The politics of rescue

Abstract

In December 2002 the UN adopted a definition of ‘trafficking’ that critics worry discounts female agency in commercial sex and migration. This definition was already being used in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) and Kosovo to tackle the violent sex industry that had developed alongside peacekeeping. This paper analyses official assumptions about female agency in commercial sex when ‘victims of trafficking’ (VoTs) are identified in BiH and Kosovo. In this context the Protocol definition helped extend access to resources to women and girls who could otherwise have been excluded. Those who had ‘been abroad’ before were no longer automatically rejected from VoT programmes but pathologised as sufferers of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); their illness establishing their ‘innocence’. Understanding the choice of migration for sex work as a symptom of PTSD allows anti-trafficking programmes to focus on victim rather than perpetrator behaviour. Strong pressures against tackling the way soldiers, police and contractors treat women and girls in the sex industry underlie this focus on victim behaviour. Those in the sex industry who are not ‘foreign’ or do not want to go ‘home’ are excluded from VoT status while anti-trafficking activity increases their risk of arrest, thus reifying the categories of innocent VoT and guilty prostitute.

Keywords:

• peacekeeping
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
• prostitution
• sex industry
• trafficking

Notes

1. Girls over 12 are sold in BiH and Kosovo along with women, not in a ‘market niche’ for paedophiles. This is common in sex markets around the world (Davidson 1998: 12). In this article I will talk about ‘women and girls’ because I have read no reports of males being sold for sex. Of course this does not mean that it is not happening, IOM Kosovo (2003a) reports helping one boy of 14 although it is not said what kind of forced labour he was in. ‘Childhood’ is a cultural construction and many people, including myself, find it odd to think about someone who is 16 or 17 as a child. However, I will use the term ‘girls’ to refer to those under 18, following the UN and most international bodies. The literature on BiH and Kosovo reports that there is a minority of girls under 18 in the brothels.

2. There is a real irony in this since PTSD literature is highly critical of ‘blame the victim’ discourse, and in fact victim blaming is discussed as one of the typical human responses to traumatic events (see Herman 1997).

3. The quotation marks do not indicate that these categories do not exist in ‘reality’ but rather acknowledge that their definition is precisely what is being contested politically in laws dealing with the sex industry. Terms such as ‘sex worker’, ‘prostitute’, ‘sexual abuse’ and ‘prostituted woman’ (often used to denote the victim status of women and girls in the sex industry) are contested. My purpose in this article is not to advocate one term as more appropriate than another, therefore I use all terms in quotation marks to indicate that these are categories used by various agents to think with and that this has varying results.

4. There are parallels that could be drawn between VoT programmes and contemporary welfare state programmes, which aim to ‘reintegrate’ the welfare dependent underclass while blaming their problematic cultural habits for their poverty and marginality. My critique of such programmes draws on Nikolas Rose's work on liberal strategies and techniques of government. See Rose (1993, 1996a, 1996b).

5. The Protocol defines ‘trafficking’ in the following way: [a] Trafficking in persons shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. [b] The consent of the victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) have been used; [c] The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered ‘trafficking in persons’ even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in subparagraph [a] of this article. [d] ‘Child’ shall mean any person under eighteen years of age. The Protocol also provides a basis for transferring resources to VoTs, providing a useful tool for those lobbying for funds. See http://www.uncjin.org/Documents/Conventions/dcatoc/final_documents_2/convention_%20traff_eng.pdf (accessed 4 January 2005).

6. For example, UNMIK Regulation 2001/4 uses the exact wording of the UN Protocol and one OSCE report uses the exact words in the Protocol without citing it to any other source. See OSCE (2001b); IOM (2003a: 1).

7. Clause a of the Protocol at http://www.uncjin.org/Documents/Conventions/dcatoc/final_documents_2/convention_%20traff_eng.pdf (accessed 4 January 2005).

8. Amnesty also suggests that it could be applied to women or girls held captive and repeatedly raped whether or not in a commercial context (Amnesty International 2004: 16–18).

