What does Justice Mean to You?

This text was offered as a speech at the launch of the 'What Does Justice Mean to You?' workbook, at Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre's 45th anniversary special event. It was written and read by a support worker at ERCC, facilitator of the Justice Beyond Criminal Justice group and editor of the 'What Does Justice Mean to you?' workbook.

There is a myth that limits our responses to sexual violence and abuse. The myth is that there is a binary: Option 1, report to the police. Option 2, do nothing. In five years as a gender based violence support worker, I’ve worked with hundreds of people who’ve experienced sexual violence. I’ve had hundreds of conversations about the pressure to report, the pressure to do something. My clients feel and express the societal commitment to criminal justice as the only route to justice. They experience pressure to report coming from themselves, their loved ones, from police and the criminal justice system, from support workers, from the media. Reporting is their ‘responsibility’. Fear and guilt surround the idea of not reporting. Not reporting is equated to doing nothing, to letting people down, to letting the abuser win. I’ve seen too many people tormented by this myth that the only way to do something rather than nothing, is to report.

Whether they reported it or not, I’m yet to meet anyone who did ‘nothing’ in response to their abuse. Every person I’ve met has shown unique and complex ways of responding to the harm they endured. In every story, there is active resistance. Resistance might be staying still or staying silent. Resistance might be in the moment of threat or much later. In everyone I’ve ever worked with I’ve seen innovative efforts towards safety and the transformation of harm. The myth of doing ‘nothing’ obscures all these creative techniques of survival. It limits our vision of how people are already creating and enacting justice for themselves. The myth of doing ‘nothing’ obstructs us from alternative strategies for healing and justice, from the many ways there are to do something. It limits our capacity to imagine how we might establish truly transformative justice within our communities.

Police and criminal justice are relatively recent inventions. Communities around the world and throughout history have demonstrated countless other responses to harm and injustice. So, it’s clear that engaging with this one process is not the only path to recovery and change. Marginalised communities who’ve experienced the police to be a violent and abusive presence rather than a source of help or protection have developed and practiced alternative ways to address the effects and causes of violence. However, mainstream feminist anti-violence organisations like ours have focused almost exclusively on criminal justice interventions and the question of reporting. In my years as an advocacy worker at Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, it became clear to me how narrowing the scope of advocacy services to ‘support to report’ reinforced the illusion that there are no other ways to address harm. We have reinforced the binary of ‘report’ or ‘do nothing’. This has added to the pressure survivors experience to accept the only apparent option, to report, and excluded those for whom reporting was never an option.

While working in the advocacy project at ERCC, I began to imagine an approach to sexual violence justice services that might recognise all the ways that survivors create justice for themselves. I started paying closer attention to what my clients described as their responses to abuse out-with the criminal justice system. I kept lists. Some of the things on the list were:

Learning to drive, learning english, not keeping it a secret, doing the things my abuser prevented me from doing, volunteering on a helpline, Acknowledging the harm that was done to me, dying my hair and wearing what i like, showering at least once a week, supporting other people who’ve been abused, painting a portrait of the person who abused me, joining a campaign group, leaving the house everyday. Walking at night, getting sober, standing up for my children.

These are just a few that made the list. Hearing these responses now, I’m still awed by the creativity and tenacity that enabled each of these people to overcome harm, to create their own sense of justice, to bring about justice for themselves. The richness and complexity of these justice measures creates a vivid picture of survivors’ diverse needs and how much they are already doing to meet their own needs, regardless of a statement, verdict, or sentence.

‘What are my options?’ ‘What do other people do?’ ‘How do other people cope?’ ‘What will it really be like if I report?’ are questions I’ve heard from countless people I’ve worked alongside. The silence and the isolation instilled by sexual trauma and insisted upon by the criminal justice system makes it very difficult to find answers. Individualized trauma support services generally do little to distribute knowledge and experience amongst survivors, so the only advice and (mis)information comes from the system itself or services who are compromised in what we’re able to say.

The ‘What Does Justice Mean to You?’ workbook is an effort towards changing that, towards facilitating conversation and information sharing amongst the people who really have the answers to those questions - those with experience of seeking justice themselves. It’s designed to empower the reader to define what justice is for them. It invites readers to notice how they might achieve justice on their own terms, rather than waiting for the criminal justice system’s interpretation of justice to be delivered to them. Criminal justice might be an option, but it’s not the only option.

The workbook was made as an outcome of the Justice Beyond Criminal Justice group at ERCC. The JBCJ participants had all engaged with criminal justice processes following their experiences of sexual violence. I invited them to come together to consider what justice means to them, including and beyond what the criminal justice system has to offer.

‘We all had different ideas and different opinions of how the system should change. We all had different experiences and outcomes so it gives us a more varied view of exactly where the system is lacking. That was different. It made you feel like you had a purpose. It made me feel like a strength because I don’t want anyone else to go through what I went through so I’m going to voice my opinion, be heard and change things. I want to make a change that way. If my experience can change how they (the Criminal Justice process) deal with people then great! I’ve done my bit.’

The participants were between the ages of 18 and 65 and had a wide variety of experiences in life and in their justice and criminal justice journeys. There was agreement and disagreement, but what mattered to all the members of the group was that survivors’ experiences of seeking justice must change. They wanted other survivors to have better experiences than they had. Specifically, they wanted other survivors to have more access to information and to be able to hear from each other. They wanted their experiences to be shared, to contribute to change.

