What I think transformative justice looks like
At the heart of radical healing and forgiveness needs to be the steps to actually aid people and communities in healing from violence and actively seeing perpetrators held accountable and changed for the goal of ending trauma and abuse.
It is a lonely thing to be a victim or survivor of abuse and trauma.
Community at large does not yet know how to deal or answer to accusations and instances of violence without using the state or police to solve it. Community at large also does not yet know what “abuse” actually means or is, who abuses, why, and what victims/survivors go through when they are abused and what they need to heal and grow.
These are all things I have grappled with in silence, but I don’t wish to do that anymore. My whole life I have had to teach people how to hold space for me and other victims/survivors and that hurts, but if I can help victims/survivors, I’ll keep on doing it.
In the following I will be naming inter-personal communal level abuse culture and how to challenge it through the communal alternatives to mass incarceration and the police state, transformative justice. I don’t mean this to be exhaustive and hope to learn and grow an add to this as people talk and engage and as I learn and grow and come to more deeply understand abuse culture and transformative justice myself.
Transformative justice is the radical response to the state, which operates under the framework of abuse culture.
As a violator, abuser or perpetrator (VAP) of harm or violence, your growth as a human being is not the priority. If you have hurt someone, the transformative justice process does not center you, rather it centers the abuse you have perpetrated and the need to end it. Your journey as a human in general is not the main priority. The people you violated and the need to end violence are the priority. Transformative justice must center victims and survivors and their trauma, healing, growth and humanity, as majority culture, abuse culture, already privileges and centers those of abusers’.
The first priority with VAPs is expose them, stop their abuse and to restrict their access to those they have harmed or could harm or avenues/community spaces/tools of abuse or manipulation to zero. Until that has been completed, it is the only priority. Skipping to the other parts of the process is abuse culture.
Believing that people are not disposable and prisons do not work does not mean that VAPs cannot yet experience levels or degrees of being separated from communities or people they have assaulted, abused, hurt, violated or otherwise been unsafe in. Prisons might not be the solution but letting abusers have free access to community while those they abuse stay home, afraid of being targeted, bullied, mocked, triggered or re-traumatized isn’t right either. Believing that VAPs can be changed does not mean that they will or have. Until VAPs have actually changed, they should not regain access to the communities or positions they have had prior again.
VAPs do not act or work alone in a vacuum. A community that informs, breeds, shapes, teaches, hides, excuses, permits, enables, esteems, apologizes for or turns their back on VAPs and abuse are complicit and are part of the abuse, victimization and trauma that victims/survivors experience.
All the shit that comes from your actions as a VAP (social ostracization or isolation, loss of friends or social/economic opportunities, shame, etc) are your fault and the result of your behavior. If you regret or wish for those repercussions to end, you should find a way to create a time machine and to never have caused them to happen in the first place by abusing. To say that victims/survivors are in any way responsible for the repercussions of your actions and it is up to them to “stop” it for you as a VAP is abuse culture.
Not all abuse looks the same. Abuse can be emotional, spiritual, physical, mental, sexual, social, economic, academic, financial, the list goes on. It can be perpetrated by anyone against anyone within any dynamic. Saying that abuse is all intimate partner violence or leaves bruises or in any way restricting what abuse and trauma is or looks like is dangerous and perpetuates abuse culture.
VAPs can look like and be anyone. They can have social standing, be “nice” or good people, can be social justice advocates. It doesn’t matter: if anything, having social power or authority over people gives more space for people to potentially abuse and get away with it. Charisma, intelligence, social cache, esteem, good looks, or social standing does not mean someone cannot be a VAP. To use the background or identity of the VAP to dismiss accusations or instances of abuse and violence is abuse culture.
Victims/survivors can be and look like anyone. They can be any gender, of any age, of any background, of any financial status. They can be mean or difficult or not respond or engage how you “think they should”. The “Perfect Victim” is an exclusive dangerous myth that crosses and excludes victims/survivors across lines of race, gender, sexuality, mental health status, legal status, and much more. To police victims/survivors in this way is abuse culture.
Victims/survivors do not have to be part of the confrontation/accountability/transformation process of the VAP for it to happen or for it to be valid. If a victim/survivor wants nothing to do with the VAP and does not care for their growth from their behavior, that does not mean the process should be stopped or make the trauma they went through less real or make them bitter or a bad person. Demanding and requiring victims/survivors forgive or be a part of the confrontation/accountability/transformation process can be violating, trigger and is abuse culture.