9. The Trafficking Protocol was one of two supplementing the UN Convention on Trans-national Crime, the second was the Migrant Smuggling Protocol, addressed to ‘voluntary migrants’. ‘Trafficked’ migrants are profiled as mostly women and children, thus we assume most ‘smuggled’ migrants are male. See http://www.uncjin.org/Documents/Conventions/dcatoc/final_documents_2/convention_eng.pdf (accessed 4 January 2005).

10. For arguments and testimonies about this see: Prostitutes Education Network, Prostitution Law Reform: Defining Terms, http://www.bayswan.org/defining.html; Prostitutes Rights, Alleged Trafficking of Asian Sex Workers in Australia, http://www.bayswan.org/Austraf.html

11. This is not to say that ‘inclusiveness’ is not also a problem with the Protocol since it singles out all foreign women who work in nightclubs as potential victims and thus exposes them to more police attention. An example of the importance of local categorizations and resources to how the Protocol works is how in Western Europe ‘eastern’ prostitutes are usually assumed to be ‘trafficked’ while ‘western’ women are assumed to have independent agency in choosing sex work. See Outshoorn (2000) and Allwood (2003) who both describe how ‘eastern trafficked woman/girl’ becomes an orientalized category in relation to ‘liberated western sex worker’ in the Netherlands (Outshoorn 2000) and France (Allwood 2003), allowing for more policing of female migrants in both cases. Doezema (2001) discusses this problem more generally. In Kempadoo and Doezema (1998: 45) she notes that in Holland police refuse to follow up complaints of ‘trafficking’ from women who continue to do sex work. Altink (1995) also notes this about the Dutch police throughout her book. This suggests that the VoT category is applied inclusively to allow policing of migrants, but when it comes to policing perpetrators exclusiveness becomes an issue.

12. A Moldovan woman who escaped a brothel in Kosovo expressing her fears about being re-sold into prostitution once she returns to Moldova (HRW 2002: 20).

13. In Vietnam, the Republic of Korea and the Philippines the ‘overwhelming cultural pressure’ on US soldiers to have sex with prostitutes was reportedly difficult to resist while the prostitutes were mostly living in debt bondage and experienced violence from GIs and pimps (Moon 1997: 37). Before the US military presence, the Japanese military had forced Korean women into prostitution to serve for soldiers, while in Vietnam the French military regulated soldiers' access to prostitutes (Enloe 1988: 32). The British, Dutch, French and Americans regulated prostitutes for soldiers with the infamous Contagious Diseases Acts that enforced regular gynaecological examinations on women identified as prostitutes by authorities in designated areas near military bases (see Burton 1994).

14. According to data compiled by the International Lesbian and Gay Association and the Centre for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, twenty-four countries allow gays and lesbians in the military: Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Belgium, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands (being first to lift the ban in 1974), New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. The USA bans gays and lesbians along with Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, Croatia, Greece, Poland, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Turkey and Venezuela. In many other countries homosexuality is illegal and so there is no stated policy on homosexuals in the military at all since they are outlawed. See http://www.gaymilitary.ucsb.edu/PressCenter/press_rel_2003_0317b.htm

15. See, for example, the generic gender training manual for peacekeeping personnel at http://www.reliefweb.int/training/trainingmaterial/dpko-gendergeneric.pdf. See also the code of conduct card at http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/training/tes_publications/books/peacekeeping_training/pocket_cards/un_in.pdf

16. I take the term ‘confined brothel’ from Julia O'Connell Davidson's (1998: 29–35) typology of the various social relations structuring commercial sex around the globe. Commentators agree that the number of brothels in both BiH and Kosovo mushroomed with the arrival of peacekeepers although they disagree about the scale of the problem and the proportion of locals and internationals forming the market. IOM Kosovo (2003a: 8) stresses that the majority of brothel patrons are local men while other observers emphasize that most of the profits in the local sex industries come from the ‘international community’ (Limanowska 2002: 81; Amnesty International 2004: 39–40).

