Two Women's Journeys: Restorative justice after sexual violence

For more than 40 years I have worked in the field of sexual violence, and while not exclusively so for all of this time, it has nonetheless always been there. Sexual violence in all its multidimensions has always been part of my professional life – to a greater or lesser extent – and that does not seem to want to end any time soon. From my first child sexual abuse ‘case’ as a young Irish social worker in Brixton in 1976 to issues involving sexual harassment on campus and online child exploitation, with which I am concerned today, my professional life has involved almost every aspect of sexual violence – legal, social, therapeutic, organisational, research and policy – and for most of that time from all perspectives simultaneously. The work has also involved the full 360 degrees concerning multiple parties all together: victims, perpetrators, both sets of families, criminal justice systems and professionals, media, politicians, policy makers, communities, the Catholic Church (Keenan, 2012) and more latterly the film industry (http://themeetingfilm.com/). Sexual violence in its many dimensions seems to seek me out, and it is in this context too that I also first came to work with Ivo Aertsen when he supervised a Daphne-funded research project on Integrated Approaches to Sexual Violence: the Role of Restorative Justice, led by Estelle Zinsstag and myself (Zinsstag and Keenan, 2017). In this tribute article to the work of Ivo Aertsen, we will begin by outlining Marie’s work in the area of sexual violence and illustrate developments in Marie’s thought over this time. We will conclude by offering the perspective of Ailbhe, a young woman who suffered a sexual assault and her journey towards restorative justice and getting her life back.