In 2019, Marlee Liss's sexual assault case became the first in North America to get resolved in a restorative justice process instead of ending up in a criminal trial. Today, Marlee Liss is a restorative justice advocate, award-winning speaker, and embodiment coach. Her story is a testament that restorative justice provides a rare opportunity for survivors to heal in a way that respects their need for boundaries, care, and consent...while also initiating a transformative process for those who cause harm. Marlee’s social media handle is @marleeliss. Find her work at www.marleeliss.com The second edition of her (poetry) book Re-Humanize is just out. This episode discusses sexual violence,suicide and sexual harm. If you need support please call 8-1-1 in Canada or visit https://endingviolencecanada.org/sexual-assault-centres-crisis-lines-and-support-services/ for a list of crisis lines, support services and sexual assault centres in your area.
In 2019, Marlee Liss's sexual assault case became the first in North America to get resolved in a restorative justice process instead of ending up in a criminal trial. Today, Marlee Liss is a restorative justice advocate, award-winning speaker, and embodiment coach. Her story is a testament that restorative justice provides a rare opportunity for survivors to heal in a way that respects their need for boundaries, care, and consent...while also initiating a transformative process for those who cause harm.
Marlee’s social media handle is @marleeliss. Find her work at www.marleeliss.com
The second edition of her (poetry) book Re-Humanize is just out.
This episode discusses sexual violence,suicide and sexual harm. If you need support please call 8-1-1 in Canada or visit https://endingviolencecanada.org/sexual-assault-centres-crisis-lines-and-support-services/ for a list of crisis lines, support services and sexual assault centres in your area.
HOST: I’m Myrna McCallum, Metis-Cree lawyer and passionate promoter of trauma-informed lawyering. As you know, I believe that law scholars and bar courses are missing a critical competency in their curriculum: trauma-informed lawyering. Becoming a trauma-informed lawyer will, among other things, challenge you to critically reflect on your personal behaviors, beliefs and biases. Call on you to positively transform the way you approach advocacy. Guide your practice in to avoid doing further harm to others. And ask that you commit to remaining open to learn new and old knowledge you didn’t know you needed before beginning your career.
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HOST: In 2019, Marlee Liss's sexual assault case became the first in North America to get resolved in a restorative justice process instead of ending up in a criminal trial.
She actually sat face to face with her assailant in an eight hour circle, but no one had presented that option to her. She had to figure it out for herself, and the process changed her life.
And it changed her assailant's life. Today, Marlee Liss is a restorative justice advocate, an award winning speaker and coach. Marlee's voice is a testament to how restorative justice can offer a path to healing for survivors of traumatic experiences. And not just for survivors, but for everyone. It's an alternative to the current system that we know is not working, and it demonstrates that we can have a more compassionate and human centered justice system that is actually achieving justice.
Today's episode is a very personal and potentially triggering one. It contains mention of sexual assault, self harming behaviors, and references to incidences that could be re traumatizing. If you need support, I'm going to invite you to go to endingviolencecanada.org. They have a whole list of sexual assault centers, crisis lines and support services, and it's categorized by provinces.
So go to endingviolencecanada.org for access to their support info. And we now have a suicide crisis helpline in Canada. All you have to do is dial 9, 8, 8. Okay, so if you're ready to lean into this conversation, let's go.
[00:00:00] Myrna McCallum: Hi there, Marlee. Welcome to the Trauma Informed Lawyer Podcast.
[00:00:03] Marlee Liss: Hi, thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:06] Myrna McCallum: I'm so happy to have you here because as I was thinking about restorative justice and all the things that bring people to restorative justice processes, I think I maybe only had one other person, Vanessa Slater, on my podcast, who talked about that.
[00:00:23] She's a restorative justice practitioner and she wrote about it. But it's, I think, a really timely conversation. I think maybe talking about RJ processes is always timely, but before we get into it, do you want to say a few words about what's bringing you here or how you want to introduce yourself to the listeners, anything you might want to say?
[00:00:45] Marlee Liss: Yeah, for sure. So yeah, my name is Marlee. My pronouns are she/ her, come from a lens informed by my own like queer Jewish identity background in social work and somatic sex education as well, which I'm very passionate about. But I think what informs my work, most of all, which I think is true is for so many of us is lived experience and, the way that my own experiences as a sexual assault survivor and as someone who experienced both a punitive process in a courtroom and a restorative justice process, all the ways that those experiences have made me just very passionate about this conversation and, about advocating for survivor centered justice that's really deeply rooted in humanity and care for those who are harmed.
[00:01:35] Myrna McCallum: Absolutely. Let's begin by you talking a little bit about just how much your life has taken on like a whole new direction arising from a really horrible thing?
[00:01:49] Marlee Liss: Yeah. I mean, in some ways. [00:01:51] So interestingly, I was already very passionate about challenging objectification culture. I was already studying social work and I had actually spent a summer on, like, a woman's meditation center. I was 21 years old at the time.Um, and it was actually on the West Coast in B. C. and being on that center, of course, you kind of wonder, like, what brings different women to live on a healing meditation center? And so, of course, I heard so many stories of trauma, of grief, of loss, of violation to women's bodies, of disordered eating. And so, coming home from that summer, I was very passionate about challenging sexual violence. I did not know that restorative justice existed. So that is the piece that kind of came from not out of the blue, but out of like, yeah, lived experience. but I was quite committed to helping to eradicate gender-based violence in the world. And the moment I started to put that into motion, I started planning a workshop that night is when I experienced rape from a stranger.