17. Of the 371 women, girls and one boy assisted by the IOM shelter in Kosovo between February 2000 and May 2003 70.87 per cent report never being paid anything at all, only 3.67 per cent reported getting regular pay, others were paid either only at first or towards the end of their time. Women were usually forced to serve drinks, dance and have sex with bar patrons and do domestic work (IOM Kosovo 2003a: 6; Amnesty International 2004: 12). The devices of control that allow this are: physical violence, constant supervision, locked rooms, drugging, confiscation of identity documents, threats against loved ones back home, violence against one person in front of others to intimidate them, manipulating fears of arrest for prostitution and/or illegal migration along with debt bondage. Debt bondage is important for motivating intimidated subjects to work. In this system money-lenders offer people large loans and then demand they work for little or no pay until the loan is repaid. The debt motivates compliance because people believe they can work it off. This may or may not be the case: some people have to work without pay for a few months, others years and sometimes women or girls are thrown out of brothels when the debt is counted as clear.

18. This description of conditions in the sex industry is based on numerous case histories, many compiled by IOM shelters for trafficked women, but others by other human rights investigators, NGOs and journalists (OSCE Mission in Kosovo 2001b; Correspondent: Boys Will be Boys 2002; Hearing 2002; Human Rights Watch 2002; IOM Kosovo 2002a, 2003a, 2003b; Kelly 2002; Rehn and Sirleaf 2002; Amnesty International 2004). NGOs in BiH say 90 per cent of women and girls in the brothels are foreign, but this is an impressionistic figure. However it seems that club owners do favour foreign women. Limanowska (2002: 64) mentions that there is local street prostitution in BiH, especially in border areas. A shelter for women and children in Kosovo reports that the number of local women held captive and sold for sex is increasing, 36 per cent of women and girls registered with Kosovo police as working in bars suspected of trafficking were local in 2003 (Amnesty International 2004: 8, 16).

19. ‘We drove out of the barracks as usual in our military jeep just as usual with a driver's pass so that no one can become suspicious of us … we drove around and waited until 11pm, and then drove to the brothel as fast as we could. We called the brothel's owner that we are coming … the owner opened the gate so we could drive straight into the garage.’

 (German KFOR soldier, describing events in Macedonia where KFOR also have a presence. Amnesty International 2004: 42)

Four girls made statements reporting being taken to the Russian military camp in Kosovo where they were sold for sex (OSCE Mission in Kosovo 2001a: 60). Amnesty International report ‘credible allegations’ about the use of trafficked women within KFOR national battalions, including at Camp Monteith in Gnjilane/Gjilan and Camp Bondsteel near Ferizaj/Uroševac, where US KFOR personnel are prohibited from leaving their bases (Amnesty International 2004: 43).

20. For an overview of UN peacekeeping operations in BiH, Kosovo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Occupied Palestinian territories, East Timor, Sierra Leone see Rehn and Sirleaf (2002).

21. See (HRW 2002: 49–68). One whistleblower on peacekeeper involvement in the sex market in BiH, Ben Johnston, an aircraft mechanic contracted by DynCorp, testified that many of his colleagues in BiH ‘owned’ and traded girls aged 12 to 15, talking about and treating them as sexual and domestic slaves. He stressed that this was a norm among the men he worked with and that he was encouraged by others to buy a girl and offered opportunities to do so (Hearing 2002: 27–9). This practice of soldiers paying off a woman's debt was noted by Moon (1997) in her study of ‘camptown’ brothels specifically for US GIs in South Korea, however in these cases the women were called ‘wives’, even if the relationship was only for the duration of the GI's stay. The reasons why discourses of slavery have appeared in BiH and Kosovo are not completely clear to me. Johnston's testimony resulted in a US Army Criminal Investigations Division (CID) investigation, which, among other things, uncovered and confiscated (from local police) a video tape of a DynCorp contractor raping two girls. US Army Criminal Investigations Command, ‘Agents Investigation Report’, ROI Number 0075-00-CID597-49891; ‘Sworn Statement: John David Hirtz’; ‘Sworn Statement [of Kevin Warner’: File number 0065-00CID597, Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina 2 June 2000, on file with Human Rights Watch (HRW 2002: 63); Human Rights Watch interview with Safet Huseinovic, chief of police, Zivinice, 27 March 2001 (HRW 2002: 64). Kathy Bolkovac, also contracted by DynCorp as a police officer with the gender office, analysed transcripts of interviews with more than thirty-five ‘trafficked’ women. She wrote a report describing the violence and abuse these women had experienced, mapping the geography and patterns of the market they described and criticizing the presence of peacekeepers among those paying for sex with them. Internal e-mail correspondence from Kathryn Bolkovac to UN mission personnel. ‘Subject: Do Not Read This if You Have a Weak Stomach or Guilty Conscience’, 9 October 2000, on file with Human Rights Watch (HRW 2002: 54). An OSCE report mentions testimonies from women about UN personnel buying and selling women and girls, three Romanian women who sought help from police and told of being sold in Belgrade and taken to Kosovo where they were driven in a UN vehicle by a UN staff member to a hotel where they were threatened and sold for sex (OSCE 2001a: 57). Another group of four girls made statements in which they reported being taken to the Russian military camp where they were sold for sex (OSCE 2001a: 60).

