TED Radio Hour - Listen Again: Making Amends

Episode Date: November 26, 2021

Original broadcast date: July 10, 2020. What makes a true apology? What does it mean to make amends for past mistakes? This hour, TED speakers explore how repairing the wrongs of the past is the first step toward healing for the future. Guests include historian Brent Leggs, law professor Martha Minow, librarian Dawn Wacek, and playwright V (formerly Eve Ensler). See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, it's Manusch, and here in the U.S., it's Thanksgiving time. For a lot of us, that means eating really good food and relaxing with our loved ones, thinking about what we're thankful for, and it can also mean rehashing old arguments with your cousins or other fun family dynamics, which is why I want to share this week one of my favorite episodes. It's called Making Amends, and it features some amazing speakers and stories about dealing with conflict. in a productive way. It is pretty inspiring and gripping. And a quick note, as you'll hear, we first put out this episode in July 2020.

When there were big protests sweeping the country, sadly, those issues are ongoing and still as relevant as ever. I'll be back next week with an all-new episode. Meanwhile, I'm so thankful for you being here. This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see.

Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're going to find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person.

Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From Ted and NPR. I'm Minutes Zamorodi. And a few months ago, I visited Birmingham, Alabama. In the heart of downtown, spread over just a few small blocks, is the Civil Rights Historic District.

There's Kelly Ingram Park. Just across the way from there is the 16th Street Baptist Church. September 15th, 1963, bundles of dynamite set by Kuwait. And one block away from that is the A.G. Gaston Motel, the first black-owned motel in Alabama. Most individuals could pass a building like this and have no idea. The history that is embodied in these walls and this brick and this wood. And they look at a vacant motel that's in a condition like this. And couldn't imagine

that Jim Crow ended because of the sacrifice and the community organizing in Birmingham. This is Brent Legs. He heads the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. At the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and my work is to elevate the significance of African American history and American history. And he does that by preserving historic places and buildings like the age of. Gaston. Right now the motel is boarded up and run down, but it wasn't always that way. It really looks like your quintessential, stereotypical American motel, like a Howard Johnson's, that split-level motel and people, I can imagine in the 50s and 60s hanging out on their balcony, maybe having a smoke, but was it like a fancy motel as a drive-in? Was it nice, you know?

It was. So Jet Magazine said that it was one of the most luxurious. curious black motels in all of America. It was also where Martin Luther King Jr. stayed when he was in Birmingham. And from his motel room, he helped organize sit-ins, boycotts, and marches that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Right here was room 30. Right here in the corner? Right there in the corner on the second floors. That's where Dr. King was?

It was Dr. King. That was his room. It was the largest room in the motel. Can I just say? And I can't explain it, but there are shivers. Like, I just got goosebumps. Like, there's something really, there's something really weird about thinking, like, oh, right here where my feet are walking. Dr. King was walking up these stairs to the second level on the corner where his room was.

And he made a plan to change America, like right there. Dr. Mon Luther King. It happened right there. Thank you very kindly, my very dear friend. And some of the protest marches literally started from right here. Coming out of the motel? Coming out of the motel. Yeah.

As long as we keep moving like we are moving, the power structure of Birmingham will have to give in. Right here on the side of the building near King's room is where a bomb exploded. And on May 11th, the Black age. It was an assassination attempt on King's life. Oh, my Lord. That bombing was one of over 40 bombings, targeting the black community in Birmingham,

from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. They were scare tactics to keep black people from organizing or moving into white neighborhoods. So what did they do? How did they even function? There's bombs going off around here. Like, how did they keep this motel? in business. I know. It's hard to imagine living in a community where bombs were going off at night time,

in the daytime, that you had no idea of whether or not you would be able to go back home to your family because you were involved in activities that, that in your opinion, was helping to make society better. I mean, the resilience of this neighborhood, like, just walking around here, it's so calm. The madness that was happening on a daily basis in terms of people being arrested and bombs going off and hostile interactions with police. There must have been such a steelyness to, and their meeting in motels where who knows what could happen. They could be assassinated at any moment. Yeah. That's what I think is beautiful about this story is the fairly.

of the activist here. In spite of the difficulties, and we're going to have a few more difficulties, keep climbing. Through violence and fear, the black community had a resolve, and they moved through that fear to shape the consciousness of our nation.