[00:03:05] And that totally changed my life. And this topic that I thought I knew about, maybe logically knew a bit about it, but on an embodied level, I didn't have that knowledge around how this can impact a person. And so my passion and commitment to this topic became so much greater. And then what has been very unexpected is this intersection of restorative justice for sexual violence, because I went through the punitive system for three years without knowing that this option even existed at all.
[00:03:41] And when I discovered it, it was in the moment of me thinking, I'm just going to drop the charges. Like, I don't want to do this anymore. It's too painful. And that's when I discovered it. And so I was learning about restorative justice for the first time as I was living it. And as I was living it, I was completely A) immensely grateful and blown away by the process that that is and the way that it embodies trauma-informed care, right to boundaries, right to consent, and B) I was very frustrated that nobody had ever told me about this, right, and I had spoken to advocates, lawyers, nurses, therapists, rape crisis centers, other survivors, so many different people, no one had ever mentioned it or sort of opened a door to me.
[00:04:32] For any kind of access. And I was kind of devastated by that. And then every other survivor I talked to also didn't know about it. And that continues as I do this work. And so, yeah, I think that in many ways, but not all the ways it is sort of like: Wow, I didn't think I'd be doing this very specific thing with my life, but here we are, and I'm so deeply grateful to be doing this work because it's something that I want everyone in the world to know about, to understand on an emotional level, and to have access to if they want it.
[00:05:08] Myrna McCallum: This Rape that you experienced happened in 2016.
[00:05:14] Marlee Liss: Yeah.
[00:05:14] Myrna McCallum: Okay. By the time you got into the court system, presumably there was a preliminary hearing. What year was that?
[00:05:23] Marlee Liss: So the rape happened in 2016 and I reported right away. The preliminary happened two years later. So in 2018. And then, when I was subpoenaed for the criminal trial in late 2018, that's when I started fighting for a restorative justice outcome. And then, a few months later, after a lot of back and forth a lot of different, like, powers that be kind of fighting over whether that was deemed an adequate outcome, it was confirmed that this process would happen. And that's when my assailant entered therapy for about seven months.
[00:06:03] And then we eventually met in the restorative circle in 2019, which is probably what you saw in terms of dates.
[00:06:10] Myrna McCallum: Yeah. Okay. So about three years.
[00:06:13] Marlee Liss: Yeah.
[00:06:14] Myrna McCallum: And it was only what the year before that you started to hear about a restorative justice option.
[00:06:21] Marlee Liss: It was after three years that I heard about it because I reported in August of 2016 and it was in December of 2018 that I discovered restorative justice and it wasn't through anyone in the system or even anyone in the fields of like advocacy who led me towards that. It was my own interpersonal conversations and my own research. And I just think of, like, I love Adrienne Marie Brown and her work so much, shaped by Queer, Black feminism and abolitionist perspectives.
[00:06:58] And she just has a quote that's like, "a survivor's only job is to survive." And I think that's so potent and so real. And like, at that time, I barely had the capacity to think about what was going on with my justice process. I was just trying to get through every day. Like I was not okay. And, um, that took up my mental space.
[00:07:22] And then also there was this justice process. And then also I had to do my own research and go out and jump through all these hoops in order to even find out that this existed. So it shouldn't be that hard. Like it just shouldn't be that hard for survivors. And I really do believe that we all have a right to be.
[00:07:43] I mean, if we're speaking about consent, we all have a right to be informed about our options and what's available to us and to have conversations around what is truly most compatible with our needs and our healing.
[00:07:56] Myrna McCallum: Previously on the podcast, I interviewed a woman, a Métis woman named Chantelle Sparkling Eyes, who has like the best last name ever.
[00:08:05] And she talked about helping a family member through a similar system after having experienced a similar type of sexual assault. And she just talked about how traumatizing it was and, and dehumanizing, and I believe I was reading up this morning, on you and there was, an article that I read where somebody had said to you, I know this sucks.
[00:08:33] But like, let's do it anyway, like, or let's just do this. Like, I know this is, I know this sucks. I know this is terrible, but like, here, we're going to do it. And that was like in reference to moving through their system, right? The dehumanizing, traumatizing court system. And so, because I think it's important to continue to voice the experience, particularly of sexual assault survivors in criminal justice processes.
[00:09:03] What can you say about how that experience was for you until you opted out of it?
[00:09:10] Marlee Liss: Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for having those conversations. I think every step of the punitive process recreated the sense of powerlessness that I felt during the actual rape. And what I can elaborate on is like, during the actual rape and, hopefully there's a trigger warning.
[00:09:36] I'm assuming there's a trigger warning, but yeah, like I had this moment of being like, Oh, my voice has no power. I can say no all I want and it doesn't do anything. It doesn't change anything. It has no weight. It has no power. And the devastation of that going forward in my life was so profound. Like I was like, what's the point of even asking for what I need?
[00:10:00] What's the point of even like saying how I'm feeling? Like I kind of just shut down. And even when we did the preliminary hearing, my biggest fear was that I'd freeze up and no words would come out. And I was actually told beforehand that if I refused to or was unable to answer a question that I could be deemed as... I could be charged as non cooperative.
