Bear Witness: The Pursuit of Justice in a Violent Land

A high-octane true-crime story, Bear Witness follows two Christians who refuse to let fear or conventional wisdom stand in the way of their altruistic mission.


As young men, Kurt Ver Beek, an American sociologist, and Carlos Hernández, a Honduran schoolteacher, devoted their lives to helping the poor. But it wasn’t until they moved to an extraordinarily dangerous neighborhood in Honduras that they came to a radical the charity world was combatting poverty incorrectly.


In gripping prose, journalist Ross Halperin chronicles how these two best friends became quasi vigilantes and charged into a series of life-and-death first with the gang that terrorized their community, then with a notorious tycoon who commanded about a thousand armed men, and finally with a police force whose corruption defied credulity. Their efforts made some of the most violent neighborhoods on earth safer, but not without compromising their principles, precipitating collateral damage, and acquiring their share of outraged critics.


A remarkable and dangerous feat of reportage, Bear Witness is a thrilling account of an unorthodox mission to establish justice in a place thought to be beyond the reach of the law. View Less