Re: Circles Ottawa

Good Morning! - I received this article this morning from Harry Nigh, the Toronto Community Chaplain and thought it worthy to pass along to you FYI. I recently attended the 10th anniversary celebration of Circles of Support and Accountability in Toronto and fully support the work of this group and encourage you to pass this along to any church group as you feel led.

There has ben a recent "expose" prepared by The Kingston Whig Standard on former Kingston choirmaster, John Galliene.

This morning I noticed this feature article from the Ottawa Citizen which gives another slant.

MAY 22, 2004 THE OTTAWA CITIZEN PAGE: E1 / FRONT (CITY)
Support circles help keep streets safe from sex offenders
They work with the worst of the worst. But these are no mere do-gooders, these bands of angels who offer society's most reviled outcasts the support they need to keep from reoffending. Don Butler reports on how this Canadian initiative is becoming something of an international cause celebre.

KEYWORDS: crime, victim*, Correctional Services of Canada, correction* [NEAR] service*, correction* [NEAR] canada, correction* [NEAR] program*, inmate* [AND] Canad*, parole*, restorative justice, sex offender registry, sex offender*, statutory release, crisis , community safety

Don Butler, The Ottawa Citizen
For the past decade, a band of angels has been watching over John Gallienne.
But these angels are mortal -- flesh-and-blood Samaritans who volunteer with circles of support and accountability that operate out of St. John's Anglican Church on Elgin Street.

Mr. Gallienne is that most reviled of outcasts, a pedophile who sexually abused 13 choirboys when he was choirmaster and organist at an Anglican church in Kingston. He moved to Ottawa in 1994 after serving four years of a six-year prison sentence.

He was back in the public eye this week after news reports that he plays the organ and conducts an adult choir at St. John's, in defiance of a ban imposed 10 years ago by Ottawa's Anglican diocese. Bishop Peter Coffin, who heads the local diocese, is now considering whether Mr. Gallienne should be allowed to retain those roles.

That such a furore would erupt now, after Mr. Gallienne has been living in the community without incident for a decade, speaks to the fear and loathing that adheres to pedophiles like a stain no solvent can expunge.

All of which makes the willingness of a select few Canadians, often from faith communities, to befriend sex offenders like Mr. Gallienne all the more remarkable.

It would be easy to dismiss them as bleeding hearts, these volunteers -- naive do-gooders who see the world, and its manifest evils, through the rosiest of coloured glasses. Except that there is compelling evidence that circles of support and accountability, which began in Canada in 1994, are keeping all of us safer.

Robin Wilson, a Correctional Services of Canada psychologist, has been tracking two groups of 30 high-risk sex offenders since the late '90s. Among the 30 who belong to circles, only three have reoffended --just one in 10. By contrast, eight of those who lack the support of circles-- more than one in four -- have created new victims.

Mr. Wilson has also compared the reoffence rate of the two groups to actuarial projections, which compute the likelihood that high-risk sex offenders will commit more crimes. The projections indicate that 11 men in the circle groups should have committed new sex crimes by now.

"So in comparison to actuarial norms," he says, "there are eight people who should have reoffended who haven't."
"The results are extremely promising," says David Molzahn, a special advisor in the Correctional Service's chaplaincy unit, which funds the circles of support and accountability program. "They're far beyond what I think anybody ever imagined possible."

The result's even more impressive when you consider that circles of support and accountability target those at the highest risk of reoffending.

"We want to work with the worst of the worst," says Mr. Wilson. "We want to have the greatest effect with those people who are likely to do the greatest amount of damage."

The power of the circle process derives from its volunteers.
'People kept saying: 'Well, no, I don't think so'
Typically, between four and six volunteers enter into an agreement, called a covenant, with a newly released sex offender, known as the "core member."

For a minimum of one year, the volunteers pledge to have daily contact with the sex offender, helping with such basic needs as finding employment and housing, attending medical appointments and shopping. They also undertake to hold him accountable if he shows signs of slipping into bad habits.

