know around to it but the reason i am on the panel is because i am someone who was the victim of childhood sexual abuse and it was my father and me in two thousand and nine i decided to for  decide when to minnesota and i started at the same asylum i went north of the river falls where i my grandparents had lived over to the red lake indian reservation where i have many relatives on the edge of our nation information about my grandparents and i found a photo of a woman who i had recognized as a childhood name from going up and so i contacted angie and she was eighty something at the time i have little photos there is me with and she said she knew my grandmother into taking care of her when she got was released from the insane asylum because my grandmother actually was not insane but had spent forty years there she was out for three years and in to help  care for her but she said all go see my doctor who is ninety nine and he was and she had both her grandparents one had both my grandparents i find this ninety nine year old woman and this is an and when i walk into an assisted care home she hands me this photo it's my aunt it's from nineteen twenty seven it's my paternal bonds and on the back and says they took daughter of the natori as frank cook  so sorry for her i took care of her for a summer while her grandma her father was in prison and i asked anna my grandfather was in prison and she said yes and she would not tell me of the crime so i am forever indebted to the department of corrections of minnesota i call that they said well try the historical society which i did this base that they might have the records i needed an indictment number so i contacted a researcher that because i'm now back in vermont who had previously worked at the start of society and we agreed upon five hours of work that she would do to search for information she didn't or five hours thankfully knew the library of them having worked there the library asked him what are you looking for someone trying to find out this man spent time in prison and still at stillwater state intentionally and the woman said oh come here i have a secret card catalog on the counter and it lists all the inmates have ever been in the penitentiary and sure enough under my family name we found my grandfather and she filled out the appropriate work and the archivist went down into the bowels of the minnesota storable society and came back with three hundred fifty pages documenting my grandfather's criminal history with the primary crime being at the time it was called carnal knowledge of girls under the age of eighty so when i heard that truth my all sentient or system actually relaxed because my life m and in that moment to interesting way my father was forgiven you notice that i didn't forget my father my father was forgive it just happened and it was my grandfather and i didn't because there was something it was about him i had to read through those documents it is stunning what was in those documents and i wish i had more time to share because i love sharing it but i and it took me quite a while to have to work through that you know i cite the d n a i get here is that of a man so i wanted to come to terms with that and have done that and it is many some of you have heard there's been two thousand and fourteen i decided to attend the sentencing of a sex offender about the time that i had started my research about my grandfather described was committed in this michael jackson kidnapped raped and killed his twelve year old niece and i could never look at the paper during that time but in two thousand and fourteen i saw this picture on the front of the paper and i actually read the article go there and keep my heart open to him there is no doubt i keep my heart open to brooke bennett in fact they often speak because she can she gave her life for those cards we owe it to her to end this today you know sexual abuse of children children and they michael jackson said look at me look at me and he did and she said there is nothing good about you and in that moment for me it because it came right through it to me and it was a moment of healing for me one i got for the first time in my entire life that yes there is there something good about him because i am the daughter of one of him and my two kids are the grand kids there is that he was born like you and me a vulnerable and innocent baby and something happened and the other thing that happened in that courtroom is i had a vision and a developmental psychologist and of my kind i play with consciousness as my heart is what does heal to me and i saw how we can end the this crime we someone who's ever been a victim you need to see our goodness and help us see that and pull that out so that we can see that there's more to us than the toxic shame that resides once you've been victimized by the toxic s that can be there if you have that to my list or you know so we need to know and see the goodness in all of us so that that is something that we can we can work on we can build i know for that my grandfather was a really good hunting then the problems can become lesser and the good things can become bigger so coaster there's a but i think in their mind is it's awesome that we have we need them for victims too we all need some words these crimes these abuses happen in relationships they can all we need healed in relationship there's no other way to do it isolate any human being there's a little bit of survival instinct and they're going to do something to survive and that's what we do enough to care enough about this world to get over our fear and our abhorrence and everything else to see the goodness in each and every one of us edge of that out so that the other crap that we do as humans none of us the people that may not have this urge is right to stay in prison for life seventy not a problem but while he's there he