THE RESTORATIVE POWER OF LOVE

"I was given life without the possibility of parole…I was sentenced to die in prison at the age of 19. It took many, many years for me to come to taking accountability for that…I can’t believe I caused so much pain and anguish to this family." – John Johnson 

During a recent CYS event, Safety Starts With Us, we were grateful to be joined by Lynn Williams and John Johnson, who participated in a deeply honest and inspiring moderated discussion.  During this conversation, Ms. Williams and Mr. Johnson opened-up about their experience participating in a restorative justice process together – where Ms. Williams represented the harmed party (her sister Elaine, who died 37 years ago) with Mr. Johnson as the responsible party.   

Ms. Williams explained how their journey started, sparked by a District Attorney's request for her to make a statement against Mr. Johnson's request for parole, and her desire to first learn something about the person whose future life she was being asked to weigh.  “It was the beginning of our healing process. I didn't know this was called ‘restorative justice’. I just knew that there was a pain in our hearts of losing Elaine. And now I had someone to talk to about it. And it was the person who was responsible for killing her.”  

Mr. Johnson and Ms. Williams came together in a restorative justice process called Victim Offender Dialogue, which is where "the victim of a crime, or the surviving family members, and the offender who committed the offense meet face-to face in a safe and secure setting". (1)  

At first, they just “wrote letters back and forth…we talked on the phone” and over two years, got a sense of one another. Through this, Ms. Williams said, “we established a real honest relationship.”  

Finally, after a long correspondence, Ms. Williams and Mr. Johnson met for the first time in person, when, as Ms. Williams recalled, Mr. Johnson “hugged me and he kept saying to me in tears, 'forgive me, forgive me, forgive me'. I had to turn to John and say, 'you have to first forgive yourself'.”  

Through this very vulnerable process, Ms. Williams and Mr. Johnson were able to cultivate a strong sense of trust, and through that trust, begin to heal. Visibly moved, Ms. Williams said Mr. Johnson “trusted me enough that our conversations helped him delve into his background as a child and the trauma he had. He shared stuff with me that he never shared with anybody. And so, this in some ways was very cathartic for both of us.”  

Mr. Johnson added, "It made me feel something totally different that’s kind of hard for me to explain.  But I’m at a place where I never want to harm another human being, I never want to even get into a fight. I just want to help people. Every day I live my life in honor of Elaine, and with a responsibility to give back to every life that I touch."   

As the discussion came to a close, Ms. Williams praised “the restorative power of love, the restorative power of acceptance, that of forgiveness, and that of partnering in healing both our hearts…to see in the other person their humanity.”  Highlighting the miracle of their healing journey, Mr. Johnson said, "Just having the opportunity to be able to express myself to her and her family was good enough for me, but I got out March  29 of ’23, so I’m going on my third year, and we continue having a relationship…and me and her husband are best friends, that’s my buddy." 

Ms. Williams and Mr. Johnson represent an entire community of people – individuals who have caused harm and those who have been harmed – who have found repair, healing, and growth through restorative justice. As is apparent listening to Ms. Williams and Mr. Johnson, restorative justice empowers victims with a place to be heard and to express what they need in order to heal.   

Learn more about what restorative justice can look like here.  

See pictures and a recap video of the whole event by visiting our website: https://www.cys-la.org/safetystartswithus. 

Visit our YouTube channel to see clips from the event: https://www.youtube.com/@centinelayouthservicesmedi1602