In return, the sex offender pledges to honour any conditions imposed by the court, which might include avoiding alcohol and areas where children gather, steer clear of high-risk behaviour and communicate honestly with other circle members.

Once a week, all members of the circle meet to review the past week's events, brainstorm solutions to problems, celebrate successes and develop plans for the week ahead.

Today, more than 60 circles of support and accountability operate in Canada. Most are in Toronto, where released sex offenders find it easier to blend into the landscape. Three currently operate out of St. John's church, where about 30 volunteers have received formal circle training.

The rest of the world is starting to pay attention. Eight countries have since picked up the idea.
"We so rarely toot our horns when we do the right thing,' notes Mr. Wilson. "I think it's worth saying that this idea was born of really rather humble beginnings in Canada, and it's now becoming something of an international cause celebre.

"We're seen as the leaders of this, the stewards of it. Yet I don't think many people in Canada know anything about it."

- - -
Like many inspired innovations, circles of support and accountability were conceived as a creative response to crisis.
In 1994, a mentally disabled pedophile named Charlie Taylor was about to be released from prison. Because of changes in the law sparked by the community protection movement --which arose in the 1980s in response to public alarm over high-profile sex crimes -- he had been denied both parole and statutory release, and held in prison for his full sentence. Now he was about be dumped, unprepared and alone, into Hamilton, a community that wanted nothing to do with him.

One of Charlie Taylor's few friends was a Mennonite pastor named Harry Nigh. A prison psychologist asked if he could offer the beleaguered man any help.

Rev. Nigh was familiar with restorative justice, an alternative justice concept championed by the Mennonite Central Committee that often uses circle processes. It advocates healing the harm caused by crime, and focuses both on the needs of victims and the safe reintegration of criminals into the community.

Rev. Nigh rounded up some volunteers and the first circle of support and accountability was born. Six months later, Hugh Kirkegaard, a Correctional Services community chaplain in Toronto, created a second circle to deal with the situation of Wray Budreo, another pedophile with 36 convictions who was released to an equally hostile reception from the media and public.

Both circles still meet; neither Mr. Taylor nor Mr. Budreo has reoffended.
The success of these initial circles led Correctional Services and the Mennonite Central Committee to establish a pilot project in 1996 to refine the concept and implement it across Canada.

Today it operates on a shoestring budget of $300,000 a year, much of which goes to pay modest salaries to part-time circle co-ordinators. Everything else runs on a volunteer basis.

Given the demonstrated success of circles, this may be one of the best investments taxpayers have ever made. It certainly looks sensational when compared to the estimated $1.5 million -- for policing, courts, monitoring, rehabilitation and treatment -- that it costs to deal with a single sex offender.

Circles of support and accountability, says Mr. Wilson, "are costing pennies by comparison. It's much more profitable and much more cost effective than any sex offender registry will ever be."

- - -
John Gallienne, fresh from prison, landed in Ottawa just as the first circles were forming in Hamilton and Toronto. His prospects were bleak. Because of his crimes, he could not practise his profession. He and his wife were starting over in a new community, with no network of support. Fortunately for him, he met Heather Mallett.

Ms. Mallett is a parishioner at St. John's church and a deeply religious woman. A victim of childhood sexual abuse herself, she is an unlikely angel to a sex offender. But the choice wasn't entirely hers.

"There's this other part of me which is not of my own choosing or making, but from God," she says. "There's no other way of describing it. This is God saying, 'you have to do something about this.' "

(It should be noted that confidentiality is a central value of circles of support and accountability. During interviews for this story in April, Ms. Mallett and other volunteers were careful not to identify core members of their circles by name. Mr. Gallienne's identity only came to light as a result of this week's news reports.)

After inviting Mr. Gallienne and his wife to her house for dinner, Ms. Mallett spoke to the rector at St. John's about creating a "house church" -- effectively, an informal circle of support and accountability -- where Mr. Gallienne could worship and meet with other parishioners.

At first, she had little luck recruiting volunteers. "People kept saying, 'well, no, I don't think so.' " But she persisted and was eventually able to find 18 people who agreed to participate.

