Introduction: Exile & Homecoming
Derek Poole

From the Ardoyne Road...
Norman Hamilton

From the Director
David Porter

Exile and Homecoming
David McMillan

Be Careful What You Wish For
Gareth Higgins

Bonfire Reflections
Alwyn Thomson

Rights, Relationships and Responsibilities
Kelvin McCracken

Wilson On Suffering
Alan Wilson

Poems

Faith and Practice - Debbie Watters
Ruth Hutchinson

Forgiveness
Janet Morris

< Past Issues Archive

FAITH AND PRACTICE
Debbie Watters
(Greater Shankill Alternatives)

Debbie Watters is Project Manager of Greater Shankill Alternatives, a centre whose work is based on the principles of restorative justice. Debbie is a native of County Derry. After study in the University of Ulster at Jordanstown, she lived for a time in the United States of America. Four years ago she returned to Northern Ireland and now lives and works in North Belfast. We asked her to begin by defining the term ‘restorative justice’.

Restorative Justice
‘Restorative Justice’ is basically a different way of dealing with crime and conflict. It tries to humanise crime and conflict by looking at who has been hurt by crime, who has been hurt by conflict, who is the victim, who is the offender, and what the obligations are on the part of the offender. It is very much rooted in biblical teaching in that it is about healing broken relationships. It is about bringing people together, helping them to understand that when they are involved in wrongdoing there are consequences and obligations. Basically it is about healing, moving forward and trying to create a better future.

The role of the victim is pivotal to the whole process and we would see that as being very, very important. Victims are often left out. They don’t have a voice; they are not empowered; they feel very much marginalized and re-victimised by whatever process follows their initial victimisation. Restorative justice says that victims need to be included; they need to have a voice.

Greater Shankill Alternatives
We asked Debbie to give us a picture of restorative justice and its effectiveness on the Shankill Road.

In Northern Ireland restorative justice has emerged at a grass roots level. It is very much indigenous to the community, and emerged initially as a response to paramilitary punishment attacks, which we see as a legacy of the conflict. In Northern Ireland generally, restorative justice looks very different than it does in other countries. For example, in America Restorative Justice Programmes would operate mostly in white middle-class areas. On the Shankill it provides a non-violent positive alternative to paramilitary punishments. In some ways we have already moved on because the number and level of punishment attacks have decreased dramatically since we opened our doors. That is partly because the paramilitaries have agreed to refer young people to our programme.

Part of the process on the Shankill has involved talking to everyone from police to paramilitaries, from victims to young people, getting all of the stakeholders on board. We work intensively with both young people involved in anti-social behaviour and with victims. It is a voluntary process; both parties choose to be involved.

Is it working?
I feel it works, although some people may feel I am biased. I worked in restorative justice in the United States for 4 or 5 years and was a great ‘believer’ before moving back here. Now, to see it emerge at a grass-roots level, indigenous to working-class communities is amazing. Former combatants and ex-prisoners are working at peace building on the ground, truly committed to a philosophy like restorative justice - a biblical philosophy like restorative justice. I think it is just amazing. Paramilitary attacks have decreased, and the number of young people who engage with us each year proves we offer something different. Victims receive restitution from young people on the road on a monthly or yearly basis. Three of the staff are ex-prisoners, all of the workers in the programme live and work in the Shankill, most of our volunteers are local. It is very much rooted in the community and is very much about healing broken relationships - a biblical concept. People see it as peace building and part of the whole process of conflict transformation.

Is there any cross-community dimension?
Yes, at several levels. Our management committee is made up of both Catholics and Protestants. At a staffing level some are engaged in cross-community boards or committees that work on the ‘interface’. We engage with Restorative Justice Programmes from the Republican/Nationalist community and with young people who engage in rioting on the interface. We also work closely with people from the Springfield community, and have some contact with people from the Ardoyne community. Wherever there is a need and a desire we try to build on that. Also, some of the young people are involved in cross-Border, cross-community projects. I suppose that if we are working at helping to humanise victims for our young people we also have to be working at helping humanise the perceived enemy, and that is often the Catholic community.

Personal Involvement
We wondered how Debbie came to be involved in the work of restorative justice.