22. According to Human Rights Watch Article VI of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the UN regarding ‘experts on mission’, which would apply to civilian contractors, only provides for immunity in the case of ‘words, spoken or written and acts done by them in the course of the performance of their mission’. Therefore civilian personnel should be able to be prosecuted by local law for criminal activity, however this has never happened in practice. See Human Rights Watch (2002: 46–48).

23. Data and analysis on gender and policing can be found at http://www.womenandpolicing.org/publications.asp

24. In March 2003 DynCorp was bought by Computer Sciences Corporation, http://www.csc.com/newsandevents/news/2327.shtml. In a current advertisement it refers to itself as DynCorp International FZ-LLC (DIFZ). See International Police recruitment advertisements at http://policemission.dyncorp.com/kosovo.asp

25. These hearings were before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights of the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, One Hundred Seventh Congress, Second Session, 24 April 2002. Interestingly, the discourse of ‘slavery’ was used here a lot, alongside that of ‘trafficking’.

26. See Harrington (2003) for a review of the ‘hyper-masculinity’ literature that suggests such an analysis.

27. She later won her case for unfair dismissal against Dyncorp, see Daniel McGrory ‘Woman Sacked for Revealing UN Links with Sex Trade’, Times Online, 7 August 2002. Available at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,3-376444,00.html

28. UNMIBH IPTF ‘Investigative Report’ ‘Follow-up Requested: International SFOR-IPTF-Local Police Allegations of Involvement’, 5 November 2000, cited in HRW (2002: 54).

29. Interview, IPTF internal affairs investigator [name withheld], Sarajevo, 24 March 2001 (cited in HRW 2002: 59). There are also reports of IPTF tampering with witness testimony. Some women freed from a brothel by a police raid reported that the IPTF officers driving them to give testimony had been brothel regulars and had told them not to say ‘too much or anything about our relations’ (Hearing 2002: 21). An IPTF officer taking evidence from two Romanian women said that after a Romanian IPTF monitor in the station shouted in Romanian at them the women seemed afraid to co-operate anymore (UNMIBH ‘Summary Investigation Report: Bijeljina 2, Covering Period 2–19 March, 2001, cited in HRW 2002: 51).

30. For example, in March 2001 in BiH operation Macro was organized by ministries of the interior of both entities. Police raided 39 bars and found 177 foreign women but only 13 were referred to IOM, 34 foreign women were charged with prostitution, found guilty and sentenced, imprisoned and fined. Charges against eight Bosnian men for mediating in prostitution were lifted. Four were charged with renting a place for prostitution and sentenced to 20 to 40 days. Nobody was charged with crimes related to ‘trafficking’. No human rights officers were involved. According to IPTF sources the bar owners were tipped off in advance (Limanowska 2002: 66–7). In Kosovo both OSCE and Amnesty International express concern about the large numbers of convictions of foreign women for prostitution even after a new trafficking regulation was introduced (OSCE 2001a: 58; Amnesty International 2004: 19–22).

