Restorative Justice and the Sexual Abuse Scandal in the Catholic Church

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I want to begin by telling you how I got into the restorative justice field. I served as a judge for almost twenty years, and nine of those years were in criminal court. My last assignment before going to the Wisconsin Supreme Court was to preside full-time over sexual assault and homicide cases.

During the time I spent as a trial court judge, I regularly taught classes at prisons in Wisconsin. About ten years ago, I became involved in a restorative justice program in the Green Bay Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison. Since that time, I have been conducting an intensive three day restorative justice program a few times a year. I work with a lot of "lifers" and other serious felons - about forty men at a time - bringing in survivors of violent crimes, including a widow of a police officer killed in the line of duty, sexual assault survivors, and others.

My program also involves many community members, including politicians, students, religious leaders and business people. Before becoming involved in restorative justice, I was one of those judges that thought restorative justice was one of these crazy ideas which would only serve to revictimize victims. I was not interested in learning anything about it.