Thursday, April 17, 2025
Zoom Webinar
12:00-1:15 PM (HST)
The Hawaiʻi State Judiciary’s Committee on Equality and Access to the Courts (CEAC) and the King Kamehameha V Judiciary History Center are pleased to present the Equitable and Sustainable Futures Speaker Series. Five public programs are scheduled through May 2025 to build pilina (connection and collaboration) between stakeholders across the justice system. Through engaging public discussions, this series seeks to drive critical change in law, policy, and institutional practices to improve public awareness, safety, and wellbeing. The series is cosponsored by the Hawaiʻi State Bar Association Civic Education Committee.
Program 3 of 5-Part Series
Pathways to Healing: Exploring Victim and Survivor Services Within and Beyond Hawaiʻi’s Justice System
For victims and survivors of crime, the journey toward healing often involves navigating a complex network of legal systems, community resources, and support services. This discussion explores the challenges, successes, and ongoing gaps in victim and survivor services, focusing on restorative justice, trauma-informed care, and survivors’ rights. The panel will include leaders and advocates in restorative justice and victim rights, addressing the critical role community-based programs and partnerships play in supporting those impacted by violence and crime. They will explore solutions that prioritize healing, accountability, and reconciliation while ensuring survivors feel empowered.
This programming series is a follow-up to CEAC’s Racial Equity Speaker Series that occurred virtually between January and May 2021 (access recordings here).
Featured Panelists:
Moderator: Miyoko Pettit-Toledo
Miyoko Pettit-Toledo is a graduate of the William S. Richardson School of Law, where she joined the faculty in August 2022 as an Assistant Professor of Law. She currently teaches Civil Procedure I & II, Advanced Civil Procedure, and Second Year Seminar. Professor Pettit-Toledo’s scholarship merges legal theory, research, and analysis with frontline advocacy for civil and human rights as well as social justice—something she learned and took to heart as the inaugural Korematsu Scholar Advocate while in law school. Her work explores reconciliation initiatives and reparations for historic injustice with an emphasis on the intersection of race and gender. Her recent cutting-edge research on healing persisting historic injustice harms across generations draws upon multiple disciplines including law, social psychology, human rights and indigenous conflict resolution, public health, and more. This scholarship, in part, engages with victims, survivors, advocates, scholars, journalists, healers, government officials, community members, and those seeking to repair the harms from the Jeju, South Korea “peacetime” April 3rd Tragedy, as part of the ongoing reconciliation initiative that she first started working on over a decade ago. Another area of her scholarship focuses on developments in the rules of civil procedure—at the federal and state level—and how amended rules may promote or hinder access to justice (in concept and in practice).
Following her graduation from law school, Professor Pettit-Toledo clerked for the Honorable Richard W. Pollack, then-Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawai‘i, and the Honorable Susan Oki Mollway, Senior District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii. She then worked as a civil litigator with McCorriston Miller Mukai MacKinnon LLP, where her practice focused primarily on complex commercial litigation, appellate litigation, employment disputes, and debtors’ and creditors’ rights. Most recently, Professor Pettit-Toledo served as the Executive Director and Managing Attorney for Maximum Legal Services Corporation, a local Hawai‘i 501(c)(3) non-profit specializing in trust and estate administration and conservatorship and guardianship services for people across the State of Hawai‘i.
Professor Pettit-Toledo currently serves on the Advisory Committee of the Hawai‘i State Bar Association’s Leadership Institute and co-leads a session each year on “Doing the Right Thing.” She also serves on the Hawai‘i State Judiciary Committee on Equality and Access to the Courts.
C. Melenani Wai‘alae, Esq.
Melenani is Executive Director of Ka Lei o Ka Lāhui, and Owner/Attorney at Waiʻalae Law. She founded Waiʻalae Law, LLLC to impact people’s lives in their time of need by offering individualized care in family law services. She received her J.D. at the William S. Richardson School of Law in 2016. She has devoted her entire educational and legal career to the practice of family law in Hawai‘i. While in law school, Melenani externed with the Legal Aid Society of Hawai‘i and trained in family law matters. She was awarded the Advocates for Public Interest Law grant for her efforts to assist women and children in family law in 2015. She was selected as the 2016 James K. Hoenig Judicial Fellow for the Promotion of Alternative Dispute Resolution in Family Law and was an extern for Senior Family Court Judge R. Mark Browning. She was also awarded the Gender Equity Legal Fellowship at the Office of Institutional Equity at the University of Hawai‘i in 2015.
Angelina Mercado
Angelina “Angie” Mercado is the Executive Director of the Hawaiʻi State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. She received a BA in Economics from Connecticut College. Prior, she was President and CEO of South Street Consulting International, and Director of Advancement for Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network. She also volunteers as Vice President of Communications for the Junior League of Honolulu.
The Hawai‘i State Coalition Against Domestic Violence advances the safety and healing of victims, survivors and their families. We are the collective voice of a diverse network of organizations and individuals, working to eliminate all forms of domestic violence in Hawai‘i by fostering partnership, increasing awareness of domestic violence, developing the capacity of our member programs and community partners to address the needs of survivors and their families, and advocating for social justice and change.
Ian Crabbe
Ian Crabbe is Vice Chair of the Hawaii Friends of Restorative Justice (HFRJ). Ian grew up in Pearl City, Oʻahu, played football, and attended Foothill College in California. He is a licensed electrician in the State of Hawai’i. He is extremely proud of his only child, who works in forensics for the FBI. Ian had one of the first restorative reentry circles in 2005 at Waiawa Correctional Facility where he was imprisoned for drug-related offenses. He spent three years in prison with little family contact. The reentry circle enabled him to make amends and rebuild relationships with his family. He became his father’s caregiver before his father passed away. In 2014, Governor Neil Abercrombie pardoned Ian’s criminal convictions. Ian has been an important supporter of Hawai’i Friends of Restorative Justice for over ten years.
