One year after the shootings at Columbine High School, the road to healing for families and the community has been slow and laden with setbacks. For many, the slayings of two Columbine sophomores on February 14 at a local Subway sandwich shop shattered an already fragile and tortured recovery process.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold massacred 13 people and wounded dozens of others on April 20, 1999, before killing themselves. Many families of those who died are slowly rebuilding their lives through ministries and activism. Darrell Scott, father of murder victim Rachel Scott, has launched a nonprofit ministry called The Columbine Redemption that coordinates his speaking ministry at youth rallies and through which he is raising funds to build a Christian memorial for the slain. Scott is the scheduled keynote speaker at two major youth events in Washington, D.C., this year: "Take a Stand" (May 19-21), which expects to draw 100,000, and "The Call" (Sept. 2), which hopes to attract 400,000.

Brad and Misty Bernall, parents of Cassie Bernall, have joined with the Christian Mission of Honduras to build the Cassie Bernall Home for Children, an orphanage in a rural part of Honduras. They recently agreed with the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention to produce a movie based on Cassie's life.

Michelle Oetter—student John Tomlin's girlfriend when he was killed—has been drawing crowds at speaking engagements about the spiritual significance of the Columbine tragedy. Valeen Schnurr, who affirmed her belief in God after being shot several times, has fit some public speaking into her study schedule at the University of Northern Colorado.

An organization called HOPE (Healing of People Everywhere) has become a rallying point for many parents of the slain. Through HOPE, families are raising funds to convert the Columbine library, where most of the massacre occurred, into an atrium and to build a new library for the school. "This gives people a way to put positive energy into this otherwise terrible situation," says Brian Rohrbough, whose son Dan died in the massacre.

Targeting Christians?

But the road to healing has also been full of painful twists and turns. Many families who lost children are Christian. As they await the official report on the investigation, which at this writing has yet to be released by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department, some are bewildered by the seeming unwillingness of investigators to acknowledge the significance of anti-Christian aspects of the killings.

Eric Chester, a Colorado author, speaker, and youth expert, has spoken about teen issues in over 100 schools since the Columbine tragedy. He suspects that the killers' malice was not a characteristic form of racial, religious, ethnic prejudice against certain groups. Rather, he says, "Eric and Dylan were on a death mission, and probably thought, 'Let's look for people we hate.' Their hate knew no bounds.

"But the killers felt no lack of hatred for Christianity and Christians, as evidenced in shocking and vitriolic anti-Christian ravings in portions of the videotapes made by the killers in the weeks before the rampage. Before Darrell Scott made and released audio tapes of these sentiments, the sheriff's department did not acknowledge this video evidence. In addition, journalists who viewed the tapes made little mention of the killers' hostility toward Christianity.

Scott was startled when he heard his daughter Rachel mentioned and then mocked for her Christian beliefs on one of the videotapes. Scott's sense of outrage concerning the videos was very real, because investigators had told him that significant information pertaining to his daughter's murder would be made known to him. Yet sheriff's investigators never mentioned that Rachel was named. Lead investigator Kate Battan insists that Rachel Scott is not the person discussed on the video. Battan has also stated publicly that what happened at Columbine was not "a God thing."

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