As a teenager I grew up and was quite heavily involved in church. The story of Jesus in the Gospels was always very important to me. I could never really work out why the church didn’t have more of a social conscience. For me the gospel is about being present for people on the ground, people who were hurting, people who were in pain. I could never understand why the church seemed to absent itself from the political conflict (some people would call it a war). That was always an enigma to me. As a teenager I started to develop a social conscience as part of my faith. I began looking at how I could develop myself. At Jordanstown I got involved in youth and community work. In my early twenties I moved on from the whole concept of trying to evangelise people to just being present with them. Whether people adopted or embraced my beliefs or not wasn’t the important thing to me. The important thing became that people reach their full potential. And in helping people find healing inside themselves I also began to find healing inside myself. It really helped me develop as a person.

In my mid-twenties I got married to an American Mennonite. The whole Mennonite culture appealed to me because of the peace-building element, because of the mediation. Restorative justice and the apparent embracing of a social conscience felt very good to me, so when I moved to the States I got involved in their Restorative Justice Programme. In many ways it fitted with what I was feeling inside. I feel very fortunate that when I moved back from the States about 4 years ago restorative justice was a concept that people were willing to begin to embrace. They were ready for it, whereas some years earlier they would not have been. The climate was right for it, and with the release of some life ex-prisoners who really had had transforming experiences ‘inside’, people on the ground were ready to embrace it and the time was right for me. I was a Protestant, a Christian who had grown up in a Loyalist background. There was an opening. The timing was right.

Personal faith
Debbie next talked about her faith, and about the values which govern her attitude to work.

In terms of my faith I would say that the older I get the greyer it becomes. Trying to live with that greyness is an ongoing issue for me. I would define my faith today very differently from 5 years ago, maybe even 2 years ago. It is continually developing and evolving as I change and grow as a person. My faith is very central to who I am as a person and what I do as a person. My work is a vocation for me. I would say it is a calling. I have always struggled with the fact that, in the Protestant church, ministers are said to have a calling, and that is very special. But I think that everyone has a calling and my calling at the minute is to work on the Shankill. That is as important as anybody else’s calling and just as valuable. What I do every day in restorative justice is me acting out my faith. Restorative justice for me is a biblical concept and I work at trying to internalise that on a daily basis. Now I am not always good at that but I really try to treat people as I would like to be treated. I try to have a level of integrity in myself as a person and in the work that I do. I try to be honest and open - about the shades of grey and the lack of answers – and be real and human to people.
The older I get, maybe the less complicated my faith becomes, and theology maybe has become less important as I see people’s pain, anger and hurt. I truly believe that is where the real work is. It is empowering people to heal themselves. I would define my faith very much in terms of my humanity and other people’s humanity. That comes from how I view God and Jesus. I try to walk side by side with Jesus and be there for people, trying not to judge them, trying just to accept them for who they are. That would be one of my core values. People are valuable because they are made in the image of God, so regardless of the choices they make in life, or regardless of the journey they go down, they still are valuable people, loved by God and accepted by Him. It is not for me to judge. My role is to work at changing who I am, at healing myself while being there for others.

Membership of the local church
Currently I am not involved in any church for several reasons. In Northern Ireland I struggle with church life. In some ways I have found my experience of church quite removed from my experience of God. One of my struggles over the years has been finding a role for myself as a female, as a woman who wanted to have a voice and who felt that she had something to offer. I have mixed experiences of church but I still really struggle with the gender issue. I feel very much that women don’t have the role that they could and should have. They aren’t given the voice that they could and should have. Very little has changed even in the past 100 years in terms of the voice and role of women.

In my teenage years church was a very important aspect of my life. There were men who pushed me on, who wanted me to do well, who wanted me to grow and who really empowered me. What I enjoyed about church then was a sense of community and I miss that. Maybe I find my church in other places like work because it’s a vocation, a calling and a community for me. My work is spiritual. I would like to find a church where I could be comfortable, to be part of one that very clearly has a social conscience, that is reaching out genuinely to people who are hurting and in need. I would like to find a church that doesn’t judge me because of where I work or where I am at in my life, but embraces me as a person just because I am made in the image of God. So currently I am not involved in church, though I think church can be an important aspect of growing.

Church and Community
We asked Debbie to say something about the relationship between church and community and about the
church’s response to the Restorative Justice Programme.

