Rugby star Gareth Thomas made headlines over the weekend after he revealed that he was the victim of an attack in Cardiff by someone who had targeted him for his sexuality. But this is a story with a hopeful ending; the 44-year-old decided that instead of pressing charges against his attacker, he would employ restorative justice.
Gareth Thomas at the second annual awards thrown by g3 and Out In The City in 2014 / Photo Credit: VMJM/FAMOUS
"Last night I was the victim in my home city of a hate crime for my sexuality", the Welsh rugby player, nicknamed Alfie, said in a video he posted on Twitter on Saturday (November 18). "I want to say thank you to the police who were involved and were very helpful and allowed me to do restorative justice with the people who did this because I thought they could learn more that way than any other way."
Police confirmed the incident in a statement, elaborating that the attack was carried out by a 16-year-old boy in city centre street The Hayes on Friday night. The teenager confessed to the assault and expressed remorse for his actions, and now Thomas is being praised for his decision to use restorative justice and resolve the matter through verbal communication.
Rugby referee Nigel Owens who is also gay was one of his appraisers, confessing that he underwent a similar process back in 2015 after he received hateful comments on Facebook.
"I had a homophobic comment - a bit of a nasty comment - put on social media against me after the England v France game I refereed three years ago", he confessed to BBC Radio Wales. "A couple of days later I had a Facebook message off this young lad apologising saying he was drunk at the time, which is not an excuse, but he was profoundly apologetic.
"There was the option that either the police would take this on and this young lad would have a criminal record which would stay with him for the rest of his life, or you would deal with it in the same way Gareth seems to be dealing with it."
But what is restorative justice?
Restorative justice is the term given to an approach in which a system of mediation is organised between an offender and their victim, whereby they negotiate a resolution between them rather than through traditional police or court proceedings (although authorities are still able to put in place additional sanctions). It allows the victim to directly express the impact a crime has had on them towards the offender, who in turn has the opportunity to apologise for or justify their crime.
Case studies show how restorative justice works, with a government-commissioned study showing how 85% of victims who took part were satisfied with the process, while instances of re-offending reduced by 14%. Despite the obvious impact that restorative justice has on the lives of both victims and offenders, less than 30% of people are actually aware that the process exists.
Yet it seems restorative justice could be an important part of erasing prejudices and therefore reducing hate crime altogether. If perpetrators of socially, culturally or racially motivated attacks can be made to directly answer to their crimes face-to-face with their victims, it's much more likely to appeal to their conscience than other methods of justice.
It's an innately human way of handling conflict. We force children to do it in playgrounds, and after fights with their siblings. Just because a person is old enough to be prosecuted for attacking another person does not mean they can't be educated into behaving differently through a simple process of courteous conversation.
Hearing the impacts of their crime in a setting that doesn't revisit courtroom jargon, that is honest and civil, allows offenders to re-think their actions more thoroughly not out of fear of prosecution but out of moral responsibility.