[00:10:26] And for someone who was experiencing like freeze response and that struggle to even get my voice out in that way, that was terrifying. Like I was like, Oh my God, like, am I on trial? So I really felt like I was the one on trial. I felt scared and I felt that the mentality was we may have to have these like very violating and potentially like dehumanizing, upsetting conversations but that's just a means to an end in order to quote- quote get justice and Now, when I look at that from where I'm at now, as someone who works with and hears from survivors every day, I'm like, we call the courtroom traumatic, like re-traumatizing, but I'm like, that's actually quite abusive.
[00:11:17] Like that's actually quite violent to justify that degree of harm to someone who's already traumatized in order to quote- quote, get justice. so it was immensely painful, you know, like I experienced so much sort of victim blaming. One of the defense lawyers was just like obsessed with my phone and kind of had this line of thinking that like, if I really didn't want this to happen, I would have like left my friend who was close by and could have helped a voicemail.
[00:11:47] He's like, you only texted her and you called her, but you didn't leave a voicemail. And I remember an advocate saying like, what does that have to do with this being non consensual, so it was incredibly traumatizing it was incredibly invasive. I felt that I had no right to boundaries, and I didn't have a right to boundaries in this process where we're supposedly fighting for victims' rights to boundaries.
[00:12:16] And I remember the defense lawyer looking at me and asking wild questions like how many thrusts happened per minute. And if I didn't know those answers, it would be a proof that I was not super credible. If I was too emotional or too stoic, proof that I'm not super credible. Wearing makeup, wearing any sort of colors, proof that I'm not super credible.
[00:12:42] So it just was. sort of bewildering. Like I was like, what, what are we doing? Like, it just felt surreal to me. And I remember my assailant just sitting in the room, just staring at the floor the whole time. And I was like, this doesn't make sense. I had that urge to ask him questions. I had that urge to be like, I just want to have a real authentic conversation.
[00:13:07] So I would say that it was, um, a very negative experience, to say the least.
[00:13:17] Myrna McCallum: I don't want to detract from what we're talking about, but, and, as I listen to you Marlee, I think about, like, I'm somebody who was a defense lawyer, was a prosecutor, so I'm very familiar with being in the courtroom and presenting evidence and all of the things. We often hear people talk about how hurt people hurt people, right?
[00:13:41] And I think about how the profession I'm a part of seems to me, especially lately, that we're just a collective of hurt people who just hurt people. Like you talk about having no boundaries, experiencing no boundaries in that space. Well, lawyers notoriously have no boundaries. And so we perpetuate the same kind of thing onto people who are navigating the systems that we occupy all the time.
[00:14:13] And that was something that stood out to me. And also, it was really quite impactful to hear you say: You couldn't even say no, like you couldn't say the words no, which really repeated the original traumatizing experience that you had, which I think is so A) obvious but B) should stop every lawyer and judge and police officer in their tracks right now who are listening to this to think about how they are holding up these systems that reinforce the original like traumatization and victimization, particularly of sexual assault.
[00:14:53] Marlee Liss: Yeah, no, thank you so much for, for adding that. And in this time that I've been able to share my story and be a speaker and advocate and speak with like judges and lawyers, there's one moment that stands out to me where I shared my story with a judge in a courtroom full of judges who was very skeptical at first, you know, the kind of body language, like arms crossed, leaning back a little, like half severed so often, like white cis man, all that stuff.
[00:15:25] And, by the end of me sharing, and it was quite informal, you know, I just shared my experience, he had tears in his eyes. And he said, you know, I've felt nauseous every time I leave the courtroom, no matter the outcome for the past several years, and this is helping me understand why. And he also shared that, you know, they're not allowed to show emotion or to tear up or whatever on the stand because that would kind of imply a bias.
[00:15:56] And for me, coming from like my social work, somatic, also just human first lens, I'm like, what a, violent thing to ask of someone to suppress their emotions to that degree in the name of their job every single day. And the amount of desensitization that that requires. And like, what impact does that have on that person?
[00:16:19] And, it was clearly so big for him to feel what he felt as I shared that story, and the moment that he felt those feelings, it led to this whole line of questioning around what systems he's a part of, what systems he's complicit in and reinforcing, and maybe potentially that led to action. So, I think that, yeah, you're right:
[00:16:47] like our stories and listening to survivors about experiences like this is so important for that reason. And, um, can catalyze so much emotion that can catalyze so much change.
[00:17:01] Myrna McCallum: Really important what you just cited. Thank you for sharing that. I want to add at least when I listen to judges, even lawyers, police officers, it's not a job requirement to suppress emotion and to conceal emotion.
[00:17:15] It's an interpretation of what it means to be impartial, neutral, a fair decision maker or investigator, whatever it may be. And what I have found to be kind of funny, not like ha ha funny, just, I don't know, contradictory ridiculous is I will hear people talk about how like emotion is the death of reason.
[00:17:41] So I can't show emotion because then I'm no longer reasonable. What I have discovered and learned in the work that I currently do is it's not so much that emotion is the death of reason. I think dysregulation is the death of reason. And the reality is in those courtrooms, more often than not, I have encountered a number of dysregulated people, dysregulated judges, dysregulated lawyers, dysregulated police officers who, I suspect in their effort to suppress their empathy and their compassion, they default either to shut down or they default to rage.
[00:18:20] Like I've seen rage come out of these people and it's like ridiculous to me, like, okay, showing empathy, just communicating to someone, I could see that this is difficult for you. No, no, no, we can't do that. But I can start screaming and yelling and demanding things. And that doesn't, infer that maybe I have lost complete objectivity or I am not in control of my emotions, or maybe I'm not a rational decision maker at this moment.