Keep moving. If you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk. If you can't run, walk. You can't walk, crawl, but by all means, keep moving. Over the past several weeks, I've been thinking a lot about my trip to Birmingham, the A.G. Gaston Motel, my conversations with Brent, and I just keep thinking history is repeating itself. I think some of the cultural conflicts that we see that's rooted in race and that's rooted in a legacy of slavery

has yet to be fully acknowledged. So when we preserve a place like the A.G. Gaston Motel, that tells a civil rights story. We are reminded that we still have a long way to go to be inclusive as a country and to respect all of our citizens and their contributions. Never in the history of this nation have so many people been arrested for the cause of freedom

and human dignity. You're tired of being second-class citizens. The Birmingham campaign, the march from Selma, the Montgomery bus boycott, the same issues that brought people into the streets then are bringing people into the streets now. That's because this country has not faced its past.

As long as you stay second-class citizens, you will never get the thing that you should have. The thing that we are challenged to do is to keep this movement moving. There is power in unity and there's power in numbers. So today on the show, what does it mean to make amends? As a country, how do we begin to make amends for our past atrocities? As a society, how can we learn to forgive in our schools, our libraries and prisons? And in our own lives, how do we take responsibility and apologize to the people we have wronged or repair the damage done to us?

Protesters are already removing Confederate statues, calling to abolish police and demanding reparations. But for Brent Leggs, a good first step in making amends as a nation is to recognize and preserve black historical sites. Making amends means that black Americans are appreciated, that our community is recognized for a 400-plus-year contribution, that our history and the physical places where that history is held are preserved. Making amends means that our nation is making new investments to address years of disinvestment and inequity. I believe that making amends is to understand that the black experience is an American experience. There is a statistic that I read that really I found kind of shocking, that there are nearly 100,000 entries in the National Register of Historic Places, but only 2% of those focus on African American history.

Can you just help us understand how that possibly came to be? I think in many ways that our National Register of Historic Places, which is the nation's inventory of historic sites that tell an American story, it really is a mirror. It mirrors social issues. The National Park Service, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and a whole coalition of advocates are working to rectify this inequity and to list more diverse historic places in our national inventory. So the big vision of the Action Fund is to reconstruct our national identity. And our tagline is tell the full history.

And we do that by preserving sites of enslavement, but with a deeper focus on helping to preserve sites of activism, achievement, and community. I mean, that's a humongous goal, reconstructing our national identity. Do you feel like most Americans are basing what they think it means to be American on an incomplete story? Like, what are they missing? That's exactly it. When I travel around the country and I meet with citizens or organizations and I bring up individuals like Madam C.J. Walker, America's first self-made female millionaire. In 1918, she constructed an elegant historic residence that stands in Irvington, New York,

as a symbol of American entrepreneurship. And many Americans have no idea that a black woman was the first self-made millionaire. No. Yeah. I did not know that. Yeah. Yeah. So it's important that Americans know this history because all Americans should be able to see themselves

and their history and their potential in the African American history. or places that surround them. And so where do you stand in terms of removing Confederate memorials? Do you think that's a way of making amends? Our position is that we should not erase our history. At the same time, we don't have to revere it. When we come back, we'll hear more from Brent Legs on tearing down Confederate monuments or keeping them.

I'm Manusse Zamoroti, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Minnuch Zamoroti. On the show today, making amends. And we were just talking to preservationist Brent Legs about whether removing Confederate statues can indeed rectify our past.

Our position is that we should not erase our history at the same time we don't have to revere it. And I think what's exciting is Many communities are bringing together their citizens to say, how can we tell a fuller story about our city and about the citizens that have contributed so much to it? Yeah, it almost, I'm starting to picture it in my mind as almost like a manuscript being edited. And like some of the people are going in and crossing things out and removing entire passages. and then other people are going in saying, like, actually, we should keep that sentence and maybe massage that one and that we're in this sort of iterative process, a creative process of recognizing the way that we have told the story of our nation, in addition to this new recognition that we have to find a new way to explain how we've gotten to this moment where racism still is alive and well in this country. That is so true.

