Trust is Not a Crime | Shannon Moroney | TEDxQueensU
In this TEDx talk, Shannon Moroney recounts the harrowing experience of being victimized by her partner Jason, who committed violent and voyeuristic crimes. She describes the immediate fallout—loss of her job as a high‑school counselor, PTSD, community stigma, and the painful process of cleaning up crime scenes and notifying victims. Moroney explains how the criminal‑justice system treated her as a peripheral figure, focusing on punishment rather than the harm to trust. Determined to transform that narrative, she pursued a master’s in social work, studying trauma and the concept that trust is the foundation of a healthy society. She critiques the traditional punitive model, which asks only what law was broken, who did it, and what punishment is deserved, and proposes a restorative approach that asks who is hurt, what their needs are, and whose responsibility it is to meet those needs. Moroney outlines how accountability, acknowledgment, and amends can begin to repair trust for victims, offenders, and the community. She ends with a heartfelt call to re‑center trust in justice, emphasizing love, community support, and the belief that trust itself is not a crime.
Chapters
Have you ever had a moment, even just one moment in time, where everything in your life seems like it's come together like you wrote it? I did. It was November 8th, 2004, just after our baby came out. I had recently turned 30 and had embraced my life for exactly a month. I'm turning my tiki cart around and I also look in front of me. I'm already seeing the crossing lines. In that moment, it felt as though all of my work and engagement in upper edgers and all the wisdom I gained from Heritage Secondary had come together as a silver ball. And I was at the break of a new chapter of life, one filled with hopes and dreams, especially the dream of medical school. I learned that Jason had brutally attacked 2 women who were asking for help to explore the keyboard, and he'd seen them before come, and then called 911. My mind instantly flashed back to an incident under my basement 18 years prior when Jason was a teenager. My 12 and 38-year-old daughter. There was an argument in which Chief tried to tell his mom about their relationship. He fled guilty of second-degree murder and received a sentence of life in death due to his young age. Even though he had stayed free and successfully integrated into society by the time we met and fell in love, his incarceration was not easy for him to handle. I am trusted with the gentle person named Jason, who's battling inside cancers. Now, after 3 years of beautiful and enduring relationship with him, my trust has shattered. I have appreciated all of your understanding, perspective, and your belief in me. Talk about it. I just told all of the details about Jason's horrific cancer, which created a film strip of lies in my mind that I have read for months. I don't think Jason would have installed a handheld video camera in the back of my apartment and filmed me and others. This crime, on the other hand, is not even the official business of the criminal justice system, but it couldn't be helped thanks to your vigilante. It was up to me to clean up the crime scene in my home. It was up to me to watch all the voyeuristic videos And identify all of their victims. Then, if you didn't believe it, it was up to me to notify all 22 that their trust and dignity had been violated. The other thing I had to do was I was stripped of my job as a high school counselor. My principal told me not to enter the school without permission And that finally represented something terrible. Jenny, she said, it's too difficult for people to see you. I would sit home reading about her, made guilty by association, and judged by the community I loved. I never saw my students again, and I know I'm sorry. I went to victim services in place for being outed. But instead of being in a corner, I went to work with it tonight again. The counselor looked me up and down and said, what are you doing here? She told me to go home and that I needed to get a better legal mind. And I needed to understand that I would experience the crime tour, but it didn't quite suck at the same time. Before I go up to my classroom, Which are anything aligned to the imperial subjectivity. And she's dismissing other objects in the whole way they don't need to be killed in Jason's arena. Meanwhile though, where was Jason? Jason had been placed in solitary confinement, protected custody. And I realized that just as society was being protected from him, he was being protected from having to face up to the wantingness And in some sense, I was responsible. I was diagnosed with PTSD, and having lost my main kind of benefit in the world of treatment, I became a clergy member. While I worked hard on my faith and intellectual system, I endured the shame and stigma that we call homelessness. Our privacy and dignity is taken from us not only by the offender, but by justice system, the media, and most painfully by itself, friends and family. I became determined to make a difference for all of us, and it wasn't through perfect victimhood. How many of us feel as if they're able to be vulnerable with the parents who love me? Questions I had in 2D would stand isolated through the intersectional barriers of racism, poverty, and other systemic oppressions. And it's built into the trauma of victimization. But before I become anybody else, I want to help myself. We can't change from an empty cup. I've always believed that education will move the needle, and so I chose to pursue a master's degree in social work. I focused my studies on trauma and something called the 2-word diagnostics because I just love the sound of it. Me too. And in my studies, I learned that a retaliative trust like seed crime fundamentally has an insult on trust. And trust is the most essential component of a safe, healthy, and functioning society. And therefore, it is trust that must be repaired. But criminal justice systems all over the world see crime as an assault against the state. More on victims and not on trust. Criminal justice systems ask 3 main questions: what law was broken when these people were convicted and listed charges? Who did it? And what punishment does that person deserve? Now, these are important questions, but they're limited. They keep the crime of our enemies in the public center and victims around the periphery. And they're typically— victims are abused only to achieve a conviction and eventual sentencing. By contrast, the punitive justice asks 3 different questions: who is hurt? What are their needs? And whose responsibility is it to fulfill those needs? To answer the first question, who is hurt, we are opening ourselves up to understand From direct victims and their families and friends, to collateral victims like family and friends of the offender, and to the community. It can even include the offender, who 9 times out of 10 is a victim before they point a gun at anyone. Hurt people hurt people. The second section of this bridge document, Brotherly Peace, We're going to ask people real quick what they think to move forward. We typically hear in these, uh, presentations, litigation, or learning, evaluation of concepts, and you can anticipate so many questions. Um, what was going through your mind? How do I know that you understand the impact of what you said? The third question is to address this, which is accountability, visitation, and accountability. It requires us to think about what can an offender do? What can the community offer? We can't undo the violence, but we can look for some way to move forward through accountability, acknowledgement, and amends. Thank you to Creative Alliance for healing. And heal people, heal people. Representative Taylor Rickerson is approaching the aftermath of Jason's crimes, and today he is facing a vote to relieve recommendation, to release him. It took 2 and a half years for him to have the chance to plead guilty and to be sentenced, even though on the night of the crime, he called 911 himself. You can impulsive, but you can also take responsibility and human biology. As a victim of careerism, I was allowed to give a victim impact statement at the sentencing, even though careerism was the reason I was given such a tight time. I wanted to tell my own story. I wanted to tell the assault victim so much I cared about them, but I knew that they would be qualified today to share their own painful experience. I wanted to be a private attorney and an effective drug safety counselor to know how it felt to be ignored and mistreated. And I wanted to be a plus to know how it felt to be a victim of mercy. More than anything, I wanted to be a stand-up for myself. Because I felt like I had been on trial. My crime? Yes. The last thing I asked was, what is my crime? And I took her. I didn't want to imagine. After I finished reading that statement, one of the victims herself witnessed the doctor and the children in the gallery cross the courtroom with fierce eyes until she opened her arms and put them around me. And as we held each other, we cured each other. In her last statement that day, it was said twice, He declared Jason a dangerous attacker and sentenced him to serve 50 to 100 years behind bars. And that's it. Only, it wasn't the end. In the days, weeks, and months that followed the sentencing, I felt like most victims do— exhausted and empty. I'm not the last to be ignored. I've heard so much be taken and not to be described. All that happened was that one person sent a present that he got for his wife. Never mind what it was, just send it home. Christ is present in each other's life, and that is something we should want to be doing for people around the world and around the world. Many people hand their presents one day, and sometimes we do, don't we? But the truth is that suffering about other women not only really matters for anyone in the climax. What really makes suffering is knowing that our agency around it continues to be out of our acceptance. Blame isn't ever permanent. Talk to your wife and tell her it's up to her to take blame, meaning that I don't care enough. Don't say I don't know what it says, I don't know the meaning I make sure of it. It is a temporary title. It should mean that you are acknowledged for the fact that you did not choose what happened to you when it happened to you, child. It should mean that you deserve help and support to reclaim sovereignty over your life. Because without support, we can fail. Many people have asked me on my journey, Shannon, how can you develop trust in life? Maybe you're very hard to. I know I can say it's something I've learned. Life is governed by law. Trust is the most essential component of a safe, healthy, and functional society. And Of love. So when it comes to love, you know, I want to encourage you to have the kind of courage to trust love one more time and one more time. Because it's love. Love makes us feel fully alive. Friendship love, romantic love, love of children and elders, love of our animals, love of the earth, love of ourselves. Love it. The light we have loved also long watching. In bright words, teach us love one more time and one more time. Brighter than love ever has been shown since today. In bright words, do light thy love teach the world to worry. I have fought for principles and no medication for validation and vindication. In my choice to become a failure, I have helped other people do the same and to achieve what once seemed impossible. I think my choice to become a conflict— I am working for a justice system that respects victims and that would explore their trust, our trust, Because trust is not a crime. It is what makes all of us safe, healthy, and whole. Thank you.