I recall this experience at this time each year. The only thing I change each year is the number of murder cases I have worked on in the previous months. This year the number increased yet again …
Justice is not restricted to a single outcome of right or wrong, guilty, or innocent. My work teaches me again and again that justice is complex and operates in both external and internal realities. As a forensic psychotherapist my task is often focused on the later and means that, although a legal process has arrived at a conclusion, there remains, a much longer process to achieve an internal justice.
For the offender, processing guilt, remorse, shame and taking responsibility requires much more than any judicial sentence could ever require. Enabling someone through this process is at the very heart of my work, it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning and often prevents me from sleeping all night.
To say that achieving internal justice is hard is a total understatement and for many it remains impossible, they simply cannot do it and I certainly cannot do it for them. It has always been the most challenging aspect of my career. Now, more than thirty years in, that challenge remains.
The challenge of my work is a revolving paradox. It is full of horror (murders, countless sexual assaults, rapes, many incidents of child abuse, bestiality, stalking, harassment, domestic violence, robbery, arson, stalking and suicides present on a regular basis). In equal measure my work is also full of inspiration (kindness, compassion, resilience, courage, hope, recovery, healing, and creativity). Each one of these features has characterised and shaped each day of my working life.
I recall from a few Christmases ago that late on a snowy Tuesday evening I received a message that a bed had been found in a therapeutic medium secure unit for one of my most complex, troubled, and very young offenders who had become involved in chemsex, offending violently and repeatedly in that context. He was dangerous to others and himself.
Medium secure care provides intensive therapy in a safe, respectful, and comfortable environment. When all else has failed, it is very much a last chance and so incredibly precious. It is also very much in demand. So much so that I often will not even begin the process of trying to access it for anyone as it usually impossible.
Also, often impossible to achieve is the consent, motivation, and willingness of the client. For many, it just asks too much. On this occasion and in relation to this young man I did not know what his response would be. What I knew for certain is that I could not risk delaying him the opportunity and needed to go to him in person to try to get him to say ‘yes’.
So, on an equally snowy morning morning, instead of Christmas shopping, I sat in HMP Liverpool with my ‘chemsex client’ and asked him if he would take this opportunity, this last hope, and to be willing to subject himself to daily therapy over two years and even beyond the expiry date of his sentence. A massive ask!
This young man is not stupid, he has insight, capacity, and awareness. The mayhem of chemsex had over several years made it almost impossible for him to access any of those qualities. The madness of chemsex had diminished those qualities with repeated trauma inflicted on him and yes, by him. Repeated incidents of extreme violence, exploitation, abuse. Repeated incidents of vulnerability along with many episodes of paranoia and psychosis.
His capacity for intelligence, insight and awareness had also been ignored and abused by so called professional services. One LGBT service who purports to work with victims of crime absolutely rejected my requests for them to work with him and address his victim experiences, instead they found it possible to write a report on him that was the most biased, damming, and judgemental report I have ever seen written on anyone in over thirty years practice.
But back in HMP Liverpool and in spite of being written off by that so called ‘LGBT charity’ this young man, with awareness, integrity and hope said ‘Yes’.
After agreeing and without prompting, the young man then went on to say, far better than I, why we should never give up on anyone, why access to internal justice is crucial and why, on occasions, Christmas shopping can wait:
“I’m saying yes Stephen. I want to go as I know that if you just leave me to come to appointments by myself once I’m out, then I’ll come on the Tuesday, the Wednesday and maybe even the Thursday but on the Friday I’ll go on Grindr and by the afternoon I’ll be slammed up, I’ll be fucking for the next three days and then shit will happen and you’ll be putting me back in here. In this new place, in there, I won’t be able to do that, and I might kick off and threaten the nurses and bite them and all that, but I will still end up in the therapy session and that’s what I need and what I’ve wanted for so long. Will you come to see me when I’m there? and do you think when I’ve been there for a few months we could go out for an afternoon? And will you ring my mum for me and tell her I’m going to go; she will be smiling like mad when you tell her. I’ve needed someone not to give up on me and you haven’t and neither has Seb (his Probation Officer), tell him thank you, can you ring him and tell him thank you. Will they let me go there this afternoon?”
Br Stephen Morris FCC
