Listening to Victims

MVFHR members Bill Pelke and Bess Klassen-Landis were among those who spoke on "Listening to Crime Victims" panel at the 3rd National Conference on Restorative Justice in Raleigh, North Carolina last month. Now Lisa Rea, the moderator, has blogged about the event and their testimony:

As I considered each victim/survivor I thought of how different each story was from the other. Bill Pelke's grandmother, Ruth, was brutally murdered by a group of ninth grade girls in 1985. Stephen Watt, a Wyoming state trooper at the time, was shot multiple times by a fleeing bank robber in 1982 leaving Watt in his police vehicle bleeding to death. Bess Klassen-Landis 's mother, Helen, was brutally raped and murdered by a man in 1969 in the family's Indiana home Bess was 13 years old. Kim Book's only daughter, Nicole, was murdered in 1995 at 17 years of age in her father's home in Delaware by a boy known by her daughter. Again, there is no way to hear such horrible stories and not be affected.

Read the rest of Lisa's post.