Ackerman and Levenson's book revolutionizes our understanding of sexual trauma and potential paths toward healing. Written from the perspective of scholars and survivors, the book proposes a paradigm shift for responding to sexual abuse, from an offender-centered punishment perspective to a survivor-centered restorative justice approach. The authors discuss critical issues regarding the life-long trauma that can result from sexual abuse, and offer a cohesive understanding of restorative justice processes and outcomes that can help survivors to heal. I highly recommend this book for scholars, practitioners and survivors alike.

This is a book of hope and possibility in the face of doubt and rejection. It shows how healing from sexual harm can be possible and the important role perpetrators of sexual violence can play in the healing process. The vicarious restorative justice model is designed to enable safe, intimate dialogues to occur that lead to transformation for all participants. Ackerman and Levenson are pioneering this important new model and show us how to implement it with both rigor and compassion.

It is easy to recommend this book not only to professionals who treat those who've committed sex offenses but to professionals who treat those victimized.

This book allows all who care about healing from and ultimately ending sexual violence to understand how transformative restorative processes can be to all the individuals involved. The authors explain various types of restorative justice and through the words of those harmed and who did the harm, provide windows into the possibilities of such processes including their model of vicarious restorative justice.

A circle I facilitated is used as an example of a community-based effort with a man who committed a rape decades ago and wanted to go through a process to take more action towards accountability. I thought I'd breeze through that part since I was intimately familiar with what occurred. Instead, I was swept in by the words of the survivor and the man who wanted to take accountability for the rape he'd committed. Reading this reminded me what an honor it is to be part of such a process and how critical it is that we have restorative processes more widely available.

Alissa and Jill have written a book based on their extensive work and expertise that has the potential to make not only individual but systemic change from a sense of justice based in punishment to one of transformation toward authentic accountability and healing.

Healing From Sexual Violence: The Case for Vicarious Restorative Justice does so much more than lay out a solid academic case for VRJ as a viable criminological intervention. It is a multilayered scientific biography where everything is put on the line for the advancement of science in a field that is shrouded in social taboo.

Ackerman and Levenson begin with a tour through the theory and reality of life as a survivor or perpetrator of sexual violence, surveying the relevant research about what can be done to help - and whether encounters between unrelated survivors and perpetrators can change criminal minds.

Ackerman traces her own heartbreaking years of breakdown as a consequence of sexual violence and outlines the risks she was prepared to take to find closure. Like so many ground-breaking scientists before her, she places herself as a subject in her own experiment - a therapeutic encounter with a group of convicted male sex offenders.

In the middle of the process she experiences transformational healing from her own trauma as her story awakens empathy and self-awareness in the sex offenders. All the time we get an inside view of what it's like to walk this controversial and complex path.

Ackerman and Levenson carefully lay out their process and catalog the outcomes using the reflections of participants in multiple encounters using different methods. The profound therapeutic breakthroughs that emerge for the participants are so striking that they may drive further discoveries in the years to come. There are testimonies from offenders who realised for the first time, the damaging impact of their actions and set them on a new mental path.

The findings confirm everything I've witnessed whilst facilitating VRJ encounters between surrogate crime survivors and perpetrators in a prison setting, in the Sycamore Tree Project. The results are consistently life-changing and life-giving for participants and observers.

I strongly recommend this paradigm-shifting book for those who are involved in policy, research or therapy for sex offenders and/or survivors of sexual violence, as well as those who are looking for hope in a difficult world.