GRETCHEN CASEY
The Perspective of a Restorative Justice Facilitator
At a TEDxUF event, Gretchen talks about how restorative justice can be used to empower and save sexual crime victims.
Gretchen is a perseverant victim advocate and counselor based in Gainesville, Florida for more than 30 years. As the former Director of Training and Outreach for River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding (RPCP) in Gainesville, she was in charge of initiating a series of restorative justice programs that focus on both its theory building and practical operation. Gretchen's decade-long commitment to helping victims of crime motivated her to launch the local “Me Too” project and found the UnShame Facebook campaign which attempts to spark conversations centered on the shame culture sexual assault victims are noticeably suffering and end the stigma of rape by creating a caring online space for people to show support.
Gretchen currently serves as a facilitator of restorative justice circles in serious harm and sexual harm cases and has been dedicated to the undertaking of bringing this process into wide use. For better effects of empowering individuals to seek help from restorative justice processes, She created the Amend Initiative in 2019 so that victims are able to reach out for restorative justice meetings to “amend” the harms they experienced but found difficult to relieve from. Meanwhile, Gretchen is working as the President of Florida Restorative Justice Association (FRJA) where she provides “facilitation and training on utilizing and incorporating restorative justice approaches in criminal cases involving serious crime,” as introduced by the FRJA website.
The motivation for her extensive involvement in restorative justice can be largely traced back to her past experience of surviving a crime when she was a student from the University of Florida. Her professional and personal experiences make her a great person to tell what stage restorative justice has come to so far and why this alternative justice process matters in bringing to an end the crime and particularly the harm caused.
STAGES OF RESTORATIVE JUSTICE MEETINGS
1. How a Restorative Justice Facilitator Intervenes
As the Center for Justice and Reconciliation indicates, North America and Europe share a basic case management process which typically contains the four stages—case referral and intake, preparation for mediation, the mediation itself and follow up.
Speaking from her own experience, Gretchen usually chooses to ensure the defendant is on board at the early stage of organizing restorative justice meetings, regardless of whomever she receives the referrals from, a judge, a prosecutor, a victim, a defendant, or a defense attorney. Once the defendant is judged to be eligible, ready, and willing to admit the crime, address the accountability, and attempt to do some repairs, Gretchen will proceed to contacting the victim who is given an introduction to restorative justice and subsequently takes the time to inquire about concerns he or she may have over participating in the process.
One of the things Gretchen has to consider every time before the meetings is: is it safe? Part of that answer is figured out by talking to victims and offenders and seeing if they have strong will and want to do this. It is also very common for people to get increasingly nervous as the date gets closer, so they decide to quit—sometimes even prior to the meeting. That is why Gretchen considers “voluntary” to be a foundational principle that she will never talk people into getting involved.
There are a lot of circumstances that the person or the people who are the victim or the victim's family will want to consider before they say yes, no, or maybe (to attending restorative justice meetings). It depends on people's own values as they relate to if anything like this has ever happened to them before. I worked with people who have had family members who are in prison, and they feel that sending someone to prison is not the answer. It just creates another set of victims—the family members who would lose another family member. So they want the chance to confront this person (the offender).
Gretchen Casey
2. During a Restorative Justice Meeting
According to Gretchen, four overarching questions need to be addressed during a restorative justice meeting:
What happened?
What was the impact?
How can we repair the harm?
What can be done to prevent this from happening again?
The process is about hearing how the victim has been impacted and addressing the harm that the crime behavior has caused. “Why did you do this to me? Why and how did you pick me? I’ve only showed you kindness, so why did you turn around and then steal all my stuff? How could you do that? You know, I wondered if you had a drug problem,” Gretchen unhesitatingly recalled a few questions to which most victims were eager to seek answers during previous meetings she held. She also mentioned one potential advantage that can be attributed to the very private and intimate nature of restorative justice meetings—people are probably going to be much more likely to tell the truth when there is no police and prosecutor around adding extra pressure to the setting.
Restorative justice helps to figure out how people justify their behavior. The same results are not coming out of the criminal justice system, which is simply focused on the evidence and punishment. Restorative justice invites people to accept accountability and to explain why they thought they could get away with the crimes they committed. Gretchen says, "If we only rely on the criminal justice system, we are not going to have enough evidence in a case because a defendant will never take the stand and answer questions."
What restorative justice is offering is not a guarantee, but the means by which we can see if by facing each other and talking about what happened, what needs to be addressed in order to prevent this from happening again, the harm that came out of it, and the impact on relationships, the two parties most directly affected by a conflict are able to fix it. It turns out that the vast majority of people are very satisfied with this process, according to Gretchen.
3. The Evaluation Stage
Five questions are given to evaluate participants' feelings and degree of satisfaction throughout the meeting:
How comfortable did you feel being able to talk about what happened?
How important was it for you to have this process take place outside of a courtroom?
How satisfied were you with the amount of time that was provided to you to prepare and spend talking about this?
How well did you feel the facilitator met your needs for safety and preparation? How satisfied were you with this whole process?
Use three words to describe how you are feeling now at the end of this process.
"I think it has helped change the way I look at people. We are more than just the worst thing that we’ve done in our lives, and even people who've done horrible things can change. And this process for me has taught me that it is possible to repair something very tragic. But we haven't always given people the invitation or the opportunity to do that. So to be able to feel like I can fulfill that for others is very meaningful. For me, it has also meant that I have met such amazing people who are brave, people who are scared, people who are really willing to take a risk and sit across from the person this far apart from the person who harmed, from the person they harmed and face what they have done. I like giving people a safe chance to be able to do that."