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7/17/22, 2:08 PM Can Restorative Justice Work in Domestic-Violence Cases? - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/domestic-violence-restorative-justice/408820/ 1/9

HEALTH

Abuser and Survivor, Face to Face

Can restorative justice, in which offenders talk with people who have been harmed by

their crime, work for domestic-violence cases? And who exactly does it bene�t?

By Leah Sottile

LoloStock / Shutterstock

OCTOBER 5, 2015

e cops only came once for Kimberly and Jason.

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7/17/22, 2:08 PM Can Restorative Justice Work in Domestic-Violence Cases? - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/domestic-violence-restorative-justice/408820/ 2/9

It was 2000, and Kimberly was 5 foot 2, 100 pounds, 20 years old, and pregnant. Her

husband Jason had gotten rough with her during an argument, one that was loud

enough for the neighbors to hear and scary enough to make them call the police.

When Jason pushed her, Kimberly pushed back, leaving long, red nail scratches down

his throat. e cops took one look at the marks and told Kimberly to get in the back

of the cruiser. Jason told them to take him instead.

e pair had met at a Baptist church in Portland, Oregon, when they were both in

high school. She was 15, he was 17. She needed a ride home one night after youth

group, and he had a car. ey were married at 18 and 20. eir �rst baby came a

couple of years later.

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Both grew up in conservative, religious homes. Both households were abusive, places

where slaps and shoves happened, but more often the abuse was psychological. “I

never saw what a marriage could be,” Kimberly says. Her husband didn’t, either.

is was the foundation on which Kimberly and Jason built their family.

No charges were �led that day in 2000. But nine years into her marriage and three

children later, Kimberly sought counseling for depression. During one session, her

therapist asked her if she had experienced domestic abuse, a term she had never

thought to apply to her own marriage. Kimberly says the moment was eye-opening. “I

didn’t know what I didn’t know.”

7/17/22, 2:08 PM Can Restorative Justice Work in Domestic-Violence Cases? - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/domestic-violence-restorative-justice/408820/ 3/9

Over the past six years, Kimberly and Jason have undergone counseling, separated,

made amends, separated again and come back together again. After their �rst

separation, Kimberly changed dramatically from the demure wife she once was.

“Suddenly you’re not under a thumb anymore,” she says. “I got very loud.”

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Loud meant Kimberly drew hard lines in her marriage: Jason could come home, but

he could only sleep on the couch. Kimberly, meanwhile, began taking classes designed

to help domestic-violence survivors heal from the abuse. And in 2011, she started

telling her story to people she never thought would listen: men who’d abused their

partners.

Her therapist asked her if she had experienced domestic abuse. e moment was eye-opening.

rough her classes, Kimberly learned of and was eventually asked to speak on a panel

for Domestic Violence Safe Dialogue (DVSD), a Portland nonpro�t with a mission of

allowing survivors to “speak to domestic violence offenders honestly” about their

experiences. DVSD hosts Survivor Impact Panels (SIP) through two Portland-area

counties. Survivors speak to a crowd of offenders at least 26 weeks into court-ordered

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7/17/22, 2:08 PM Can Restorative Justice Work in Domestic-Violence Cases? - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/domestic-violence-restorative-justice/408820/ 4/9

therapy, discussing how domestic violence affected their lives. (ey don’t know the

offenders in the audience.) e men listen, then ask questions.

DVSD was founded in 2000 by Carrie Outhier Banks, a former domestic-violence-

shelter worker with a Ph.D. in con�ict analysis. e organization applies restorative

justice to situations of intimate-partner violence—an idea that came to her after years

hearing the women in the shelters wonder if they were at fault for their abuse. “You

just keeping hearing over and over ,‘I wish I could understand,’” she says.