[00:18:50] So it's interesting to me. Every time I hear what you just shared that being enraged or being angry is totally okay and doesn't impair our judgment and decision-making ability, but oh my gosh, like communicating that see you and I can see this is really difficult for you is like a no-go zone. I mean, that's ridiculous to me.
[00:19:15] Marlee Liss: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I experienced the same thing with the police as well. And when I didn't experience that, and I experienced kind of like humanity poking beyond the role or job description that people hold, those were some of the most healing moments. You know, like I remember each of those moments.
[00:19:38] I remember doing the rape kit and the nurse who was administrating it for me. She actually teared up at one point. And she was like, if it's okay with you, like, can I just, I just feel very compelled to give you a hug. And, you know, maybe that's not professional code of conduct, whatever. It meant so much to me to the point that I remember it every day, like, you know, with gratitude.
[00:20:00] And even my case having the outcome that it did was hugely in thanks to the crown attorney, Kara Sweeney, who cared, you know, like she actually came up to me before the preliminary hearing, and she had read a book that I've written. It's like a poetry book where I speak about surviving trauma in a very, very, very raw way.
[00:20:23] And she came up to me with tears in her eyes and was like, thank you for writing this. Like, I hope that today can be as, as little as traumatic as it can possibly be, you know, and, she's the one who really understood this on an emotional level and fought for this, and she's the only person I encountered through this whole journey that asked me, like: What would justice look like to you?
[00:20:49] What would actually feel healing? Like, I want to hear, and then I want to see if that's possible. And that shouldn't be so radical and controversial and wild and out there, but what a humane response to turn towards someone who's deeply harmed and say, what do you need right now? I'm listening and I actually care.
[00:21:12] It was the first time I'd encountered that in the system. And it was after three years of going through this process. And that alone was already, I'd say the start of the restorative process for me. It didn't start with a circle. It started with her asking me that question.
[00:21:28] Myrna McCallum: I've never met Kara or I've never spoken to her, but I'm just going to make an assumption like in order for her to ask you that question, she would have to have developed some degree of self awareness and self reflection practice, to be able to see the humanity in you and push aside all of that procedure, all the evidentiary requirements and see you as a human being and say, what do you need from this process? What would justice be for you? And I wish, you know, I commend her and I wish more lawyers would approach their clients in that way. Because. I feel that more often than not, what people want is repair and repair doesn't happen in a trial.
[00:22:17] Marlee Liss: Yeah, and I can I can quote her because they do all the time, because she's wonderful. Um, but she said to me in that room when when I first asked for restorative justice, it was her in the room, and then another crown attorney who is very set in the ways of justice equals punishment. This is how it's done.
[00:22:43] The worst, the current, like tough on crime, you know, rape equals bad, bad equals prison. This is kind of her mentality. So there was a lot of tension in that room. But Kara said, when I said, this is what I want, you know, Kara said to me: I've been a crown attorney for over 20 years. And I constantly see victims re-traumatized, rapists acquitted, and in the rare case that they are incarcerated, they come out and re-offend again.
[00:23:18] There's no transformation that actually happens, and she kind of said, like, I agree, we do need to try something different. And that to me is hopefully a glimpse into what the judge who I spoke with who was moved to tears, like maybe he's doing that now, right? Because of that sort of emotion that leads to that line of questioning.
[00:23:41] And I do tend to lean on the optimistic side, which in the past I've deemed naive and used it as a way to blame myself for the traumas I've experienced and I'm now working on saying no, this is a beautiful aspect of power to keep imagining a world free from violence, like, you know, don't let go of that.
[00:24:03] But, um, I do believe that there are many people who get into this field, whether they're lawyers, prosecutors, whatever, for nice reasons. You know, I don't always believe that it's just to make cash. I'm sure you have more insight into this, so maybe it is, but I think a lot of the time people actually want to help.
[00:24:25] Maybe they want to create a more safe world. Maybe they want to help survivors. Maybe they want to, see more justice. I don't know. But I think so many people lose sight of that along the way and as they become more embedded in these systems and their corruption and I just think it's such a powerful thing when people come back to this very deep question of like, why am I in this work?
[00:24:52] You know, like, on a soul level, like, why am I in this work? Why am I doing this? What world do I help, want to help create, right?
[00:25:00] Myrna McCallum: I can tell you Marlee, when I decided to become a lawyer, it wasn't to help people.
[00:25:05] Marlee Liss: Okay.
[00:25:05] Myrna McCallum: It really wasn't. I became a lawyer because I had been highly traumatized. I'd been abused a lot, um, from the time I was like an infant until. I ran away from residential school, I think, when I was like 11 or 12 and there were other sexual assaults that took place after that.
[00:25:27] So I grew up for sure in like deep survival mode and for me survival meant just not feeling my feelings. If I could feel nothing, then I could be safe. And when I looked around at what other community members were becoming, they were becoming teachers and social workers. And I was like, no, thank you. I don't want to work with emotion.
