Source: (2004) Included in Restorative Justice Week 2004: Engaging Us All in the Dialogue. Ottawa: Correctional Service of Canada. Downloaded 28 January 2005.
Russell Kelly is now a restorative justice practitioner in Kitchener, Ontario. In 1974 he was a teenager who, with a friend, both under the influence of alcohol, committed a number of acts of vandalism one night in Elmira, Ontario. After being apprehended, they were turned over to Mark Yantzi, a probation officer and volunteer with the Mennonite Central Committee in Kitchener, and to Dave Worth, another volunteer. Yantzi and Worth, in coordination with the courts, arranged for the teenagers to meet with their victims to apologize, to hear their victims’ statements, to ask forgiveness of their victims, and to determine restitution. Thus arose the Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program in Kitchener and an oft-repeated story of the emergence of modern day victim-offender mediation.
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