And there is power in truth. And even for the Confederate memorials that stand, if we are brave enough to tell the truth for why they exist, that is empowering to communities. And it begins to help to reconcile our racist past. And I think in many ways it begins to help. it begins to help diverse citizens relate to one another better. If you do preserve and maintain all of these sites,

how far does that actually go in terms of healing this country? I think it goes a long way. I think it's an opportunity for all Americans to be educated, to reflect on their understanding of history, on the injustices faced by black people in our country. And most importantly, honor all of the contributions that African Americans have made to this amazing democracy that we call America.

We are talking about moments where Americans will, when they're walking down the street and they see a historic marker, or they take a moment to walk inside, a historic space and learn and interact with that history. We can create millions of cultural moments for Americans to learn something new about our own history and to walk away more empowered than they were before they were connected with that history. What do you think all those millions of moments can add up to be? Yeah, I would say all these moments.

add up to healing, education, respect, acknowledgement, and I think all of those words equal reconciliation. Brent Legs is the executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. He has helped raise over $23 million to put towards preservation of places important to African American history. On the show today, making amends for past wrongs. We've been looking at U.S. history, but how do we think about our present? Should we reconsider justice in this country? And how we ask individuals to make amends if they've committed a crime.

Oh, I'm so glad you put it that way. I've been thinking a lot about... This is Martha Minow. And I teach at Harvard Law School where I have been since 1981. She studies the U.S. criminal justice system and international law. I've been so compelled by the story of people who, as a young age, have been either forced into the role of being a child soldier or drawn into conflicts and how international law treats such individuals. Mr. President, Your Honor. The very first case was against Thomas Lubanga for drawing minors, children, to juvenile.

into armed conflict. Some of the most serious crimes for the international community. This is a recording of Lubanga's trial before the International Criminal Court. Thomas Lubanga systematically recruited children under the age of 15. And he was convicted of that activity

as a violation of crimes against humanity. Prosecution has proved that Mr. Thomas Lubanga Dailo is guilty of the crimes. The question that then emerges, what about the minors themselves? because many of them do commit horrible crimes. They kill people. They rape.

They conscript other minors. They cannot forget what they suffer, what they saw, what they did. And in international law, the approach is very much to say, well, they deserve another chance. They are not the ones most responsible. The people most responsible are the adults. who created the conflicts and drew or forced the minors into it. I mean, that's pretty remarkable that international law sees child soldiers as victims and gives them another chance. You are right.

And how different that is from the way we talk about juvenile justice in this country, where very similar elements are present. Young people are drawn into conflicts, drug dealing, for example, that's not of their creation, people who haven't yet had a chance to have a childhood to develop a sense of right and wrong. What a different approach it is, as many countries have developed for child soldiers, to say, okay, we know you have that challenge and we're going to help you and you're going to learn some skills as well as have some therapeutic opportunities as opposed to what we do with juvenile offenders in the United States.

The rhetoric of innocence is resonant when we talk about child soldiers, but not when we talk about teen gang members in the United States. Martha Minow picks up this idea on the TED stage. Youth are caught in worlds that are made by adults, and forgiveness can offer both accountability and fresh starts. What if instead young people caught in criminal activity and violence could have chances to accept? accept responsibility while learning and rebuilding their lives and their own communities.

Legal frameworks inviting youth to describe their conduct could also involve community members to hear and forgive called restorative justice. Such efforts emphasize accountability and service rather than punishment. So this is really about finding a way for them to move forward. It is a focus on the future rather than the past. So often our legal system, our criminal process, even school discipline processes, focus entirely on what happened at the past. It's retrospective. Restorative justice has a view that actually the community, the people who are involved,

are going to have some kind of a future. Restorative justice alternatives involve offenders and victims in communicating. in ways that an adversarial and defensive process does not allow, and it's become the go-to method in places like the District of Columbia, juvenile justice system, and innovations like Los Angeles's teen court. Many schools in the United States have turned to use restorative justice methods to resolve conflicts and to prevent them, and to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. Some American high schools have replaced automatic suspensions with opportunities for victims to narrate their experiences and for offenders to take responsibility for their actions. So what does restorative justice look like in schools? Can you give us an example?

