Growing up with an alcoholic father has been extremely difficult. The constant arguments and verbal abuse brought a lot of emotional and physical pain. It was at college that a counsellor introduced me to Alateen, a 12-step fellowship of young people whose lives have been affected by alcoholism in a family member. There I found unconditional love and a rich ground for growth. Through listening to others share, I learnt a lot about alcoholism as a family disease.

A few years later I went to study in Scotland. At the height of a nervous breakdown I was involved in a violent riot when I was protesting against racism. A few months later I was featured on Crime Monthly (a programme which appealed for some of Britain’s most wanted criminals) and arrested the next morning .

Volunteering at a holiday home for people with severe disabilities, I met a retired police officer who had been attacked on duty which had left her paralysed. She told me that “she had joined the police to help people” and I asked her if she hated the person who had injured her. She replied, “No, because there is too much hate in the world”.

After waiting nearly 2 years I was sent to prison for 16 months. While incarcerated, I kept a scrapbook where I could record my journey using letters, poems, short stories and artwork. This is one of those poems that really captured my prison experience:

Prisoners

We want them to have self worth So we destroy their self worth

To be responsible So we take away all responsibility

To be part of our community So we isolate them from the community

To be positive and constructive So we degrade them and make them useless

To be non violent so we put them where there Is violence all around

To be kind and loving people So we subject them to hatred and cruelty

To quit being tough guys So we put them where the tough guy is respected

To quit hanging around losers So we put all the losers under one roof

To quit exploiting us So we put them where they exploit each other

We want them to take control of their own lives own their own problems and quit being

Parasites so we make them totally dependent on us

By Judge Dennis Chaleen, Supreme Court USA.

On my release from prison I went back to Al-Anon, and by applying the 12 steps to my life I have grown mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I am grateful to Al-anon for giving me a healthy programme to live by and enjoy. Al-Anon gave me a space to heal and gave me the courage to develop my story into a one-man play using puppets, masks, dance, poetry and silence. My dad is still drinking, but through the programme I’m learning to forgive him.

I got a job editing an arts magazine called The A-word for prisoners and ex-prisoners in 2008. The theme of the first issue was inspired by a talk I heard at a seminar organised by The Forgiveness Project, which is an organisation that explores forgiveness and restorative Justice through the narratives of real people.

One member of the panel was Marian Partington, whose sister lucy had been one of the victims of the serial killers Fred and Rosemary West. Lucy Partington, a 21 year-old art student at Exeter University, had gone missing in 1973. When the murders at the West’s house in Gloucester were revealed in 1994, Lucy’s was among the bodies uncovered.

In her book Salvaging the Sacred: Lucy, my sister Marian writes:

“…the closer I get to accepting Lucy’s death, the more I can remember about our childhood. I remember a massacre of guinea pigs by a fox. Lucy carefully buried each mauled corpse. A close childhood friend told us about another incident with a dead guinea pig. I was scared to kiss him as he was dead. She told me fiercely that just because something dies it doesn’t mean that you should stop loving it and that everyone deserves to be kissed before going to heaven.

By the time that Lucy was twenty one years old, we were both studying English at university (I’d had a few diversions on the way well it was the sixties both in our final year. I was in London and she was in Exeter. Lucy’s focus was on truth and beauty. She was single-mindedly and passionately exploring the deeper meaning of life; immersed in art, literature and religion.

During her last free evening 27^th December 1973 Lucy visited a friend in Cheltenham. She left in time to catch the 10.15 bus back to Gretton. Her satchel contained my last present to her. It was a Victorian cut-glass jar, the right size to hold a night light candle. Lucy had been delighted with it, and talked of using it as her nightlight when she was back in her hall of residence after the Christmas holiday. Also in her bag was the letter of application to the Courtauld Institute of Art for a postgraduate course in medieval art. It was never posted.

This is where, for me, it all goes into slow motion. The moment when Lucy, satchel swinging on her shoulder, hurried through the darkest of nights (there was a national power cut due to the fuel crisis), intending to post the letter before the bus came. The moment when Lucy’s life met its opposite. The gargoyles came to life and destroyed her. Euphemisms serve to numb the senses and present the unpresentable. Maybe that is the best I can do. No try again, I am avoiding it put it into words. It is medieval. It smacks of concentration camps and nuclear bombs. I am trying to imagine the moment when she was abducted from her own direction in life and debased into a physical object to be treated as mere flesh and bones for the gratification of some other human beings whose quest was the opposite to hers. They stole her gagged her tied her up toyed with her, raped her, tortured her and at some unknown time killed her.

