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Burglary victim Margaret Foxley's response to 'letter writer' on Radio 4's PM programme
A letter, in which an offender calls the person whose home he burgled ‘dumb’, was published last week as part of an anti-burglary campaign by West Yorkshire Police. The letter was not part of the force’s restorative justice work and was never given to victim.
BBC Radio 4’s PM Programme on 24th November invited Margaret Foxley to respond from the perspective of someone who has been a victim of burglary and has experienced restorative justice.
Margaret’s letter, which she read live on air, said:
Dear letter writer,
Please allow me to help you to find some valid reasons for writing the letter that you were ‘forced’ to write.
Three years ago I made similar mistakes to the people living in the house that you chose to burgle. Yes, looking back on it, to use your words, I was pretty ‘dumb’ and ‘thick’ to relax in my own home and not be on constant alert with regard to someone like yourself, taking advantage of that..
My family and my home are the most precious things in my life. With my husband I have worked extremely hard to provide a home which is loving, warm and comfortable for my family. Somewhere we can feel happy, safe and secure.
Three years ago someone like you, caused me to feel scared and nervous in my own home. He made my children and my husband feel worried about me returning home first, in the evening to an empty house. No one was particularly concerned about the things that had been taken; they were material things which formed part of an insurance claim. It was the fact that someone had felt it was their right to enter someone else’s home, break and smash what was in their way, and take what ever they wanted.
I believe that there has to be a reason behind everyone’s actions and not being able to try to discover what was in the person’s mind when he bashed my front door down, was extremely frustrating. I needed to know why he chose our house, what he had touched , picked up, how long did he spend in each room, did he look at our happy family photographs? I wanted to tell him how angry I felt about having my privacy invaded.
When our beautiful daughter was killed, six months later, I felt a greater need for some answers to my questions. At the time of the burglary, our daughter was more concerned with the reasons behind somebody breaking into a house and taking things for personal gain. She wanted to know what made a person do it and was more interested in helping and understanding rather than condemning.
I knew when I was offered the chance of meeting with the man who burgled our home that I had to do it, even if it was simply to respect our daughter’s wishes.
I was NOT wanting an apology. I wanted the meeting to be about ME, and the opportunity to tell him how he had made me feel and to receive some answers to my questions. We had lost things that he had taken, which meant so much more since our daughter’s death, and I needed to tell him how that felt.
The meeting was about our family, our loss, our grief. I did not expect an apology; I did receive one which was heart felt, genuine and not forced. Our meeting has made this person think about the effects of his actions on ordinary people and for the very first time he had to look his victim in the eyes and read for himself the pain he had caused.
We met a second time before his release a couple of months ago, and the change was remarkable. His apology to me was not through saying sorry but simply seeing and listening to how he had made me and my family feel.
Margaret Foxley
Further reading
You can listen to Margaret Foxley reading her response on Radio 4’s PM Programme (at 52 minutes into the programme) until Thursday, 1st December 2011 at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017cjmv.
Lizzie Nelson, RJC Director, and Peter Hitchens, columnist for the Daily Mail, discuss restorative justice on the Today programme following the publication of the anonymous letter by West Yorkshire Police. You can listen again at http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9647000/9647642.stm.
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