Forgiveness in the court
Published: August 22, 2005
Compassion is a beautiful thing, but its seeds are tiny and fickle. In many people, they never grow while in a remarkable few, they thrive.
I wish Victoria Ruvolo would quit her job at a Long Island collection agency and go on tour across the U.S., leading workshops on compassion and forgiveness.
Vickie, as her family calls her, is 45 but looks perhaps 10 years older now. Nine months ago, she was driving home on a rainy November night from a niece’s singing recital when fate smacked her in the face.
An 18-year-old kid out screwing around with his buddies hurled a 20-pound turkey from the rear window of his oncoming car through the windshield of Vickie’s. The turkey twisted her steering wheel, then shattered the bones of her face.
There followed eight hours of surgery, four titanium plates and screws, a netting to hold up one eyeball, rubber bands to realign her teeth and months of recovery. At first her brain dawdled; she was disoriented and forgetful.
But she is herself again, and asked prosecutors to allow Ryan Cushing to plead to a lesser charge that will spare him 7-to-25 years in prison.
Instead, he’ll serve perhaps six months.
‘It’s OK, it’s OK’
On Monday, Ryan was leaving the courtroom after entering his plea when he took a step in Vickie’s direction then fell into her arms, sobbing.
According to reporters who were there, he said “I’m so sorry,” over and over again as she murmured, “It’s OK, it’s OK,” stroking his head, patting his back, touching his cheek. She told him, “I just want you to make your life the best it can be.”
Her brother-in-law, Benny Dierna, who stood beside her during that rare courtroom scene, said he and everyone else had tears in their eyes.
“She gave this kid a new life,” Benny told me, since Vickie is barred from talking to the press until after Ryan’s sentencing. “She held him like a mother would. She told him, ‘I want you to be somebody,’ and he said, ‘I will, I will, I promise.’ ”
I asked Benny: Where does that come from? How could she forgive so easily?
“She felt for the kid,” he said, and over the phone I could almost hear him shrug, mystified, too.
The birth of compassion
But I needed more. He told me Vickie is the youngest of seven children, that her family is close. She grew up Catholic. She has worked full-time since age 16, and after a marriage and divorce bought herself a home. She volunteers at an animal shelter, and provides a home to three cats and two dogs including one, Rocky, whom she saved from imminent execution.
Vickie has no children, Benny said, but once gave birth to a stillborn daughter. Vickie told her brother-in-law that Ryan Cushing, the kid who threw the turkey at her, “could be my son.”
Perhaps compassion springs from religious training. Perhaps it grows out of strong family values. Or maybe it germinates in suffering. If you know pain yourself, you can recognize it — and embrace it — in someone else.
Its invisible seeds blossomed in Vickie Ruvolo, and have now fallen on a shattered young man.
I have a feeling they will take root in him as well.
* thanks to Debbie who alerted us to this news story
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