[00:25:52] I don't want to work with people who are crying, who are hurting. Why? Because I couldn't articulate it then, but I certainly can articulate it now. I realized that to be able to see the humanity in other people, I'd have to be willing to feel the humanity in myself. And I was not prepared to do that because to do that meant I'd have to start unpacking all of the things I'd lived through and
[00:26:17] when I looked around , to see like what was possible, I saw, you know, American lawyers on American television, like these characters. And I was like, they were cold, calculated, heartless, highly analytical, cutthroat. And I was like, that is what I want to do. Like, that's where I want to go. And then when I got into law, I went into law school and I did the bar course.
[00:26:42] Never did I hear about trauma. Never did I hear about humanity. Never did we hear about pain or suffering or emotional, re-traumatization. We never heard about dehumanization. We just heard about evidence. Facts only. And I felt like it really validated, okay, I've gone into the right line of work because I get to be analytical all the time, never emotional.
[00:27:09] And this is perfect. And then, I did the thing I said I'd never do, which is I started practicing criminal law. And of course, then the whole range of human suffering meets you in a criminal courtroom. And I wasn't prepared for all the emotion. And I wasn't prepared for all the pain and all the suffering and I was not trained.
[00:27:30] I wasn't trained to hold space to see people for people. I was only trained to deal with legal issues to gather evidence. And I think that there are many lawyers who operate from this deficiency because for whatever reason they were attracted to getting into a job that required them to be analytical all the time and not so emotional.
[00:27:57] And it's the lawyers who uphold that and refuse to see the human being in the legal issue that do harm. And that's one of the reasons I think I've become so popular is because people invite me in saying, how do we humanize our processes? Like, where did we get it wrong? And how do we fix it? And I think that's incredible because now there's an interest in cultivating emotional intelligence for lawyers and for judges and for police officers and for so many.
[00:28:28] But I want to say. as I say this for sure, I know there are colleagues of mine who became lawyers to help people, but I think for every lawyer that went into it, to help people, there are many others who didn't, and I suspect that's one of the reasons why we've created this system or uphold this system that is so dehumanizing and traumatizing and dismissive of people's experiences, is.
[00:28:55] Thank you.
[00:28:56] And I'm, I'm not excusing it, I'm just trying to explain it.
[00:28:59] Marlee Liss: No, thank you so much for sharing that. And it's very interesting. It almost sounds like a, just putting on my somatic healing head, I'm like, it's just like a fight response. It's like a tangible version of a fight response.
[00:29:12] And I think that's really interesting. and also, well also, I wanna say thank you so much for sharing that glimpse into what you've been through as well.. And I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing. It's incredible and so deeply needed, obviously. And also I think it really parallels the journey you took really parallels someone who
[00:29:34] commits, causes harm and then maybe they go through the criminal justice system and then they end up incarcerated and then they get out. I think the path that you explained where you're avoiding your emotions and that really hard stuff to look at the whole way along really parallels that journey and allows someone to remain hardened and unchanged and to continue causing harm.
[00:29:58] And what parallels the restorative journey is you having that moment of feeling it all and saying, Oh my God, I'm not equipped right now to handle all this emotion, all the suffering in front of me. And that completely catalyzing you onto a different path where you're doing the work you're doing now, which is so needed in our world, which is so restorative.
[00:30:21] So to me, you having the courage to feel those feelings and have that moment is the same as an accountability process that happens in a restorative justice context. And I say that because so many people, as we know, think that restorative justice is too easy, too soft on crime.
[00:30:40] It's letting someone off, but I can imagine that it would have been much easier for you to keep bottling up your emotions, your whole life in some ways and to continue being like a hardened lawyer fighting the fight every day and that it was very hard to have that big process of like now I need to learn how to feel all of this and I need to let that reshape the way that I move through the world, the way that I do my work, the purpose that I have. So I think that's just like a very great sort of mirrored example of how restorative justice is so effective and can really transform people whereas something like incarceration doesn't actually lead to any transformation at all.
[00:31:27] Myrna McCallum: It really doesn't. I mean, I know this for all kinds of reasons and I want to say, you know, I get a little bit annoyed when I hear people refer to, things like compassion and empathy and vulnerability as soft skills, because I'm like, do you know how hard it is to like, to summon up some compassion and empathy or to sit vulnerably with someone?
[00:31:52] I know so many people who would rather go to jail and do the time than to have to sit in the shame and in the vulnerability and in the compassion and like to feel things what we know we have like a multi billion dollar industry in alcohol and drugs that are so successful because people use these substances to suppress their emotion right so feeling our feelings is far from a soft skill and letting people see that we have feelings is so not a soft skill like this is a critical competency I believe all lawyers and people who work in the justice system have to develop. I want to ask you because of the courage it takes to sit and be accountable and look into the eyes of somebody who is expressing pain
[00:32:46] what was the restorative justice process like for you and for your family members and for, from what you could see from everyone who was, who was participating in that process?
[00:32:58] Marlee Liss: I, I will never minimize how much it blew my mind. Like, I feel like the representation I've always seen around justice, if we think about like what's on Netflix right now, the win is always like an justice courtroom process that ends in incarceration for the person.
[00:33:20] And I had always been taught that that's the happy ending. That's the best outcome, you know, before the credits roll on the screen. And then I experienced leaving the courtroom, even though it was just a preliminary, I was still technically a win because they said there's enough evidence here to move forward.
[00:33:40] And when I left that courtroom, I felt depleted and drained and like every step I had taken and my healing was knocked backwards. I was in a place where I was considering taking my life, like I was not okay. And I was like, is this it? Like, Is this justice that we're like, you know, and when I left the restorative justice circle, I felt like I had let go of a thousand pounds that I was carrying.
