Can Restorative Justice Really Bring Healing?

**Summary: Restorative justice is a new concept for helping crime victims
cope with fear, anger and loss by meeting with the offender that disrupted
their lives.**

Five years ago, on February 27, Ted and Pat Nelson were plunged into horror and despair. "It was a tough thing on Sunday morning to have the sheriff come to our house and say, 'Your son is dead,'" said Ted Nelson, a farmer in the small town of Letcher, S.D. Mark Nelson, who was 23, died early that morning when a bullet pierced his chest.
Mark Nelson and Travis Henjum were high school friends and worked together at a welding shop. They shared a trailer-house in Mitchell, = S.D., but were in the process of moving out the weekend Mark Nelson died. = Henjum planned to move back home, and Nelson planned to move to Sioux Falls for another job opportunity.
"Some friends, Mark Nelson and I went out partying Saturday, Feb. 26," said Henjum in an interview from the South Dakota State Penitentiary, Sioux Falls. "We did a lot of drinking, hung out until the late hours of the evening and continued partying into the next morning."
"I had moved most of my things home ... but I had left a few things. I had a rifle," said Henjum. "I was handling the rifle the morning of = Feb. 27, allowed it to be pointed at Mark and caused it to go off. The next thing I remember was hearing it fire, looking up and seeing my friend with a tiny red spot on the front of his chest."
Mark Nelson died shortly after he was shot. Henjum then fled the scene. Thirty days later police caught Henjum in Texas and returned him = to South Dakota for a sentence hearing, where he pled guilty to murder in the first degree. Henjum was sentenced to 46 years in prison for the death of Mark Nelson.
"During the sentence hearing I had planned to talk to the Nelsons and tell them how sorry I was, but I didn't have the opportunity," said = Henjum.
"I wanted to hear what Travis had to say ... to know exactly what had happened in his mind when my son died," said Pat Nelson.
"So, life went on and we were coping until two years later, on my birthday, I received a letter from Travis," said Pat Nelson. "The letter contained a brochure about a victim-offender reconciliation program in Sioux Falls." Henjum had requested to meet with the Nelsons in a process called "restorative justice."
Restorative justice is a new concept being circulated among correction systems in the United States. It works to bring together victims, offenders and the community to discuss the facts and consequences of a crime with the intention to work toward reconciliation. Restorative justice programs have been implemented in Illinois, Oregon, Minnesota, Texas and several other states.
Pat and Ted Nelson are members of Trinity Lutheran Church, Letcher, S.D., a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). The ELCA is committed to bringing restoration and healing to victims, offenders and communities affected by crime. Through a social statement adopted by the 1991 ELCA Churchwide Assembly, the church's challenge is = "to incapacitate offenders in a manner that limits violence and holds open the possibility of conversion and restoration."
"Victims have questions that need answering in order to heal," said Lois Janzen Preheim, director for the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP). VORP is housed at East Side Lutheran Church, Sioux Falls.
"Restorative justice provides the opportunity for reconciliation, which is an agreement on some of the facts of a crime," Preheim said. "Usually people have two different sets of facts. The victim knows = certain things, and the offender knows certain things. Reconciliation provides a truer picture of what went on. It is some level of acceptance about what one can change and what one cannot change," she said.
"I believe that reconciliation is a gift from God and a task that has been given to us by God," said Preheim. "Generally our legal system does not care too much about recovery for victims and offenders. I think the church should be interested in helping people heal from the consequences = of a crime."
Restorative justice offers also the opportunity for offenders to make amends for the harm they have caused to both the victims and the community.=

Rather than simply serving out a sentence, offenders take responsibility
for their action and take steps to repair the harm, as much as possible,
caused to the victims and the community. These steps often result in a
face-to-face mediation between the victim and the offender.
"After I read the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program brochure I received from Travis, I immediately went to the phone. I wanted to do this," said Pat Nelson.
Preheim led the mediation between the Nelsons and Travis Henjum in June 1998. "The Nelson-Henjum mediation was my first mediation that dealt with a crime of severe violence," Preheim said. "It was really heavy for me, because I was overwhelmed with Mark Nelson's death and the senselessness of it."
"Part of what I do is to arrange the logistics for the meeting. I meet with each party to explain why such mediation would be useful. After I find out what the objectives are from each party -- the victim and the offender -- I sort out what would really be the important items to say at the time of the mediation. By the time people come to the table, they are clear about what it is they want from each other," said Preheim.
"It was a very frightening experience at first, because I didn't know what they were going to say to me," said Henjum. At the mediation, "I heard [the Nelsons] tell me how they were affected. I heard them tell their story, and they were kind and compassionate. If I had been them, it would have been something I would have found extremely hard to do. But they didn't show that kind of difficulty at all. They were understanding,"=

Henjum said.
"I didn't necessarily ask the Nelsons for forgiveness," he said. "Lois Preheim and I talked about it before the mediation, since it was one of the things I was searching for, I guess. Lois said that forgiveness = was something the Nelsons had to be ready to give on their own, if they were willing."
At the mediation, Henjum discovered that the Nelsons were willing to forgive him.
"I had to have him look at me right in the eye and say, 'Pat, I'm so sorry for killing your son, or taking your son's life.' I needed to hear that before I could forgive him." That was one goal for me during the mediation, said Pat Nelson.
"When we walked out of that meeting room, we were physically drained," she said. "We were going over everything -- his side, our side, what we were doing, and what he was doing those 30 days he left town," = said Pat Nelson. "After that, it was just like 500 pounds was thrown right off my shoulders. I don't have to live with all that anymore. I had forgiven him, and it was in the Lord's hands what was going to happen to him next."
When the mediation ended Pat Nelson walked around the table, and gave Travis Henjum a hug. "I did not expect that," said Preheim. "It was so very moving for me. It was just a very special moment because I knew Travis Henjum was not expecting it."
"It wasn't Mark's time," said Henjum. "I don't believe that it was God's will that Mark should die on Feb. 27, 1994. He died because of what I did. He died because of my action. He died because I had no business messing around with that rifle."
"Everyone thinks victims want revenge," said Dora Larson, coordinator of victim services for the Illinois Department of Corrections, Springfield.=

"Victims really don't want revenge, they want to be made whole. And, they
want to have some kind of voice," she said.
"In 1979 my little 10-year-old daughter, Vicky, was kidnaped, raped, murdered and put into a g