I suppose my struggle with church and community has been that church has always seemed and felt quite removed, especially in Protestant communities. People educated themselves, move up in the world and move away. They then commute to their traditional church but don’t live in the community. The church therefore isn’t engaging with local people. I suppose my question would be how relevant is the church to where people are. Some of the issues on the Shankill obviously are ongoing, like the Ardoyne/Twaddell conflict. Where is the church in that and what role has the church been playing even in a mediation sense, in peace building, in building relationships? I sense that this happens through community groups and not as much through church. I am open to be challenged because I do think there is some good work happening at church level on the Shankill. But my experience of church overall is that they leave out the ‘dirty’ work - I don’t mean that in a bad sense – the real work where you are engaging with real people who are having real struggles on a daily basis. That is often left to community workers and the church doesn’t engage. Restorative justice in the States has been pushed on and championed by the Mennonite church. In Northern Ireland, restorative justice has sometimes been seen as an arm of paramilitary groups so therefore people have been very suspicious of it. The reality in Northern Ireland is that paramilitary groups do exist. In working-class areas paramilitary groups have a lot of power. Churches and their ministers need to be talking to people within communities who have power, to people within communities who can and do make a difference. Part of that dialogue is an education process - a mutual education process - because everyone needs to make changes. On our Management Committee we have a local minister from the Shankill, Rev Barry Dodds, who is very committed to restorative justice, a man with a real social conscience who has’ hung in there’, year in and year out, trying to make real changes, and be a real presence on the Shankill Road. Barry has such respect at all levels within the community, including paramilitaries.

I think we need to engage and be willing to enter into dialogue. That is difficult for churches because they place a stigma on certain groups within Northern Ireland, people who have perpetuated the conflict and have been offenders. In some senses I don’t buy into that. I think that we all have been part of the problem here and we should all be part of the solution. I didn’t go out and kill anyone in the conflict, but I was brought up with sectarian attitudes, and my church life helped promote those sectarian attitudes at many levels. Churches need to take responsibility for that. What are they doing to help change the mindset of people who attend their churches? What are they doing to challenge people about their stereotypes? My experience of young people on the Shankill Road is that many of them are willing to engage in cross-community work. A lot of churches aren’t willing to enter into dialogue with the other community, aren’t willing to build relationships, aren’t willing to work at breaking down the stereotypes of their ‘enemy’ and I think Jesus calls us to do that. Jesus calls us to work at how we perceive our enemy and who is our enemy. In Northern Ireland the church does have a lot to answer for. We have grown up with a culture of violence. The church has helped to promote that by its silence.

Silence is also a form of violence. By saying and doing nothing the church chose to stay removed. I think things could have been very different if the church had got involved at different levels and at different stages. Individual ministers and church people have, but the church as a whole, in my opinion, didn’t do the job that God called them to do, and didn’t walk the path that Jesus walked.

Current Issues for the Shankill
Finally we asked what Debbie perceived as the current issues for the people of the Shankill.

There are a lot of issues, ranging from social to economic to educational. The big issue is that, in terms of the Good Friday Agreement, it is hard for people to see that there is peace. Peace is a process and a lot of people in the Shankill haven’t felt that there is a peace yet. The Shankill feud over the last year shows that the culture made of violence is very real. What difference has peace make for the ordinary people on the ground? The whole economic infrastructure on the Shankill is an issue. It has an unemployment rate three times the national average. Where are the jobs, how safe is it to move off the road and get jobs in other places?

Young people are growing up with violence and trauma, both of which are real not only for them but for adults. Alcohol, drugs and anti-social behaviour among young people are still major issues. Many of our communities in Northern Ireland are very traumatized and I would challenge the church about what are they doing to help deal with the trauma that people are feeling. North and West Belfast are said in a recent survey to have the highest level of medication taken in the whole of Northern Ireland. Stress levels, levels of trauma are great for people on the Shankill Road.

The whole community needs to find itself - some people are beginning to re-define loyalism. Loyalism doesn’t have to be what we are against. It can be about who we are as a people, how secure we are in our identity and culture. I see the Shankill as a community that is beginning to empower itself, mobilize itself, working-class people beginning to take control of their own destiny. That is the truly heartening thing about what is happening on the road at the minute. At a grass-roots level people putting their lives on the line every day in the name of peace, in the name of healing and transformation. People are beginning to say, “Enough is enough. For 30 years we have had things done to us. Now we are beginning to ‘do’ for ourselves, and we want to ‘do’ for ourselves in partnership with churches, with police, with the education system. Let’s move forward together and let’s find healing together.”

ECONI thanks Debbie for her willing co-operation in this interview and wishes her success as she continues to work with Greater Shankill Alternatives.

Ruth Hutchinson
Assistant Editor