[00:34:13] And I would say I felt like I let go of a thousand pounds that I was carrying, but also like, I felt sort of the like collective trauma and intergenerational trauma. And I was like, this is, Like revolutionary levels of healing, like to just sit in that room and to be with someone who had also done the prep work, right?
[00:34:35] He didn't just show up to get a check mark. He did seven months of therapy where he was talking about the harm he had caused in every system in our culture, rape culture, misogyny, all of these things that played into that. And to sit in that room and have him show up with full presence. To have him shed tears.
[00:34:59] And just listening to the impact that this had on me, to have him like put his hand on his heart and sort of see his eyes dart between my mom and me, as he heard the impact that this had to have him look me in the eyes at one point and say like, I'm sorry I did sexually assault you, and there's nothing that I can do to take it back, but I really hope that being here today can help.
[00:35:28] That was so immensely healing in and of itself. The amount of self blame that survivors hold, the amount of like, I caused this in some way, is so big. Like, we gaslight ourselves and our culture gaslights us in so many ways that to have that moment of validation from the person who caused harm, I didn't even know how much I needed that.
[00:35:53] Like, I broke down crying. I felt like a knot untied in my stomach that I didn't even know was there, and I started bawling. Like these tears of relief, like I did not even know I was holding on to all that. And then we didn't end it there. We didn't say, okay, let's wrap it up and go home. We said, well, what now?
[00:36:12] What, Who do we want to be in the world? What moving forward? What has changed? What, kind of person do you want to .Be and my assailant did talk about how this changed his life and we talked about how at one point, both of us were suicidal, because of this. Like for him it was because he felt like a victim in the criminal justice process at first.
[00:36:35] And for me it was because of the harm caused by rape. And to think of this parallel reality where both of us take our lives because of this. And instead we're sitting here in this circle and we're turning towards the feelings that are very, very scary and hard to feel. And we're talking about, and acting on, ending a cycle of harm and creating a cycle of like, yeah, of healing and of thinking about even like if we zoom out and I think about, you know, maybe he becomes a father one day or whatever, like, how will he treat his kids now?
[00:37:13] How will he treat his partners? And like, I do believe from the core of me that that has changed and that he's a much better, more compassionate, more self aware, you know, more systemically aware person than he was before this rape even happened. And that's because of this process. And not only is, has he changed in that way, but his friend who sat in the circle as a support person there to ensure that this accountability was long term, right? That my assailant wouldn't just say, put this in a box and forget it forever. Like his best friend was there to witness this process. His friend's life was changed. His friend broke down crying at the beginning, sobbing like head between his legs, sobbing.
[00:37:57] And then he got up and he said, Oh my God, I've never cried in front of anyone as an adult before. He said, I've learned more here in this room than I have in my 26 years of life, my eight years of work, my four years of school, and it changed his life.
[00:38:14] So how does that change the way he might be a father one day? He might be a partner and it changed my mom's life. And she was there, not just as someone who was there to support me, but as someone who was also impacted because she was like this changed her life in so many ways. She's actually doing she's 62.
[00:38:32] She's doing her master's of counseling now to become a therapist. And she'll cite that circle as the thing that changed her life and made her want to be in that role in that way. So every single one of this we're changed by that. Kara who was on the verge of burnout and quitting this role completely has a whole new fire within her a whole new commitment to advocacy to trauma informed-survivor-centered practice. Like it's incredible how much change came from that one circle and obviously it changed my life right like I'm doing this work every day the circle was in 2019. It's 2023 now and my main work is fighting to eradicate gender based violence, advocating for healing justice, sharing my story every single day with people who I feel need to hear it or they feel need to hear it for different reasons.
[00:39:26] And all of that came from that one space, like, in contrast to how I felt again leaving the courtroom, there's no, there are two different worlds, it's, it's night and day beyond that even.
[00:39:42] Myrna McCallum: Sounds remarkable. And so incredibly hopeful. And wow, like, if this isn't happening already, I hope it is happening that folks are looking at this experience that you've had as a case study in law school as like, what is possible as an alternative to the courtroom?
[00:40:02] I mean, you know, Marley, as much as I do that we've got right now, sexual assault, survivors who are opting for civil court processes and opting out of criminal court processes because the idea or the hope or the dream is that it's going to be less traumatizing. I really wish we had more people talking about how restorative justice processes could be an alternative to, to litigation, more openly.
[00:40:32] And I, and of course, as I say this, I am not saying If you've experienced rape, this is the process you need to go through. I don't think you and I are saying that at all. You're sharing your experience and what's possible. And, I think it's also notable to comment on. The fact that you had to go find this information, it wasn't even readily available to you, and, presented to you as an option, it sounds to me like you had to go ask the questions, like, can we do this? I heard about, or read about this, is that right?
[00:41:07] Marlee Liss: Yeah, exactly. 100 percent with you that I would never impose that kind of adversarial process that happens in the punitive context all the time where people say like, I know best what you need. I think the biggest takeaway, I hope survivors listening would have, is that we deserve to have our needs centered.
