I had admitted to killing my partner when I was arrested and I was remanded in custody while awaiting the judicial process. When I went to court I had two options, I could plead guilty to murder or guilty to manslaughter. If I chose the latter option it would trigger a trial and it would be up to a jury to decide which conviction I would receive. My legal team urged me to plead to manslaughter and run a trial – they assured me that I had a strong case. In a time of legal aid cutbacks I believed that they were primarily concerned with the fees that they could charge during a murder trial – they didn’t care about me or about my victim’s family.
At that time I knew that I could at least not make things worse. I pleaded guilty. I was taking responsibility for my crime. Around two weeks after my conviction I met with my first Offender Supervisor – this was the man that would start me on the rehabilitative part of my incarceration. He interviewed me at length asking me about my life, my history, my relationships, the build-up to and the day of my offence. Towards the end of the interview I he mentioned the guilty plea at court and I described how it gave me some comfort, having taken responsibility for my crime. I was confused when he told me that he believed that my guilty plea was well motivated – but that I was still far from taking responsibility. I was confused – was this guy an idiot?
It has taken over a decade of imprisonment and behavioural work to appreciate that he was absolutely right. It has taken around 1,000 hours of intensive group and individual Cognitive Behavioural Therapy sessions and thousands more hours of self reflecting to shed the justifications that I still held on to. When I read ‘Black Box Thinking’ by Matthew Syed it resonated with me. I think that this has been the motivation for me to start writing about the nature of my crime. Syed suggests that mistakes in life should be examined forensically to determine their cause and to gain the knowledge necessary to prevent the same things happening again. Where people have a tendency to deny their mistakes have happened or to diminish the significance of their contributions, a learning opportunity has been missed.
I am not suggesting that I am in any way unashamed of my crime – but I have tried to identify how I could allow myself to fall into a situation where I killed somebody that I loved. I needed to know that there was a cause and that I wasn’t just fundamentally damaged. I was fearful that I had some form of Incredible Hulk gene – was it only a matter of time before I exploded into a fit of violent rage again? The truth of the matter was my crime stemmed from an inability (or unwillingness) to face my problems and manage my emotions.
I was every classic abusive cliché, I may as well have started every sentence with “I’m not an abusive man, but…” When I committed my crime I had been provoked, and was drunk, and was under great emotional stress, and had financial worries, and she knew what she was doing, and she wouldn’t have been able to cope without me and … the list went on and on.
Through the CBT process I worked with great facilitators and psychologists and gradually I let go of the excuses. During one session, where we discussed an autobiography I had written, the psychologist described my progress as encouraging – she suggested that I had progressed from dipping my toes in the responsibility pool to walking in the water with my trousers rolled up. She told me it was time to just jump into the pool and gave me some suggestions on how I could progress further. Taking her advice, I revisited my autobiography – this time I wrote it from a 3rd person perspective – as if I was watching events through a CCTV camera with no way of knowing what the people on screen were thinking. This painful process produced a version both shorter and profoundly different – I took away all of the excuses, stripped back the justifications and I finally understood. I had been violent, cruel, abusive and cowardly.
I murdered an innocent woman.
It is not easy to think about the worst things that I have done in my life, let alone to write them down in a simple sentence – without embellishment or mitigation. But there is great power in the use of a reductive statement, a tool I still use regularly to check in on myself. When things don’t go as expected (or could have gone better) I try to examine events dispassionately – like Air Crash investigators who recover the black box and piece the wreckage back together. When I reflect on things I examine the observables, focusing purely on what happened – I forget about the thought processes I used or the intentions that I may have had. I certainly don’t guess at the motivations or thought process of the other parties. It has made me focus on my behaviours and how they impact on other people. By knowing that I will take full responsibility for my actions, I have become far more considered in the things that I say or do.
While I hate the man that I had been, I have finally accepted that I was that man. I am aware that I still have the potential to cause harm – but knowing that makes me vigilant. Mine are lessons that have come at too high a price not to be cherished, and shared.
