Thank you both. Everything Pam said, I agree with, so I would just co-sign on everything there.
I would say, around transformative and restorative justice, that Courage to Act released two guides on working with people who have caused harm and working from a non-punitive approach around accountability. I would say those two things really need to be looked at.
Too often, we create processes that actually don't heal communities. We can't create an island where all the people who commit sexual violence go; they are amongst us. We have to build resources, opportunities and training so people can do the work. I've been witness to accountability counselling in which a young man was found to have sexually assaulted someone, and instead of going through an investigative process was asked if he would go through accountability counselling. He agreed and he went through it and at the end he was able to say, yes, I did that and this is why and this is what needs to change within me. Six years later we spoke to him. He was a part of a podcast we just put out in which he and the survivor talked together about what it meant to go through that process.
We need more opportunities like that, because the thing is, there was actual change there. There was a change of mindset to “I won't do this again.” This takes more resourcing and a whole system change, but it's where we need to go, because the current criminal legal system—I'm not going to call it justice—isn't working for survivors and respondents. We need to do better and invest in that transformative, restorative justice, but that's going to take funding, resourcing and being creative, which I hope we can be.