One Can Make a Difference (28 page)
Having been bitten by the reporting bug, I took it with me to Wayne State University. There were no real journalism classes then, but I loved English and I loved history and that's what I needed for my job. Since that time, I've covered history every day. I wasn't the first woman reporter, women have been in the newspaper business for 150 years, but, nevertheless, when I began it was very much a man's world.Women were encouraged to be teachers and nurses, as those were considered secure jobs. Barriers to us were up all over the place. Women couldn't belong to press clubs, for instance. Those barriers had to be overcome and eventually they were, but not without great passion and effort. Suffragettes chained themselves to the White House fence, were arrested, carried off; there was a struggle for women to get the vote. There will always be struggles.
I've had disappointments in my time, of course. If you're never disappointed, you're not alive! But I never let things get me down; you can't expect life to be a smooth run. What's important is not to let setbacks keep you from moving ahead.
If you're persistent and never deviate from your path, and if you're in the right, meaning you're doing something legal and moral, you'll be okay. Speaking the truth is my Gold Standard. Unless you're blocked by a secretive government, you can always seek and find the truth, and you must never stop trying to get it.
I've been so lucky to pick a profession where I get educated every day. News is news and as long as there are people on this planet, there will be an interest in what's going on. To report honestly is a public service, I can contribute something, inform people. A healthy democracy requires an informed people, facts make a country safe, and facts protect people. The questions I ask aren't just my questions, they're the people's questions.
As a member of the press, I carry a responsibility to ask them.
Since becoming a reporter, I've been to nine inaugurations, all of them moments of great hope. All presidents mean well as they come to office, but then a funny thing happens on the way to the forum.
Nevertheless, I firmly believe that democracy works. For instance, President Kennedy's assassination was the most traumatic event in my career and could have resulted in a time of great political upheaval. Yet, the transition to President Lyndon Johnson was very smooth; he stepped into office immediately.
There was no coup d'etat, our government simply went on about its business. However, democracy isn't working so well in this administration. We have a president who can't explain this war in Iraq. He can't give a valid reason for it, and that's so shocking.Thousands of lives are being lost. We're killing people who did nothing to us. We raise young people to do the right thing, not to lie and cheat and steal and kill and then we all of a sudden tell them to go kill people who've done nothing to them. I stew about this every day.
If there are words I've carried with me through my life they belong to a sports writer who came to my high school. After his talk, we went up to him to get his autograph. He said no, he wouldn't sign any autographs. He said, “Never ask for such a thing.You are as good as anyone else.” When a press secretary avoids a question or isn't behaving as he should, I remember those words. I remind him that he's a public servant, that we're paying him, that he's not there to do us a favor, he owes us an explanation, an accounting. People should understand: we don't have a king or a dictator. A president can be impeached if he does something wrong. Being a citizen gives you rights you must never forget you have. Rights that are secured in the Bill of Rights. Let this fact give you strength, don't let people push you around, and always do the right thing.
CHERYL WARD-KAISER
The Strongest of Victims
There is a very personal reason that Cheryl Ward-Kaiser sits on the California
Juvenile Justice Commission, speaks to youth in detention centers, campaigns
for political candidates who will forward the rights of victims of crimes, and supports
the Justice and Reconciliation project. One night, five young people broke
into her bedroom and woke her up not only out of sleep but out of any sense of
security she might have had. She witnessed her daughter being raped and her
husband's murder.
Since that time, Cheryl has worked hard to forgive the perpetrators, all of
whom were identified and arrested and are serving or have served time in jail.
She asked to and did meet the driver of the getaway car and the man who kept
his foot on her back that night. She not only believes that victims have the right
to question those who have interrupted their lives, but also feels strongly that
she has something to offer that may affect or prevent future crimes. If anyone
belongs in this book, it is a person who works to stop violence, and I believe
that Cheryl does just that.
I
no longer live in a fluffy world. I'm a serious person. I might enjoy talking about my wonderful grandchildren, say, or the wonderful man I married years after the crime (the arresting officer on my case). But, I live in the real world now, a world where we must work to reach youngsters, even those who've already offended, and prevent more horrible things from happening out there. I was shocked to find out how young the perpetrators were in the attack on my family. Lying there on the floor with a shotgun to my head, I'd guessed that they were in their late twenties, but they were actually only eighteen, nineteen, and twenty. The girl who drove the getaway car was all of sixteen! I found out later that they had committed seventeen other robberies before then.
When they burst into the room, my husband, Jamie, and I didn't have time to get out of bed. The noise went from zero to 1,000 in a second. One of the men forced me to the ground with his foot on my back. They cursed the whole time as they dragged Jamie on his knees from place to place, searching for the safe they were convinced we had but didn't. They found an envelope of cash that Jamie was going to use to surprise me the next day by buying a soft water heater I'd wanted for thirteen years! They started counting it out and they couldn't even count it right. I heard the man's hand hitting my rosary on the trunk near my bed as he rifled through the money. Then, they pulled my seventeen-year-old daughter, Roxie, into the room, made her strip, and raped her with the barrel of a gun in front of her dad. What I couldn't see, I could hear.
As strange as it may sound, I never felt afraid, although I was convinced I was going to die. I first prayed to God for forgiveness of my sins and for strength, and then I begged the men not to hurt Roxie. They had such power lust, such a thirst for blood, they were like leeches. As events escalated, the two main criminals got higher and higher on the violence. These men were much bigger than my husband, but he fought so hard that, in the end, they were amazed. I don't think they'd had dads around and didn't know that when you threaten to kill a man's wife and daughter, you may push that man over the edge. They ended up shooting him in the back. After that, the men fled and soon sheriff 's officers filled the house.
