In a recent research study entitled Encountering ‘The Other’: Victim Offender Dialogue in Serious Crime the impact and outcomes for victims/survivors of meeting with the prisoner participants who had caused them harm were examined. In the vast majority of those cases, organised within the context of the Victim Offender Mediation Program (VOMP), forgiveness was offered by victims and received by offenders. This research, utilizing a qualitative multiple case study method, examined twenty-five randomly selected cases referred for victim/offender mediation over a 10-year period, in which victims/survivors, following a period of preparation, had participated in at least one day-long dialogue with their offenders facilitated by trained personnel. This article addresses only one of the research questions posited in this study, namely, the ways in which apology and forgiveness played a part in those dialogues and in the experience of the participants following their mutual encounters. It is argued that granting forgiveness can have great power in its effects when experienced by the participants.

The apologies offered by young offenders in restorative justice conferences are often of poor quality. In this article the difficulties that accompany the offering of excuses are discussed. Offenders sometimes lack the language skills to pronounce an adequate apology, are anxious or insecure or believe that they have not been treated fairly. The mediation setting itself also has effects: sometimes perpetrators feel intimidated and feel compelled to say something that resembles an excuse. A related problem is that the perceptions about the sincerity of the apology can vary considerably. This perception-mismatch also occurs among victims: what one victim considers sincere is ‘fake’ for another. Many people
– also advocates of restorative justice – trust that the offender will offer a sincere apology, without realizing that this is not self-evident in a thorny confrontation setting. This article aims to temper this sincerity-expectation.

Empirical research on restorative justice shows that offenders can apologise to victims. Because of the ritual component of restorative justice and the possible influence on the justice system, certain questions arise: how do victims perceive these apologies? Is it important for victims that these apologies are sincere? The aim of the article is to discuss these questions through three topics, namely the physical aspect of the ritual, the symbolic meaning for victims and the relation between the offender’s apologies and the victim’s reaction.