Maximum security prisons serve a harsh and sterile purpose. For all of us to feel safe, and for society to function, we need a vault where we can send the people who risk our safety and wreck society.

A vault hidden away in our suburbs or country towns, where the worst of us are sent to pay the price for their crimes. For some, that’s a lifetime locked away never again to taste or breathe freedom. For others, it’s long enough to enter young and leave old, trading decades of their life for the lives they stole or ruined.

Samuel Davidson’s time is not his own anymore. It’s ours.

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We, as a society, now own his time and life. A judge said Samuel had to lose 28 years of his life, so that all of us, and his victims can rest easy that justice had been delivered for Samuel killing four beautiful young children.

But for the parents of those children, there’s no such thing as resting easy, only long days and nights of intrusive grief that strikes like lightning on a clear sunny day. The kind of grief that king hits logic and therapy, and screams injustice, because no prison penalty can return their children.

We rarely get a look inside the vault. If we do it’s a sanitised prisoner-free media tour of maximum-security centres to show that governments have spent lots of money on upholding law and order.

We never get to interview a maximum-security prisoner. Our cameras are never allowed that access, and so the public never gets to see what happens after justice is served and the hard time begins.

That’s the stuff of made-in-America documentaries where reporters seem to sweep on in and pick a serial killer for their next big real-life crime series.

So, when we asked the impossible for our Spotlight special, we were very surprised that the heavy time-locked doors of the Cessnock Correctional Centre in NSW weren’t slammed extra hard in our faces.

There was a rare, and highly unusual crack in the heavy front door. Corrective Services NSW were open to the idea in this exceptional circumstance of letting me inside their maximum-security prison to record an extraordinary meeting. A face-to-face meeting between Samuel Davidson, and Danny Abdallah.

Danny is the father of three of the children who Samuel killed while driving high and drunk. Antony, Angelina, Sienna and their beloved cousin Veronique Sakr were mowed down while walking to getting ice cream.

As we know, Danny and wife Leila had publicly expressed forgiveness to Samuel shortly after the crash. Their faith and humanity shocked Australia.

But Danny had spent the past few years wanting to extend his forgiveness, to fully embrace Samuel. Where some fathers would be forgiven for seeking revenge on the killer of their children, Danny took a u-turn on anger and chose love.

I’ve challenged him on this, and his answer is as much about saving himself and saving Samuel. If he stayed in a place of hate, he would have lost his wife, surviving children and his sanity.

His story and Samuel’s punishment is very much on the record, but our experience of being given approval to go behind bars was a story in itself.

Almost a year in the making - from bold request and expected rejection, to surprising approval, to rejection again, to bureaucratic intrusion, lawyer and psychologist caution but finally consent, chaplaincy concern then approval as well as a logistical nightmare to clearance – this story cartwheeled so many times we were just never sure it would happen.

But in amongst all this, Corrective Services NSW had a quietly successful and private program, with positive results that it was keen to reveal to Australia.

It’s called restorative justice, where offender and victim meet and talk. It’s not about confrontation, or expelling hate, but a chance to understand why and atrocity happened.

It’s a hundred steps past those victim impact statements read in court, which allows raw emotions to be vented but is usually met with silence and no further explanations. This restorative justice program is rarely approved, and heavily vetted on both sides.

But in Danny and Samuel’s case it was green-lit after lengthy scrutiny which satisfied all parties that good would come of it. That we were then allowed to be there with three cameras and a crew to record the face-to-face meeting was simply extraordinary. The public, for the first time, able to witness a deep extended program of justice, long after the prisoner was locked up and hidden from society.

It was raw and revealing. Samuel, the killer of four children, was perhaps not the monster we all thought he was, but it certainly wasn’t my job to rehabilitate his character.

I questioned him, challenged him, and we learned how an everyday bloke used to love getting loaded on the weekends, and binge-drink himself to the point of reckless oblivion. That’s certainly how he got behind the wheel that bloody awful day.

Condemn him? Some watching might. Many more I reckon got shivers that he could be your son, brother or mate doing the exact same thing most weekends in any suburb, in any part of Australia.

What we did witness was possibly the greatest act of forgiveness ever recorded in Australia. A dad hugging his kids’ killer. Kneeling with him and sharing prayer. Extending the hand of acceptance, not a fist of anger. It was quite simply extraordinary, and something that’s left me in deep in thought every day since I witnessed those moments inside that maximum security prison.

On appeal, Samuel’s sentence was taken down to 20 years. He’s eligible for parole in 10 years, but what Danny did in his amazing moments of forgiveness, set Samuel free. He may be locked in his cell 17 hours a day for the next decade, but his soul and spirit have been released by Danny. And that’s as uplifting as it is challenging for many of us, I think.

And how’s this for a footnote, which I saved for here. I asked Samuel and Danny whether this would all pass now that restorative justice is behind them, and their relationship would return to that of offender and victim.

Danny jumped in and said: “No way. My family waits for that day in 10 years’ time when Samuel is released. After he sees his family, he’s coming to my family home where we’ll have a BBQ together. He’s in my circle now, and forever.”

Forgiveness, beyond what many of us could possibly comprehend.

WATCH THE EXPLOSIVE SPOTLIGHT SPECIAL HERE