31. Human Rights Watch tells of women testifying that this was a case in IPTF police raids in Bosnia, November 2000. A ‘high level UNMIBH official’ is quoted as saying the IPTF raided one particular brothel to cover up their own use of it when the story of their involvement seemed likely to go public (HRW 2002: 49–50). Human Rights Watch (2002) reports on local and international police as sex-buyers in Bosnia (see chapters 6 and 9) while Amnesty International (2004) do so for Kosovo (see pp. 7–8, 27). For further discussion of police involvement see Limanowska (2002: 24–5, 84, 112) and Hearing (2002: 24, 53).

32. In Kosovo the shelter was opened with a voluntary contribution from the OSCE Austrian chair in office. When IOM had to freeze activities in March and April 2001 OSCE stepped in to lead all ‘repatriation and reintegration assistance for the most needy victims’ and raised funds for the shelter from the US government (see OSCE 2001b).

33. See http://unmikonline.org/regulations/2001/re04-01.html for the full text of the Kosovo anti-trafficking regulation, including the extensive rights theoretically granted to VoTs.

34. This was mentioned in an interview with an IPTF human rights officer [name withheld] Sarajevo, 26 March 2001 (HRW 2002: 44).

35. Assistance was refused by IOM when women were assessed to be residing voluntarily in Kosovo and voluntarily performing their job, having their own means (money and documents) to return home and being not at risk, or when they had already refused the offer of assistance several times. For women who do not qualify for the IOM trafficking victims return programme but wish to go back home there is a separate IOM programme for stranded migrants. In order not to create a magnet, the selection for second assistance programme is very strict.

(Limanowska 2002: 98)

36. ‘The interview is conducted by IOM staff in the beneficiary's mother tongue and aims at identifying eligible beneficiaries for the return and reintegration assistance programme and to assess their specific needs’ (IOM Kosovo 2003b: 17).

37. Until October 2001 out of 450 referrals to IOM 180 refused assistance, 250 were helped and 4 were refused because they were assessed as voluntarily living and working in Kosovo and able to get home without help, or because they had refused assistance a number of times (Limanowska 2002: 98).

38. Some women fear that by returning home through the IOM programme what happened to them will be obvious, IOM offer those who want to go home without entering the programme a limited ‘mini-programme’, providing help with travel documents. Since it is impossible to get a passport issued in Kosovo, and impossible to travel legally anywhere where one can be issued, women and girls without documents are effectively trapped in Kosovo (Amnesty International 2004: 30).

39. Local women and girls in brothels are usually not recognized as VoTs, but sometimes have been placed in a shelter run by the local Centre for the Protection of Women and Children (CPWC) (Limanowska 2002: 103). Since 2000 the CPWC has been providing shelter for internally trafficked women, but the police have no ‘standard operating procedures’ for referring them to the shelter.

40. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees Principles and Guidelines, paragraph 11 says: ‘Trafficked persons shall be offered legal alternatives to repatriation in cases where it is reasonable to conclude that such repatriation would pose a serious risk to their safety and/or to the safety of their families’ (Amnesty International 2004: 33).

41. From 2004 responsibility for this shelter was being transferred to a local NGO ‘staffed by experienced shelter workers’ (Amnesty International 2004: 32).

42. Celhia de Lavarene, STOP director, 14 March 2002 telephone interview with Human Rights Watch (HRW 2002: 19).

43. ‘Prosecutors usually ignore complaints of beatings and mistreatment at the hands of night-club owners and guards and let pass opportunities to bring physical assault charges against them’ (HRW 2002: 25). ‘In a case in Sokolac in March 2001 women were prosecuted and imprisoned for thirty days after testifying against their traffickers. IPTF appeared completely incapable of preventing prosecution of these women’ (HRW 2002: 19). In another, 1999, case reported by HRW, in Zivinice, Tuzla canton, a local criminal court convicted four Moldovan women of prostitution while dropping charges against the owners of the club they had been forced to work at (HRW 2002: 38–9). In Kosovo courts overturned police efforts to close brothels (Limanowska 2002: 99). OSCE reports that in Kosovo judges routinely humiliate women and girls giving testimony of sexual violence, few witnesses have appeared in trafficking trials because of the lack of witness protection, but when one did she was required to give her address and place of employment publicly in court (in line with procedure). In addition, according to the procedure, the defendants were allowed to question her directly (OSCE 2001a: 55–61).

