Mapping the world of victims and survivors of violence

Confronting the Horror: The Aftermath of Violence By Wilma L. Derksen. Amity Publishers, 263 pp., bibliography.

“Those people live in a different world,” said a pastor, speaking of “secondary victims” of violence, people who are left behind to mourn and yearn for justice.

In Confronting the Horror: The Aftermath of Violence, Wilma Derksen helps readers understand the “different world” of victims who are isolated by the justice system and even by their own faith communities. Her own struggle to forgive after the abduction and death of a daughter (described in an earlier book, Who Has Seen Candace?) brought her into contact with many other survivors/victims.

Derksen listened, reflected, analyzed and reported so that those in the “different world” might feel more understood, more able to accept reality. She discerned 15 challenges, organized under five major headings: react, retreat, rectify, refer and recover.

Her experience and research will help the rest of us to “weep with those who weep”, to be true neighbours to people struggling to get their lives back on track after a trauma. She is particularly useful in identifying unhelpful responses. Often we deal with our own fears by blaming the victim (“It couldn’t happen to me”). We cannot admit the possibility of random violence. Although we make ourselves feel safer that way, we isolate the victim more than ever.

Because Derksen has researched her topic exhaustively, her book is a useful text for people seriously affected by any crime, seven to ten relatives and friends, along with neighbours and co-workers. But Confronting the Horror is not for the closest kin in the immediate aftermath of the crime. Someone else will have to absorb its wisdom for them at that stage.

The book’s language and format are simple, but the content is never simplistic. There is material here for those seeking to change a system that sometimes brings justice to the perpetrator but almost never gives satisfaction to the victim. There are implications for peace theology. Recommended for study groups.

Donna Stewart is a member of MCC B.C.’s Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse advisory committee, and was recently moderator of Killarney Park MB Church, Vancouver.