OHIO Crime victims make youths aware

Victim awareness classes offer offenders a different perspective.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- Three times so far, a woman has told a room full of delinquents how a 14-year-old boy on a bike fired a stolen gun into a group of boys on a sidewalk, hitting her son in the back of the head and killing him instantly.
The pain is fresh every time Rita Rathburn describes that night in August 1997. But for her, it's a way to make 14-year-old Anthony Rathburn's death seem less pointless.
"I thought if I could prevent one kid from going out and doing the same thing to somebody else's kid, then in a way I've done something beneficial," said Rathburn, 57, a Columbus bus driver. "It would help a family that wouldn't even know they've been helped."
Victim's perspective
Rathburn is among a group of crime victims who tell their stories in Ohio's juvenile corrections centers to youths who might be hearing a victim's perspective for the first time. This summer, she did the same thing for social workers being trained that they, too, need to keep that perspective in mind when treating the juveniles.
Ohio has one of the best programs in its adult prisons for keeping victims informed and helping them meet with offenders, but the juvenile system has been slower, said Gordon Bazemore, a criminal justice professor at Florida Atlantic University in Fort Lauderdale.
Developing true empathy -- understanding the victim's pain -- can help prevent the child from committing another crime, Bazemore said. Several states have various programs for teaching juveniles how they can make amends, such as writing apology letters or attending classes on crime. Panels of victims like the one on which Rathburn speaks are less common.
"It's still quite possible for a juvenile to go through the system and never hear anything about his victim," he said. "A lot of times, it's just about processing these kids, getting them into some kind of program or putting them on probation."
More than 1,500 youths have gone through the victim awareness class since it began in Ohio in 2001, with the three victim service workers at the Department of Youth Services traveling among the eight corrections centers to teach them.
Now each of the centers and the six parole offices has two staff social workers who can teach the classes. Another social worker at each site is a victim advocate, helping notify registered crime victims of changes in the offender's status and mediating any trouble or requests for meetings.
The 42 social workers volunteered to add the duties to their regular schedules, program administrator Bruce Adams said.
Rathburn talks about her tall, green-eyed son with an infectious smile and spot-on Garth Brooks impersonation, how she had to give up her second job after his death, how she still can't concentrate enough to balance her checkbook.
After the class, one social worker thanked her.
"He said that working with the offenders, they usually feel like they're supposed to be on the offender's side," she said.
Progress
A study of the class's effectiveness should be finished in about six months, Adams said, but he has noticed during computer entry of records on youths leaving the system that those who took the class are less likely to be repeat offenders.
Not all experts on the movement known as "restorative justice" are fans of the classes. Bonnie Bucqueroux, executive director of Crime Victims for a Just Society, based in Mason, Mich., said empathy can't be taught, and the victim stories likely won't help a youth prone to explosive anger learn how to control those impulses.
"Kids find the stories interesting and dramatic and fascinating," she said. "Whether it leads to a change in behavior is a question."
That change likely requires a face-to-face therapeutic meeting with the victim of that offender's crime, Bucqueroux said.
Presiding Judge Sylvia Hendon of Hamilton County Juvenile Court disagreed, saying most victims never want to see the offender who hurt them. Any attempt to help offenders understand the full effect of crime can only help, she said, so long as other programs such as high school equivalency aren't cut.
"It's amazing when you talk to these kids how devoid they are of life experience," Hendon said. "They have no clue that the community as a whole is a victim."
In the last three years, Ohio has been able to arrange five face-to-face meetings at the victims' request, Adams said. With the on-site advocates, that can happen more often.
Reginald, an 18-year-old from the Dayton area who gave only his first name, is scheduled for release Monday. He told The Associated Press the class made him understand he wasn't locked up for 17 months just because he got caught, but because he hurt the 12-year-old girl he raped.
"I really wasn't thinking about her at the time. I was just thinking about myself," he said. "I took something that never could be given back to her.
"It was time for me to realize it was about her."