Content note: This episode discusses sexual violence.

An Emotions Beat episode about proxy conversations, restorative jusice, and the questions we may never get to ask.  

Yowei has a problem. She's having trouble explaining the show to people who don't get it. She knows proxy conversations work. But why would talking to someone who wasn’t directly involved in your situation help you feel less stuck?

For the first stop on this quest, she turns to a much higher-stakes version of proxy conversations: vicarious restorative justice. Alissa Ackerman, a criminal justice professor and co-founder of Ampersands Restorative Justice, has helped survivors of sexual violence talk with people who committed similar kinds of harm — when the actual person who harmed them is unavailable, unwilling, or unsafe to talk to.

In this episode, Yowei and Alissa investigate why talking to a proxy can sometimes offer something close to the real conversation: accountability, honesty, vulnerability, remorse, and the chance to ask questions you may never get answered otherwise.

From the episode

— Alissa Ackerman — criminologist and author of Healing from Sexual Violence: The Case for Vicarious Restorative Justice— more about her work: www.alissaackerman.com

— Ampersands Restorative Justice: www.ampersandsrj.org

New to Proxy? Try Bisexual Wife Guy for a classic case, or Dead Eyes by Proxy for another emotions beat episode about why talking to the “wrong” person can still help you get unstuck.

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