Offender and Victim Reconciliation Sought : Crime: The county’s program brings juveniles and their victims face to face for a meeting that can help both.

Kim Ficzko sat next to a 15-year-old Orange boy and carefully told him the trouble she went through in September when he and others broke into her car, which was parked at her Anaheim apartment.

“It was really brutal,” she told him. “I felt angry and mad.

“I thought, ‘Who gave them the right to break into my car?’ ”

This face-to-face meeting, Ficzko said, gave her the chance to calm her fears about the incident and restore some control in her life.

For most victims, contact with an offender ends when a crime is committed, and they are otherwise removed from the court process. But with a new program in the county, juvenile offenders meet their victims to try to explain the situation and agree on some sort of restitution.

The program, the first of its kind in Orange County, also gives offenders the chance to right their wrongs and see who it is they are harming, all outside the confines of a courtroom.

The court system is “sort of a detached process from the crime that occurred,” said Bonnie Glende, the boy’s probation officer. “This gives a sense that this was a person, that this person was hurt. It gets them out of the legalese and onto a more personal level.”

The Victim Offender Reconciliation Program, as it is called, received approval from the county’s Juvenile Probation Department in August. Since then, about a dozen juveniles have met their victims in sessions mediated by a community volunteer.

The Probation Department refers juveniles to the St. Vincent de Paul Center, a private, Catholic organization in Orange that operates the program. A mediator talks with the victim and the offender separately and explains the program. If both agree, a meeting is arranged.

“It really reframes our justice system,” said Mike Niemeyer, the coordinator of the program and the Catholic chaplain to Orange County Juvenile Hall. “It allows us to look through different lenses.”

Niemeyer said that in the current system, juveniles pay the state rather than the victim, either by serving detention, probation or doing community service work.

With this program, he said, “what we’re dealing with is not broken laws but broken relationships. What we’re dealing with is the needs of the people involved. It’s a sense of the community having some ownership in the justice process.”

After she explained her troubles at their first meeting, Ficzko and the boy agreed on the restitution. Ficzko, 37, lost a day’s wages while the car was being repaired, so the boy agreed to pay her $20 each month for six months, making up a day’s wages. The first payment came on Feb. 1.

“Twenty dollars isn’t much, but it’s worth the effort that he did,” Ficzko said.

In other cases, such as those involving physical acts of violence, offenders might agree to pay medical bills or to change their behavior. Such agreements give victims more of a voice in the outcome of a case, Niemeyer said.

“When a crime occurs, the victim loses a sense of control over their lives,” Niemeyer said. “There’s a loss of a sense of security. This is an opportunity for them to regain control in their lives.”

But not every victim has been anxious to have a word with an offender. So far, about 40% of the victims they asked to participate have refused. Even Ficzko had her doubts and needed some convincing.

“I said if he looked mean to me I would leave,” she said. “If he looked nice, I would talk.”

But the meetings can be just as scary for the offender. Niemeyer said he knows of one boy who was happy to get a court sentence in Juvenile Hall rather than have to meet with the victim.

But for the boy in Ficzko’s case, the meeting was a chance to explain how it all happened. He said that this was his first offense and that he had become involved with the wrong crowd.

“They were bad guys,” he said. “They got in trouble before.”

Had he not been able to meet the victim and just go through regular court channels, he said, “it would be harder. There wouldn’t be anyone to talk to. I got to explain to her what happened.

“It really helped me out,” the boy said. “I think it’s a lot easier to understand things.”

But the program has limitations. So far, the Probation Department has referred, for the most part, offenders convicted of less serious crimes such as auto burglary and vandalism. More serious crimes, such as rapes, shootings and stabbings, might require more expert mediators, probation officer Glende said. She also doubted that the program would help anyone who didn’t admit to the crime or feel remorse.

Arnold Binder, a professor of psychology at UC Irvine, said the program probably would have limited success in the long run because in most cases, victims cannot overcome their animosity toward the juveniles. “It’s not something I’d be optimistic about,” he said. “Come back in five years and, I bet, it would be gone.”

Binder has helped create several county programs to help juvenile offenders, including one that arranges restitution for victims. But meetings between victims and criminals are rare and seldom desired, he said.

But a program in Fresno, which started seven years ago, has grown to include 60 trained mediators who handle more than 500 cases a year. The Orange County program has about 15 volunteer mediators.

The program has expanded so quickly, “we’re getting way too many referrals,” said Elaine Enns, a member of the Fresno program’s management staff. She said about 70% of victims offered a meeting ultimately agree.

Most of the victim-offender programs in the country are designed for juveniles. That might be because victims are more apt to hope that juveniles can be rehabilitated, Niemeyer said, although he believes that it could work just as well with adults.

Ficzko said she ultimately agreed to the meeting when she heard the age of the offender.

“I have a son, too,” she said. “My son is 10 years old, and I don’t want him to do that when he grows up. But if he did, I would want a program like this for him.”

As she left the room, Ficzko shook hands with the boy. Then she looked at him and said: “Good luck.”