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People who have suffered physical and sexual torture have a particularly hard time living
with the sexual torture. The perpetrator’s purpose was to destroy the sexual identity of the
Person and he used psychological mechanisms to obtain that. The torturer observes the
most vulnerable points in the victims’ reactions and uses them to break her will. Torture
creates an extreme social situation where the victims are subordinated totally to the will of
the perpetrator. Unpredictable and painful attacks on the body creates a helpless situation.
To be subjected to sexually humiliating situations in combination with other psychological
torture as food, sleep, water and sanitary deprivation, teaches the victim that she is totally
helpless, can not escape, can not be heard by anyone. In this situation she feels like a
marionette with total loss of control and independence. Her body does no longer belong to
herself but to somebody else.
The torturer decides what and when she will eat, drink, go to the toilet, sit or stand, be at
his disposal sexually. The sexual assault attacks the most intimate parts of the body and
soul. Sexuality, normally a part of a safe intimate relationship, is turned into the most
aggressive and unpredictable attack. The humiliation, shame and fear felt in the torture
situation is carried with the victim for the rest of her life if untreated. The torturer often tells
the woman that she will not be able to be a woman again and will never be able to have
children.
Since sexual torture involves the intimate parts of the body it creates a special tormenting
feeling of complicity in the victim. Even under the most forcible and inescapable situations
where resistance only brings more and heavier assaults, women feel guilty and feel they
should have done something to escape the situation (J rgensen, 1993, Arcel 1998).
Acts of psychological and sexual abuse are invasions of the self of the victims. (Arcel et al
2000. Kirshoff 1999 Herman 1992) Victimisation affects important assumptions about
oneself and the world that the victim held up until the moment of victimization. What
changes is especially the feeling of invulnerability that we all have as a natural
endowment.
The conviction that we are invulnerable is healthy and necessary in our everyday lives,
otherwise we would constantly be suspicious of every person and every situation as
potentially dangerous.
Torture destroys temporarily or permanently the feeling of invulnerability.
Posted on 2002-11-11
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