We have prisons that are filled  with people who have stories to tell us, and they're never  given a chance to tell those stories for the most part and  here's what I mean. We do forgiveness therapy in  prisons and the very first time we did a forgiveness therapy  group in a maximum security prison with men who were  all mass murderers. The therapists, I was a  consultant not the therapist. The therapist asked the men, "Tell us your story of  those who have hurt you." And one of the men who had shot  every member of his family dead started weeping. Here's this big strong guy who  had been in prison for 20 years, and  he was weeping and the therapist said,  "Why are you crying?". And he said nobody  ever asked me that before. And they said,  "Tell us your story".
 Here's the story. When he was a child for  punishment his father made him crawl on his hands and knees on  a gravel road down to get the mail out of the mailbox  and then crawl back again to the house and when he came back  he was cut bruised and humiliated. And that happened over  and over again. At 16 years of age when he was  old enough to pick up his father's hunting rifle he shot  the entire family and nobody had ever asked him  about that story in prison because everyone was intent on  stopping his behavior, his murderous behavior  and including some of his dangerous  behavior while in prison. And I find that actually  typical, where there is a hope of rehabilitation of the  behavior, but his behavior was an  accumulation of injustice, followed by emotional pain,  followed by anger, then unhealthy anger, then rage  that came out in this way.
 And here's what I ask myself  all the time and I really ask those who will listen. What would have happened in  that family if the father could have forgiven those in his past  where he wasn't so angry as to have a brutal kind  of exercise for his son. He thought it was discipline  but it was a demeaning thing. What would have happened if  that son as he was growing up knew about forgiveness and  began forgiving his father. Do you know what I  think would happen to this day? He would not be in prison and every one of his  family members would be alive. But forgiveness was not as we  say on the radar. No one thought about it and  it ended tragically, with the whole family deceased and him in maximum security  prison for life.