Tuesday, August 31, 2010

On not becoming a Victim

Victim Support, years ago, seemed like a good idea. People who were traumatised because loved ones had been wiped out in some car smash or criminal shoot-out, home invasion, medical misadventure... parents whose baby had died in the night from what medicine started to call Sudden Infant Death Syndrome... Victim Support was set up, trained its volunteers, and now it suits the police to call them in where needed.

Then, before we realised, it had become somehow important to be a Victim. The media pitched in, of course, and we began to get interviews with seriously aggrieved or bereaved people, usually at times when they were unlikely to be rational.

The media gave them status as victims, publicly honoured and encouraged their suffering -- and then started to consult them as to their opinions on law reform, criminology, traffic management, police administration, criminal investigation, court procedures, sentencing and punishment.

Just today I heard on the radio a woman whose son had been murdered, inform us that she agreed with the High Court judge’s decisions. As far as I know, this woman has no expertise in the law whatever.

So we developed the culture of Victim. It has become a recognised status, something you might aspire to, were it not for the unfortunate fact that you have first to be traumatised. Victim is something you weren’t before. You now have recognition in the media, no longer anonymous or invisible, the way most of us are most of the time. You may even get to appear in court at the time of sentencing, to read out your Victim Impact Statement. Some of these in recent memory have been utterly illogical, hideously embarrassing, unnecessary. I remain confused as to why judges permit them.

The Chief Justice, Sian Elias, a learned, astute woman, recently said something to the effect that our courts exist to stand between alleged offenders and the rage of the Victims. They are intended to be an area of calm, logic and truth. Every intelligent person knows that the best any court can do is approximate to this ideal, yet it matters.

I prefer the culture of forgiveness. It is fascinating to see how this affects various people. Victims bent on revenge -- and plenty of others -- see forgiveness as at best disappointing, but more likely as a cop-out, other-worldly, wimpish and embarrassing. It is an embarrassment to some Christians that the Bible actually teaches forgiveness and proscribes “an eye for an eye”. They prefer to keep revenge, punishment, recrimination, in reserve at least, in case they need it.

Tapu Misa, one of the consistently good writers in the NZ Herald (she writes about issues rather than about herself) said:

“I met a victim of violent crime last year who wasn't a member of the Sensible Sentencing Trust. Apparently, the trust hasn't quite cornered the market in crime victims (though not for want of trying, according to the victim; the trust made overtures, which she rejected).

“No worries, though, because the trust seems to have captured more than its fair share of senior government ministers eager to show crime victims how deeply they feel their pain - as evidenced by the presence of not only the Prime Minister but the Ministers of Police and Justice at the trust's conference at Parliament last week.


“The woman who told me her story over coffee and a few tears would not have defined herself as a "victim". She struck me as strong, brave, and hopeful. She could have been bitter as well, given the way she felt her family had been victimised not just by the person whose crime shattered their lives, but by the police's inept investigation and the sensationalist coverage in some media.

“But years later, she has made peace with what happened. Although her family were never the same again, she has rebuilt her life.”


Many people choose not to live in resentment, bitterness, revengefully. It is a decent and dignified way to go forward. It enhances life. And it is a free choice.

Monday, August 23, 2010

The pleasure of their company



My younger brother lives in Queensland, and his lovely Aussie wife Genevieve thought he might spend his 60th birthday with his siblings across the Tasman here in Algies Bay. Thus we turned to and arranged a kind of tribal coagulation for lunch here at our house last Saturday, the actual birthday.

So Duncan travelled from Brisbane with Genevieve and their two sons, Tom and Hamish. Tom and Hamish, let me tell you, are handsome, urbane, accomplished, poised, sociable, world citizens. They have two younger sisters of similar quality presently travelling somewhere in Greece.

Here at Algies Bay on any normal day that does not involve shifting furniture around for some family jamboree, arranging food, negotiating times and places, you would find my peaceful home with Mary, my sister Marilyn’s stable and tidy home with Lionel (another great Aussie), and my even younger sister Barbara’s welcoming home with Noel, a dinkum Kiwi.

Just over the ridge at Sandspit, where the boats leave for Kawau, is our sister-in-law Jan, who has an art studio. Jan doesn’t socialise with us. Jan’s husband Morris is our brother, Marilyn’s twin. And. mirabile dictu, Morris showed up smiling on Saturday, a wonderful gift for us all.

I hope you are keeping up with me here because now we come to the offspring, and their offspring. I won’t name them, and some of them couldn’t come. But quite a few of them did. One even brought his very brave girlfriend. And so we all ate ham and chick pea curry, salads and cakes, with wine, and beer for the blokes on the balcony.

We gave Duncan a birthday book, a real quality one about the 18th and 19th century sailing ships, with brilliant accurate illustrations, the best kind of gift, the one you would love to have yourself.

Now, you understand that in our tribe there are plenty of more or less constant adverse currents, relating to things that happened in years long gone which have left their wounds, memories, griefs.

Each of us has long ago gone our own way, making our own private arrangements eventually with the past, perhaps failing in the main to listen to or understand the others. It’s all pretty normal, actually. I don’t think we are a dysfunctional family. It’s just that the years bring their scars, and choices people made long ago have had huge effects down to this day.

The years also have brought their triumphs. We raised families. We did learn things and teach our kids things. We did support each other solidly from time to time. But now we certainly show our wounds.

I think in the main we have managed to demonstrate the triumph of openness and hospitality over division and bigotry; of love over fear of difference; of dogged loving loyalty over shock and catastrophe. We have all turned out different, quite different -- imagine that! From the same stock, we each became something else. We have no need to come together to pretend we are all the same. We are not. And that’s perfectly OK.

Our offspring will go on widening the diversity, even as they retain the genetic inheritance. That’s amazing. Our parents, Tom and Eulie’s cohabitation, long ago now, results in vastly different people in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and travelling everywhere, adapting to the cultures they discover, learning the languages and folkways.

We had a good tribal meeting. Nothing of any value got negotiated. There were too many people and there was too much noise and activity ever to discuss anything properly. But it was worth it all to see each other and get an impression of each person, recognise worth and what various people have survived and overcome, sometimes to share a brief heart to heart moment and understanding... It all mattered.