I'd be glad to. It's an example, and it's a true story, about how restorative justice processes can work. And this involved a young woman named Mercedes who attended a public high school in California. And there were two other students who called her names and they were almost getting into a fight. And a counselor took her aside and earned enough trust so that she admitted that she had stolen shoes from one of the other students. And the three of them agreed to have a conference, a restorative justice style conference, which means that they, each had a chance to describe their version of what happened. Turns out they had known each other for a long time in childhood and had never found a way to talk without coming to blows. But suddenly, Mercedes apologized. And she said that indeed she had stolen these shoes, but she did so, she said,

because her mother needed money. And she wanted to sell the shoes in order to get enough money so her mother could get a drug test and hopefully show the state that she was clean. and then regain custody of two other children. The other girls were moved, and they did not exactly forgive Mercedes, but they said they didn't expect her to pay the money back, and they wanted to go forward, and they just wanted assurances that they could trust her going forward. And later on, Mercedes said that if this process had not taken place,

she was sure she would have been on the road to suspension and maybe expulsion and maybe out on the street. But the school might also refer the matter to the criminal justice system, especially if there were blows landed. And that could lead to charges, hearing, even to penalties as severe as incarceration. I mean, not to sound naive, but it seems unbelievable that if Mercedes School didn't have this program, that pair of shoes could have landed her in prison. Sadly, there are more kids in the criminal justice system now, particularly girls. There's been a real increase in the numbers of girls who are involved in criminal justice. We are the most incarcerating country in the history of human beings. And I think that this is a wake-up call for people across the political spectrum, that something's not working in our criminal justice system. And the institutions that feed into it, which include schools, that's.

why we call it the school to prison pipeline, unfortunately, particularly for people of color. You mentioned these restorative justice experiments happening in L.A. and D.C., but this isn't really about one school here or a couple juvenile courts. I mean, it sounds like you're really advocating for a broader mindset shift across the entire criminal justice system and society that we need to rethink what constitutes a crime and why someone might commit it in the first place. I think we need a reset in this country. And yes, it is a mindset shift. So, for example, the contrast between bankruptcy and criminal law is so striking because, you know, with bankruptcy, we say, yes, you have a chance for a second chance. You can have a clean slate. You can start over. And we don't do that when it comes to crime. You know, even people who've served their entire sentence. You know, people lose the right to vote in many states. They lose the ability to get credit, to get

jobs to actually start a new life. And we need a mindset change. We absolutely need a mindset change. Yeah. And I guess that would mean that all of us would actually need to put greater value in the act of someone taking responsibility for their actions. I think the word responsibility in English is such an interesting word because on the one hand, it certainly implies, you know, blame. more guilt or who caused something. But I think it also carries with it the idea of ability to respond and sometimes getting hung up on who caused what can get in the way of, you know, people assisting the turn from the past to the future causes of why does a conflict occur? If that example of Mercedes is one that we can point to, you know, why did her,

a mother not have the ability to get money for a drug test? Why did this young girl think that she had to steal in order to help her mother? Can we address that? And so if you really take restorative justice seriously and making amends seriously, it includes not just in this particular situation, what do we do? But how do we understand what leads to these conflicts and making a ground for building a different kind of society. That's Martha Minow. She's a law professor at Harvard University, and you can see her whole talk at TED.com. On the show today, making amends. How forgiveness can help us carve a new path toward addressing inequality, even when it comes to something that seems small, like library finds.

I don't think they work. This is Don Wosick. It's supposed to be a deterrent. People are supposedly, you know, they'll know ahead of time that they would be fined if they were late, and then they won't be late. And it took until really recently for us to think about, is it working? You know, does it make a difference in how people behave? Don is a librarian in Wisconsin. At the La Crosse Public Library.

And she says what was meant as a simple deterrent can have pretty big consequences. So I'll use my own library as an example because it's fairly typical. In the past, we would charge 10 cents a day, which sounds reasonable, unless you have 20 picture books checked out and they're late by a week or two weeks. What would happen is at the point where a patron owed $10 or more, they no longer have access to materials in the library. They're just blocked. And so what we saw happening was people who had disposable income would come in and they would pay their $10 or their $20 or their $50 or their $50 or $1 or $50 or $1 or $5. or whatever it might be, and they would go on with their lives. And those who don't have that money available to them would not come back.

