Last summer, a midnight flood struck a girls\u2019 camp in central Texas, and 25 young girls died. The parents of some of the girls are suing the camp, Camp Mystic, accusing the camp directors of gross negligence in ignoring flood warnings and not having a clear evacuation plan.<\/p>\n
One of the plaintiffs is Carrie Hanna, mother of Hadley, who was 8 when she died in the flood. A Camp Mystic alumna herself, Carrie Hanna told the Wall Street Journal last week (\u201cCamp Mystic Is Still a Crime Scene,\u201d Wall Street Journal<\/em>, April 18-19, 2026), \u201cIf they had said, \u2018We\u2019re so sorry, we messed up\u2019 \u2013 if there had been some accountability \u2013 we wouldn\u2019t be where we are today. I didn\u2019t want to sue them. This is not how I want to live.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Hanna\u2019s comment illustrates the value of an apology. People may withhold an apology for fear that they\u2019ll end up paying dearly, but sometimes the opposite is true: the victim just wants to hear that the offender is willing to take responsibility for the offense, which enables the victim to let go. The victim who doesn\u2019t hear that, feels more justified in suing. Ironically, the camp directors\u2019 attorney may have warned them not to apologize \u2013 the very thing that, according to Ms. Hanna, would have prevented the lawsuit.<\/p>\n Of course, the camp directors may not feel any responsibility for what happened, in which case they of course should not say that they do. And victims who think that all they want is an apology may hear it and still end up feeling dissatisfied enough to file a lawsuit. But in some cases an apology can stave off a lawsuit and bring some measure of peace to parties in conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last summer, a midnight flood struck a girls\u2019 camp in central Texas, and 25 young girls died. The parents of some of the girls are suing the camp, Camp Mystic, accusing the camp directors of gross negligence in ignoring flood warnings and not having a clear evacuation plan. One of the plaintiffs is Carrie Hanna, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologies","category-christian-lawsuits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1122"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1124,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions\/1124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}