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Healing centre would benefit crime victims |
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Written by Caroline Zentner
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Sunday, March 07 2010, 10:23 PM |
After Marjean Fichtenberg’s son was murdered in 1993 by an offender on day parole she was in too much pain to think about the kinds of services she and others like her needed in order to heal.
“I remember I had a heck of a time getting contact information for a grassroots victims rights group,” she said. “And I could have used some help with advocacy for different things.”
She later learned that Workers’ Compensation in British Columbia, where she lives, provides for counselling sessions as part of its criminal injury compensation. But Fichtenberg lived in an isolated area where there was no access to counselling and she had no idea how to go about finding it. Looking back on it now, she said she would have also benefited from peer counselling and talking to people with similar experiences. Because the murder, which happened in Prince George, garnered a lot of publicity at the time, Fichtenberg says having a place to retreat would have been a blessing.
“Those things exist individually out there somewhere but for a person that’s in trauma to run around and try to hunt them all down it’s pretty overwhelming,” she said. “At certain times it’s all you can do to put your feet on the ground in the morning, never mind going through all that work.”
Using her own experiences as a guide, Fichtenberg got involved in advocacy. She was instrumental in starting a victims’ advisory committee for Correctional Services of Canada and the National Parole Board and now chairs the advisory council. Fichtenberg also saw a need for a healing centre for victims.
“About seven years ago we were touring some of the institutions. On Vancouver Island we discovered a healing centre for offenders. I was impressed with the program and I thought ‘Why couldn’t we have something like this for victims?’” she said.
Such a healing centre for victims didn’t seem to exist anywhere in the world, although she found some programs that contained elements. When Fichtenberg met Sherry and Glenn Flett, founders of a society called Long-term Inmates Now in the Community (L.I.N.C.), they formed a partnership.
“Their philosophy is that in order to help offenders become law-abiding citizens there has to be a level of accountability to the community and the people that they’ve harmed,” Fichtenberg said.
Their goals seemed to match and they began to put some flesh around the bones of the idea. L.I.N.C. plans to start non-profit businesses to train offenders in work and life skills. Their eventual goal is to use the profits from the businesses to fund a victims’ healing centre while giving offenders the opportunity to learn new skills and give back to the community and victims at the same time.
They teamed up to create a proposal for the Department of Justice to conduct a feasibility study into the need for a healing centre for victims. Approval in hand, Fichtenberg has now launched an online survey in Canada and the United States for survivors of homicide victims. She’s already received more than 50 responses but her goal is to get at least 100 by the end of March.
The survey can be completed online at http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dGVvWmlVcnVhUU5ZRnlkcGFKRDdiY1E6MA. Those interested can also contact the L.I.N.C. society 604-852-5514 or send an email to
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