News
Rape Victim Meets Attacker to Forgive Him
BBC News UK, London – A rape victim who met her attacker in prison in order to tell him she has forgiven him called the visit a “great” experience to seek “peace and forgiveness together.”
London resident Katja Rosenberg, 40, was cycling home after work when she was attacked by a 16-year-old stranger. He was eventually captured and jailed for 14 years after admitting to that attack and another rape of a 51-year-old woman shortly afterwards.
Rosenberg said she felt she could forgive soon after the 2006 rape, believing things must have gone wrong in her attacker’s life. “You wouldn’t ever do that if you felt happy,” she told BBC Radio 5 live.
Rosenberg said she had always felt in the years since that she should meet her attacker. She finally visited him in prison last September–a meeting arranged through a restorative justice program. Rosenberg said she was partly motivated by a wish to assure her attacker that “life’s not hopeless, that he knows he’s got a future”, she said.
“I just felt I could give that. I also thought the exchange would be good for me to somehow get some kind of closure – I mean, I didn’t really need a ‘Sorry’, but it was somehow just good to see that you walk into the same direction of peace and forgiveness together.”
Read the full story: “Rape victim meets attacker to forgive him.”
“I Have Forgiven You for Murdering My Mother. . .”
Amarillo Globe News, Amarillo, Texas – Before a District Judge sentenced a 22-year-old man to life in prison without parole for killing an 84-year-old woman and assaulting her developmentally disabled daughter, the woman’s adult children addressed the court to talk of forgiveness and faith.
Imogene Wilmoth Harris, who died of blunt force trauma on Aug. 14, 2011, was described by her family as a giving woman who taught Bible study and worked with stroke victims to help them regain their speech. The man who killed her, Esequiel Gomez Jr., was eventually captured and pled guilty to capital murder in a plea agreement that spared him from Death Row.
Family members, who supported the decision to grant Gomez a life sentence instead of lethal injection, spoke at his sentencing last week in a tiny, hushed courtroom.
“The bottom line is this, Mr. Gomez: I have forgiven you,” said Harris’ daughter Shelley Fields. “I have forgiven you for murdering my mother and raping my little sister, but I will never forget what you took from us that night.”
Another daughter, Holly Chester, also told Gomez she forgave him while the victim’s eldest daughter, Peggy Guthrie, said, “God won’t forgive us if we don’t forgive others.”
Read the full story: “Tulia family speaks of forgiveness, punishment during killer’s sentencing.”
A Mother’s Journey of Hope and Forgiveness
NBC Bay Area – KNTV, San Francisco, CA – Scarlett Lewis lost her six-year-old son Jesse during the Sandy Hook school shooting. In the face of that tragedy, Lewis said she learned to forgive the shooter, in part due to the final message Jesse wrote on their kitchen chalkboard: the words “nurturing,” “healing” and “love.”
Lewis is sharing the story of her son’s final act of bravery as well as how she learned forgiveness in a book, “Nurturing Healing Love: A Mother’s Journey of Hope & Forgiveness.” Jesse Lewis had urged his classmates to flee the school after seeing his teacher shot, investigators learned after gathering accounts from survivors. Six children escaped before 20-year-old Adam Lanza reloaded and shot Jesse.
“I knew that forgiveness was possible… It’s taking your power back. Not forgiving doesn’t feel good,” Lewis said.
Lewis’ book isn’t a story about a massacre. It’s a story about love and survival. It’s about how to face the impossible, how to find courage when you think you have none, and how to choose love instead of anger, fear, or hatred.
“I believe that Jesse was put on this earth to do what he did… I’m proud of him. I believe he left a message for me: nurturing, healing, love.” Lewis added. “We understand these final words as a calling from Jesse that says, ‘I have something for you to do for us. That’s to consciously change an angry thought into a loving one’ because it is a choice.”
In addition to the book, Scarlett recently began the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Foundation, which promotes ways for communities to “choose love over anger, gratitude over entitlement, and forgiveness and compassion over bitterness.”
Read the full story: “Newtown Mom Describes Struggle for Forgiveness, Peace After Son’s Death.”
Father Forgives Daughter’s Killer; Asks Others to do the Same
The Christian Science Monitor, Denver, CO — The father of a 17-year-old girl who was fatally shot at her suburban Denver high school told mourners at the girl’s memorial service that he and his wife have forgiven the killer, and he asked others to do the same.
Investigators say Karl Pierson shot Claire Davis at Arapahoe County High School on Dec. 13. She died eight days later. Pierson, 18, who was also a student at Arapahoe High, killed himself after shooting Davis.
“My wife and I forgive Karl Pierson for what he did,” Michael Davis said. “We would ask all of you here and all of you watching to forgive Karl Pierson. He didn’t know what he was doing.”
Davis said Pierson “allowed himself to become filled with anger, rage and hatred. … The fact is that Karl was so blinded by his emotions he didn’t know what he was doing.”
Here is an excerpt from The Christian Science Monitor article:
Forgiveness is often misunderstood – and some people may even condemn Mr. Davis’s remarks, believing that they excuse Mr. Pierson’s actions or are an attempt at a “quick fix” – but forgiveness “does not cast justice aside [and] when it comes to a tragedy like this, forgiveness is a long journey,” says Robert Enright, an educational psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of “The Forgiving Life.”
Davis “is not all of a sudden wrapping up all of his negative emotions in a little box … and all is well,” Professor Enright says. “He’s going to be going through a process of forgiveness…. Rage might come into the picture for him” after this initial stage where “psychological defenses” are kicking in, he speculates. “Forgiveness doesn’t wipe away pain; it helps us go through the pain in a healthy way to get to a healthy resolution.”
“Forgiveness simply means that the victim … on their own, irrespective of anything related to the offender, lets go of bitterness and resentment,” Enright says, and lets go of “the right to revenge,” by refusing to retaliate. Victims who forgive can still hold the offender accountable, but they are declaring their freedom – that they won’t be held hostage by the past or by anger, he says.
Read the full article “Father of slain girl forgives Colorado shooter. Is that helpful?” and watch a video from the memorial service.
Forgiveness Sets in Motion a Chain Reaction
Digital Journal, Toronto, Canada – Grace and Edmund Fabian spent 24 years as missionaries on the island nation of Papua New Guinea. The married couple spent all those years developing a dictionary of the Nabak language in order to translate the New Testament to the language of the Nabak. The Fabians were close to completing the project when Edmund was suddenly and tragically murdered by a man they considered a Nabak friend.
Grace initially put a pause to her work in order to navigate the country’s judicial system but ultimately she and her four children offered a simple gift to the murderer– forgiveness. Their forgiveness prompted a change within the community. In turn the Nabak people showed her a beautiful model of reconciliation. Grace then stayed in Papua New Guinea with the Nabak people to finish the translation of the New Testament.
“I learned that forgiveness sets in motion a chain reaction,” according to Grace, who is now called Amazing Grace by some of her friends. “There are no loopholes in scripture that excuse us from forgiving. Forgiveness doesn’t just change ourselves, it changes others too.”
Grace’s incredible true story is told in a book she has written called, “Outrageous Grace: A Story of Tragedy and Forgiveness.” Since completing the Papua New Guinea project with Wycliffe Bible Translators, she has returned to the U.S. and now lives in Pennsylvania where she speaks, teaches and writes. You can visit her online at http://www.gracefabian.com/
Read more at “Could You Forgive Your Husband’s Murderer?”