That's where you see it really add up and really impact people's lives, and especially the people we want to serve most. Here's more from Don Wosick, from the TED stage. In libraries across the country that charge fines, the poorest neighborhoods have the most number of people blocked from use. In fact, the Colorado State Library was so worried about this, they published a white paper, and they stated unequivocally that it's the fear of fines

that keeps poor families out of libraries. Books level the playing field by exposing children of every socioeconomic background to words. At the library, we offer programs for adults on computer classes and job skills training, business startups. We do all of this great work for our community members and at the same time, we counteract it by charging fines and fees of our patrons. Now, why would we continue to operate under a model that hurts our most vulnerable patrons the most?

So what would you prefer to see? I would prefer to see late fees go away entirely. Altogether. All together. Everywhere. Just no more. What we've done here in LaCross and what a lot of these libraries that are eliminating fines now are doing is we've said, we're not going to charge you any late fines. If you bring the items back, you're forgiven and you can check out as much as you want again. And that seems to be really the only incentive people need to get their things back because they want access to everything we have to offer them. You don't think that people would just take books out and not be fearful of forgetting to return them, that they just hold on to them. And I mean, if there's no repercussions, what's the difference? Yeah. So what we are seeing, is that people are still bringing them back. They still want to check more things out, and so they come back. But they aren't as fearful about fines.

Oh. You know, they still could lose an item and have to pay for it somehow. But we just try to make people feel as comfortable as possible when that situation comes up. When we come back, we'll hear more from Don Wasek about eliminating library fines. On the show today, making amends. I'm Manus Zammeroti, and you'll see you. You're listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

I'm Manoosh Zamoroti. And today on the show, Making Amends, ideas on how we can be more forgiving in our prisons, our schools, and our libraries. We were just hearing from librarian Don Wasek on why she thinks we should eliminate overdue book finds. Here she is again from the TED stage. When other libraries have experimented with eliminating fines like one in San Rafael that took away children's fines, they had 126% increase in child card applications within the first few months. When people aren't afraid of the fines they might accrue, they line up to access what

we have to offer. Now, you might think I've forgotten that money piece where we need to finance libraries, right? But fines have never been a stable source of revenue. They've always fluctuated, and in fact, they've continued to go down over the last few decades. You might be surprised to know fines on average nationally are about one and a half percent of a library's operating budget. Now, that can still be a lot of money. If you're looking at a large library or a large library system, the dollar amount can be high, but it's an achievable cut for most libraries to absorb. And finally, and maybe most importantly, fines cost us money to collect.

What we found is we were spending so much money to collect fines. You know, we were spending all this staff time. We were spending money on mailers. We were spending money on a collection agency. And when we eliminated all of that, some of that kind of balanced out. And then what we did is we said, okay, these staff members now have time for other kinds of things, maybe more mission-centric work that they can do. So you're saying that when the punitive model was diminished,

the amount of time spent and forcing it was also diminished, and that freed the librarians up to do things that actually increased the outreach to get more people to come to the library. Yes. The debate about fines, whether we should find, how much we should find, it isn't new. We've been talking about it for almost 100 years. study after study has shown that the reason libraries fine is because of strongly held beliefs

about the effectiveness of getting materials back on time backed by no evidence. Basically, we fine because we've always fined. I mean, that seems like a pretty good argument. How have people responded to your sort of mission to get rid of fines? You know, I feel like there's always people who feel like no people have to be punished because they've messed up, right? This is the rule. If you can't follow the rule, you have to be punished, and money is the way we punish people. But lots of people are really excited by this idea. You know, this can work. It's working all over the country little by little. Do you think that there is sort of more broadly a bigger conversation about rethinking this punitive model and thinking more restoratively simply because not only is it good in this instance for the people who want to take out the books, but as you explain it, it actually can work better for the the librarians and their staff as well.

Yeah. I feel like it's a little bit connected, too, to this idea of libraries being for everybody. More and more libraries are trying to make sure that their staff reflects their community in all kinds of ways. And there's a broader conversation about how we make sure that libraries stay relevant and not just relevant to middle class white Americans, but to everybody that we serve. And so when we talk about that, those punitive models really throw up such a barrier for people. Our purpose is to get information materials of every kind out into our community and make sure that they have access to that. And so if that's our purpose, then creating these fines as a deterrent just really goes against everything we stand for. That's Don Wasek. She's the youth services manager of the lacrosse public library.

