular hospital ward on Wednesday and her mother said the girl is making steady progress.

Read the full story: “Forgiveness for Rinelle’s attackers: Teen’s mom says it’s what she was raised to do.”
Watch a video of Julie Harper forgiving the two attackers.

Justice and Forgiveness Confront Each Other in Court

Pittsburgh’s Action 4 News, Beaver, PA – An 85-year-old nun who has spent her entire life helping others while living out her vow of chastity, has forgiven the teenage man who raped her last December.

The victim testified at a preliminary hearing that she was grabbed, punched, choked and ultimately raped, and she told the magistrate she thought she was going to die. She survived the attack by 19-year-old Andrew Bullock who admitted to targeting the woman behind St. Titus Church in Aliquippa, PA.

The Sisters of St. Joseph nun wrote a Victim Impact Statement that was read in court at Bullock’s sentencing hearing on Wednesday. In the statement, the nun said she was asked by the media if she could forgive her attacker. Her response, she wrote, was: “My thought-out answer to the question was and had to be: ‘Of course he is forgiven.’ ”

The nun referred to Bullock by his first name and called him “my brother.” She said they should both “love one another and forgive one another. And, this I do, Andrew. . .”

The judge, who said that he had not seen such depravity in all his 42 years in the criminal court system, sentenced Bullock to 18 – 37 years in state prison.

Read the story: “Elderly nun’s rapist gets prison sentence, forgiveness”

Watch the video: “Nun’s rapist gets prison time from judge, forgiveness from victim”

United Nations Peace Conference Emphasizes Justice and Forgiveness

Today’s Zaman (an English-language daily newspaper in Istanbul, Turkey) – A United Nations peace conference held in Geneva, Switzerland, on United Nations Day (Oct. 24), developed “five tools as the modus operandi of peace building” including justice and forgiveness.

Although Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen was unable to be at the conference with the more than 800 participants from 50 countries who attended, he sent a message that was read by German historian and author Jochen Thies. In his message, Gülen emphasized the importance of investing in human beings while stating that “building peace means building peace-loving men and women.”

Professor Thomas Michel of Georgetown University (Washington, DC), was one of the conference speakers who underlined the importance of justice and forgiveness as tools to achieve peace. He said one is not possible without the other and that without serving justice no forgiveness should be expected from the victims of oppressors. According to Michel, the way to make people forgive their oppressors is to increase dialogue among groups with animosity against each other.

After day-long intensive workgroup meetings, the conference suggested five tools as the modus operandi of peace building: interfaith dialogue, justice and forgiveness, education (especially to foster intercultural understanding), forming institutions to promote peace, and for peace speech to replace the hate speech that is prevalent, especially in social media.

Just three weeks prior to the Geneva conference, University of Wisconsin educational psychology professor Dr. Robert Enright laid the foundation for “forgiveness as a peace tool” at a 2-day work session hosted by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Professor Enright, co-founder of the International Forgiveness Institute, served on an international “Expert Group” that is developing intervention models aimed at ending gender-based violence around the world.

Globally, according to the UNFPA, 1 in 3 women face gender-based violence, usually at the hands of someone she knows. Furthermore, 1 in 4 women, including adolescent girls, have been subjected to intimate partner or non-partner sexual violence. Those risks of violence are compounded in countries experiencing conflict and are negatively impacting broader peace initiatives in those countries.

Dr. Enright said he is hopeful that the forgiveness programs he has been operating in Northern Ireland for the past 12 years; in Liberia, West Africa for 3 years; and the one he just recently started in Israel-Palestine after 3 years of groundwork there, will soon be employed around the world to address violence and peace issues.

“If students are introduced at age 4 to the inherent (built-in) worth of all people, which we do in our Forgiveness Education Programs, would the amount of violence go down, perhaps dramatically, and would that increase the likelihood of peace?” Dr. Enright asks. ”The world needs forgiveness education.”

Read more: http://www.todayszaman.com/national_un-peace-conference-renews-commitment-against-extremism-of-all-kinds_362573.html

Teen Forgives Best Friend Who Shot Him and Others

Uinterview.com (a celebrity video network) – Nate Hatch, cousin and best friend of Jaylen Fryberg, the teen who opened fire on his friends in a school cafeteria on Friday, Oct. 24, tweeted his forgiveness to Fryberg  who shot him and others before turning the gun onto himself.

Hatch, 14, was reportedly meeting Fryberg and a group of four of their friends for lunch in the cafeteria of Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Marysville, Washington, when Fryberg took out a gun and opened fire, killing two students and seriously wounding two others. Fryberg later died of his self-inflicted wounds.

Just days after the shooting, Hatch tweeted that he had forgiven Fryberg. In a goodbye note to his cousin, he wrote “I love you and I forgive you, Jaylen. Rest in peace.”

Hatch suffered facial injuries in the shooting and is listed in satisfactory condition after undergoing surgery to repair his broken jaw at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center.

“It’s sad and it’s tragic. . . but it’s better to have forgiveness because that will help the healing process,” according to 17-year-old Dominique Reyes, a member of the same Tulalip Tribe to which Fryberg and Hatch belong. “We have to move on, and we can’t do that with hate in our hearts.”

Read more:

“Nate Hatch, Cousin And Victim Of School Shooter Jaylen Fryberg, Tweets His Forgiveness From The Hospital”

“Washington school shooter texted lunch table invites to victims”

Minnesota Man Urges Forgiveness After Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 Disaster

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS/KSTP-TV, Saint Paul, MN –  By now you know the story. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed near the village of Hrabove, Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, on Thursday, July 17, 2014. All 298 people aboard the Amsterdam-to-Kuala Lumpur flight died making it the deadliest airliner shootdown in history.

The Boeing 777 plunged out of the sky over territory held by pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine. According to a report by the Dutch Safety Board (193 of those killed were Dutch citizens), the plane was likely struck by multiple “high-energy objects from outside the aircraft,” causing it to break up over eastern Ukraine.

For Drew Ryder of Willmar, MN, that Thursday started out as just another typical day at the office–until his phone rang about 10 a.m. It was Ryder’s uncle calling from Amsterdam “totally distraught” saying he had terrible news: Ryder’s brother, Arjen, and sister-in-law, Yvonne, were on Malaysian Airlines Flight 17.

Ryder says he found the news difficult to process, especially as the days wore on and evidence mounted that a deliberate missile attack brought the plane down. Even so, Ryder says his faith has prevented him from participating in the hatred responsible for the attack.

“It doesn’t create for me any need for revenge,” Ryder told KSTP-TV. “If we react in anger and ask for retribution, all we’re doing is continuing the violence.”

Ryder says that if he were able to meet the people responsible for the airline tragedy, he would look them in the eye and say, “I forgive you for what you did.”

Ryder added, “I’m actually praying for those people. We as Christians are asked to forgive those who wrong us.”

Read the full story: “Willmar Man Loses Brother and Sister-in-Law on MH17, Urges Forgiveness