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Friends. it was in his second year in the senate when brooks found the cause close to his heart. victims rights was simply one of those things that nobody talked about. but of course that was the core experience of his life. did he know how the system treats victims of crime? oh, yes he did. so he introduced oklahoma s first victims right act. the jury never hears one word about the family or not considering how brutal that crime was. this person took another individual s life in these cases. the victims rights movement was in its infancy then. he met resistance from judges and prosecutors. there were judges, there were state senators who had championed the rights of the accused. and certainly the accused is entitled to basic rights. and but there s a long tradition of that. it s a relatively new phenomena ....
leslie s reaction was more muted. he had told me about meeting with ake. and him forgiving him and me having a hard time understanding it. is forgiving part of moving on like that? part of getting past it? i think it is. i mean, i feel like i ve forgiven. you can forgive, but it just doesn t change the circumstances sometimes. but there is a difference between forgiveness and forgetting. the state of oklahoma along with brooks and leslie douglass had some unfinished business with stephen hatch. not the triggerman, no. but a murderer, yes. coming up i was afraid to sleep at night. i was afraid somebody was coming to get me. another legal confrontation. and another staggering surprise. a new part of the story. 8gg@ú ....
dad, mom s dead. they had to relive that night, and i know how hard that was for him, and he talked about it and how hard that was going to be, and that i was glad it was him going and not me because i couldn t have dealt with it. after a los angeles opening, heaven s rain was first released in oklahoma and texas and across the southwest. it then came out on dvd. glen ake, the trigger man, died of natural causes in april. brooks spends much of his time now promoting the movie, often speaking after group screenings. it s found its early audience among oklahoma churchgoers. you know, brooks, i m not sure people can fully appreciate the power that the grace of god has had in your life in granting the forgiveness to the people ....
And murdered their parents. did you watch the children s testimony? yes. brooks was very strong in his testimony. leslie was, too. but it bothered her more than it did brooks to testify. it was like i had to pretend like i was somebody else just telling a story of what happened. and it s kind of like the night that happened and i have to remember all this, i is to remember all this. i was trying to almost forget about what was actually happening and just, okay, remember what their face looked like, what did their what happened here, what happened there. that s the remarkable thing, that even when it was going on you were conscious of the fact you would have to remember for the sake of what might happen. right, right. and i didn t know why: that promise that leslie douglass made to herself the night her parents were killed is what carried her through, she said. i didn t know why. i just i just knew that his ....
Mom singing. i sing she did once every week at church. and at home where she sewed the outfits leslie wore to compete in miss teen oklahoma. i was the one that spent time with my mom, where it be singing or her making me a new dress for a pageant. so autumn, 79, 16-year-old brooks was an advanced football-playing senior in high school, making money breeding doberman dogs. leslie, a precociously pretty girl, and dad was busy, a chaplain at the state house, visitors of prisoners at mccallister penitentiary, even preaching a bit on early morning television. simply saying that death is not meaningless, that it s parent of the overall experience of life. and packing them in at putnam baptist. i may not match god s plan with my living, but he knows just exactly how long i m going to live. ....