When Margaret Mizen spoke last week of feeling no anger for her son's killer and pity for his family, she followed a growing and impressive line of bereaved mothers who have spoken in a spirit of understanding and compassion in the wake of their children's senseless murders – Dee Walker and Marie Fatayi-Williams to name but two.
And yet even though there is universal respect for these mothers' dignified response, public opinion is more polarised. The more usual response from someone who has lost a loved one is that of Helen Newlove, who in February this year spoke of bringing back the gallows at the trial of three youths for the murder of her husband Gary.
I have always been especially interested in those people – like Margaret Mizen, whose son Jimmy was stabbed to death in a south London baker's shop 10 days ago – who somehow go against the grain, and try to make meaning out of a meaningless atrocity by not talking of revenge or hatred.
It was for this reason that in 2004 I founded The Forgiveness Project, an organisation that examines and explores forgiveness and restorative justice through real people's narratives. When the organisation launched the exhibition The F Word: Images of Forgiveness, Esther Baker, who runs Synergy Theatre (an organisation which works through theatre with offenders and ex-offenders towards resettlement), was so moved by the stories that together we embarked on raising funds to get a play commissioned that looked at forgiveness in the aftermath of brutality.
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