Library in Wisconsin. You can see her full talk at ted.com. Oh, and by the way, if you checked out library items before the pandemic hit, chances are your overdue fines have been waived. On the show today, ideas about what it truly means to make amends. And just a warning, there are stories in this next interview about sexual assault and violence that may be hard to hear. If you're Listening with kids, you might want to turn down the volume on this one. So back in 2017, during the Me Too movement, it seemed like a lot of people accused of assault or harassment responded by saying things like, I'm sorry if you interpreted my actions this way, or I remember the incident differently. It often felt like the accused, most of the men, didn't give real apologies.

No, there have been no apologies. There really have been no apologies. And I think this non-apology must be a pretty fundamental column of what's holding patriarchy up and keeping this kind of toxic masculinity in its place. This is playwright Eve Ensler. You might know her play The Vagina Monologues. And she recently wrote a book called The Apology. I think an Apology is an equalizer. It removes hierarchy.

It makes you humble. It makes you vulnerable. It makes you human. And I think there are many reasons why men don't apologize. I mean, one is, I think, from a very young age, men are taught that it's a sign of weakness. It's a sign of vulnerability. But I also think that to apologize requires awareness, and it requires knowledge, and it requires wisdom. And it would mean that men knew how to go through a process of self-interrogation,

where they would have to look at their behavior and investigate who they are. how they became the person they became, how they became the kind of man they became that is capable of raping somebody or abusing someone or harassing someone or violating someone. And I think all that requires a mindset that doesn't really exist within the current culture of patriarchy. Eve's perspective comes from her own experience with sexual violence, which began when she was just a child. She told her story on the TED stage. My father began to sexually abuse me when I was five years old.

He would come into my room in the middle of the night. He appeared to be in a trance. The abuse continued until I was 10. When I tried to resist him, when I was finally able to say no, he began to beat me. He called me stupid. He said I was a liar. The sexual abuse ended when I was 10,

but actually, it never ended. It changed who I was. I was filled with anxiety and guilt and shame all the time, and I didn't know why. I hated my body, I hated myself. I got sick a lot. I couldn't think. I couldn't remember things.

I was drawn to dangerous men and women who I allowed. Actually, I invited to treat me badly, because that is what my father taught me love was. I waited my whole life for my father to apologize to me. He didn't. He wouldn't. And then with the recent scandals of famous men as one after another was exposed,

I realized something. I have never heard a man who has committed rape or physical violence ever publicly apologize to his victim. I began to wonder, what would an authentic, deep apology be like? So something strange began to happen. I began to write,

and my father's voice began to come through me. He began to tell me what he had done and why. he began to apologize. My father is dead almost 31 years, and yet in this apology, the one I had to write for him, I discovered the power of an apology and how it actually might be the way to move forward

in the crisis we now face with men and all they abuse. So that apology that you're describing turned into your book, how did you come up with this idea to write a book from your father's perspective, to make an apology on his behalf? Well, as a survivor of enormous sexual and physical abuse, even though he was dead, there was still this part of me that yearned for an apology. I started thinking, well, maybe I should write the letter I want to hear. Maybe I should write the words and say the words that would free me.

And possibly, this could be a blueprint for men who might be wanting to write such an apology. So I wrote my father's apology letter to me. And I want to make a big distinction here. There's a huge difference between exclamation and justification. There's never any justification for sexual or physical abuse ever. But I think I wanted to try to understand why my father did it, because there's something about getting to the core of the why that has aspects of liberation to it. When you just begin to see, oh, here's the culture my father was born into.

here's the family he was born into. Here's the story he was born into. Here are the things that affected him and changed him and made him into this kind of man. And I think the book really was my attempt to create an apology process, and that's what the apology is. Apology is a sacred commitment.