I was never in shock unless you count the shock of discovering the real world, a world of shit, a world in which a criminal taps you on the shoulder and says, “You're it!” I didn't shed a tear and neither did Roxie, until, many hours later, I got into the shower. Then I broke down. I'd been so protected by marriage. I'd never graduated college, I hadn't worked a paying job in twenty-six years (I was volunteering as a youth counselor, working primarily with pregnant girls when the crime occurred), and we didn't have a lot of savings or a fat insurance policy. I sat on the bed, thinking “I'm now the breadwinner. I'm going to lose this house. I will have to pull Roxie out of private school. I wonder if I can get a job to support myself.” As it turned out, Tanimura and Antle, the produce company my husband worked for, were wonderful. They created a job for me, paid me my husband's salary, and told me to go out into the community and make someone's life better to help balance what happened. And that's what I've been trying to do.
The trial lasted twenty-two months. I was excluded from the courtroom most of the time; first because I was a witness, second because the prosecutor was afraid that the offenders' lawyers might win an appeal by arguing that I was such a strong victim that the jury could only convict, and third when I hugged the shooter's mom. Staying outside was torture. I'd lost my husband, my daughter had been raped, my life was upside down. I wanted to see and hear the five on trial and I wanted them to see and hear me.
Finally I was given a chance. California was the first state to pass Proposition 115, the Crime Victims' Justice Reform Act. That law gives victims a voice in the proceedings, and that's a very powerful part of the healing process. I was entitled to address the court at the end in a “victim impact statement,” and I did. I spoke from the heart, without notes. I was able to say what I felt and what I wanted. I laid out the facts of my own childhood abuse (I'd been physically abused by my father and sexually abused by my grandfather) because I didn't want the men to use their own childhoods as an excuse. I said, “This is what happened to me, but I made a choice not to grow up to hurt other people.You had the same choice.” When it came to sentencing the man who raped my daughter with the shotgun, and who had loved hurting her, I fought against the lighter sentence that was being considered for him. Three times the judge suggested to the lawyers that he would give him twenty-five years to life with the possibility of parole, but I continued to petition for a life sentence without the possibility of parole. They listened, and that's what he got. I felt that he and the shooter would do it again if they ever had the chance.
After the trial, I learned about restorative justice, the concept of bringing victims and offenders together with the goal of accountability and forgiveness. I found this very exciting. So many people, usually those who've not been a victim, talk about verdicts bringing closure. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the moment a crime takes place, it's the beginning of a whole new life. The key is what you do with what has happened to you. I wanted to meet my violators for several reasons. First, I wanted to tell them that I do not hate them and that I forgive them. I wanted to tell them that face to face. Second, because I had so many questions.Why did they choose my house? for instance. My closet was hidden, no one could see it in the dark, and yet the men who entered my bedroom went straight for it. They knew where it was. How? And why did they think my house had a safe? It seems to me someone must have fed them false information. Who would do such a thing still nags me.Third, because I wanted to be sure that they heard everything that they had taken from me and from Roxie and be forced to think about it. I didn't feel vindictive; rather, the only way any of us could begin to heal was by being honest about what had occurred.
I wrote letters to all the prisoners asking if they would let me visit them. The first one I met with, seven years after the crime, was the girl who drove the getaway car. With the help of a mediator, I explained to her what that night had been like for my daughter and me, and what our lives had been like ever since. She hadn't been in the room. She needed to know what she'd been a part of. Then I asked her to repeat everything I'd said back to me. I was able to ask her my questions, but she said she didn't know the answers to most of them. I knew she was lying. Some people think victims will be conned if they talk to prisoners, but I don't think this is the case. A liar is easy to spot inside or out.
Next I met with John, the man who'd held the shotgun to my head. It was extremely moving. I knew he was sorry. I knew he was sorry as it was happening. I shared with him my experience of that evening and he cried. I told him, “Lying on the floor, I named you âThe Nice One,' because you tried to calm the others down, because you kept telling them not to rape my daughter.” He couldn't stop crying. We've remained in touch ever since, and I've promised him that I will work for his rehabilitation and support his release. There's no way for those who commit crimes to realize the full impact they've had, the disruption in lives they've caused, all that they've destroyed, unless their victims can tell them and make them confront what they've done. They need to know the rest of the story. To hear it all, to go over it all again, to answer questions, to look at their victims as individuals. Then they, too, get a chance to heal and change. I don't believe in monsters, but in human beings who do monstrous things. I also believe in consequences, not vengeance; I believe in the ability for people to change.
In the beginning, people who were counseling in juvenile detention centers and prisons didn't want real victims to talk to the incarcerated. They thought it would be too traumatic for us or that we'd end up suing the corrections system. My outlook is, “You may feel bad seeing us cry, but we need to, it's good for us to cry!” You can turn something bad into something good and help these kids, who are going to offend again if you don't reach them and teach them empathy. In a classroom setting, kids can be cocky little jackasses. In jail, they get it, there's no more baloney. The response to the speakers' program is terrific. They know that if a victim comes to talk to them, that victim has to care about them. No one is paying the victim, not even gas money, and yet here he or she is. Often no one else has ever cared about these kids, and their crimes have come from hate. Unable to attack the person they hate, perhaps an absent father, they attack someone they don't even know. One of the biggest problems our society has is that there are no fathers out there. I ask an audience of hundreds of incarcerated kids “How many of you have an okay father?” Not a perfect, wonderful father, just an okay father. And less than five will raise their hands. As for adult-offending men, they've been devalued, told they're not necessary.