They didn’t know the beauty of her soul.

They caused her unimaginable physical and emotional suffering. How long was she kept alive, unable to scream or struggle? I pray that her recent conversion to Roman Catholicism gave her some moments of strength. They beheaded and dismembered her and stuffed her into a small hole, surrounded by leaking sewage pipes head first, face down still gagged. Her flesh decomposed into a tarry black slime that stained the clay walls of the hole and coated the bones. The rope that held her in bondage, two hair grips, a few strands of hair and the masking tape gag survived, with most of her bones. Who knows what happened to the missing bones.”

Marian quotes the Dalai Lama: I will learn to cherish beings of bad nature. And those pressed by strong sins and suffering as if I had found a precious treasure very difficult to find. She goes on to say, “I know Lucy would have understood their meaning – ‘love thine enemy’. This path offers a way to break the cycle of violence and hatred, to find in danger the opportunity to change. To reach the experience of the deepest compassion (empathy with suffering) and humility (from the latin word “humus” meaning ground or earth). The earth is common to all forms of life. It is that which connects us and feeds the following generations”.

Marian finished the book with these words.”Thank you Lucy. Your life and your death have deepened my knowledge of love. I will try to pass that on. Each moment that passes is full of significance and the opportunity for change if we choose to look if we choose to act. Maybe we could start with each one of us writing a favourite poem on a small piece of cloth and tying it to the branch of tree in memory of all victims of violence and act towards hope for a world in which cruelty is replaced by understanding and compassion.It is time to salvage the sacred”.

Marian found herself drawn to working in the field of restorative justice. In Bristol prison she became involved in a project to raise victim awareness with staff and among some prisoners. This usually involved explaining her story, including her experiences of extremely destructive emotions, then listening to their stories and trying to help them open their hearts to themselves. There was a young man called Mark in prison for burglary who was very moved by her story and her likening what happened to Lucy to the ultimate burglary. He suddenly saw that his crimes had affected other’s lives. So he asked to be taken back to his flat where he showed police all the other items he’d stolen. He was driven around pointing out the houses he had burgled and asked the police to return the goods and express his apologies. Marian and this young man went on to correspond for 3 years, and as a result of this experience he has written beautiful poems. Marian sent me this letter of correspondence and one of Mark’s poems Time to Heal:

(Mark wrote) “I’d never written a poem in my life before I met you, and the only way I can let go of the pain and express myself from the heart is poetry. I never knew Lucy used to write poems. I would like to dedicate all my poems to Lucy because in a strange way if it wasn’t what happened to her we would never have met and I would still be in that dark lonely place. I know my poems don’t mean anything to most people. But to me they mean the world. I have over 40 poems now. They have a little story to tell. They are part of me. They are like a window into my heart. Every time I write or read one of my poems I will remember how you and Lucy pulled me from the dark lonely pit which would have destroyed me. Thank you”.

Time to heal

A time to heal, a time to dance and be free

Forgiveness for every soul

We hold the key

The sun dial and peace inside

We all need

Anger and resentments

will never succeed

Solitude- heights of the mountains

The loneliness of the desert

Time to reflect

Let all your pain go

As you bathe in the gracious blue fountains

The void within the soul

The gardens of peace we can feed

The lushes of yellow and green flowers

From seeds to beauty

We watch them grow

The sound of the rivers

Rushing waters to a steady flow

In all this beauty will we find

To hear the sweet songs

From the singing birds

The heart and soul becomes combined

The flowers , the roses row in row

We are no different We are how they grow

The light, the rain, the sun

Is what they have

We have all this and more

So why be sad?

By Mark Fernley

I invited a prisoner who had read The A-Word to illustrate Marian’s story. Andrew wrote this description of his picture “A woman (Marian) is under the surface of the water hidden from everyone’s view. Her expressionless face hides what’s going on inside her—how she really feels. She is ‘pushing’ her exploding anger and destructive emotions out of her body, breaking through the surface of the water. Her ‘tornado’ of emotions is sent up to the sky where it forms dark clouds, which then fall as rain to revitalise the land forgiveness is beginning. The dolphin is there to guide her through the healing process and ‘senses’ her turmoil.”

Marian has been part of an unfortunate piece of infamous history. I believe that forgiveness has been the catalyst in all the good work she now does, to help herself and help others. Forgiveness transforms the victim into the most beautiful flower that everyone wants to pick. We can all learn from Marian’s story.

I hope so.