Crime & forgiveness

"Was walking up to Charles Goodwin and saying what I did about forgiveness?" asks Cackler. "No. For me it was about survival and purely in my self interest. Forgiveness is not mine to give."

Mark Umbriet, director of the Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota, says, "There are people who have indicated that forgiving is tremendously helpful, because they stop allowing the offender to consume their energies and thoughts." But, he stresses, many victims can find meaning for themselves without totally forgiving. "Forgiveness can never be forced."

On an objective level, says Cackler, she is pleased Goodwin seems to have turned his life around. But on the other hand, it really does not matter to her. "All I wanted was to try to understand what was going through his mind at the time ... so it would not seem just a random act of total craziness," she says. "It really was not about him or seeing a new side of him."

"There is so much societal pressure to forgive. Priests tell you you have to let go and forgive, therapists say forgiveness is about self-growth," says Cackler. "But I don't think it's appropriate. Forgiveness is an abstract concept. But, in real life, some acts are irrevocable," she says. "That's the tragedy. That's where the offender and victim part ways. The offender's need for forgiveness will not change the act."

Seale stopped waiting for a reply letter from Mrs. Reso long ago, he says, and yet continues to be productive and helpful to other inmates in an effort to prove something to himself - if not to her. "If I didn't try and better myself," he reflects, "I would only be confirming the judgment that has been imposed on me - that I am worthless and irredeemable."

He has found his greatest satisfaction, he says, in helping other inmates through tutoring and mentoring programs. In his experience, he says, "most violent offenders lack empathy with their victims and don't care about forgiveness. I try and encourage them to think otherwise." The problem, for many is that they were never really a part of society, he says. "They were in a disturbed subculture of their own."

But, stresses Seale, "people can change. It can happen. It takes time and work and reinforcement, but we change through the decisions we make every day."

Why does an offender deserve to be helped, he is often asked. "Well, right now, about 95 percent of people in prison are going to be going home some day," he says. "If you don't do something to change them what was the purpose of sending them here in the first place?"

Forgiveness is an integral part of that process of change, he believes. How is it, he asks, that many people daily pray the Lord's Prayer - including "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" - and yet they do not see the possibility of extending forgiveness to someone like him?

Seale, and other offenders, might just have to live with these questions and the lack of closure, say the experts. Doerfler says he often recommends to offenders that they change their goals. "I tell them their whole aim is to be accountable," he says. "The issue of forgiveness, however they define it, will take care of itself."

Seale spends most of his days on his own: reading in his cell or writing in the library. On Saturdays he calls his mother. The birthday cards he sends his sister go unanswered. He does not know where his son is. His daughter, he thinks, is homeless in Denver. He has 24 hours of visiting time a month, but no one ever uses it.

"I wish for a different ending," he says. "But I can't write it."

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