I believe when we hurt someone, we incur an obligation. Period. Nothing changes that obligation— not our own history of pain, our unhealed trauma, nothing.

When we talk about people who commit violence as monsters (or “superpredators,” if you prefer), we often viciously deny them the benefits we afford to people we consider fully human, but we also do not hold them to the obligations to which we hold people whose humanity we do not question.

Research unequivocally shows that one of the most surefire predictors of violence is surviving it. Nearly everyone who has committed harm has survived it, and few have received any formal support to heal.

Accountability is not just about being or feeling sorry— it is about a set of actions that demonstrate remorse in practice. And it is not the feeling of remorse that delivers us from our shame— it is the practice of accountability in action. It is doing sorry.