News
Mall Shooter Gets 20 years, Forgiveness
The Advocate, Baton Rouge, LA – An 18-year-old Baton Rouge man received a 20-year prison term and forgiveness after pleading guilty last week in a January 2012 shooting that wounded two innocent teenage bystanders outside the Mall of Louisiana.
The teen victims and their parents said inside the courtroom that they forgive Johnny Williams and pray that he will someday become a productive member of society.
The shooting occurred when Williams fired a weapon into a crowd during an argument with another teen. Caleb Day, 16, was shot in the right arm and chest and suffered nerve damage to that arm. Trenton Miller, 16, was shot in the left arm, and the bullet went into his hip and out his leg, prosecutors said. Day said that despite missing 50 days of school and a year of playing baseball because of his injuries, he holds nothing against Williams. Day’s father, David, said he forgives Williams and prays for him. Miller’s father, John, said, “With our whole hearts we forgive him.”
Read the full story: “Mall shooter gets 20 years, forgiveness”
Can Forgiveness Play a Role in Criminal Justice?
The New York Times – The Jan. 6 issue of The Times Magazine features an intriguing story from Tallahassee, FL, about parents Kate and Andy Grosmaire whose deeply held religious faith led them to forgive the man who murdered their 19-year-old daughter in March 2010. The killer was no stranger to the Grosmaires; he was their daughter’s boyfriend, Conor McBride, who shot Ann Margaret Grosmaire in the head after the two had been arguing for hours.
This story, however, goes beyond a heinous crime, a repentant lawbreaker and a typical punishment. While first degree murder in Florida usually carries a mandatory life sentence or, potentially, the death penalty, the Grosmaires sought to have Conor’s sentence reduced through a a concept called “restorative justice” which considers harm done and strives for agreement from all concerned–the victims, the offender and the community–on making amends. Partly as a result of that process, Conor was sentenced to 20 years in prison plus 10 years of probation instead of receiving a life sentence or the death penalty.
Read the full story and consider for yourself the challenging questions presented by “Can Forgiveness Play a Role in Criminal Justice?”
Mother Preaches Forgiveness Less Than a Week After Her Sons are Killed
The Palm Beach Post, West Palm Beach, FL – Isidro Zavala, dressed in black and with a gun in hand, stormed through his former home earlier this month, strangled his two young sons and then killed himself, even as his estranged wife, Victoria, pleaded for him to kill her instead of the boys. Police said Isidro told his wife he would keep her alive so she could live with the pain of not having her children.
Less than a week later, at the funeral service for the three Zavalas, Victoria offered forgiveness to her late husband. “Today, I choose to extend the forgiveness that exists in Jesus Christ,” she said.
Ivette Eligio, the boys’ older cousin, also spoke at the funeral and said that just as Eduardo and Marco had taught them many lessons during life, they continue to do so in death.
“As a last hoorah, they’re trying to teach us how to forgive,” Eligio said.
Read the full story: “Boynton mother preaches forgiveness.”
A Lesson in Forgiveness from Genocide Survivor Jean-Paul Samputu
STV Edinburgh, Scotland – Jean-Paul Samputu survived one of the worst genocides in history–a massacre that claimed not only the lives of his parents, his three brothers, and his sister, but the lives of more than one million people who were killed in his country in just 90 days. All were killed by those who had once been their neighbors, their friends.
The 1994 mass slaughter took place in the central African nation of Rwanda where violence between two ethnic groups–the Hutu majority and the Tutsi–had festered for years. Jean-Paul, a well-known Tutsi musician at the time and a marked target, had already fled his home and travelled to Uganda.
It was more than a decade before Jean-Paul learned that his own family’s killer was a man he had once counted on as a friend. He came face to face with Eugene Nyirimana at the war tribunals in Rwanda in August of 2007. It was there that Jean-Paul spoke with the man and somehow found the courage to forgive him.
“I don’t think I’m a strong man or a particularly good man because I forgave, because I don’t think I made a deliberate choice to forgive. I think it was my only choice,” Jean-Paul says. “The man who killed my parents, he went to prison. As was right because he had committed a crime. But my prison was far worse than his. I was trapped, killing myself everyday with anger and bitterness. It was horrible.”
“I had to choose to forgive. It was the only way out for me,” he explains. “I had to do it for myself, to learn to love myself, to get the healing that I desperately needed. And when I found its peace, I knew I wanted to help others find it too.”
Jean-Paul now spends his time travelling around Rwanda and the world to share his story through discussion and music.
“It’s so important that people realize that forgiveness isn’t for the offender – it’s for you,” insists Jean-Paul. “We have a culture of revenge in our society at the moment. Generations pass their hatred onto the next generation and so on and so on. We receive the mistakes of our parents.”
“Instead of a culture of revenge we need a culture of forgiveness if the cycle is ever to be broken. Forgiveness is my message. Education is the answer. To teach our children that a culture of forgiveness is the only way to end pain.”
Read the full story: “A lesson in forgiveness from genocide survivor Jean-Paul Samputu“
Finding Forgiveness After Child Abuse
Farm and Dairy, Salem, OH – Scarred by years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his parents–abuse so violent that it nearly killed him–Terry McDaniel would seem to have every reason to hate. As awful as his childhood was, though, he’s not out for revenge. His message is one of hope and inspiration, of forgiveness and understanding.
McDaniel, now 52-years-old, says his anger over the constant abuse did not subside until after he discovered the “process of forgiveness” when he was 26. As bad as his life had been, McDaniel says, he came to realize that it wouldn’t get any better until he let go. “You release that person to be dealt with by God, not by you,” he added.
After years of writing and rewriting, McDaniel has put his thoughts together in a book. “Through Our Eyes, A Story of Surviving Childhood Abuse” uses semi-fictional scenes and characters that draw parallels to his own life. By using a fictional approach, McDaniel says, he didn’t have to mention the names of real-life people in his family. “I wanted to make the book a book of hope and healing for people who have been abused,” he said.
Read the full story – “Finding Forgiveness: Abused as a child, local author says only way forward is ‘forgiveness.'”
