If instinct tells you an amend might be tricky, because it could injure them or others, here’s a set of questions to consider in discussion with a sponsor:
- The person, the event, and the harm
- Does the person know they were harmed?
- Does the person know who harmed them?
- Is there any other information that the amend might reveal that is new?
- Might the event have been forgotten?
- Might its memory have been repressed?
- Might it have occurred before an age when memories were consistently formed?
- Is the event linked with other difficult or traumatic events?
- Could bringing up the individual harm trigger associations with a larger traumatic context?
- If the amend introduces new information or retrieves lost information, how might they respond?
- How might their response involve other people?
- What other negative consequences might the introduction of new information or retrieval of old information have?
- What would have been the impact of the event at the time?
- What might have been the lasting impact of the event on the person?
- What might have been or was the impact on the relationship with you?
- What might have been or was the impact on the relationship with others?
- What is the evidence of any impact?
- Is there any evidence that they have gotten over or past the event?
- Is there any evidence of an ongoing difficulty, in personality or in relationships, due to the event? What other consequences might have flowed from the harm?
The relationship with the person
- Does the person know you already?
- Did you have a relationship with the person in the past?
- Do you have a relationship with them still?
- Is there a current problem in the relationship? Might that be connected to the past harm?
- Is there any overt evidence of that?
- Has the harm been discussed before?
- Has the harm been apologised for before?
- How else might the amend affect the relationship?
Involving third parties
- Was anyone else involved in causing the harm?
- If you admit the harm, are you also admitting their harm?
- Have they already made amends / are they fine with you making amends? Could your amend implicate them or otherwise get them in trouble?
Triggering procedures / proceedings
- Could the admission trigger legal, administrative, human resources, or other formal grievance procedures?
- Does the admission of the harm implicate the setting in which the harm took place (a school, an institution, an employer)?
- Who would be involved if procedures were triggered? What would it cost in time and money?
- Who would foot the bill for those?
- Who would benefit from such proceedings?
- If you (the amender) are subject to such proceedings, how might that affect your ability to be useful (e.g. in terms of future employment)?
- Who would be affected by that, other than you? Have you secured their consent?
This is not an exhaustive list of questions but will certainly take you some of the way.
Consideration, consultation, and (prayerful) contemplation will reveal whether the benefits of the proposed amend outweigh any of the possible harms.