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generationFIVE’s analysis of intersecting systemic oppression and trauma and resilience leads to gen5’s approach of Transformative Justice (TJ). Through extensive community work and development with numerous national organizations since 2002, g5 has developed this Transformative Justice approach. To read gen5’s Transformative Justice document and learn more about its background as well as application, contact our Program Director.
Transformative Justice links how we respond to incidences and experiences of child sexual abuse to social justice. This means that we work to respond to experiences of child sexual abuse (both current and past) while also changing the community beliefs and practices, and social institutions and norms that keep child sexual abuse going. Also, we do not use nor support responses to child sexual abuse that perpetuate systemic oppression and/or trauma.
TJ Definition
Transformative Justice is an approach which secures individual justice in cases of CSA while transforming structures of community and social injustice that are perpetuated by and perpetuate CSA.
Transformative Justice addresses incidences of child sexual abuse and social conditions. This is necessary for prevention and revealing the intersection of child sexual abuse with other social justice issues. Transformative Justice orients toward more choices for individuals and communities.
The Transformative Justice approach to child sexual abuse challenges people to integrate their emotional and political commitments to change. It holds the two together in a set of principles and practices that are focused on achieving individual and social transformation.
TJ Goals
We locate a Transformative Justice approach and response inside of community networks and relationships, with support and alliance from broader TJ collaborative. Transformative Justice seeks to provide survivors of CSA with immediate safety and long-term healing and reparations while holding offenders of child sexual abuse accountable within and by their communities. This accountability includes stopping immediate abuse, making a commitment to not engage in future abuse, and offering reparations for past abuse. Such offender accountability requires community responsibility and access to on-going support and transformative healing for offenders. Beyond survivors and offenders, Transformative Justice also seeks to transform inequity and power abuses within communities. Through building the capacity of communities to increase justice internally, Transformative Justice seeks to support collective action towards addressing larger issues of injustice and oppression.
The goals of Transformative Justice as a response to child sexual abuse are:
o Survivor safety, healing and agency
o Offender accountability and transformation
o Community response and accountability
o Transformation of the community and social conditions that create and perpetuate child sexual abuse, i.e. systems of oppression, exploitation, domination, and State violence.
TJ also seeks to…
o Build collective power for liberation efforts through addressing the inequity and injustice happening inside of communities
o Build capacity of individuals and collectives to address larger conditions of inequality and injustice
Transformative Justice Practices
The principles we have described are intended to guide the implementation of a Transformative Justice response to child sexual abuse. The practices discussed here take a closer look at what this response involves. This set of practices does not comprise a model that has been applied and evaluated but, rather, the best describes what generation FIVE knows so far from its work with communities. As such, this account of the practices of Transformative Justice is a work in progress to which generation FIVE welcomes feedback.
The sequence in which the practices of Transformative Justice are presented is not intended to imply a linear set of steps. The sequence in which these practices are applied will depend on specific circumstances, but it is important that a Transformative Justice process touch upon them all. Generation FIVE believes that most situations will require cycling through these practices several times at various moments and to different depths. In implementing any of these practices, people will face a number of emotional challenges. So that we can better prepare to effective respond to these challenges, they are discussed in more detail in Appendix 2 of our Transformative Justice paper.
Practices of Transformative Justice include:
o Strengthening community capacity
o Naming child sexual abuse
o Assessing level of concern
o Developing a safety strategy
o Supporting healing and resilience
o Holding accountability
o Working for community transformation
o Collective resistance, vision and strength
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