All of the participants described feeling silenced and isolated by the criminal justice process. They felt unable to share their experiences and unsure of how to access the experiences of other survivor witnesses. Meeting the other participants gave them the opportunity to hear and support each other and feel their experiences reflected in the group. They were able to create a sense of community, belonging and peer support in ways that had been prevented by the criminal justice system and not made possible by the one to one support they’d already received.

“We co-created the space that I wanted, that I want to see in the world. All the things I’ve said here, about how I want to live and what I hope for, we created that within the group for that hour. We were kind to each other, we were non-threatening, we supported each other, we created a safe space where we could be ourselves. When I say love, that’s what I mean. We created love for each other, for ourselves, a loving space.”

The group was a really powerful experience for all of us that participated. As a support worker, I came away with the sense that supporting clients to make informed choices about reporting means not minimizing what engaging with this system might cost them. The harm done to witnesses by the criminal justice system is not limited to the failure to convict. Those who have navigated the system as victims and witnesses and those who have supported them know that this is not a system that prioritises what people who’ve reported sexual violence want and need. I’m sure this is apparent to police and criminal justice workers too. Nicky, a member of the group, gave me permission to share her experience with you. Nicky says:

Where the justice system is failing is that they don’t provide enough mental health support both during giving your statements and during the court proceedings. Due to the lack of support you are made to feel like you’re the one that fails and you are left feeling like it’s all your responsibility if the case falls apart (which in my case is what happened).

It’s extremely difficult for people engaging in the criminal justice process to interpret the case proceeding or not proceeding, ‘guilty’ and ‘not guilty’ as anything other than ‘we believe you’ or ‘we don’t believe you’. The punitive ‘justice’ that’s on offer from the criminal justice system is so infrequently granted and often fails to meet the person’s desire for transformation and rehabilitation of their abuser. The relatively few people i have known to receive the conviction they hoped for, some of whom were participants of the group, have been left asking if the abuse and coercion they experienced at the hands of the system was worth the conviction of the harm they’d already endured. When i say coercion, I mean that people experience pressure from the system to report and to go through with trials no matter how it affects them. If they change their mind, they are threatened with punishment for being a ‘reluctant witness’ rather than being assured of their right to withdraw at any stage. When i say abuse, i mean that a person who speaks about their abuse in court can expect the legitimized humiliation of being told in front of a room full of strangers that they are lying and not to be believed.

The group didn’t want people to be discouraged from reporting, but they didn’t want the reality of reporting hidden from people considering engaging with the criminal justice process either. They wanted their experiences and reflections to be shared. The group compiled a list of things they wanted other survivors to know before reporting. You can find it on the page entitled, ‘I want you to know…’ They want you to know that:

It’s a really long process, I felt trapped in the system.

The information the police and courts gave me was unrealistic.

Not knowing when the process would end made it harder to move on.

I didn’t get to tell my experience in my own words.

I never got to speak to my abuser, to confront them.

I had to fight for what I was entitled to.

It was so draining, it impacted me every day.

I didn’t feel respected or cared for.

Getting a guilty verdict didn’t make me feel like I hoped it would.

These realities are a challenge to all of us who work with people engaging in the criminal justice process. How can we support people to make informed choices rather than encouraging them blindly towards further harm? How can we help them weigh the potential advantages against the considerable cost? How can we lessen the pressure to engage with criminal justice? Police, court workers, support workers could all be more realistic and transparent about the limitations of the process. I’ve known police officers to remind people of their right to withdraw and of their right to financial compensation regardless of the outcome of the criminal justice process. I’ve known court’s workers to support people to withdraw without threat. I’ve also known them to offer, before they are asked, the full range of options of ‘special measures’ and supported ways to give evidence. These are examples of better practice that should be the norm, but are not.

The questions at the heart of the workbook are: How can we diversify our understanding of justice? How can we complicate the binary between reporting and doing nothing? Beyond criminal justice, the ways people achieve their justice goals can be extremely diverse. Some of the ways my clients achieved justice are listed in the workbook. Some items on the list are:

Telling people who know me what they did, joining a campaign group, talking to people with similar experiences, going to a protest, writing a letter to them and destroying it, writing about my experience anonymously or creatively, supporting other survivors.

The definition and methods of justice are different for each person. What I’ve found is that people who have a clearer sense of what their personal definition of justice is, feel more empowered and in control of how to achieve it. Whether they are trying to meet their justice needs within the criminal justice system or without it, having realistic expectations and a diversity of options is crucial. When people are able to identify their specific needs, they are most able to recognise the many different ways to meet them. The workbook invites the reader to identify their own justice needs, to notice what they have done already to meet those needs, and what else they would like to happen.

Throughout, the workbook offers the reader the knowledge and experience shared amongst the JBCJ group and invites them to participate, to build on it and personalise it. While not everyone will be able to attend a group, the workbook tries to create for the reader a sense of collective support, of information and skill sharing and to (indirectly) connect them with people who have the experience and knowledge they may be seeking.

Alongside the workbook, we’re launching an online forum for people to share their experiences of seeking justice and seeking criminal justice. We want there to be a place that people can go when they find themselves asking those questions, ‘What are my options?’ ‘What do other people do?’ ‘How do other people cope?’ ‘What will it really be like if I report?’ We want to work against silence and isolation, and help our clients (and all the readers of the workbook) find the answers and the information that they need.

View our 'What Does Justice Mean to You' workbook and further resources here

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Support

Rape Crisis Scotland's helpline 08088 01 03 02 (5pm - midnight every night) offers free and confidential support and information. They offer support to anyone aged 13 and over, of any gender, affected by any form of sexual violence, no matter when or how it happened.