Sexual harassment in a university setting: Searching for justice and compassion in an unjust and indifferent world

The article deals with the question concerning legal responses to sexual harassment – whether those responses should be relentless in punishing and stigmatizing perpetrators and banishing them from positions where they can offend further, or whether there should be room for rehabilitating or even forgiving at least those offenders whose abusive behavior is not violent or serial. On the one hand, the importance of achieving justice and equality for women is critical. On the other hand, one may recognize the possibility of repentance and restoration of both victim and offender to society. The modern restorative justice movement, informed by Christian theology, suggests that alternative dispute resolution mechanisms should not only ensure that victims receive appropriate restoration for the harm they have suffered, but also try to restore perpetrators who accept responsibility for their offenses back into the community. It seems that practiced in the right cases, restorative justice may turn the disempowerment and fearful, sometimes guilty in-turning that victims may experience in adjudicative processes, into a freedom of giving beyond justice, and they may move the self-justificatory shame of a perpetrator into true repentance and reparatory action. At least, restorative justice may push them toward a relational dynamic that is healthier for both whether they must necessarily encounter each other in the future or free themselves from the hurt of the past.