by COSA

“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at least finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”
- Frederick Douglass, October 22, 1883

For the past decade, a band of angels has been watching over John Gallienne. These angels are mortal flesh-and-blood Samaritans who volunteer with circles of support and accountability (COSA).
After serving his prison sentence, Gallienne, who had sexually abused 13 choirboys, lived in the community without incident for a decade. He speaks to the fear and loathing that adheres to pedophiles like a stain, which no solvent can expunge. All of which makes the willingness of a select few Canadians, often from religious communities, to befriend sex offenders like Gallienne all the more remarkable.
It would be easy to dismiss these volunteers as bleeding hearts, naive do-gooders who see the world and its manifest evils, through the rosiest of coloured glasses. Except that there is compelling evidence that circles of support and accountability, which began in Canada in 1994, are keeping all of us safer.
Robin Wilson, a Correctional Services of Canada (CSC) psychologist, has been tracking two groups of 30 high-risk sex offenders since the late ‘90s. Among the 30 who belong to circles, only three have re-offended. That’s just 10 percent. By contrast, eight of those who lack the support of circles, 27 percent, have created new victims.
“The results are extremely promising,” says David Molzahn, a special advisor in the correctional service’s chaplaincy unit. “They’re far beyond what I think anybody ever imagined possible.” The result is even more impressive when you consider that COSA targets those at highest risk of re-offending.
“We want to have the greatest effect with those people who are likely to do the greatest amount of damage,” says Dr.Wilson.
The power of the circle process derives from its volunteers.
Typically, between four and six volunteers enter into an agreement, called a covenant, with a newly released sex offender, known as the “core member.”
For a minimum of one year, the volunteers pledge to have daily contact with the core member helping with such basic needs as finding employment and housing, attending medical appointments and shopping. They also undertake to hold him accountable if he shows signs of slipping into bad habits. In return, the core member pledges to honour any conditions imposed by the court, which might include avoiding alcohol, areas where children gather and to steer clear of high-risk behaviour and communicate honestly with other circle members.
Once a week, all members of the circle meet to review the past week’s events, brainstorm solutions to problems, celebrate successes and develop plans for the week ahead.
Today, more than 60 Circles operate in Canada and the rest of the world is starting to pay attention. Eight countries have since picked up the idea. “We so rarely toot our horns when we do the right thing,’ notes Dr.Wilson. “I think it’s worth saying that this idea was born of rather humble beginnings in Canada, and it now is becoming something of an international cause celebre. “We’re seen as the leaders of this, the stewards of it. Yet I don’t think many people in Canada know anything about it.”
Like many inspired innovations, circles of support and accountability were conceived as a creative response to crisis. In 1994, a mentally disabled pedophile named Charlie Taylor was about to be released from prison. He had been denied both parole and statutory release, and held in prison for his full sentence. Now he was about be dumped, unprepared and alone, into Hamilton, a community that wanted nothing to do with him. A prison psychologist asked Harry Nigh, a Mennonite minister, if he could offer the beleaguered man any help. Rev. Nigh was familiar with restorative justice, an alternative concept championed by the Mennonite Central Committee that often uses circle processes. It advocates healing the harm caused by crime, and focuses both on the needs of victims and the safe reintegration of criminals back into the community.
Rev. Nigh rounded up some volunteers and the first circle of support and accountability was born. Six months later, Hugh Kirkegaard, a correctional services community chaplain in Toronto, created a second Circle to deal with the situation of Wray Budreo, a pedophile with 36 convictions, who was released to an equally hostile reception from the media and public. Both Circles still meet and neither Taylor nor Budreo have re-offended.
The success of these initial Circles led Correctional Services of Canada and the Mennonite Central Committee to establish a pilot project in 1996 to refine the concept and implement it across Canada.
Heather Mallett is a parishioner at St. John’s church in Ottawa and a deeply religious woman. A victim of childhood sexual abuse herself, she is an unlikely angel to a sex offender. But the choice wasn’t entirely hers. “There’s this other part of me which is not of my own choosing or making, but from God,” she says. “There’s no other way of describing it. This is God saying, you have to do something about this.”
At first, she had little luck recruiting volunteers. People kept saying, “Well, no, I don’t think so.” But she persisted and was eventually able to find 18 people who agreed to participate. Everyone, including John Gallienne, was frightened at first, she says. “We didn’t know what to expect. Was this person ever going to be employed by anybody for anything?
“I had this idea that somebody would find out and, I don’t know, shoot us or something. I got a little bit paranoid,” explained Mallett.
At the first house church gathering, Gallienne sat quietly on a chesterfield in Mallett’s living room while the assembled group took turns upbraiding him for his crimes. Then the healing began with a eucharist.
“It was an incredibly powerful evening,” Mallett recalls. “There was just a sense of all of us being surrounded by love. God was there with us.”
Friends were aghast when she told them what she was doing. “Think of his victims,” they cried. “Think of all the people he has hurt. How could you?”
She tried to explain that she and her COSA colleagues were only trying to keep the community safe. It was no use; her friends couldn’t accept that she was helping a pedophile.
Fourteen members of that original circle still gather every couple of months. Most now consider John Gallienne a personal friend. Heather Mallett, for one, has total faith in the once-broken man who showed up a decade ago with little hope of ever again living a normal life. “There is no possibility of re-offence,” she says flatly. “I would lay down my life saying that.”