could be doing something to restore justice to those who are i don't know if he is or not but i believe he i know he's of really when they said the question of her time that is the core for me that i believe that we're doing harm to people when we send them to prison and i feel like as a member i'm not the d o c please don't treat me like the d s c and here in a different capacity i'm not paid by the d o c i am beholden to agreements with the d o c just like you are and so let's which i don't always agree with and i feel like that just gives me even more and that the for the person who's coming out of prison who has a list of agreements with the do you see their conditions of release that makes my little list people actually have to deal with when they come out of prison and part of it is the stigma that so many of us carry about whatever their crime was but there are also a lot of conditions which i personally would have a really hard time living with so every time earl would go to get a job which he needs to get because he has to pay for housing which he needs to get because he has to pay for his own the gob programming so that the requirements of his being released serving the end of his sentence in the community because that's technically what he's doing every time he has a job interview if he's offered the job he needs to tell people about his crime so just think about the thing that you've made me feel most ashamed about in your life for the thing this may be the hardest reader talk about and imagine having to share that every time you're offered a job and you know how many jobs are going to get so they you know i could bask in the light of everybody talking about how great coast is and our thank you for the volunteers but really i have to say that for me it's an invaluable learning experience and it gives me a window into lives and conditions and things that i am actually a part of by being part of the society that my tax dollars go towards that and i a couple things one is that it really is a part of practice that's based on research evidence so for example sex offenders in particular one of their risk factors that makes them more likely to re is isolation and so the social supports that are part of the coast are really essential the other thing in you know echoing what you said is that being in prison itself is criminogenic which means increases your likelihood of re offending all other things being equal so they come out with a lot of barriers and obstacles and one of the reasons that koza works is because it is not to give see the volunteers the fact that there are unpaid volunteers is what a lot of the members of the people who have to go said have  d what it was really powerful to them that ordinary citizens would spend their time trying to help them and you know in so far as the volunteers function quite differently than they do you know see they're actually adding a different value it's clear you know kids are the ways they might look like a barrel board or something but they're they actually managed to help people stay within those very stringent conditions by doing things like driving and if they're not allowed to drive spending time with them and when they're most affected it's when they help the or member to develop another self another person persona in the world or another narrative about themselves so the research also shows that people who stop doing horizons and commit to that are people who can and are allowed the space to see themselves as something other than a criminal right and so there's a lot of things in our system where we're reminding them that they're criminals and that they are offenders and they're this and that and that you know that no matter what they're trying to do we're sort of waiting for them to re offend and or we're you know we are putting all these sorts of things in place that make it very difficult for them to forget for a second and i'm not saying that you know that we should ask them to forget we still need to hold them accountable but to the extent that we can help them develop other parts of themselves the more ordinary conventional part so for example closer sometimes will do things like ok will yeah you did this terrible thing we've talked about it you've done your time what else are you someone who can hang around ordinary people doing ordinary things and you know have a place at the table basically also because a lot of times people have been in for a long time and they're really institutionalized they don't know how to function on the outside quite and so the team can actually help adjust to things like oh here's how you use a cell phone they have cell phones when you  when let's just go buy groceries and here you know whatever these sorts of things are but it also communicates really powerfully i think the community is willingness to say you know we are going to hold you to a standard but we're also going to let you be among us and basically welcome him back into the community and based on all the research there's that sort of approach is absolutely going to be the more effective one isolation that the film talks a lot about you know the registry and notification and stuff has these very perverse of facts and they do at a minimum nothing all but potentially have really negative effects and it's not hard to imagine why so just from a policy standpoint i mean i understand we have to have the registries and i know the vermont is actually much more humane  and in fact vermont the tips is famous all over the world for having pretty good results so there's all kinds of things vermont does that is you know way better than a lot of other places and one of which is it's so it's my experiences that it is simple but profound and the simplicity is just treating people as if they could be something other than just the worst thing they ever did  that i mean