This Stuff report on Susan’s Supreme Court success does not mention the vital role of Garth McVicar and the Sensible Sentencing Trust in Susan’s recovery and her case which has now inched forward.

Garth was there when the families of Bell’s three victims were reeling under the revelations of Corrections’ indifference to the threat posed by Bell. Inside tip-offs were telling them of complete administrative chaos, and staff certainty that Bell would comit grievious harm again, the only question being when and on whom. Someone was going to be Bell’s victim.

Garth  gave the practical help they needed. He found them lawyers willing to lift them from despair at their helplessness, with prospects of ‘accountability’ from those who wronged them, including the government that was more keen to display its ‘compassion’ to Bell, than to save his next victims.

Garth asked me to help him evaluate first the case for Tai Hobson, who lost his wife Mary to Bell’s cruelty. I thought the odds were against us, but that they were enough to make it worth a try. It’s not just for Tai. The case was essential to confront with the evidence of its callousness, a hypocritical  government that liked to stigmatise victims and Garth for their demands that criminals pay for their crimes.

Garth found Brian Henry to run the case. Though Tai, as a mere lifelong husband of the woman bludgeoned to death, was found to be too remote for the courts to extend the liability of the Crown, Susan as a direct victim could overcome that hurdle.

I had several weeks travelling with Tai and Garth last year. It is inspiring to see the dignity of these survivor victims after they come to feel that they can do something constructive, that their suffering might be turned to some use.

Victims have to rebuild their sense, against all the evidence, that they are not just helpless targets of capricious or even malicious fate. “Moving on” doesn’t happen while every passing day shows them their assumptions about the world were fiction, that justice is not done, that talk about fairness and reciprocity is empty, that the modern justice system largely excludes the victims as unfortunate discards, while preaching at them forgiveness.

They learn that the criminal’s welfare and fate are the central concern of the self-important actors in the justice theatre.

They are instinctively searching for ways to perform the age old cleansing and re-balancing procedures of vengeance before reconciliation.

Every long-term culture has them, as explained in Beyond Revenge – the evolution of the foregiveness instinct. This just published work by Prof Michael McCullough is a must-read book for anyone who wants to understand the centrality in any effective justice system of both assured retribution, and scope for forgiveness and reconciliation. The book summarises the evolutionary psychology behind the comunity’s interest in ensuring satisfaction of the revenge need (among other things, victims must re-establish status vis a vis the aggressor who is otherwise left in a more powerful position)  and the conditions that encourage foregivenss and reconciliation.

The more simple its objectives and decision model, the better it works over the long term. Ensure that reciprocity is seen to work, both ways. Return harm for evil after giving some latitude for one-off mistake (a second chance but not the 9th, 10th or 109th given to Bell), and return good for good. Do unto others as you would be done by.