Bearing Witness Gautier, Andres; Scalmati, Anna Sabatini
2010, 20180508
eBook
'In their discussion of torture, the contributors to this book write of what its victims cannot put into words and the work that has to be done with them to that end. Working with a victim's account ...of a traumatic experience goes much further than any debriefing technique would have us believe - above all, victims need someone to listen carefully to what they have to say; that person will be the first to offer a refuge for the pain of those who have no internal "shelter" of their own. The authors go on to discuss the kind of mental processing that can free victims from their unspeakable trauma, a trauma that has no framework in time nor words with which to express it.Under the skilful editorship of Andres Gautier and Anna Sabatini, this book asks of both psychoanalysts and politicians a question that goes right to the heart of their "impossible professions".- Rene Kaes, from the Foreword
This book provides a rich analysis of the history of Swedish victim support. With the majority of research on victim support centering on the Anglosphere, this book offers a unique case study for ...considering the role of the victim in the criminal justice system. While Sweden has enacted many laws to support victims, and victim assistance programs have grown rapidly, welfare policy has become more restrictive and crime policy, to some degree, more punitive. Drawing on archival material and interviews with key representatives for the Swedish Association for Victim Support (BOJ), this book examines what role the victim movement has played in a changing welfare state. It argues that BOJ filled a function in the decentralization and privatization of the Swedish welfare state and explores distinctive features of the Swedish victim movement and the form it has taken, as compared to that in other countries. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of criminology, sociology, social policy, civil society studies, and social work, and those engaged in studies of victims and victimology.
On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a two-ton truck bomb that felled the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. On June 11, 2001, an unprecedented 242 ...witnesses watched him die by lethal injection. In the aftermath of the bombings, American public commentary almost immediately turned to closure rhetoric. Reporters and audiences alike speculated about whether victim's family members and survivors could get closure from memorial services, funerals, legislation, monuments, trials, and executions. But what does closure really mean for those who survive - or lose loved ones in - traumatic acts? In the wake of such terrifying events, is closure a realistic or appropriate expectation? In Killing McVeigh, Jody Lynee Madeira uses the Oklahoma City bombing as a case study to explore how family members and other survivors come to terms with mass murder. As the fullest case study to date of the Oklahoma City Bombing survivors' struggle for justice and the first-ever case study of closure, this book describes the profound human and institutional impacts of these labors to demonstrate the importance of understanding what closure really is before naively asserting it can or has been reached.
This volume examines sentencing hearings in criminal court and the presentation of victim impact statements, as well as child protection cases in juvenile court and the recommendations of guardians ...ad litem (GALS). Through interviews, observations, and textual analysis, all deeply grounded in an innovative court watch program, the authors illuminate the most effective persuasive practices of victim advocates and GALS as they help protect the rights and needs of victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse. Mary Lay Schuster and Amy D. Propen offer nuanced interpretations of these strategies in the courtroom setting and provide an understanding of how to develop successful advocacy for vulnerable parties in the legal arena.
Calculating compassion examines the origins of British relief work in late-nineteenth-century wars on the continent and the fringes of Empire. Commencing with the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71, it ...follows distinguished surgeons and ‘lady amateurs’ as they distributed aid to wounded soldiers and distressed civilians, often in the face of considerable suspicion. Dispensing with the notion of shared ‘humanitarian’ ideals, it examines the complex, and sometimes controversial, origins of organised relief, and illuminates the emergence of practices and protocols still recognisable in the delivery of overseas aid. This book is intended for students, academics and relief practitioners interested in the historical concerns of first generation relief agencies such as the British Red Cross Society and the Save the Children Fund, and their legacies today.
Alongside existing regimes for victim redress at the national and international levels, in the coming years international criminal law and, in particular, the International Criminal Court, will ...potentially provide a significant legal framework through which the harm caused by egregious conduct can be addressed. Drawing on a wealth of comparative experience, Conor McCarthy's study of the Rome Statute's regime of victim redress provides a comprehensive exploration of this framework, examining both its reparations regime and its scheme for the provision of victim support through the ICC Trust Fund. The study explores, in particular, whether the creation of a regime of victim redress has a role to play as part of a system for the administration of international criminal justice and, more generally, whether it has such a role alongside other regimes, at the national and international levels, by which the harm suffered by victims of egregious conduct may be redressed.
Rape law reform has long been hailed as one of the most successful projects of second-wave feminism. Yet forty years after the anti-rape movement emerged, legal and medical institutions continue to ...resist implementing reforms intended to provide more just and compassionate legal and medical responses to victims of sexual violence. In Up Against a Wall, Rose Corrigan draws on interviews with over 150 local rape care advocates in communities across the United States to explore how and why mainstream systems continue to resist feminist reforms.In a series of richly detailed case studies, the book weaves together scholarship on law and social movements, feminist theory, policy formation and implementation, and criminal justice to show how the innovative legal strategies employed by anti-rape advocates actually undermined some of their central claims. But even as its more radical elements were thwarted, pieces of the rape law reform project were seized upon by conservative policy-makers and used to justify new initiatives that often prioritize the interests and rights of criminal justice actors or medical providers over the needs of victims.
Broken Spirits Wilson, John P.; Drozdek, Boris
2005, 20041001, 2004, 2004-09-01, 2004-10-01
eBook
Mental health problems among asylum seekers and refugees are becoming a public issue, but awareness of this problem among the mental health community is relatively low. Although advances have been ...made in the provision of innovative mental health services for asylum seekers and refuges with PTSD, they are not systemized, and not widely known to professionals in the field. A publication offering practical guidelines for the treatment of torture victims and political refugees does not exist. Broken Spirits aims to bring together the works of the most respected mental health professionals - from the U.S. and abroad - and make available the most current knowledge on complex PTSD, forced migration and cultural sensitivity in diagnosis and treatment.
" Make no mistake, this is a powerful book. If you work in this area, or aspire to, it will give you tools and models and a great deal of insight and understanding. It will challenge you as well. Yet in the work with the trauma victim who has survived horrors of a kind that are so outside of our ‘normality’, it is perhaps our sense of humanity that is our most powerful tool. It is from this that the spirit within us reaches out to the spirit within the other and some form of psychological restoration of the spirit becomes possible." - Richard Bryant-Jefferies, Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, UK
"This volume represents an important contribution to this expanding and is anticipated to have a high impact on both policy and future research. The volume is an excellent handbook for all those who are interested in the treatment of traumatized asylum seekers, refugees, war, and torture victims, including the educated general reader or policymaker with an interest in contemporary work on trauma. Libraries will want to add this to their collections, and one supects the book entice readers from diverse fields, including psychology, anthropolgy, sociology, human development, social work, nursing, and psychiatry. It offers a starting point for the novice as well as a contemporary literature review of this expanding field for the specialist, the current volume ought to remain an important contribution for some time." - Grant J. Rich , APA, PsycCRITIQUES
"As Volkan writes in his introduction, the topic is both timeless and timely...Professionals interested in or involved with mental health care for asylum seekers and refugees can find new insights and inspirations in many of the chapters..." - Loes H. M. van Willigen, Journal of Refugee Studies
"John Wilson and Boris Drozdek bring an important collection of articles to the reader of trauma literature and to therapists who have the potential of seeing specific forms of trauma reflecting the cruelty witnessed in this volume...it will be one of the more interesting volumes that you will likely read in a while." - Tom Schumacher , in The Repetition & Avoidance Quarterly
"...This book is especially valuable to those who work in the field of care and assistance for refugees. A few chapters are extremely valuable for those who work with populations in affected regions and countries. However, the other chapters contain important insights in the condition of refugees, cultural peculiarities and treatments that can be adapted and tested in those areas where the vast majority of displaced people and refugees seek shelter. The book presents the reader the actual state of the art in both theory and practice of care for refugees and other victims of trauma. In addition, it invites for further study and thought, and the development of proper and effective therapeutic or community interventions. It is worth a thorough read." - Petra Aarts, Intervention: International Journal of Mental Health, Psychosocial Work, and Counselling in Areas of Armed Conflict
"We have in this volume a significant and comprehensive text on a theme that has become what is in effect a new discipline within therapeutic provision. Broken Spirits will provide you with theoretical as well as practical insight into the effects of traumatic experience on the person, and methods of response to help restore them to stronger psychological functioning. Make no mistake, this is a powerful book. If you work in this area, it will give you tools and models and a great deal of insight and understanding. It will challenge you as well." - Richard Bryant-Jefferies, Head of Equalities and Diversity, CNWL NHS Foundation Trust, and author of Counseling Victims of Warfare
Foreword. About the Editors. Contributors. Acknowledgements. Preface. Part I: Theoretical, Conceptual and Socio-cultural Considerations. Wilson, Introduction. Volkan, From Hope for a Better Life to Broken Spirits: An Introduction. Silove, The Global Challenge of Asylum. Modvig, Jaranson, A Global Perspective of Torture, Political Violence and Health. Aroche, Coello, Ethnocultural Considerations in the Treatment of Refugees and Asylum Seekers. McFarlane, Assessing PTSD and Co-morbidity: Issues in Differential Diagnosis. Part II: Broken Spirits: Traumatic Injury to Culture, the Self and Personality. Wilson, Introduction. Wilson, The Broken Spirit: Posttaumatic Damage to the Self . de Jong, Public Mental Health and Culture: Disasters as a Challenge to Western Mental Health Care Models, the Self and PTSD. Part III: Post-traumatic Treatments: Guidelines for Practitioners. Wilson, Introduction. van der Veer, van Waning, Creating a Safe Therapeutic Sanctuary. Turkovic , Hovens, Gregurek, Strengthening Psychological Health in War Victims and Refugees. Drodzek, Wilson, Uncovering: Trauma Focused Treatment Techniques with Asylum Seekers. Wilson, Empathy, Trauma Transmission and Counter-transference in Posttraumatic Psychotherapy. Lansen, Haans, Clinical Supervision for Trauma Therapists. Bot, Wadensjo, The Presence of a Third Party: A Dialogical View on Interpreter-assisted Treatment. Part IV: Non-verbal and Experiential Therapies. Wilson, Introduction to Part IV. de Winter , Drodzek, Psychomotor Therapy: Healing by Action. Karcher, Body Psychotherapy with Survivors of Torture. Wertheim-Cahen , van Dijk , Schouten , Roozen , Drodzek, About a Weeping Willow, a Phoenix Rising from its Ashes and Building a House... Art Therapy with Refugees: Three Different Perspectives. Orth , Doorschodt , Verburgt, Drodzek, Sounds of Trauma. Part V: Treatment of Special Populations: Gender and Developmental Considerations. Wilson, Introduction to Part V. Walter, Bala, Where Meanings, Sorrow and Hope have a Resident Permit: Treatment of Families and Children. Adam, van Essen, In Between - Adolescent Refugees in Exile. Kastrup, Arcel, Gender Specific Treatment. Part VI: Medical, Surgical and Clinical Issues in the Treatment of Refugees and Torture Victims. Wilson, Introduction to Part VI. Kinzie, Friedman, Psychopharmacology for Refugee and Asylum Seeker Patients. Juhler, Surgical Approach to Victims of Torture and PTSD. Ekblad, Jaranson, Psychosocial Rehabilitation. Part VII: Legal, Moral and Political Issues in the Treatment Process. Wilson, Introduction to Part VII. Herlihy , Ferstman, Turner, Legal Issues in Work with Asylum Seekers. Steele, Mares, Newman, Blick, Dudley, The Politics of Asylum and Immigration Detention: Advocacy, Ethics and the Professional Role of the Therapist.
This book examines the survivors of political violence and terrorism, considering both how they have responded and how they have been responded to following critical incidents. As this work ...demonstrates, survivors of comparatively rare and spectacular violence hold a mirror up to society’s normative assumptions around trauma, recovery and resilience. Drawing on two years of observational field research with a British NGO who works with victims and former perpetrators of PVT, this book explores contested notions of ‘resilience’ and what it might mean for those negotiating the aftermaths of violence. Examining knowledge about resilience from a multitude of sources, including security policy, media, academic literature and the survivors themselves, this book contends that in order to make empirical sense of resilience we must reckon with both its discursive and practical manifestations. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, victimology, criminal justice and all those interested in the stories of survivors.
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