Cyrus
Monday morning, at a quarter to 10, and I’m sitting in the reception area of Rampton Secure Hospital, an hour’s drive north of Nottingham. In 15 minutes, a panel of three people – a judge, a consultant psychiatrist and a layperson – will hear an application from my brother to be released. It has been 20 years since my parents and sisters died. I am now 33. Elias is 38. The boy is a man. The brother wants to come home.
For years I have told people that I want what’s best for Elias, without knowing exactly what that means and whether it extends to setting him free. As a forensic psychologist, I understand mental illness. I should be able to separate the person from the act – to hate the sin but forgive the sinner.
I have read stories about forgiveness. People who have visited killers in prison, offering sympathy and absolution. They say things like, “You took a piece out of my heart that can never be replaced, but I forgive you.”
One woman, a mother in her 60s, lost her only son, who was stabbed to death outside a party. After the jury convicted the killer, a boy of 16, she forgave the teenager. Doubled over in shock, she kept repeating, “I just hugged the man that murdered my son.” In the next breath, she said, “I felt something leave me. Instantly, I knew all the hatred and bitterness and
