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It’s
Easy To Help...
CALL 720.565.3898
VORP
of Boulder County
1520 Euclid Avenue
Boulder, CO 80302
303.442.6040
nickie@bouldervorp.org
www.BoulderVorp.org
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It’s
possible, even easy, to think of "mailbox tackling" as
a team sport of sorts. A way to kill some time, have some laughs
with friends. And, unless you happen to be a mailbox, no victim,
right?
Possible until you understand the owners of that pseudo tackling
dummy may have survived the Holocaust. Possible until you learn
they may feel, like many crime victims, that they are being targeted.
| Again.
Possible
until you understand what managers at the Victim Offender
Reconciliation Program, VORP, call the "cascading effect"
of your actions – like an avalanche of faces expressing
the kind of horror you can’t describe.
Memories and faces that didn’t used to come when an
elderly couple walked to the mailbox. |
Click on image for larger picture |
"Good
kids, well-spoken kids" make "really ridiculous decisions"
sometimes, says Nickie Kelly, who’s seen her share of pranks
gone horribly bad.
The meaning of ridiculous, of course, is found in the eye of the
beholder. When kids, generally ages 12 to 18, look into the eyes
of their victims, a whole new meaning of their actions is carved
out.
"Pain. I think that was my predominant emotion,"
said the mother of a 16-year-old victim of harassment.
The action was a series of vulgar messages directed first at
a child, then at his parent. The result was emotional chaos that
shook child, parent and family to its core.
A VORP mediation settled some of the puzzlement and hurt for the
victims. It brought the callers together with their targets. Perhaps
only then, in a small room with the vile, taped message playing,
did the callers begin to understand the anguish they had caused.
It was written onto a mother’s face then, and remains in her
voice now.
The idea is to move people involved with a crime to the forefront,
instead of masking them behind "an offense against ‘the
state.’" "(Restorative justice) looks at crime as
harm to relationships in the community," noted Anne Brubacher,
VORP’s program coordinator.
After a few years looking into the eyes of offenders as well as
victims, she understands: Crime, in all its forms, offends people.
It destroys much more than a mailbox or a peaceful evening at home.
Crime destroys relationships.
In 2002, 72 cases were referred to the program by juvenile justice
authorities as well as schools. Sometimes even victims call. The
pace continues to grow, so it’s likely that more than 150
kids will be involved by the end of 2003.
So VORP mediators, 25 volunteers in all, carefully help rebuild
bonds between people in our community.
Victims. Offenders. Maybe they never knew each other before, but
they will never forget each other now.
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