Because the process was so new, no one had any training in circle processes. But the group included a doctor, two priests, a pastoral counsellor and various other professionals.

Everyone, including Mr. Gallienne, was frightened at first, she says. "We didn't know what to expect. Was this person ever going to be employed by anybody for anything?

"I had this idea that somebody would find out and, I don't know, shoot us or something. I got a little bit paranoid."
At the first house church gathering, Mr. Gallienne sat quietly on a chesterfield in Ms. Mallett's living room while the assembled group took turns upbraiding him for his crimes. Then the healing began with a Eucharist.

"It was an incredibly powerful evening," Ms. Mallett recalls. "There was just a sense of all of us being surrounded by love. God was there with us."

Still, the first year was difficult. Ms. Mallett recalls phoning her husband, Garth, one day and saying, "This is hard work!"

Friends were aghast when she told them what she was doing. Think of his victims, they cried. Think of all the people he's hurt. How could you?

She tried to explain that she and her circle colleagues were only trying to keep the community safe. It was no use; her friends couldn't accept that she was helping a pedophile. "That really shocked and surprised me, because these are all educated women."

Fourteen members of that original circle still gather every couple of months. Most now consider Mr. Gallienne a personal friend. Ms. Mallett, for one, has total faith in the once-broken man who showed up a decade ago with little hope of ever again living a normal life.

"There is no possibility of reoffence," she says flatly. "I would lay down my life saying that. He would never do it for himself, but he would never do it for the rest of us as well."

- - -
Formal circles of support and accountability began at St. John's church in 2000. None of the four sex offenders involved has yet committed another offence.

Their closest call came when a pedophile with a long history of low-level sexual offences -- "a bum-toucher," says circle volunteer Michael Petrunik -- violated some of his release conditions. But even that episode attests to the power of the circle process.

After violating the conditions -- volunteers emphasize that he did not victimize anyone -- the man called one of his circle members, Eric Bays, a retired bishop, and reported the breaches. The man then called his parole officer and informed him as well.

As a result of the violations, the man was sent back to the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Detention Centre. A short time later, in May 2003, another inmate murdered him.

Despite the story's tragic ending, volunteers say the man's response demonstrates that the process was working.
"When he was committing his breaches, it seemed that he was on a downward spiral, possibly on his way to reoffending," says Susan Love, the local co-ordinator for circles of support and accountability.

"But he stopped himself. He stopped that pattern or spiral and called a circle member. If the circle hadn't been there, who knows what would have happened?"

Mr. Petrunik, who teaches criminology at the University of Ottawa, says occasional lapses by ex-offenders are to be expected, given their high risk to reoffend.

"That's what the circle is here for, so when something at risk happens, the individual can go to the circle. Or the circle might see something that is happening and recognize that something's wrong."

Mr. Petrunik, an avuncular man with a slight stutter, was drawn to circles of support and accountability out of professional interest.

"Here is something that looks at trying to deal with both community safety and the possibility that you could reintegrate these individuals," he says. "They had these two mottoes -- no more victims, and no one is disposable. How do you balance those two?"

Another volunteer, Pat Love, was a probation officer for a decade.
"One of the things I learned in being a probation officer is that these are real people with real problems, often with many horrible difficulties in their backgrounds.

"Without excusing that, one has to look at them as individuals and help them get beyond that."
Many volunteers see the circles as a tangible way of practising their Christian faith.
"I was taken by the fact that it meshed very well with my world view," says Stacey Hannem-Kish, a young criminologist in her 20s. "For me, it was a way of living my faith and a way of practising justice as I see it should be done."

"It just seems to me to fit our Christian convictions," adds Mr. Bays, the retired bishop.
Whatever their motives, it is clear that circle volunteers are unusually non-judgmental and empathetic people. Human angels are in terribly short supply.

People often ask if circle volunteers aren't afraid of the sex offenders they walk with, says Susan Love. Her response is simple.

"I think it's scarier for them not to have support," she says.
"He has high needs, high risk and no support? That scares me."