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Restorative justice—a term popularized by criminologists in the 1990s— is a victim-

centered, dialogue-based practice that attempts to repair the harm caused by crimes. It

can be run by the criminal-justice system or outside organizations, and is often used

in property crimes—broken fences, stolen goods. But recently, it’s trickled into other,

bigger arenas. In 2013, e New York Times reported on a murder case in which the

parents of a young woman who was killed by her boyfriend used restorative-justice

tactics to weigh in on sentencing, in conjunction with the boyfriend and the

prosecutor.

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7/17/22, 2:08 PM Can Restorative Justice Work in Domestic-Violence Cases? - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/domestic-violence-restorative-justice/408820/ 5/9

In the context of partner violence, though, the concept is still a controversial one.

Banks recalls the day she �rst proposed her idea at a national domestic-violence

conference in 2000: Why not bring together a survivor and an offender, neither of

whom knows the other, and let them have a dialogue?

e idea wasn’t a popular one. “e criticism at the time was survivors aren’t strong

enough,” Banks says. “[People said,] ‘How dare you? You’re going to re-victimize

them.’”

“I was told to leave the conference,” she adds. “I was stunned.”

Banks wasn’t the �rst to apply restorative justice to domestic abuse—and she’s also not

the �rst to come under �re for it. When the criminologist John Braithwaite co-wrote

a paper on the idea 20 years ago, he says, it was “extremely controversial.”

at it’s still controversial today is puzzling to him, Braithwaite says, because it works.

“RJ can reduce reoffending by violent offenders by as much as 40 percent in some

studies,” he says. And if victims, too, are bene�tting, “it does not make much sense to

have the view that RJ should never be considered for violence against women,”

Braithwaite says.

In 2013, the neuroscientist Daniel Reisel gave a TED Talk arguing that restorative

justice is far more effective in rehabilitating offenders than incarceration. “e more

Quit Lying to Yourself

ARTHUR C. BROOKS

When Your Friends Fall off the Edge of the Earth

KELLY WEILL

7/17/22, 2:08 PM Can Restorative Justice Work in Domestic-Violence Cases? - The Atlantic

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stress, the less brain development,” he says, pointing out that an offender’s amygdala,

the part of the human brain responsible for empathy, can grow when he understands

the impact of his actions. Jail doesn’t do that. “It is ironic that our current solution for

people with stressed amygdalae is to place them in an environment that actually

inhibits any chance of further growth,” he said.

But restorative justice does. “e perpetrator can see, perhaps for the �rst time, the

victim as a real person with thoughts and feelings and a genuine emotional response,”

Reisel says. “And [that] may be a more effective rehabilitative practice than simple

incarceration.”

“For the �rst time, the perpetrator can see the victim as a real person.”

Banks, alongside the DVSD program director Matt Johnston, continues to petition

local governments to implement their programs. ey’ve also asked universities and

corporations to host survivor-impact panels in hopes that the more people that hear

the stories of survivors, the more people can recognize abusive behavior in their own

lives. DVSD also facilitates one-one-one dialogues, where abused women have a

supervised discussion with a man who has battered his partner.

Banks ignores critics who say her program would be too traumatic for survivors.

“ese are people who have gotten up and lived through abuse every single day,” she

says. “ey’re strong.”

* * *

Restorative justice is hardly a one-size-�ts-all approach.

7/17/22, 2:08 PM Can Restorative Justice Work in Domestic-Violence Cases? - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/domestic-violence-restorative-justice/408820/ 7/9

Emily Gaarder, a sociologist based in Duluth, Minnesota, works with Domestic

Violence Restorative Circles (DVRC), an offshoot program of the larger violence-

prevention nonpro�t called Men as Peacemakers. Gaarder says her program

concentrates on men who are “repeat, serious offenders,” and takes on 10 cases each

year. She says that her organization discussed the idea of restorative justice for four

years before implementing it in their work. “You couldn’t just take the basic

restorative-justice model and plop it on domestic violence,” she says. “e dynamic of

intimate partner abuse is very different from a one-time incident.”

As her group was starting in the early 2000s, Gaarder says the American criminal-

justice system was still coming around to the idea that violence between partners was

actually a crime. e �rst Violence Against Women Act was signed into law in 1994.

