The thug who battered me? I’ve shaken his hand and forgiven him says lecturer
A LECTURER beaten to within an inch of his life by thugs who burst into his home has forgiven one of the men after visiting him in jail.
Paul Kohler, 56, suffered horrific injuries including a fractured eye socket and broken jaw when a Polish crime gang targeted the wrong house.
But the academic said he was able to forgive Mariusz Tomaszewski, 33, who was jailed for 19 years – and even shook his hand.
He came face-to-face with the thug during a two-hour visit at HMP Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire, along with his wife Samantha MacArthur, 50, and daughter Eloise, 25.
‘At the end of the meeting I took the decision to shake his hand, so did Sam and Eloise,’ Mr Kohler said.
‘It was not pre-planned, it just felt like the right thing to do. The act of forgiving someone is incredibly powerful. But you can’t do that unless you believe the apology.’
Mr Kohler was beaten to a pulp when four men burst into his £2million Wimbledon home as he played a board game with his family in August last year. During the raid, his wife was threatened and Eloise barricaded herself in an upstairs bedroom. The couple’s other daughters, Tamara, Saskia and Bethany, were out at the time.
Tomaszewski punched his victim several times in the face and body, but apparently ‘had second thoughts’ about hitting the stricken father with a wooden cabinet. Mr Kohler told the London Evening Standard: ‘He was the one during the attack with some compassion. He picked up the cabinet but I could see he didn’t want to hit me with it. He was miming the act of hitting me, like in wrestling. You could see he was not psychotic.’
The lecturer at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies said Tomaszewski was ‘remorseful from the outset’ and that he ‘realised he had taken the wrong road’.
He added: ‘I have recovered now but I made the point to him of how terrified I was, the ordeal I went through and how terrified my wife and daughter were.
‘We pushed him hard on how he is going to change. He said he was studying English and maths and was a qualified chef. The point I made is that lots of people have a bad life but do not end up doing this. He realised that was not an excuse.’
A Daily Mail investigation uncovered how all but one of the gang members had long criminal records, with 32 convictions between them. Tomaszewski alone had 11 convictions in Poland, including four counts of burglary.
Detectives believe the men were hunting an underworld rival over a suspected drugs debt who lived in a halfway house next door – and unknown to the gang had just been arrested.
The prison visit was arranged by Why me? – a restorative justice charity. Mr Kohler plans to meet two of the other attackers next year.
Tomaszewski and Pawel Honc, 24, were each jailed for 19 years over the raid. Oskar Pawlowicz, 30, of Mitcham, and Dawid Tychon, 30, of no fixed address, got 13 years.