Marlee Liss speaks at Berkeley School of Law – photo by David Greenwald
BERKELEY, Calif. — At Berkeley Law School, survivor advocate Marlee Liss delivered a searing indictment of a criminal legal system she said too often fails survivors of sexual violence, using her own experience to show how processes intended to deliver justice can instead deepen trauma.
But her story fortunately did not end there, through a restorative justice process centered on accountability, healing and survivor agency, Liss offered a different vision of what justice can look like when survivors’ needs, rather than institutional routines, come first.
Liss, a speaker, author and founder of Survivors for Justice Reform, was introduced as someone whose work has challenged conventional assumptions about justice and accountability.
In 2016, at age 21, she survived a sexual assault by a stranger. What followed, she told the audience, was three years inside a legal process that “recreated the very powerlessness” she had experienced during the assault itself.
Standing before an audience of lawyers, advocates and reform-minded prosecutors, Liss urged attendees to think beyond what she described as a narrow, punishment-centered model of justice.
“So many of us are taught this concrete box version of justice that was shaped by colonialism and it equates justice to punishment and nothing else,” Liss said. “And to reimagine justice means to move that box aside and to think of something different that’s actually synonymous with healing.”
She continued: “We don’t just want justice that’s compatible with healing, but something that actually catalyzes our healing and our safety.”
Liss said the need for new approaches is urgent because traditional responses to sexual violence have not adequately reduced harm or met survivors’ needs.
“Our current approach hasn’t necessarily reduced rates of sexual violence,” she said, citing a study she said found rates of sexual assault had not declined since the Me Too movement went viral. She emphasized that this was “not to denounce Me Too,” calling it “an incredible movement that has done so much to challenge stigma, break silence.” But she added, “if rates aren’t reducing, what can be done differently?”
Liss then recounted the night of her assault in stark detail. She said she met a man at a club who initially appeared kind and helpful, but once they were alone, his behavior changed. She said she verbally refused him, but her refusal had no effect.
“I said, ‘No, I don’t want this,’” Liss recalled. “And I had this realization that my no wasn’t doing anything to change what was happening to me.”
She said that in that moment, “I felt like my voice had absolutely no power.”
After escaping and returning home, Liss said she faced a choice: tell someone or remain silent. She knocked on her roommate’s door and disclosed what had happened.
“I’m immensely grateful that the first person I told was someone who believed me,” she said. “She didn’t ask those classic victim blaming questions … She just believed me.”
Following internet search results about what to do after rape, Liss said she underwent a forensic exam at a hospital and then reported the assault to police. But she said the process quickly became alienating.
At the hospital, Liss said one of the most meaningful moments came not from procedure, but from simple human compassion.
Unable to speak, she handed the nurse a written account of the assault. After reading it, the nurse teared up and offered to hug her.
Some might view that as crossing a professional boundary, Liss told the audience, but for her it was exactly what she needed.
In a moment defined by shock and disorientation, the gesture communicated belief, care and dignity. It stood in sharp contrast to the impersonal systems she would later encounter and became an early example of what happens when humanity is allowed to matter as much as protocol.
At the police station, she said she handed officers a written account because she could not verbally recount the assault. An officer briefly accepted it, then returned and told her the paper had been taken as evidence.
“He said, ‘That’s now being held as evidence. It’s time for you to tell me what happened,’” Liss said.
She described that moment as the beginning of a yearslong process in which officials told her the system was for her benefit, while she increasingly felt it was not.
“This process is for you, but it didn’t feel like it was for me,” she said.
The trauma, she said, affected nearly every aspect of her life. She described panic attacks, hair loss, leaving school, losing the ability to work and moving back in with her mother. She recalled one day trying to return to class when her body broke out in hives.
“I was like, ‘I’m having an allergic reaction,’” she said of her visit to a nurse. “And she was like, ‘I think you’re having a panic attack.’”
For more than a year, she said, she received no update on the case.
When proceedings resumed, she learned she would testify as a witness in a crime against the state, not as the harmed party at the center of the process. She said she was told she could face consequences if she did not answer questions on the stand.