Formal circles of support and accountability began at Ottawa’s St. John’s church in 2000. None of the four sex offenders involved has yet committed another offence. Prof. Michael Petrunik, who teaches criminology at the University of Ottawa, says occasional lapses by ex-offenders are to be expected, given their high risk to re-offend. “That’s what the circle is here for, so when something at risk happens, the individual can go to the circle. Or the circle might see something that is happening and recognize that something’s wrong.
“Here is something that looks at trying to deal with both community safety and the possibility that you could reintegrate these individuals,” Prof. Petrunik says. “They had these two mottoes; no more victims, and no one is disposable. The skill is found in balancing those two.
Whatever their motives, it is clear that Circle volunteers are unusually non-judgmental and empathetic people. Human angels are in terribly short supply,” says Butler.
COSA has an emerging presence in British Columbia. In May 2004 Vancouver hosted its first Circle. In Victoria, circles of support and accountability have been operating for the past five years. Of its 10 volunteers, nine are female. While Volunteer Vancouver says that men and women volunteer at an equal rate relative to the population, the sorts of activities they volunteer for are different. Men generally volunteer to coach sports teams, or to sit on boards of directors for other, typically male-oriented activities such as Big Brothers. Fewer men than women volunteer for what we might describe as “social service” type activities. Such is the case for COSA, where typically more women than men volunteer their time.
The irony in this fact is that it is typically women and children who are most frequently the victims of sexual assault, and men are typically the aggressors in such assaults. And while few would disagree that men should hold men accountable for their behaviour, perhaps especially for their sexual behaviour, it is women who are doing this work instead of men.
One might ask if this is so because women have a higher stake in maintaining a safer society? Or is it because sexual matters are too threatening for many men to deal with face-to-face with other men? Whatever the reason, COSA needs more men to volunteer their time to work with men who are released from prison at the end of their sentences.
Since 95 percent of the people who have committed sexual offences return to the community at one point or another it is logical to form a group to help prevent such offences from being repeated.
A COSA volunteer from the Ottawa area, Pat Love, who worked as a probation officer for a decade said, “One of the things I learned in being a probation officer is that these are real people with real problems, often with many horrible difficulties in their backgrounds. Without excusing that, one has to look at them as individuals and help them get beyond that.”
Often the sex offender returns to a community without friends and without the support of their family because of fear. They also come back with no money or support to connect with a society that has changed. They turn then to the others who, like them, have been alienated from our society. You can imagine where this leads.
COSA offers support and inclusion while interacting with the once outcast individuals in a pro-social manner. People often ask if Circle volunteers aren’t afraid of the sex offenders they walk with, says Susan Love. Her response is simple. “I think it’s scarier for them not to have support. He has high needs, is high risk and has no support. That scares me!”
The accountability is about honesty. The core member looks at the impact his past behaviours had on him and how it translated into pain he has created for himself and the victims. The sex offender enters into agreement with COSA on a voluntary basis. He then sees the group as a safe way to move toward accepting responsibility and modeling new behaviours.
The regional coordinator for COSA of Western Canada is Andrew McWhinnie who has a master’s degree from Carleton University where he studied the psychology of criminal conduct. McWhinnie and others have been approaching local congregations in the downtown Vancouver area since the spring of 2003. Many responded with interest, but none were prepared to take up the challenge of COSA. They were already over extended, or did not feel their congregation would be a suitable one to provide support for an individual just released from prison.
“While this was disappointing, the faith community of the Correctional Service of Canada Pacific regional chaplaincy division were very supportive. Indeed it was a member of that community, Rev. David Price who delivered the talk, which captured the initial interest of the people at Rhodes College who provided the venue for Vancouver’s first COSA. So I followed where I felt the spirit of God was leading me,” says McWhinnie.
Bea Rhodes, president of Rhodes College has worked 10 years in the correctional system of the Lower Mainland providing peer counselling and life skills training to the inmates. Her college is dedicated to promoting wellness and life skills. The role of COSA in the community is dear to her, so she decided to foster the project until COSA finds a stable home.
Right now under their roof Andrew McWhinnie and Rev. Leon Remus, a minister with the Baptist Union of Western Canada and who works as a community chaplain with Correctional Services of Canada, provide the introduction talks and six weeks training for volunteers.
Rev. Remus gives some insight about COSA volunteers and core members: “We are more alike than different. If I’m honest I can always see a part of me [good and bad] within these persons. Some have committed horrific crimes. These two truths are often in tension to maintain a healthy balance. But we have to remember that crimes are facts, only persons have the potential for change. The fact that after almost a decade in this work, I am as passionate as ever tells me that I believe that positive change is possible.”
McWhinnie adds, “I can do this not by stigmatizing, separating, and feeding hatred. Rather, I can do it by honouring the deepest soundings of my faith, to find within myself the wherewithal to embrace the most despised members of our human family. I am blessed in being able to at least partially actualize two parts of my being many sometimes believe exist in enmity of the other: my mind, trained by the best in the world, and my soul animated by the One who creates that world.”
“We are either part of the solution or part of the problem, the choice is ours,” remarks Rev. Remus “Finally, only love heals.”

Adapted from an article written by Don Butler of The Ottawa Citizen with additional writing by BC’s COSA members.
To volunteer call COSA at 604-708-4416.
For more information contact
Andrew McWhinnie 250-889-2321
andrew_mcwhinnie@telus.net