At the time, Gaarder says, some of her colleagues worried that restorative justice could

make a situation worse for an abused woman. But ultimately, they decided, trying

something and potentially failing was better than doing nothing to �x a problem.

“‘She’s already not safe,’” Gaarder recalls one of her colleagues saying. “I found that

really profound. And it said something about how powerless so many of us feel in

order to stop [abuse].”

Some proponents of restorative justice believe it offers abused women an option that

traditional law-enforcement techniques don’t. Mimi Kim has worked in women’s

shelters across America, and in 2004 founded Creative Interventions, a San Francisco-

based restorative-justice program, after becoming “ increasingly dissatis�ed with the

limitations of our response,” particularly a reliance on policing as the primary means

of combating domestic violence, she says.

“is is a part of a larger movement led by people of color really demanding that we

have a different response to gendered violence that isn’t so reliant on criminal justice,”

she says. Although research has shown that African American women suffer

disproportionately high rates of domestic violence, Kim explains, current movements

like Black Lives Matter illustrate a lack of trust between communities of color and the

police who are supposed to protect them. Restorative justice, she says, could provide

another way.

7/17/22, 2:08 PM Can Restorative Justice Work in Domestic-Violence Cases? - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/domestic-violence-restorative-justice/408820/ 8/9

Other proponents of restorative justice say it offers an alternative to the unilateral

notion that a woman in an abusive relationship should always leave her partner, and

that she’s at fault if she doesn’t. Sujatha Baliga, a former public defender and director

of the Restorative Justice Project at Impact Justice, points to cases where abused

women have had their children taken away: “We effectively replicated the violence of

the batterer with the violence of the state.”

Believing abusers are incapable of change and throwing them behind bars won’t solve

the issue either, Baliga argues—it “ignores the fact that people do things not because

they are bad.” Transgenerational trauma—like what Kimberly and Jason saw growing

up— isn’t �xed by jail time.

* * *

“My husband is not a bad man,” Kimberly says.

It’s been six years since she recognized the abuse in their relationship—six years that

have, maybe, been harder than the years before. eir most recent separation lasted

seven months, ending when they reconciled this past July. ey’re both in counseling.

ey’ve both changed. “I don’t think it’s a miracle story,” she says. “It’s not been super

consistent and super happy. It’s been really, really difficult.”

But Kimberly’s story is an anomaly, in some ways. She and Jason are still married. It’s

hard to raise three kids alone. “I’m not sure about the longevity of it. at’s something

we’re trying to �gure out right now.”

Since 2011, Kimberly has spoken at least six times a year at DVSD survivor panels.

Sometimes, she says, she sobs through the entire thing.

“My husband is not a bad man.”

7/17/22, 2:08 PM Can Restorative Justice Work in Domestic-Violence Cases? - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/domestic-violence-restorative-justice/408820/ 9/9

But in late August, her face was hard as she sat onstage with two other survivors,

waiting to tell her story to an audience of two dozen men—young and old, some in

tucked-in shirts, some in cargo shorts and camou�age hats.

Before the panel discussion began, Johnston explained the ground rules: e three

women would speak, and at the end the men could ask questions. “Has everybody

learned in group what victim-blaming questions are?”

e room was silent. Johnston looked around the room nervously. “I’ll give an

example: What did you do to provoke it?” he said.

e men nodded.

Kimberly’s story came last. When she was �nished talking, a man in the audience

raised his hand.

“Is there any ownership you want to take for your side? For your part?” he said.

Johnston sat upright. e women on the panel were silent.

“Any times where you didn’t respond the right way?” the man clari�ed.

Johnston made a gesture toward the women, “Do you want me to…” he started to say

before Kimberly shook her head.

She paused and looked at the man, eyes �xed on him. She took a deep breath.

And when Kimberly did speak—articulately, patiently, directly—it came out strong.

e man still seemed confused, but before he could say more, another man raised his

hand.

“I just wanted to say thank you to you ladies,” he said, “for sharing your stories with

us.”