There are many types of crimes, and there are many types of criminals.  Some criminals are murders, some are rapists, some rob from little old ladies in a make money online scheme, and some make the headlines of the NYTimes.  However, without a doubt, the lowest form of criminals are the pimps.  These bottom of the human barrel criminals manipulate, abuse, rape, and profit from the suffering of young girls day in and day out.  Young girls, just like Sara Kruzan, who grow up in broken homes, are forced by these people to give up their most precious human right, the right to self respect and dignity.  Pimps manipulate these young girls, tell them they are “special,” treat them like celebrities, such as an Audrina Patridge or a Jennifer Love Hewitt, and then turn around and rape them, beat them, and force them to sell their underage bodies to decrepit pedophiles.  If there was ever a prime candidate for the term “lowest of the low,” pimps are it.

When it comes to prosecuting these human refuse, however,  one might as well try to get rid of stink bugs.  The simple fact is that Pandering, the legal term for what pimps do, is a very difficult thing to prove to a jury.  To say nothing of the fact that the girls a pimp “owns” are often times so abused and confused that they will try and protect the very man that makes his living off of their daily degradation.  Given that reality, what choice does a young girl like Sara Kruzan have?  She knows that if she goes to the police, and they cannot make a case against her pimp, she will get hit, kicked, raped, and hit some more as soon as her pimp finds her.  For girls like this there is no escape, there is no protection from the law, and there are no maps to a better life.

Sara Kruzan chose to kill her pimp, a man who had manipulated and raped her from the age of 11.  This girl now sits behind bars, hoping that the California justice system will show her some mercy.  What Stop Direct File wants to know is how could it not?  Born to a home life deprived of parental love, raised by a drug addicted mother, manipulated by a pimp, who promised to be the father she so desperately wanted, and then raped and abused into a life of prostitution — how could any justice system blame her for killing her abuser when she was 16?

There is no question that murder is wrong.  However, there are many many times when extenuating circumstances make a person less guilty, or not guilty at all, of a crime.  Kill a man in self-defense, for example.  A woman who manages to kill a man who is raping her would never be convicted of murder by a jury.  Why is it different for Sara Kruzan?  The only difference I see is that she lacked the social network necessary to gain access to a decent lawyer.

At an age when more fortunate children are playing Nintendo 3DS, taking guitar lessons at the Guitar Center, or scheming ways of finding the hidden files on their Dads iPad, this poor girl was being raped, manipulated, and sold as a sex toy by a piece of human filth.  The fact that she was even prosecuted for killing such a piece of slime is bad enough, but the fact that she was given life without parole is even worse.  If there was ever a person who deserved mercy, or a situation where the demands of mercy and justice were the same, it is this one.  Free Sara Kruzan.

The Beth-El Mennonite Church in Colorado Springs will host a restorative justice symposium Thursday and Friday September 24th through the 25th. This important event is sponsored by the El Paso County Bar Association, the 4th Judicial District, and the Colorado Springs School District among others. According to the Pikes Peak Restorative Justice Council, the purpose of restorative justice is “to enable victims, offenders and the community to repair harms and restore relationships.”

Many juvenile offenders, including some who are being held in prison for life, did not intend the level of harm they may have caused. Restorative justice recognizes that, regardless of intent and harm, healing the community, victims and the offender are worthy objectives. When a crime is committed, the community is harmed, victims are traumatized and offenders may simply be abandoned to a “corrections system” that fails to correct anything at all.

StopDirectFile.org sees restorative justice as an important step toward rehabilitating young offenders. According to Don Quick, District Attorney for the 17th Judicial District, “society’s number one responsibility” when a child commits homicide “is to make sure that kid doesn’t kill again.” There are many different types of homicide from manslaughter to circumstantial (felony) murder. Most often, it is not a child’s intent to commit homicide and yet children are tried as adults when a death occurs almost without question. As a society we can keep a child from killing again by putting them in cold storage for the rest of their lives. But that strictly punitive approach ignores–at enormous community expense–society’s responsibility to both the victim and the offender. Restorative Justice, on the other hand, treats both offenders and victims on a case-by-case basis.

According to one victim, restorative justice had enormously positive effects: “My family and I were able to see remorse and pain from the responsible party who killed my son [] in an alcohol and speeding related accident. Because of this, we were able to forgive him and exchange hugs and tears. We feel we now have the strength to heal and carry on [our son's] legacy along with many awesome memories.”

As stated in several previous blogs, StopDirectFile.org supports “comprehensive sentence reform that provides appropriate community protections by removing juvenile offenders from society (until they are no longer a threat); provides victims with a sense of security and justice (not revenge); and gives juvenile offenders an opportunity for rehabilitation (not cold storage).”

StopDirectFile.org feels that restorative justice is the all-important first step toward a child’s rehabilitation and we strongly endorse the Pikes Peak Restorative Justice Symposium.

For more information or to sign up for the symposium please visit the symposium page at www.pprjc.org or call (719) 640-1650. Space is limited so register today.