Why do courts and newspapers fail to print apologies in full? It is not enough to say that someone apologized, we need to know precisely what was said.
Recently, in New Zealand’s Whanganui District Court, Steven Burlace was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for embezzling $428,000 from various clients in an insurance investment scheme. The judge scorned an apology Burlace had written to the investors, calling it “hollow” and “self-serving at the 11th hour.” He added that Burlace showed “callous disregard” for those who lost their money.
Why I am so agog to read Burlace’s apology? Because this is the man, who when confronted by his partners, wanting to know where the money had gone, told them “I didn’t steal it, I only used it to fund my lifestyle.”
That didn’t cool them down. But by the time the police arrived, he had used it to fund leaving the country. Four years later he was found in Australia (a “remote part of Queensland”) and extradited back to Wanganui. (Sometimes it is officially Whanganui and sometimes it is officially Wanganui. I am doing my best here.)
Brown kiwi seeking a better-funded lifestyle
A person who would make the delicate distinction between stealing your money and using your money to fund his lifestyle is a person who could deliver a spectacularly bad apology. How unfair that the public doesn’t get to know. How unfair that SorryWatch doesn’t get to know.
“I didn’t steal it, I only used it to fund my lifestyle” reminds me of Steve Martin’s “Two simple words! Two simple words in the English language! ‘I FORGOT.’ How many times do we let ourselves get into terrible situations because we don’t say “I forgot”? Let’s say you’re on trial for armed robbery. You say to the judge, ‘I forgot armed robbery was illegal.'”