When Brian Banks’ story made the rounds of newspapers and news broadcasts, I stopped and paid attention, reading and watching with great interest and some sadness.
Banks is the now 26-year-old who was accused and convicted of kidnapping and raping a classmate, Wanetta Gibson, on the campus of the high school they both attended when he was 16. He was recently cleared of the crime after Gibson admitted it was all a lie.
News reports say she came forward after Banks had served more than five years for the crime and been released, reaching out to him via Facebook. The story revealed afterward was worthy of a network crime procedural drama, including a secret videotaped confession – Gibson’s admission that she was afraid of having to return a $1.5 million civil suit judgment she’d received from a suit her mother brought against the school district.
Banks said he agreed to plead no contest to the charges on the advice of his lawyer because it was his word against hers, and because for “a big, black kid it didn’t look good” for him. So on May 24, when the judge threw out all the charges, Banks openly wept.
I understood the tears. But when I learned his back story I understood even more. Banks was a star high school athlete actively recruited by several universities with exceptional football teams. He’d verbally agreed to attend the University of Southern California on a four-year scholarship at the time of his arrest.
After his conviction, Banks had more than five years to think about the injustice done to him. More than five years to feel anger, disgust and hatred. But watching him on the Today show, he was forgiving.
Ann Curry asked him about wanting revenge. Banks responded, “It’s easy to have those feelings when you initially hear the story. I’ve been dealing with this now for 10 years, and I’ve had my moments where I was very angry and very vengeful. But I know it’s best for me to try and move forward in a positive manner.”
At 26 years of age, Banks has a lot of living left and hopefully, a lot of opportunity ahead. But he’s already learned lessons that it takes many of us all our lives to learn: Life’s not fair. We’re not always responsible for what happens to us, but we’re entirely responsible for how we choose to deal with it.
The most important lesson he’s learned and teaches us, however, is that when we forgive it’s not for the other person –
it’s for ourselves. Though he served five years for a crime he didn’t commit, he was never—in mind or spirit—in jail. As I watched him, I knew that despite being imprisoned, Banks was always a free man. Free despite the false accusations and a legal system that too frequently assumes the worst of young, black boys and men. Free because he lived through it and didn’t become worse for it.
Banks clearly understands that, as Nelson Mandela once said, true freedom is not to “merely cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
© PooleProof Communications, LLC 2012