Victims/survivors all react to and handle trauma and abuse differently. Policing how victims/survivors react or engage the reality of their trauma or experiences and using that to belittle their abuse is abuse culture. A victim/survivor has the right to call the police, or not.
If you have not created or given them access to a stable and reliable system of transformative justice, you cannot demand victims/survivors not call the police. Even if you have given them alternatives, you must still hold space for how people have been taught to rely on the state to protect themselves. Dismissing, bullying, talking down to victims/survivors who call in on the state or otherwise enabling a culture of being “against snitches” is abuse culture.
If there are multiple victims/survivors, they each have a right to name and define their experiences uniquely, determine what they want to see in regards to their healing/growth and what happens to their VAP, and how they feel about the person/situation/aftermath. Journeys through abuse are all different for various reasons due to things like race, gender, class/ability, trauma, level of abuse, personality, etc, there is no “one size fits all” of experiences or responses. One victim/survivor could be “over it” and have forgiven the VAP, but that does not mean others victimized must. One victim/survivor cannot name or demand others’ journey or responses or trauma look like theirs. Weaponizing the forgiveness from one victim/survivor to intimidate, shame, or push others is abuse culture.
If you as a VAP haven’t acknowledged your role in hurt, you cannot be asked to be absolved from the aftermath of your behavior. If the people you hurt are not “over it”, VAPs don’t have a right to be “over it”. If the demons of your actions haunt and traumatize your victims, they should haunt and traumatize you.
If victims/survivors have not yet fully named, voiced, detailed and processed the harms that have been done and their repercussions, VAPs and the community at large cannot ask for them to cease speaking on them, much less for them to be forgotten. Trauma and violence can go deep. People should be allowed any and all space to name it and talk about it as much and as long as they need to to process it and to let people know how deeply it has affected them, and in what ways.
Abuses and trauma should never be forgotten. Even as we believe in trying to heal and build and transform and move past trauma and hurt, that does not mean that the abuse never happened or that it does not define or change a person or a community. They should be remembered so that hurt can always be acknowledged and so that the community can learn how to build and grow and respond to it ever occurring again. Remembering prevents re-traumatization and violence. Demanding trauma or abuse be forgotten is abuse culture.
Victims/survivors, and not their friends or families are what must be centered. While many victim/survivors have friends and families who support and believe them, many more unfortunately don’t. Victims/survivors can often have unsupportive, abusive or enabling people around them. Victims/survivors often have friends or family who are friends or in relationships with their VAP(s) or who excuse, forgive, or do not acknowledge the abuse or trauma. To unilaterally esteem the friends and families’ feelings, relationships and opinions on their trauma or their VAPs above that of the actual victim/survivor is abuse culture.
Financial reparations/restitution to victims/survivors must be provided when they are appropriate. Communities that believe in transformative justice should support and provide victims/survivors the financial/social/communal support they require or need to heal, get medical/psychiatric help, take care of, provide and house themselves and their families.
Communities that believe in transformative justice must bring VAPs to justice and keep them to a pre-agreed transformation/accountability process which may include social or financial reparations, community service, therapy/training, etc. The role especially for people that still yet care for or love VAPs is to use that bond to hold them accountable, to bring them to justice and to stand firm in reminding them how they have hurt and abused and their need to make amends and reparations for it.
You can be a victim/survivor of abuse and experience trauma and still become or be a VAP. Abuse culture is practiced and learned by all. Trauma and abuse can perpetuate abuse and trauma. Being a victim/survivor does not mean you cannot victimize/abuse others. Being marginalized does not mean you cannot abuse someone who has social power above you.
If VAPs haven’t asked for forgiveness yet, they cannot be forgiven. If VAPs haven’t made amends, they cannot ask for bygones to be bygones. If space and time hasn’t been given to heal wounds, VAPs and the community cannot wonder why people still lick them.
Most importantly to everyone is that victims and survivors should not carry the burdens of abuse culture on their own. We must create and invest in systems of transformative justice because as it stands, the state does not respond to or end abuse culture and neither do we, so that leaves victims and survivors isolated and with no tools and recourse. They deserve better. We can do better.
