Healing Stories | Crime Victims and Exonerations

In our very specific line of service at Healing Justice, we are acutely aware of a disturbing pattern. Often, crime victims become victims again, during the investigation of the crime and even after conviction.  The main reason for this is common mistakes made during investigations and trials that can cause the wrong person to be accused and convicted and leave the actual perpetrator free. Crime victims are often victimized again when they learn about these mistakes, from not having sufficient information and support and from being wrongly blamed for having caused the mistakes. In these circumstances, victims are subjected to additional layers of victimization and traumatization, and the repercussions are devastating.

Through our Healing Justice Retreats, we met an incredibly strong survivor whose story is layered with victimization. She was sexually assaulted as a child and then, within days of the assault, asked by police to participate in eyewitness identification procedures. The actual perpetrator of the crime was not in the line-up, and ultimately, this case resulted in a mistaken identification and wrongful conviction. 

17 years later, this victim learned that the wrong person had been convicted and yet another layer of victimization began. Not only was she distraught and frightened to learn that the actual perpetrator had not been convicted, media attention after the exoneration cast this now-young-woman as the person to blame for the mistake. No one from the justice system stepped up to speak on her behalf, and no mistakes were admitted by the police, attorneys or judges on the case. 

Under the strain of this new layer of victimization, and still contending with the life-long consequences of being sexually assaulted as a child, this young woman, now a mother herself, turned, like so many people do, to prescription drugs to cope with her immense pain. Soon, she was struggling to get through life without the medications, and eventually, she lost her job and nearly lost her family. This is not an uncommon result in the life of someone who has endured so much pain and victimization.

At one of our first retreats, this victim of multiple layers of abuse began to heal. Slowly, she began the journey to wholeness after so much loss. Today, she is a survivor, in multiple ways! In the face of incredible pain and loss, neglected and revictimized by the system created to protect her, ostracized in the midst of the exoneration news coverage, she is now sober and a frequent participant in our services. 

This courageous woman credits her experience at her first retreat as the impetus for her sobriety and says that she feels most at home with Healing Justice. After years of trauma, she no longer feels alone. She is a survivor times 4! First of the original crime, then of not being protected as a child participant in that case. Third, she is a survivor of an exoneration where she was cast as the person to blame, and now a survivor who has found sobriety and a place to call home. This is why Healing Justice exists: to support victims who too often are vulnerable to further victimization.