Earning Forgiveness: The Story of a Perpetrator, Katherine Ann Power
This chapter notes Katherine Ann Power's struggles to forgive herself as well as to consider the wrong that she did in terms of the pain it caused others. She was a member of a group of five who were robbing the State Street Bank & Trust Company in Brighton, Massachusetts. This wrongdoing was, at the time, conceptualized as an antiwar act, but resulted in the murder of a police officer. Power served an eight- to 12-year prison sentence at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Framingham. Through interviews, news reports, and Power's parole request statement, this chapter investigates Power's efforts to earn forgiveness. In addition, it reviews Joanna North's model in connection with certain insights into the issue found in The Sunflower. It is speculated that Power is not the only wrongdoer whose self-forgiveness was built upon both her being forgiven by others, as well as her forgiving others. Power's story improves North's theory by, for example, foregrounding the emphatically relational character of the process by which an offender might go about earning forgiveness.
Keywords: forgiveness, Katherine Ann Power, Joanna North, wrongdoing
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