In an anonymous office on a business park in Warrington, two mothers met last week for the first time. Esther Ghey and Emma Sutton sat down together for what one restorative justice expert called the most “extraordinarily unusual” meeting he had heard of in 30 years.
Ghey’s 16-year-old daughter, Brianna, was murdered in a Warrington park last year by two teenagers, one of whom she thought was her friend. That friend was Scarlett Jenkinson, Sutton’s daughter, the “driving force” behind planning and executing the “exceptionally brutal” stabbing.
Within 48 hours of Jenkinson being sentenced to a minimum of 22 years in prison last month, Ghey told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that she was open to meeting Sutton, saying: “I don’t blame her for what her child has done.”
Last week, it happened. There were no professional mediators present, just Tom Bedworth, a former journalist from the Warrington Guardian who had worked with Ghey on her Peace in Mind campaign, and Sutton’s brother, Rob.
“It was a positive and respectful meeting,” Ghey said afterwards. She said they discussed “the challenges of parenting” and that she would be willing to campaign with Sutton on the dangers of mobile phones for children.
Prof Lawrence Sherman, one of the world’s leading experts in restorative justice, said the meeting between Ghey and Sutton was “extraordinarily unusual”. He said: “I’ve never heard of anything like that before. In 30 years, I have never heard a victim or survivor of crime offering through the media to have a meeting – and for that offer to be accepted so quickly. The fact they may even partner on these issues is even more remarkable.”
If anyone can come close to understanding how Ghey might have felt in that meeting, it is Jo Berry. Her father, Anthony Berry MP, was killed in the IRA Brighton bombing during the 1984 Tory party conference, when she was 27. In November 2000 she set up a secret meeting in Dublin with Patrick Magee, the former IRA activist who planted the bomb.
Magee – described by his trial judge as “a man of exceptional cruelty and inhumanity” – had been sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment but was released under the Good Friday agreement after 13 years.
When Berry and Magee met, he was still “the most demonised terrorist we had” and so she did not tell any of her friends and family where she was going. “I didn’t meet him for an apology. I didn’t meet him to change him. I just met him to see him as a human being,” she said.
Magee began on the defensive. “He was quite political, defending his position. But I thought, I’m here now, I might as well tell him a bit about my dad and tell him about the impact on me,” she said.
Then something switched: “He started seeing my dad as a human being for the first time. He changed. There was a tangible moment when his voice changed, his words changed, and so I stayed. This was more powerful than I could imagine. It was a much more restorative conversation, with him wanting to hear about my pain and my anger. He said he was disarmed by my empathy.”
When Magee planted the bomb, he “dehumanised” his target, said Berry. “That’s often what happens when people use violence, they don’t see the humanity of the person, which is what allows them to do it. What often happens with restorative justice is that it rehumanises each side.”
Both Berry and Magee’s lives changed indelibly that day and they began campaigning together on conflict resolution. She now works as a restorative justice practitioner and has facilitated dozens of conversations between victims and perpetrators, in the UK and abroad in countries including Cyprus and Kosovo.
From 2001 to 2006 Sherman and fellow researcher Heather Strang carried out a series of restorative justice experiments in the UK, focusing particularly on the crimes of burglary and robbery, and found “very strong benefits of reduced repeat offending and reduced post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Those who took part slept better, found it easier to return to work and ultimately will probably live longer, said Sherman. “People who suffer post-traumatic stress symptoms, whether that’s crime victims or combat veterans, have reduced life expectancy due to cardiovascular disease. We have demonstrated in our clinical trial that we can reduce post-traumatic stress, so it’s not too far a leap to say that [restorative justice] should be able to reduce mortality.”
He said a study in Canberra, Australia, found that the death rate for suicide among young violent offenders “who were prosecuted rather than being randomly assigned to restorative justice was 10% by 15 years later, compared with zero among those who did receive restorative justice by random assignment.”
While contrition is essential for restorative justice, forgiveness is “not at all important” in the process, said Berry. “An awful lot of our victims say: ‘I don’t forgive them. But I was really glad to have their apology’,” said Sherman.
Of course not all victims want to meet those responsible for their pain, said Kenny Donaldson, the director of South East Fermanagh Foundation, which supports more than 3,500 individual victims and survivors affected by terrorism and other Troubles-related criminal violence.
Only in “the very rarest of circumstances”, such as Berry and Magee, “have the innocents of Troubles-related violence made arrangements to meet with the perpetrators of the violence perpetrated against them and/or their loved ones,” he said.
For such meetings to take place, certain conditions must be in place, he said, notably “willingness on the part of the perpetrator to confirm that they accept the actions they committed were wrong and unjustified irrespective of grievances they may have felt, whether perceived or real”.
An apology is not enough, he added. “What is required is the recognition and acknowledgment from perpetrators that there was no justification for their actions, taken in many cases against their very own neighbours.”
