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"It's become one of the Forgiveness Project's core principles that there will never be a victim talking without the voice of the perpetrator being heard as well."
I've been a freelance journalist since my late twenties. I like talking to people. People often say they like talking to me. I don't know why. I just want to know more.
In the past, the jobs I enjoyed most were writing about non-governmental organisations such as Oxfam and the Red Cross in Rwanda and South Africa. But I became increasingly frustrated by the kind of journalistic demands that said 'find three women who've been jilted at the altar by Monday; and make sure you know what colour underwear they were wearing.'
During this time, I met a photographer called Brian Moody, who helped me create an exhibition on mental health called 'One in Four.' The format of first-person interviews alongside strong portraits worked really well. The exhibition was a great success and I wanted to do it again.
Stories of forgiveness had always intrigued me, so Brian and I set about creating a new exhibition using the same format. That's how the Forgiveness Project came into being.
People like to tell their stories — they want others to understand what has happened to them — so I never feel I'm prising information out of them, or that it's difficult for them to talk. And most don't get emotional. They tell it word for word, as if they have learnt it as a way of making the telling easier for themselves.
But the one person I found unbearably moving was Denise Green. Her baby son had his organs removed by doctors at Alder Hey hospital after his death from a routine operation.
I cried throughout the interview, especially when she described taking him to the operating theatre. He was screaming 'No!' and begging her not to leave him. She tried to get out of the operating theatre, but because of his distress, she had to hold him down while they gave him the anaesthetic.
She was also tearful but very composed. When I apologised for being unprofessional, she said, 'No, it's really nice that you've shown emotion. So many journalists don't show any emotion; they don't seem to care.'
I can't really explain my reaction to this particular story because I've heard some terrible, terrible stories. People have told me about the most appalling things — and actually, as a story in the exhibition it's not the one that grabs me the most by any means.
But I think it's to do with the fact this mother seemed to hold herself partly responsible for her son's death. He didn't need the operation; it was recommended by the doctors but it wasn't a life-saving situation. However, it ended in his death and she obviously had to give consent, as parents do.
It may also have had such a profound impact on me because my brother died quite early on, and I too have a young son of my own.
Another terrible story for me was hearing about a seventeen-year-old girl who was looking after her two-year-old half-brother. The child fell into water, virtually drowned and ended up on a life-support machine. How will that girl — that seventeen-year-old girl - ever forgive herself?
We all know appalling things happen — violence and cruelty. But a lot of people rally in extraordinary ways. They become obsessed and passionate about it. But then, it's their way of grieving; their way of coping. So hearing these stories, and writing about people coming to terms with dreadful tragedy actually gives me faith in human nature.
I do believe in redemption. I'm not a Christian but I think it's a good word. If there's any sort of hope that the crime can be understood — if not forgiven then at least understood — to me, that's very hopeful.
I have recently added a new story to the Exhibition that reflects just this. It's about Andrew Rice whose brother was killed in the 9/11 attacks. He's formed a group called 'Peaceful Tomorrows,' and was talking to me about his desire to reconcile. Reconciliation to him is finding a way to understand why young men might want to want to be suicide bombers.
It's not forgiving what they did, but it's making sense of the motives and the reasons that drove them to do it. He actually had a meeting with the mother of the alleged 20th hijacker who's in prison in America.
I was brought up a Catholic but hardly believed a word of it. Now I would call myself a reluctant Buddhist. Spiritual belief doesn't come naturally to me, but I strive. I strive to have a faith in something.
I don't think my Buddhist faith particularly helps me in my work, but I do believe it has influenced the theme of exhibition. It's about not just tolerating difference but about treasuring differences so we can understand why people might behave in a way that we wouldn't. I see no disparity, really, between 'those who are done by,' and 'those who do.' I just think that they've had different lives that pushed them into different corners.
So it's become one of the Forgiveness Project's core principles that there will never be a victim talking without the voice of the perpetrator being heard as well. Actually, I don't like using the word 'victim.' I prefer thinking of someone who has experienced violence as opposed to someone who's been responsible for violence. They're two different things and sometimes the one who has been responsible for violence has probably experienced it as well.
I believe the Forgiveness Project is important because it's hard to get someone who has admitted to violence and killing to talk about the process they've gone through since, what led them to do it in the first place, and why they want to work in this way to make sense of it all.
In 80% of mediation work in the UK, the perpetrator and the victim never actually meet face to face. So to get two people willing to meet is very rare. In the exhibition I found a few of these rare examples — for instance with a mother and two of the men who were convicted of killing her daughter in South Africa, and with a former IRA man in Northern Ireland and the daughter of the British politician he killed in the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
Solzhenitsyn said that good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. I really do believe that. Linda Biehl said exactly the same when her daughter Amy, an American Fulbright student, was murdered by a gang in a South African township. Linda feels that had she grown up in a black township, she could have ended up empathising with this way of life too. Linda set up the Amy Biehl Foundation to address local community needs as a result.
I went out to South Africa on the 10th year anniversary of Amy's death to interview two of the men who had been convicted of her murder. No-one knows exactly what part they played it in, but they both now work for the Foundation, and were at the offices watching a television documentary to mark the death of Amy. But neither of them was willing to talk to me afterwards because they were so upset by the programme. The programme had called them 'Amy's killers' — and they didn't like it.
They're longing to get away from their history. Yet the fact that they work for the Amy Biehl Foundation means that people like me come and interview them. I thought they were quite troubled characters and that Linda had done an amazing thing to employ them. It can't be easy for her — or for them.
Jo Berry's father was killed in the Brighton bombing. Pat Magee was one of the convicted IRA bombers. They are not really at ease with each other. When they do television interviews, Pat gets a hard time because he still stands by his actions.
Although he's very sorry that people had to lose their lives, he said that at the time he was part of the armed struggle which he believed in — and that obviously creates tension.
But, I think it's easier for me. I'm not trying to trip them up. I'm only trying to understand, so I am supportive of what they are doing and therefore, there has never been any tension when I have been with them.
Our exhibition on Forgiveness is definitely serving something. I think it's tapped into a deep underlying feeling that there's an alternative to the violence and the disengagement that's all around us. It's also a living testimony and proof that people want to at least try and come to terms with what has happened to their lives.
We've now got some funding to work on a prisons and educational programme — and we're going to run a pilot workshop called 'Healing and Memories'. So my whole day, every minute of my day — sometimes I get up at four-thirty just to deal with my emails — is taken up with administration.
I think it's good working with a photographer who is a friend. We always talk about everything we've done. In fact our friendship has been absolutely unique to this because we did it for nothing. We literally took a leap of faith. It's paid off. The exhibition is now touring. I took it to South Africa in April, and it's been requested in Australia, The Netherlands and Ireland.
Many of the participants, both persecutors and victims, came to the opening in January in London, and said they found it a very healing experience to be together for two days. It proved to me that everybody who's a perpetrator is, in some way, on a journey to understanding what brought them to do what they did. They want to understand.
www.theforgivenessproject.com
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