Reframing Restorative Approaches to Harm

The current approaches to harm according to the philosophical framework of Restorative Justice (RJ) provides us with the origins rooted in indigenous practices and principles where relationships are the foundation -building community and repairing harm as much as possible when a community member is harmed. In addition to the aforementioned, RJ provides a set of guiding questions when engaging in a restorative conference process where all parties involved meet one on one to discuss the issue and work towards an agreement to move towards healing (Davis, 2019; Zehr, 2005). My interest centers on these guiding questions. 

As a practitioner in this work, I explored the discomfort experienced in what it would feel like if I posed these same set of questions to persons who experience sexual or domestic violence harm. Based on my observations, process recordings, and listening to understand, I quickly realized that my intuition was correct. It is not helpful to standardize these questions as the model for a pre-conference interview with persons who are harmed. Therefore, I invite you to sit with me and center these guiding questions from the seat of critical compassionate inquiry. Let us begin with asking, how can we reframe restorative approaches to harm?

It was during the pandemic that I began to explore the discomfort experienced with the standard questions. While covid made its unpleasant presence unknown, the time alone helped me to deepen my reflexivity practice and it was one of the best decisions I made for myself. I had options. The first option was to “shake it off” and act as if nothing was coming up for me as memories and feelings emerged. My second option was to lean into the uncomfortability and explore this indescribable knowing that my findings were larger than me. There I was face to face with myself and with compassion I immersed myself into a space of unknowing to a place I could not exit. I cared enough for all of the intricate parts of me, so when the unspoken thing came to the surface. I stopped and listened to my heart. What brought me to that moment was an email that landed in my inbox asking the community to share one thing that’s bringing them hope amidst the darkness. I believed that God was guiding me on this exploration of self.  When I sat with that prompt to share, it came to me, my one thing was the belief that change will come (Khidekel, 2020). My response was to accept the totality of who I am as a woman, daughter, sister, mother, grandmother, wife who is a survivor of sexual harm, domestic violence and child sexual abuse. I released the limiting belief that certain parts of me were worthy of seeing. There I was listening during this excavation of the inner me and completed my reply to the prompt in Thrive Global. My heart beats with the hope that I can move mindsets from a place of defensiveness to one of understanding, conviction, and compassionate action. This hope in my heart is in believing that change will come, and I avail myself to be a conduit for one way in which it arrives.” (Khidekel, 2020)

My heart, positionality and compassion affirmed to me to go back and review the questions, it was my Sankofa moment. There were some things that I left behind indeed, and I had to go back and pick up the pieces representing dignity and worth. Sitting with a potential client, I decided it was time to show up fully as me. So I brought my survivor status into my work. I learned to listen and understand which was at work within. The survivor allowed me to remember how it felt without getting lost. Having that status allowed me to show up and share my journey of why I facilitate spaces that cultivate healing. As I listened to the new client and the next client, they all said the same thing, going through a title Ix process is helpful. Most outright stated that it was awful and they wished they had the option to choose a restorative process instead. It got me to thinking more deeply as I leaned into the survivor part of me and I asked while sharing the screen with the restorative questions on it, do any of these make you uncomfortable, share with me which ones and I won’t ask them. Matter of fact, I continued, let me reframe it, can you share in a way that makes you feel safe? It landed. She exhaled and inhaled until she could be discrete because the impact was noticeable in how she responded to me. I said great. We worked through the pains and pauses as she journeyed on because healing is like learning and we do it everyday. 

My heart acted on the need to examine the guiding questions, and as I acknowledged my historical context as a survivor, new questions emerged. However, this is still my Sankofa moment, so I invite you to return with me. Before we can acknowledge what is new, there is an accountability for assessing one’s inner capacity at the root. One of the most notable scholars in the Restorative Justice field is Howard Zehr, and he proposed the following guiding questions to use in a restorative process.

• What happened? 

• What were you thinking of at the time? 

• What have you thought about since? 

• Who has been impacted? 

• Who else was impacted? 

• What do you think needs to happen to make things right? 

Another iteration of these guiding questions are shared on the IIRP (International Institute for Restorative Practices) News webpage and there are two separate sets of questions (White). 

When challenging behavior: To help those affected:

What happened?	What did you think when you realized what had happened?
What were you thinking of at the time?	What impact has this incident had on you and others?
What have you thought about since?	What has been the hardest thing for you?
Who has been affected by what you have done?	What do you think needs to happen to make things right?
In what way have they been affected?
What do you think you need to do to make things right?

Interrogating the text was a painfully right thing to do. I understand how that might sound. What I mean is that in doing what is right and making the right choice, I subjected myself to holding space for whatever may have surfaced, be it pain or pleasure the choice was not mine. It was mostly painful to move inward intentionally to experience what those questions sound like from a critical view and what it felt like from a survivor’s perspective. In the first set of questions posed by (Zehr, 2005), it sounded like a culture of bombardment, a barrage of questions feeling as if it is trying to determine a person’s credibility or weighing one’s worthiness. However, from an everyday experiential view and addressing minor wrongdoing, the questions seems to guide the responder in case they become derailed, or overwhelmed with sharing their narrative. 

When reviewing the restorative questions found on the IIRP website, they too had a familiar sound and feel. There is an assumption that stood out to me with the language to help those affected. Not everyone views themself in that way. Sometimes, they speak up because they know the behavior must not continue to cause harm. I had to twist and turn internally and go deep to remind myself how I was once a perpetrator of physical harm. Yes, I am being transparent with you because stigma holds an unrecognized authority over those impacted. Stigma silences, and unfortunately have suffocated folks where they chose to remain silent. In acknowledging that I once caused harm, it emboldened me to view the questions from the person responsible and it sounded like someone whose car I tapped jumped out and ran over to me yelling asking me What happened? What were you thinking about? Dude, do you think you could have hurt someone else? How do you want to handle this, I can call the cops or work directly with you, and the choice is yours. So this line of questioning felt like being groomed to engage the police.

This is not an attempt to minimize the value of the above guiding restorative questions. It is an invitation extended to whomever will come and sit with me as I reflect on these questions. Something that I learned on this doctoral journey and often refer back to is that people are tied to their truth as if it’s the truth for the entire world, so when they are faced with another's truth, they feel like worlds are colliding. It's not a collision of worlds. Rather it's an invitation to explore each other's world. 

Based on feedback from survivors of campus sexual assault and in various settings, I began to ask the questions below using a likert scale to listen more deeply and follow their lead.

On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest).

• What is your level of safety?

• How are you physically?

• Where are you emotionally?

• Share your level of support?

Reframing the way I viewed my past experiences allowed me to speak back to the text, trust my instinct to change the questions in real time and wait for feedback. 

References:

Khidekel, M. (2020, June 3). Small but powerful things that are bringing US hope right now. Thrive Global. Retrieved March 1, 2022, from https://thriveglobal.com/stories/small-things-bringing-hope-speaking-up-injustice/ 

White, W. by S. (n.d.). Time to think: Using restorative questions: News. IIRP. Retrieved March 1, 2022, from https://www.iirp.edu/news/time-to-think-using-restorative-questions 

Post-traumatic stress disorder. RAINN. (n.d.). Retrieved March 1, 2022, from https://www.rainn.org/articles/post-traumatic-stress-disorder