it's very easy to preach redemption for criminal behavior until you've experienced it firsthand
once a loved one has experienced something god-awful at the hands of another person i would think there is a rather slim chance of an individual retaining such optimistic ideals--now i am not saying it's a negative thing to think so ideally, but i definitely think it lends itself heavily to naivety
i would like to think of myself as someone who prefers to lean on the pacifistic/positive side(s) myself, but i also know that if someone i loved dearly was treated the way this girl was treated i would be very doubtful that i would be able to contain my rage
While I never experienced anything as horrid as some of the victims mentioned I did live a couple years of my adolescence being subjected to physical and emotional abuse on a near daily basis. At the time I was pretty convinced by my hands or his I wasn't going to make it through. My high school years to some extent are kind of a blur as I struggled to return to any sense of normality from the events. I still have nightmares about it, and in small ways it still effects me although plenty of therapy later I pulled myself out of the worst of it.
Now this is just me so take it for what its worth (not much), but the biggest part of my healing was the relinquishing of my anger, my desire for something terrible to happen to him; his 'just desserts'. It's kind of cliche, but at a point I realized hanging onto this desire of revenge or him getting his own did nothing for me, nothing positive anyway. It just made me mad when it didn't happen the way I wanted it to happen. I realized all I focused on was him. In a way he won long after the events were over. I am sure he didn't care at all about what happened, and if there was one thing that could happen it would be him asking for forgiveness, but again is never going to happen.
I focused on myself, my well-being and my 'recovery' instead, and I believe that is what my growth so much more substantial. Yes, there are dark memories, and painful recurrences, but I can say I've overcome that and channeled those feelings into being a better person and using it as a guide to a different life. I think it is what led me to becoming a Psychologist and researching male violence, and it is a career path I am so happy I found. When I was working in corrections big component of the process was forgiving those that hurt them (and often it was family, and often in terrible ways you would struggle to imagine), and a part of it was learning to acknowledge the hurt they caused and see how they were being no better than their abusers. It didn't always work, and probably more often than not it wouldn't click because of how warped things had become in their life. I worked with all kinds of criminals from petty drug charges to murderers to child molesters. You see a lot of hurt people, a lot of people who really never had a chance. Some of them were likely to never see the outside world again considering their charges, but even still some learned to begin to ask for forgiveness from those they hurt. Some wrote letters apologizing for what they did. Some I felt really began to take ownership for the fuck-ups they made.
That's one perspective though, and I admit I'm a pacifist/softy. I see I'm the minority in that regard and I am not surprised. I think my history helps give me that perspective, because sometimes I imagine I could have gone down a similar road of anger, but somewhere I got enough support, common-sense, and love to think differently. I dunno what this whole thing is about, but just giving a perspective (And again, just one) on how else those events could be taken, and to see a larger context.
Lol its an anecdote.