[00:41:32] Our needs matter, our voices matter, and we deserve to have people advocating. And the dream for us shouldn't be as I'm tempted to say sad as not being too retraumatized in potentially a civil courtroom. Like if that's our dream, I'm like, Ooh, like we need to do so much better for survivors as a collective
[00:41:57] if that's our greatest dream that we're going to pile horrible trauma, we're going to take that horrible trauma and pile on top of it just a little bit less of a retraumatizing experience. I'm like, no, that doesn't work for me. That shouldn't work for anyone. Survivors deserve processes that are a catalyst
[00:42:15] to our healing. We shouldn't have to endure justice processes that are an obstacle to our healing. That's not the world that I think any of us want to live in. And even if you are a part of the justice system and you wholeheartedly believe in punitive processes, like ask yourself, what would I say to my kid?
[00:42:33] What would I want for my best friend? I've heard so many crown attorneys and lawyers say things like, Oh, I would never let my kid anywhere near this system. And so if that's really how we feel, then it's a good moment to like take a step back and be like, okay, what do I really believe? What do I really want to contribute to? How do I really want to show up for people who are deeply, deeply, deeply hurt right now?
[00:43:01] Myrna McCallum: Absolutely. Yes. If a system doesn't have any credibility, then I think it's really, the responsibility of the people who uphold those systems to go back to the drawing board and figure out how do we do this differently?
[00:43:17] How do we do it better? And for folks who are scratching their heads right now, as they listen to us going, well, how do we do this differently? I would all I would urge you to go and buy Ben Perrins book Indictment, which he's promoting right now across the country: Indictment, the Criminal Justice System on Trial, because Ben talks about not only how the system is failing so many people, but he envisions a trauma informed, survivor centered, more holistic approach to achieving justice, that really asks people, well, what does justice mean to you?
[00:43:59] . And not enough of us lawyers are trained to actively listen to a response when, when that question is raised. And it also comes back to education, which is why I said this would be amazing if it was a case study in law schools, like restorative justice shouldn't just be for the restorative justice practitioners and associations that exist across the country. Restorative justice, it needs to be taught in law school so that lawyers can understand
[00:44:29] how becoming maybe a trained restorative justice facilitator can really help, give them a more broader base to deliver human centered legal services.
[00:44:43] Marlee Liss: I would like to add too, and I actually listened to your podcast with Ben Perrin this morning and it was amazing. I was like, I need to go buy that book right away.
[00:44:51] It was such an incredible podcast and something that he highlighted in it was how ridiculous it is that legal research so rarely involves survivors, people impacted by crime, people impacted by incarceration, all these things. And so I would add that education needs to center the voices of survivors because I think it's so powerful the way he turned towards stories, the way we're doing that right now, to reach people. I can also say that from a very passionate place of hearing from survivors every single day who are begging for a megaphone and for someone to listen. And so I'm like, perfect. You know, those emojis where it's like two hands shaking. It's like survivors who so deeply want to share our experiences, myself included, meet lawyers, prosecutors, judges, future lawyers, people in law school who desperately need to hear about these experiences.
[00:45:52] Because that to me is also a way of repair to say, Oh my gosh, we've stripped survivors of their voices for so long.
[00:46:02] So I think sometimes we're afraid to ask people and we have to respect boundaries. If someone has been through this and they say. It's not my work to talk about this. I don't want to, we have to respect that, but we also should uplift, amplify, learn from the many, many, many, many survivor voices who are saying, I've now dedicated my life to this. Please listen to this message.
[00:46:26] Myrna McCallum: Absolutely. As I'm listening to you now, I'm thinking about Harold Johnson, who he was a long time prosecutor in Northern Saskatchewan turned author, and he passed away. I, I think early last year and, um,he wrote a number of books right now. I'm thinking about a couple of his publications.
[00:46:48] One is, Firewater, how alcohol is killing my people and yours. And then he wrote another on, the colonial justice system, Peace and Good Order, the Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada. That's the title. Anyway, I think in both or at least firewater, he wrote about how there was a fellow from his community called Hillary and Hillary was drinking and driving and killed his brother.
[00:47:15] And cause his brother was walking, I guess. um, and the impaired driver, Hillary killed him and Hillary woke up in cells the next day, unaware of why he was there because he was so intoxicated the night before and learned from the police officer that he was there because he had killed somebody drinking and driving.
[00:47:36] Anyway, Hillary went off to prison and, when he got out, I believe it was Hillary who had approached Harold to try to make amends like try to repair somehow and, Harold said to him, we have an opportunity right now to work with Mothers Against Drunk Driving to go into schools here in Saskatchewan, and go and talk about our experiences.
[00:48:02] Are you willing to come and talk about what it felt like for you to take the life of somebody while you were drinking and driving, because if you are, I'm willing to talk about what that was like for me to lose a brother. And together they went and did this. They went and, Harold talked about how they went and did this tour through these schools.
[00:48:20] And then he said something really interesting. He said, prison, doesn't really do anything to heal or to repair, or to help people return back into community. He says the work that Hillary did with me going on this tour and talking about that experience, this is how he earned his way back into community.
[00:48:44] This is how he earned his way back into relationship. And I think about that because as I listen to you, this is one way, like, people can earn their way back into society, into being a functional, like, prison doesn't allow for accountability. Prison doesn't really allow for healing. Prison doesn't allow for, the humanizing of the perpetrator of whatever the crime is, and, it's just, it just seems to me that not looking at restorative justice processes is really doing a disservice to so many people, including the lawyers and the judges to see for themselves,
[00:49:26] oh my God, there's like an alternative to what we do. And actually what we do is so archaic and dysfunctional. And if we're really interested in justice, if justice is healing, then we need to also like look at this and integrate it or have it like, compliment what we do.
