Grassroots Science: Families that Perpetrate Torture and Trafficking – Understanding Women’s Victimizations and Recovery
Jeanne Sarson, BScN, MEd & Linda MacDonald, BN, MEd | September 23 | 11:45 am-12:45 pm
Topic: Conceptual | Knowledge Level: Intermediate
This session presents the scientific framework created over 29 years of supporting women whose victimization manifested as torture (non-State torture) inflicted against them as children within families or within spousal relationships. It shares the importance of validation by creating a caring environment that enables women’s truth- telling. Ground-breaking models identify the criminal actions of torturer-traffickers (Sarson & MacDonald, 2021; 2019; 2018; 2016; 2009) and includes women’s drawings, shared with consent, which gives witness to their victimizations but also voices the harmful impacts on their relationship with/to/for self. Discussed are principles developed that guide non-state torture (NST) victimization-traumatization informed care including naming women’s survival responses as post-traumatic stress responses (PTSR) and explanatory models acknowledging women’s evilism anxieties (Sarson & MacDonald, 2021). “Re-building” women’s sense of personhood involves doing the opposite of what non-state torturers do because family-based torturer-traffickers intentionally attempt to destroy the personality of the girl’s or woman’s sense of being human but explaining that torture is a violation of their human rights is a healing intervention.
Presentation Objectives:
· Define torture perpetrated within families by sharing individual women’s ordeals to help illustrate the actions or modus operandi of the perpetrators
· Explain how women’s PTSR will assist promoting insights into the normalization of women’s survival responses and assist in their recovery
· Discuss key principles developed that guide NST victimization-traumatization informed care to help build resilience for both the women victimized and the carer