There is no instance in the New Testament of a person's being forgiven by someone lower in the power hierarchy. Only someone with greater power in the relationship could perform an act of forgiveness. There's no perfect person out there, regardless of how upstanding and morally correct they might like to think they are. People do crazy things, especially when they're emotionally deprived and have no love in their life. The Bible locates the source of evil not in passion, in the throbbing heart, but rather in hardness of heart, in callousness and insensitivity.
Forgiveness is the highest virtue.
It brings peace. It washes the slate clean. It sets all the highest values of love in motion. In a sense, forgiveness is Christianity at its highest level. Empty hands Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.