Finding Personal Peace Amid Anger, Pain of Violent Crime

Gladys Terichow
June 22, 2006

Without choice, victims of crime are thrown into an abyss of darkness, confusion, frustration, fear and anger.

"We used to call it shell shock—now we recognize it as trauma," says Wilma Derksen, who was plunged into a world of pain and suffering in 1984 when her 13-year old daughter Candace was abducted on her way home from school.

A frantic search that lasted almost seven weeks ended when her daughter's frozen body was found in an abandoned shed near her home in Winnipeg.

"To this day, we still have no idea who would have done this to our child, or why," says Derksen, director of Victims' Voice, a Mennonite Central Committee Canada program that assists people affected by homicide and violent crimes.

Breaking the hold of trauma bonds

Although the offender has not been found, Derksen says a bond developed between the offender and her family—an insidious bond that had to be understood, addressed and resolved for healing to take place.

In her book, Confronting the Horror, the aftermath of violence, she describes the victim/offender trauma bond as one of the most destructive elements that characterize the aftermath of a violent crime.

"Until we break this victim/offender trauma bond we will never be free to recover from the incident, rebuild our lives or feel in control of our lives again," she says. "We have to defeat the mastery of fear. We have to defeat the control of the trauma. The only way to free ourselves of this bond is to break the hold it has on us."

"Out of sight, out of mind" doesn't work

Derksen says the trauma bond cannot be broken through prison terms for the offenders. "Unfortunately, out of sight, out of mind, often doesn't work with this bond," she says.

The first step to breaking the bond is to identify ways that the offender controls ones life. "Often understanding the bond is enough to make it manageable," says Derksen. "After experiencing violence we want to run and hide. What I have learned is that we can't run away from our conflicts or the suffering in them. We have to go back and face the issues if we want healing. In order to break the bond we need to deal with our fear, anger, mistrust and dependencies."

Safe Justice Encounters

To help victims of crime deal with issues arising from the victim/offender trauma bond, Victims' Voice, in partnership with The John Howard Society of Manitoba and Winnipeg-based Mediation Services, launched Safe Justice Encounters in 2002, a program that assists victims who choose to communicate with their offender.

This face-to-face encounter, says Derksen, helps victims find answers about the crime, clarify confusion, reduce anger and fear and deal with other issues surrounding the violent incident and trauma bond.

Her own journey of breaking her trauma bond with the offender included a meeting with 10 prisoners serving life sentences at Stony Mountain Institution, a medium security federal penitentiary located north of Winnipeg. Nine of the prisoners were serving time for murder and one was incarcerated for participating in an armed bank robbery.

This meeting helped end her obsession to obtain information about the crime and gave her a new focus—a passion to help others. "The measures of healing are radical—it is like chemotherapy for cancer," she says. "How do we find peace? How do we isolate the viruses of anger and fear? How do we bottle the remedy?"

The healing process

Derksen compares the healing process following trauma to rebuilding physical structures after natural disasters. "Some stuff can be recycled but it all has to be re-evaluated before it can be put together again."

Forgiveness, she says, is a key component in the healing process. She describes forgiveness as letting go of the need to retaliate, letting go of the need to hurt back and letting go of revenge. "We have to let go of that and learn to trust again," she explains.

Derksen's healing process also included reliving her trauma through writing the books Have you seen Candace in 1991 and Confronting the Horror in 2002.

Her most recent book, Confronting the Horror, is written primarily for victims of violent crime but destructive elements experienced in the aftermath of a violent crime can be applied to all trauma and situations of victimization, including terrorism, war, bankruptcy, natural disasters, divorce and cultural genocide.

 

Gladys Terichow is a writer for MCC Canada