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184 ˜ A Work of Hospitality, 1982–2002
watched reports of the execution on television, right through the gleeful clapping
when death was announced. But the minute the execution was done, the
media circus was over. How much the Aikens hated Smith was no longer hot
news. The TV cameras folded, and the Aikens were left alone. Their brother and
sister-in-law were still dead, but the case was no longer newsworthy. Who
cares now
Do we really need to use people this way to satisfy our corporate fascination
with violence Or could we learn how to care for the victims’ pain day by day
and to reach out to them with healing love Victims of violent crime do, in fact,
need to know that the one who hurt them has been found and restrained; they
need an assurance that he or she cannot cause further harm. We dare not ignore
this need. Victims most often need economic help—especially if a breadwinner
has been killed or disabled. Counseling, time off work, medical or funeral expenses
are all needs that often go unaddressed even while the revenge rhetoric
fills the air. But no one—individually or corporately—should encourage a victim
to believe that the pain will be lessened or the grief assuaged by seeking revenge
or further violence. Vindictive responses most often widen the circle of
tragedy, creating more victims and exacerbating every wound.
What about victims who will not seek revenge Sometimes the system does
not treat them so kindly. Angie Anderson’s eighty-six-year-old mother was murdered
in her St. Petersburg, Florida, home in 1984. Her plea to the prosecutor,
to avoid seeking the death penalty for the young man convicted of the crime,
was ignored. When Anderson pleaded with the jury not to compound her own
grief by imposing a death sentence, the prosecutor stated mockingly in open
court, “She obviously did not love her mother.” When Frank Patton’s wife,
Becky, was murdered in San Antonio, Texas, he refused the expected thirst for
revenge. His pastor, Louis Zbinden, said, “It may be difficult for the cynics of
the world to understand, but Frank is a Christian. He understands that if he allows
himself to become obsessed by hatred for these men, then it will only lead
to bitterness in himself.” Patton did not want his wife’s murderers to go free: he
wanted them behind bars. “It’s just that he held to an idea that was temporarily
out of fashion—that violence can’t be stopped with more violence,” Zbinden
said. The prosecutor didn’t care. Seeing it as a textbook death-penalty case, he
vowed to do everything in his power to see the murderers executed.
Is our law-enforcement system able to “care” more readily for victims filled
with revenge than those who seek a less violent way Whose interests are being
served Dan Van Ness authored Crime and Its Victims: What We Can Do from
his own experience as a lawyer, as a victim, and as a Christian. He locates the
root of our problem with justice in our legal definition of who is the victim. In
contrast to our predecessors, who understood that the individuals and groups
were the victims, today we identify the state as the victim. The disregard for the
needs of victims is no accident, then, since they are not part of the legal under-