It requires complete honesty. It demands deep self-interrogation and time. It cannot be rushed. I discovered an apology has four steps, and if you would, I'd like to take you through them. The first is you have to say what in detail you did. Your accounting cannot be vague. I'm sorry if I hurt you, or I'm sorry if I sexually abused you,

doesn't cut it. You have to say what actually happened. I came into the room in the middle of the night, and I pulled your underpants down. I belittled you because I was just, jealous of you and I wanted you to feel less. The liberation is in the details. An apology is a remembering. It connects the past with the present. It says that what occurred actually did occur. The second step is you have to ask yourself why. Survivors are haunted by the why. Why? Why would

my father want to sexually abuse his eldest daughter? Why would he take my head and smash it against a wall? In my father's case, he was never allowed to express tenderness or vulnerability, curiosity, doubt, he was never allowed to cry. And so he was forced to push all those feelings underground and they eventually metastasized. Those suppressed feelings later became Shadowman, and he was out of control, and he eventually unleashed his torrent on me. The third step is you have to open your heart and feel what your victim felt.

You have to let your heart break. You have to feel the horror and betrayal and the long-term impacts of your abuse on your victim. You have to sit with the suffering you have caused. And of course, the fourth step is taking responsibility for what you have done and making amends. Talk me through a little bit how you came up with the four steps to a real apology. Like, how did you break it down so that it could be an apology that counted?

I think I just went on the basis of what I needed, right? I think often particularly with sexual abuse, we talk about it like it's this broad thing, like gender violence or sexual harassment, but we don't, really talk about what it does to people, all of the ways that affects our health and our psychology and our ability to function and our ability to show up in the world and our relationship to intimacy and sex. We don't talk about all that. And so getting a perpetrator to really have to look at what his actions did to sit with the suffering he's caused is really a huge piece of it. And I think that's what I needed from my father. I needed for him to sit with that.

suffering, to feel my suffering, to feel bad about how bad I felt. But if he didn't, you did, you wrote it for him. Well, the imagination is a powerful thing, right? I think sometimes the imagination is more accurate and more persuasive than anything we can do, you know. It was the most liberating thing I've ever done. And when the book was over, my father says at the end, old man be gone. He's gone and he hasn't come back. And that story is over. And I'm no longer living in his paradigm, his narrative. I'm living in my story. It's not a reactive narrative. I'm not living out of rage. I'm not trying to prove to him that he was wrong. I'm not, it's over. It's done. And it's been so moving. People are writing me to say that they're actually doing this. They're

writing to themselves from their perpetrator and are having a really amazing impact. I wouldn't do it alone. I would do it with a counselor or a therapist or a clergy or friends somebody to support you. I'm also getting letters from men who want to undergo an apology process, which has been very moving. That's what we want. We don't want men to be destroyed. We don't want them to only be punished. We want them to see us, the victims, that they have harmed, and we want them to repent and change. And I actually believe this is possible.

I really believe it's our way forward. but we need men to join us. We need men now to be brave and be part of this transformation. I have spent most of my life calling men out, and I am here now to call you in. Eve, it sounds like despite everything you've been through and everything you've seen, you are hopeful that this conversation,

this straightforward path to making amends can start to really change things. Look, I have to believe that. I've been fighting to end violence against women and girls for much, much of my life. I have tried every angle, every approach. You know, I can go down the list of the 30 million approaches. This is my newest approach, right? I feel like you just keep coming at it from this side and keep coming at it from that side.

And I have to believe that at a certain point, something is going to catalyze men to join us in this struggle. I dream that there will come a day where we just can't believe that any man would ever lift a fist to a woman, that any man would threaten a woman at her job by making physical overture hers to her that she couldn't resist without risk of losing her livelihood. And if I didn't believe that, you know, I'd be very, very depressed. I think I'm one of those people, you know, I can't go on, I will go on, I must go on. I'm going to keep going into someone tells me differently, but this would be a very, very good moment for men to come forward. We're ready.

Eve's book is called The Apology. And by the way, since we recorded this interview, Eve has decided to change her name to the letter V. She writes that although she holds no anger towards her father, she no longer wants to live with his name or the name he gave her. You can see V's full talk at ted.com. Thank you so much for listening to our show this week about making amends. To learn more about the people who were on it, go to ted.npr.org. And to see hundreds more TED talks, check out TED.com or the TED app.

Our production staff at NPR includes Jeff Rogers, Sanaz Meskampur, Rachel Faulkner, Diba Motisham, James Delahousie, J.C. Howard. Katie Montalione, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Christina Kala, and Matthew Cloutier, with help from Daniel Schuchin. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablui. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Feelin, and Michelle Quint. I'm Manus Shomerode, and you've been listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR.