My name is Charity Lee.

In 1980, when I was only six years old, my father, James Robert Bennett Jr., was shot multiple times in the back with a .357 Magnum early one morning in our home. His accused killer was arrested, charged, tried, and acquitted. Had she not been acquitted the death penalty would have been imposed. I knew this woman well. She is my mother.

In 2007, my four year old daughter, Ella Lee Bennett, was sexually assaulted, beaten, choked, and stabbed seventeen times late one night in our home. Minutes after her death her killer called 911 to turn himself in. I knew her killer well. He is my son. Had he not been a juvenile he too would have faced the death penalty.

I do not stand before you to dwell or expand upon on the violence that has permeated and poisoned my life. I do not stand before you to rattle off statistics or regale you with stories of misery, pain, and loss.

I stand before you to speak as the daughter of a murdered father, the mother of a murderer, and the mother of a murdered child. I stand before you as a woman whose entire life has been shaped and defined by violence and murder. I stand before you to tell you how, after I was forced to look violence in the face time after time again, I learned to continue to live with love in spite of the horror violence showed me. I stand before you to show you what I have learned, and continue to learn, from my father, my son, and my daughter about the nature and expression of unconditional love. I stand before you with the hope that my pain, my losses, will save you from experiencing and enduring the depths of pain and despair I live with daily. I stand before you to encourage you to act in your world with empathy and love, not with anger and violence. I stand before you to tell you how I have learned to cope with and transform the senseless violence that daily destroys our lives, our families, our friends, our communities, our society, and our world into something beautiful and meaningful. I stand before you to testify that a life full of murder, loss, and unspeakable grief, has taught me everything I need to learn about love. I stand before you as an example of the power of unconditional love.

I have survived a lifetime of murder. I live, and now work, on both sides of the crime scene tape. I have never seen any murder, whether it be by an individual or a government, bring anything but pain into the world. There is no such thing as closure for the victims, for the offenders, or for their families after a murder has occurred. Pain does not disappear when another act of murder has been carried out; it tightens its grip on our hearts. Pain never disappears but with unconditional love pain does become bearable.