[00:49:46] Marlee Liss: Absolutely. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that.
[00:49:49] I told you before we hit record, I was like, I'm emotional this morning. I'll probably cry. I'm like, that was my, that was the one that got me to tear up. That was so powerful.
[00:49:58] Myrna McCallum: That was a powerful story that Harold shared. I think about the power of transformation, like a lot right now, I think about repair and how I had, how I wished I had learned how to repair a long time ago.
[00:50:12] Like, I'm just learning how to repair right now in my relationships, but when we deny ourselves the opportunity to learn about repair, then I think that we delay our growth. And we also maybe deny ourselves healthy and healing connections to other people. And also, the right to, to transform ourselves because I think about, an elder who's really important to me.
[00:50:39] He passed away now about almost 25 years ago. When I met him, he was such a beautiful little elderly man who was considered a healer and, just this loving person. And I went with him and his wife to a medicine wheel gathering that was at the site of his former residential school. And while we were there, he told me about his experience at the residential school.
[00:51:10] And then he said, Yeah, when I left this place, I just started drinking all the time because I felt all these things and I didn't know how to feel those things. So I drank and I drank and I drank and I hurt myself so much doing that. I hurt so many relationships. And then he turned to his wife and he says, and I used to beat my wife all the time.
[00:51:31] And I was like, what because I couldn't imagine the tiny little beautiful man I knew to have been a wife beater. And, and he talked about it and his wife was nodding. And he talked about, you know, the ultimatum that eventually came from her about like, this ends right now, you do this one more time, you know, you don't get me, you don't get the kids.
[00:51:54] And that was enough to jar him. And then he changed his life. And, and I was thinking, and we talked about how, when we hold people to their worst mistake, and we decide that is all you will ever be, we deny them opportunity of transformation and who they could be. And I think had she held him to, like, this is all you are.
[00:52:20] You're a drunk, you're a wife beater. If he had been held to that by his wife, by his community, he would have never been able to evolve into the spiritual leader and elder and healer that he became.
[00:52:37] Because how do we, how do we get to grow? And I'm, I'm sharing this partly because I want lawyers to, to really hear this and judges and police officers to understand that if you have shame attached to the work that you, because you didn't know better and you weren't trained better, and you've done a lot of harm that it's never too late to transform yourself.
[00:52:58] And I believe we live in a society that will embrace your transformation, as long as you commit to it and you acknowledge it and you lean into it and you cultivate the courage it takes to be something different, do something different, do better.
[00:53:16] Marlee Liss: Oof. So powerful. Thank you so much for sharing that.
[00:53:19] You inspired like a hundred thoughts as you were speaking. I thought of the Adrienne, another Adrienne Maree Brown quote, where she just says, encourages us to ask herself who benefits from our hopelessness, because I think there is this societal agreement right now that, oh, people can't change.
[00:53:36] And it's a ridiculous thing that they to expect that they could. And yet, I imagine that every single person listening to this and both of us certainly have experienced ourselves change and in the context of capitalism, we're so taught to like, see ourselves as products as like commodified bodies, but like, we're not finished products.
[00:54:00] No one is a finished product. We're all constantly growing, changing, evolving, whether that's for the worse or better. Like we're all constantly changing. And the idea that we're not is so harmful and false. And just one more thing that feels so important is like, what's at the core of this work is that no one is disposable.
[00:54:23] And as we're talking about restorative justice and the principles that come with it, I wouldn't even want the crown attorney who was super against this as a defense lawyer who super traumatized me. I wouldn't want them to be shunned, fired, cast aside, I'd want them to do your trainings. I'd want them to go to therapy. I'd want them to feel their feelings. I'd want them to read Ben Perrin's book.
[00:54:47] I'd want them to listen to this podcast and go for coffee with me and really talk about this. So, you know, if we're implementing restorative principles, that means we're not ping ponging a shame and blame game back and forth and a punishment game back and forth. We're actually breaking that cycle and we're saying, no, no one is disposable.
[00:55:07] Every single one of us has the capacity to transform and every single one of us deserves community care and resources to help us get there. So even I think it might be easy for a lawyer, whoever listening to be like: Oh, this girl hates me. And I don't, you know, I don't, I think it's so important that we humanize every single person.
[00:55:30] And really, like you said, believe in our capacity to transform. And we have so much evidence of that beautiful evidence of that, like the stories that you've shared.
[00:55:40] Myrna McCallum: Incredible Maeley, what a profoundly healing and inspiring story you shared and the life that you live. And I just want to say, thank you so much for chatting with me today.
[00:55:56] Marlee Liss: Thank you. This has been so special and I'm so grateful to you and to every single person who has listened.
[00:56:03] Myrna McCallum: Awesome. Thank you.
Thanks to my guest Marlee Liss.
You can follow Marlee on social media @marleeliss on social media and find her work www.marleeliss.com
The second edition of her (poetry) book Re-Humanize is just out.
Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing this episode with people in your network and for rating and reviewing the trauma informed lawyer podcast on whatever podcast platform you happen to use.
And I want to remind you if listening to today's conversation was difficult, you can visit ending violence, Canada. org for a list of sexual assault centers, crisis lines and support services in your province or near you. And we also have a suicide hotline, that number is 9 8 8.
Thanks also to Cited Media for their production support.
This episode was recorded on the ancestral, traditional, and unceded territory of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation.