Torture : quarterly journal on rehabilitation of torture victims and prevention of torture最新文献

Introduction: Communities who have fled torture and persecution in their home countries can find it difficult to access services in new cultural settings. Past research has shown that it is helpful to provide cultural bridging services to form a connection between locally-trained professionals and newly relocated communities.

Method: This article presents, from a practitioner's perspective, a case example of cultural bridging involving a pilot programme to train individuals with refugee-like backgrounds (including torture survivors, former refugees, forced migrants) to become Cross-Cultural Facilitators supporting mental health services for displaced communities.

Results: The Cross-Cultural Facilitator role has become an integral part of the case example agency's services. Internal agency reviews of the Cross-Cultural Facilitators' work shows that they have been continuing to operate successfully through challenging times, including the many societal disruptions and stressors entailed in the Covid-19 pandemic. The agency has also gathered notable anecdotal evidence that the pilot training programme has been positively impactful and supportive not only for the Cross-Cultural Facilitators but for the communities they serve.

Discussion: Healthcare workers and civil society organisations have an important role to play in supporting survivors to engage in this form of cultural facilitation aimed at addressing the consequences of traumatic experiences at a community level. In doing so, they must balance efforts to empower survivors and former refugees to participate as agents of change with a duty of care not to push individuals into roles or settings that may diminish their own wellbeing.

Introduction: This Protocol originates from a joint project regarding documentation of psychological torture initiated by the Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI), REDRESS and DIGNITY - Danish Institute Against Torture (DIGNITY) in 2015 after the Copenhagen Conference on Psychologi-cal Torture. The project is a vehicle to estab-lish a common understanding between health and legal professions as to how to best ensure the most accurate documentation of torture.The aim of the Protocol is to improve docu-mentation of solitary confinement and therefore to clarify the facts of the case so that stron-ger legal claims can subsequently be submitted to local and international complaints mecha-nisms. The Protocol has been developed based on a methodology involving a compilation and review of legal and health knowledge on soli-tary confinement and discussions among the authors and in a group of international experts.

Methods and results: This Protocol is cognisant of the significance of the specific social, cultural and political contexts in which solitary confinement is used. We hope that this Protocol will assist in the discussions between the various stakeholders and provide guidance on what can be documented and how to doc-ument torture.

In 2021, a group of tortured people and their relatives in Navarre started a process of selforganisation that culminated in 2022 with the birth of the organisation Network of Tortured People of Navarre. The process of self-organisation of tortured people in Navarra is an uncommon phenomenon, which can offer interesting lessons especially for torture victims in other countries and contexts. The aim of this article is to describe a survivor-lead experience and to analyse the keys to this process of collective empowerment.

Torture and Torturous Violence by Victoria Canning, Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Bristol, is an essay that extends the process of reflection the author began in 2016. On that occasion, she developed the concept of Sexually Torturous Violence (Canning, 2016).

Introduction: Various psychotherapies have been applied to individuals who have been subjected to torture and severe human rights violations. However, studies assessing the ef-fectiveness of such therapies are limited. Psy-choanalytic psychotherapy is said to be used frequently in practice for these patient groups. Yet, there are scarcely any studies assessing its efficacy. In this study, we aim to assess the effectiveness of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in patients with PTSD associated with torture and severe human rights violations.

Methods: 70 patients who were diagnosed with PTSD due to being tortured and severe human rights violations in accordance with DSM-IV-TR and who applied to the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey were given psy-choanalytic psychotherapy. CGI-S and CGI-I scales were applied to the patients (in Months 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12); and the patients' continu-ity of therapy and the changes in their recov-ery during the one-year psychotherapy period were assessed.

Results: 38 (54.3%) of the patients were female. Their mean age was 37.7 years (SD= 12.25), while their mean baseline CGI-S score was 4.67. The drop-out rate was 34%. The mean length of treatment was 21.9 ses-sions (SD = 20.30). Mean scores for CGI-I scale were 3.46, 2.95, 2.23, 2.00, and 1.54 for months 1, 3, 6, 9 and 12 respectively. As the number of sessions increased, the final CGI-I scores of the patients improved significantly towards recovery.75.4% of the pa-tients benefited from the treatment in general according to their final CGI-I score.

Conclusions: Considering the limited liter-ature in the field, this study has provided sig-nificant data on the effectiveness of the use of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in individuals diagnosed with PTSD related to torture and severe human rights violations, despite its lim-itations such as not involving a control group, not having been conducted blindly and ran-domized and being based on a single scale.

Introduction: With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, most torture victim care centres had to adapt their forensic assessment methods and move to online methodologies. Therefore, it is essential to assess the advan-tages and disadvantages of this type of inter-vention, which seems to be here to stay.

Method: Structured administered surveys were conducted with professionals (n=21) and with torture survivors (SoT) (n=21) from a sample of 21 Istanbul Protocols (IP). Compar-ing face-to-face (n=10) and remote (n=11) in-terviews in relation to the evaluation process, satisfaction, difficulties encountered, and compliance with therapeutic aspects. All as-sessments were primarily psychological. Three remote and four face-to-face interviews in-cluded a medical assessment.

Results: No significant problems were found in relation to the ethical requirements of the IP. Satisfaction with the process was pos-itive in both modalities. Regarding the online method, there were frequent connection prob-lems and a lack of adequate material resources in the remote assessments, requiring a signifi-cantly higher number of interviews in most cases. Survivors were more satisfied than eval-uators. Overall, the forensic experts described problems in complex cases with an under-standing of the person's emotional response, they established a bond, and they undertook psychotherapeutic interventions in the event of an emotional crisis during the assessment. In the face-to-face protocols, logistical and travel problems were frequent, which meant that fo-rensic work times had to be adapted.

Discussion: The two methodologies are not directly comparable but have specific issues to be studied and addressed. More invest-ment and adaptation in remote methodology is needed, especially given the poor economic situation of many SoT. Remote assessment is a valid alternative to face-to-face interviews in specific cases. However, there are very relevant human and therapeutic aspects that indicate that, whenever possible, face-to-face assess-ment should be preferred.

The article addresses the issue of prison overcrowding and how it can be tantamount to ill-treatment or torture under international law. Faced with such a broad phenomenon, the piece focuses on two elements that may help to assess this circumstance: the existence of a minimum standard with respect to living space, and the use of tools to establish the existence of harm caused by inhuman conditions of incarceration. The article will show novel jurisprudence of some Courts to secure reparation for victims (early release and reduction of sentence time as offsetting) and will address discussion on the scope and limitations of these decisions with the aim of proposing even more courageous measures to ensure group and generalised reparation measures to reduce the rates of structural institutional violence in prisons.

Introduction: Chile was under a civil-military dictatorship from 1973 to 1990. During that time, systematic violations to human rights were perpetrated. Oral and maxillo-facial trauma was not an exception, and such trauma was carried out through different methods of torture or ill treatment by agents of the State. Currently, Chile has laws and programs in the public healthcare system to carry out the re-habilitation and reparation process in victims, and the registration of the suffered injuries is considered an important part of these med-ico-legal procedures. The aim of this study is to describe and classify the type of torture or ill-treatment in the orofacial area of victims of political repression during the Chilean military dictatorship and relate them to the injuries registered in written reports.

Methods: 14 reports of oral and maxillo-fa-cial injuries of tortured victims from 2016 to 2020 were analyzed, considering the alleged history of the patient, the visible effects on the oral examination, and the type of torture that was inflicted. Historical clinical records and X ray exams were analyzed when available.

Results: 6 variations of torture and ill-treat-ment that involve the maxillo-facial area were caused by agents of the State during the dic-tatorship period.

Discussion: According to the patient ́s account and the clinical examination, all of the torture techniques applied caused, directly or indirectly, the loss of teeth. This resulted in not only physical problems, but psychological problems for the victims.