Integral to sexual abuse survivors’ healing is understanding the nature of their abuse. Drawing on interviews, this book gives a voice to survivors and illuminates how restorative justice processes can meet their justice needs. With a unique focus on the people around the survivor rather than on the abuser, it addresses the harm caused to survivors by those who enable their abuse, who fail to protect them, or fail to believe them. Marinari offers radical solutions for the development of restorative justice programs and policy initiatives, including practical guidelines for practitioners, and new directions for academic research.

Sexual violence, in all its forms, is a crime for which anecdotal accounts and scholarly reports suggest victims in their great majority do not receive adequate ‘justice’ or redress. The theory and practice of restorative justice is rapidly developing and offers some well-argued new avenues for dealings with crime in general. It has the potential to be extended to cases of sexual violence and a number of small scale programmes are already underway across the world. Restorative Responses to Sexual Violence examines this innovative justice paradigm in more depth in the particular context of sexual trauma and violence in order to establish the empirical realities of restorative justice approaches in cases of sexual violence, and considers how such approaches could be developed adequately in the future. This book is divided into two parts, each representing a key area of research and practice: theoretical and conceptual frameworks, and justice and therapeutic perspectives. This international collection brings together leading expert scholars and practitioners to offer both theoretical and practical perspectives on restorative justice and sexual violence. This book will be of interest to researchers in the field of law, criminology, psychology, social science, social work and psychotherapy, as well as practitioners in the fields of criminal justice, restorative justice and sex offender and victim trauma therapies.

Controversial and forward-thinking, this volume presents a much-needed analysis of restorative justice practices in cases of violence against women. Advocates, community activists, and scholars will find the theoretical perspectives and vivid case descriptions presented here to be invaluable tools for creating new ways for abused women to find justice.

Restorative justice is gaining acceptance for addressing harm and crime. Interventions have been developed for a wide range of wrongdoing. This book considers the use of restorative justice in response to sexual abuse. Rather than a blueprint or detailing a specific set of programs, it is more about mapping possibilities. It allows people to carefully consider its use in responding to violent crimes such as sexual abuse. Criminal justice approaches tend to sideline and re-traumatize victims, and punish offenders to the detriment of accountability. Alternatively, restorative justice centers on healing for victims, while holding offenders meaningfully accountable. Criminal justice responses tend to individualize the problem, and catch marginalized communities, such as ethnic minorities, within its net. Restorative justice recognizes that sexual abuse is a form of gender-based violence. Community-based practices are needed, sometimes in conjunction with, and sometimes to counteract, traditional criminal justice responses. This book describes impacts of sexual abuse, and explanations for sexual offending, demonstrating how restorative justice can create hope through trauma.

The author of Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone and The Sweet Hereafter returns with a very original, riveting mystery about a young outcast, and a contemporary tale of guilt and redemption. The perfect convergence of writer and subject, Lost Memory of Skin probes the zeitgeist of a troubled society where zero tolerance has erased any hope of subtlety and compassion. Suspended in a modern-day version of limbo, the young man at the centre of Russell Banks's uncompromising and morally complex new novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity only as the Kid, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to go near where children might gather. He takes up residence under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders. Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid, despite his crime, is in many ways an innocent. Enter the Professor, a university sociologist of enormous size and intellect who finds in the Kid the perfect subject for his research. But when the Professor's past resurfaces and threatens to destroy his carefully constructed world, the balance in the two men's relationship shifts. Banks has long been one of our most acute and insightful novelists. Lost Memory of Skin is a masterful work of fiction that unfolds in language both powerful and beautifully lyrical.

Concerned by the high attrition rates for sexual crime and the secondary victimization experienced by victims during their participation in the criminal justice system, this book analyses the extent to which restorative justice can address the justice gap that exists in current justice provision. Building on clinical experience and earlier research on sexual crime the authors engage with the complex dynamics and traumatic impact of sexual crime as a critical starting point for their research and examine whether restorative justice can contribute to a more enhanced justice response. The book presents extensive new data on restorative justice as applied in sexual violence cases across the globe. It engages with feminist concerns regarding the traumatic impact of sexual violence and the power imbalances that characterise these offences, as well as the potential for re-traumatisation and re-victimisation during the judicial process. While there is a risk of coercion of the victim to participate in the process, and manipulation of restorative justice by the offender, restorative justice has the potential to lead to the reprivatisation of sexual crime and ultimately to its decriminalisation. Having examined these topics in detail, the book concludes there is an important role for restorative justice in addressing the justice gap that exists after sexual crime and offers guidance on how this can be achieved.

Learn how restorative justice can offer healing to survivors of sexual abuse in your faith community Clara was five years old the first time she was raped by her father. The trauma stifled Clara’s self-esteem, ability to trust others, and emotional regulation well into adulthood. But after an encounter with a repentant man who had committed the same crime against his own daughter—through a guided victim-offender dialogue—Clara was finally able to breathe. In Enough Silence, Cheryl Miller draws on more than two decades working with survivors of abuse to create the composite character of Clara. Her story represents countless real people in our faith communities living with a personal history of sexual trauma. Clara’s story illustrates how restorative justice practices—implemented with care—can transform the lives of survivors. These practices include • holding offenders accountable, • lending direct voice to survivors, offenders, and members of the community, • taking into account all those with stakes in incidents of sexual abuse, • clarifying the organization’s values, and • establishing a safe and structured environment for survivors. She also offers a road map for implementing victim-offender dialogue, surrogate dialogue, circles, and more. Enough Silence issues a call to pastors, clergy, nonprofit professionals, and other leaders to dismantle patriarchal systems that perpetuate rape culture. By embracing restorative justice practices, faith communities can imitate Christ in ministering to survivors and those who love them.

Despite the current survivor-affirming awareness around sexual violence, child sexual abuse, most notably when it’s a family member or friend, is still a very taboo topic. There are approximately 42 million child sexual abuse survivors in the U.S. and millions of bystanders who look the other way as the abuse occurs and cover for the harm-doers with no accountability. Documentary filmmaker and survivor of child sexual abuse and adult rape, Aishah Shahidah Simmons invites diasporic Black people to join her in transformative storytelling that envisions a world that ends child sexual abuse without relying on the criminal justice system. Love WITH Accountability features compelling writings by child sexual abuse survivors, advocates, and Simmons’s mother, who underscores the detrimental impact of parents/caregivers not believing their children when they disclose their sexual abuse. This collection explores disrupting the inhumane epidemic of child sexual abuse, humanely.

Cyberflashing has been on the rise since the Covid-19 pandemic. This book provides new analysis into the harms of cyberflashing. This timely and unique study considers recent laws in several countries and sets out proposals to criminalise cyberflashing in English law.