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SALT LAKE CITY — When she learned last April that her daughter was the victim of a homicide in Riverside County, California, she was determined that the person responsible would pay for the crime.
Along the journey to justice, though, Jill Harrison found forgiveness.
“All this summer, I heard, ‘Forgive, forgive, forgive,’” Harrison said. “And I said, ‘I forgive you.’”
It was Dec. 21 and Cainen Chambers was appearing in court days after he was charged with Ciara Harrison’s killing.
Jill Harrison, in Utah at the time, received an unexpected phone call.
“The victim’s advocate called me and said the defendant’s in the court and he’s saying he wants to confess, and I’m like, ‘Wait, what?’” the mother recalled.
In another surprise move, Chambers agreed to be sentenced the same day.
“He said Ciara didn’t deserve this and he said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ He said it was just a day of arguing all day and being on drugs and it was just stupid — there was no reason for it,” Harrison recalled. “He said 'whatever I do with the rest of my days — if I help someone in the commissary or if I step in between a fight and bring peace to the situation — I want it to be in honor of Ciara because she would have wanted that.'”
Harrison said she was only given roughly 40 minutes to compose a victim impact statement to read over the phone.
“I said, ‘I forgive you,’ and I said, ‘I want you to spend the rest of your days in there and get on your face before God and get right with him,’” Harrison said. “For the evil that was done through you, I want you to pay it back in good the rest of your days.”
Harrison said she was told by prosecutors and other court observers what happened that day was extremely rare.
All this summer I heard 'Forgive, forgive, forgive.' And I said, 'I forgive you.'
–Jill Harrison
“They say nobody’s done that in 12 years,” Harrison said. “Nobody’s walked in there in 12 years and said, ‘I’m sorry, I did it, and I will sign my name on the papers.’”
Extending forgiveness was the unlikely result of months of inner torment for Harrison, who acknowledged she had even contemplated retribution after her daughter’s remains were discovered in April along a remote hillside in Moreno Valley.
“I (wanted) this guy to die a merciless death,” she said.
Harrison said God urged her to think otherwise.
“I just kept feeling like God kept saying, ‘Forgive more,’” Harrison said. “By summer I could sit down and eat lunch with this guy and be like, OK, I really hate you but I’m saying I forgive you until it’s, like, completed. But tell me about the day you took my daughter’s life and she breathed her last breath. I can handle it.”
Harrison remembered her daughter as a pretty, fun and intelligent woman with a wonderful singing voice who also had her own struggles with anxiety.
For the evil that was done through you, I want you to pay it back in good the rest of your days.
–Jill Harrison
Harrison said she is now hoping to spread her message of forgiveness through advocacy, and that she wanted Ciara’s story to reach people whose lives have been touched by drug addiction, mental health issues and domestic violence.
“Criminals will take things to their grave, you know, just because,” Harrison said. “(The guilty plea) said a lot to me and it meant a lot to me that God really heard my cry, he heard my prayers and he answered them.”