44. Human Rights Watch telephone interview, Celhia de Lavarene, STOP director, 14 March 2002 (HRW 2002: 36).

45. Other calculations of the numbers of women and girls in confined brothels suggest an average of ten to twenty-five in each, so I am being very conservative here. The point is to compare the proportion of VoTs to the total number of women and girls in confined brothels (Limanowska 2002: 64).

46. TPIU decided to give up raids in June 2003 and turn to undercover work because the number of premises involved in prostitution had doubled between 2002 and 2003 (Amnesty International 2004: 25).

47. A welcome exception is IOM's recent publication of the results of a pilot study into the demand for ‘unfree’ domestic and sex workers by Anderson and Davidson (2003) funded by the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sida and Save the Children Sweden and the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain. This contributes to a small, but growing, literature on the topic. See also Davidson (1998) for an analysis of different patterns of sex buying.

48. This report is based on an empirical analysis by psychologist Diana Tudorache based on counselling provided to VoTs in Kosovo from September 2001 to March 2003.

49. For example in January 2003 the US Agency for International Development announced a new policy cutting funding to international projects perceived as supporting the decriminalization of prostitution and legalization of drugs and abortion. In this kind of context, any organization seeking to raise money for people who need help getting away from violence in the sex industry has to frame their projects in a way that makes it clear they are opposed to prostitution.

50. The argument runs along the following lines. Some analysts have suggested that ‘proficiency in dissociation’ acquired during childhood sexual abuse enables prostitutes to do sex work (see Jordan 1992: 193–194; Farley and Kelly 2000: 47). A common theme in rape and torture survivor narratives is that in dealing with repeated rape and bodily violation people develop a sense of dissociation of their sense of ‘self’ from their body. The suggestion is that people who have been raped a lot may be more likely to consider selling sex as an option because they have learned to tolerate undesired sexual contact, or in the words of an adult prostitute: ‘You can switch off easily in the job because you've had to in the past’ (‘Sarah’ quoted in Jordan 1992: 193). Sex industry abolitionists argue that such dissociation is a norm for prostitutes and that this is psychologically unhealthy, a symptom of PTSD. They suggest that the involuntary traumatic dissociation with which people respond to bodily violation and the mental techniques prostitutes report using to ‘switch off’ their sense of their self in their body during sexual contact with sex-buyers are somehow associated. Melissa Farley, along with others, has conducted comparative research on prostitutes using a clinical measure of post-traumatic stress disorder. Her research documents high rates of childhood sexual abuse (60–90 per cent) and ongoing violence in the prostitutes’ lives and very high rates of post-traumatic stress symptoms (Farley and Barkan 1998; Farley et al. 1998). Of course none of these studies are (statistically) representative of the sex industry, even for the countries in which they were done. They focused on specific groups of prostitutes who appear as a ‘problem’, street prostitutes, or prostitutes associated with rehabilitation programmes.

51. See Donald Alexander Downs (1998) for further discussion of the complexities of PTSD as a defence for victims.

52. The figure for Kosovo is actually for between February and September 2002. In Moldova IOM provides VoTs with shelter for up to one year, medical examination and treatment, psychological, legal and job-seeking support. They report working with the Ministry of Labour on an apprenticeship programme for 100 to 150 VoTs (IOM Kosovo 2003a: 15).

53. The sorts of therapy socially privileged ‘survivors’ of sexual abuse follow nowadays are usually very much as an outcome of feminist campaigns for the recognition and treatment of sexual abuse as trauma. Treatment usually involves reorganizing traumatic memories with a therapist gently guiding the recall, disclosure, full articulation and integration of memories of the traumatic experience. Because the relation of trust necessary to nurture such disclosure can take time to build, treatment can be a long-term and expensive process. A precondition of beginning such therapy is establishing ‘basic safety’, that is the traumatized person needs to be confident s/he is out of danger. See Herman (1997) for a discussion of treatment from the point of view of the therapist and addressed to therapists.