“In this process where we’re supposedly fighting for victims’ right to consent and boundaries, we don’t have a right to consent and boundaries,” Liss said.
By the time she was subpoenaed again for trial, she said she no longer wanted to continue.
“I don’t want to do this,” she recalled thinking.
Yet abandoning the case entirely also felt intolerable. A friend then asked the question Liss said changed everything: “If anything was possible, what would meaningful justice look like to you?”
For Liss, the answer was immediate. She wanted to ask questions that had haunted her for years. She wanted to describe the impact in an uncensored way. She wanted the person who harmed her to take responsibility, undergo deep therapeutic work and ensure it would not happen again.
Her friend’s reply was simple: “So make it happen.”
That search led Liss to restorative justice, an approach that centers repair, accountability and healing rather than punishment alone.
Where the conventional system asks “what law was broken, who broke it, what punishment is warranted,” she said restorative justice asks “what happened, who was harmed and what can be done to help them heal and make things as right as possible.”
She also emphasized that restorative justice is not new, describing it as a longstanding practice rooted in many Indigenous, African, Mennonite and other traditions that predate modern court systems.
Eventually, with the help of an advocate and a supportive prosecutor, Liss said she secured permission to pursue a restorative process instead of trial. She described resistance from another prosecutor, who she referred to as “bottle,” who argued the case should remain in court.
Liss said she responded by asserting her own expertise as the person who had lived the harm.
“I think of all the people in this room, I know this rape was really bad because I lived it,” she said.
Another prosecutor, whom Liss identified as Sarah, supported her request.
“I’ve been a prosecutor for almost 20 years and I constantly see victims re-traumatized, rapists acquitted, and in the rare case that conviction happens, they often end up re-offending,” Liss quoted her as saying. “So I agree, we need to try something different.”
When Liss learned the restorative process had been approved, she said it marked the first time since the assault that her voice had meaningfully been heard.
“This was the first time that I said my boundary and what I needed and someone listened,” she said.
The restorative process, she explained, was extensive and carefully prepared. Facilitators spent roughly 50 hours preparing participants. Her mother and sister were invited because trauma affects families as well as individuals. The offender’s close friend also attended, ensuring accountability would be witnessed by someone important in his life.
“There was so much care in every single detail,” Liss said.
The circle itself lasted eight hours. Participants were asked one central question: “What brought you here today?”
Liss said she was able to express anger, grief, sadness and empowerment in ways the courtroom never allowed. She said the man who assaulted her acknowledged responsibility, described how legal advice had initially encouraged denial, and later apologized directly.
“I’m sorry, I sexually assaulted you and there’s nothing I can do to take it back, but I hope that being here today can help,” she quoted him as saying.
For Liss, the moment was transformative.
“I felt like this knot untied in my stomach and I started bawling these tears of relief,” she said. “It was something I didn’t realize I needed to hear as much as I did.”
The conversation then shifted to the future: how he would not only avoid causing harm again, but actively work against rape culture. Liss said that mattered deeply.
“What if that is possible for the people who cause harm as well?” she asked, referring to the possibility of transformation.
When the process ended, she said she left with a feeling she never thought possible after a justice proceeding.
“I felt happy,” she said. “I felt like I had let go of like a hundred pounds of trauma.”
After sharing her story publicly, Liss said she feared backlash from other survivors. Instead, she received messages from thousands around the world, many repeating the same phrase: “I wish I knew about this.”
Some had endured acquittals. Others said court proceedings tore families apart. Some never felt safe contacting law enforcement at all. Even some who secured convictions still lived in fear of retaliation after release. The common thread, Liss said, was the desire for options.
Closing her talk, Liss argued restorative justice should not be treated as a niche experiment or a response reserved for minor harms.
“It absolutely can be done,” she said of serious sexual violence cases.
She cited research linking restorative practices to reduced recidivism, higher participant satisfaction, racial justice benefits and broader community healing. Most of all, she said, it offers survivors what many systems still do not: meaningful choice.
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Categories: Breaking News Everyday Injustice Tags: berkeley law Criminal Legal Reform Marlee Liss Restorative Justice Sexual assault survivors Survivor Advocacy