Newsletters
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A Morning in Dadaab
September 2014
In this issue CVT Clinical Advisor Paul Orieny writes about spending time with one of the counseling groups at our Dadaab project. "On the day I visited, two women counselors were running the groups, starting with a group of young Somali women. They were in their 20s, but their faces didn't look that young. You can read a lot of what has happened in people's lives on their faces -- the sadness in their eyes, the tightness in their facial muscles."
Download:
2014_October.pdf -
Healing for Eritreans
August 2014
Bereket lives in a refugee camp in the northern part of Ethiopia. He is one of 45,000 Eritrean refugees living in this camp. While serving in the Eritrean military, officials claimed Bereket was a traitor because of how he acted during a skirmish with the Ethiopian military. As a result, he was tortured in an underground cell for years.
Download: 2014_Aug.pdf -
Advocating for Survivors and an End to Torture
May 2014
Our advocacy work has addressed the aftermath of the United States’ use of torture, secured resources to support the work of torture survivor centers, and is now raising the profile of mental health and torture survivor rehabilitation.
Download: 2014_May.pdf -
Healing the Body and the Mind with Physical Therapy
February 2014
Halimah fled her home country after being tortured, shot at, raped, and held by rebels for six months. Desperate for a new life, she made her way to Nairobi. When she finally found CVT, she was in pain with a broken bone and a torn muscle. Halimah joined a women’s counseling group and started healing emotionally and psychologically. But when she joined one of the new physical therapy groups, her physical healing and transformation began.
Download: 2014_Feb.pdf -
New Allies, New Resources
November 2013
At CVT, we approach our advocacy work from a perspective that is different from our human rights colleagues. We are not attorneys; we are healers. We give voice to people who were purposely silenced by the perpetrators of torture. We are the only human rights advocacy group that is grounded in more than two decades of helping individual torture survivors heal from their wounds and rebuild their lives. Having extended care to more than 25,000 survivors, CVT has a unique level of knowledge, experience and credibility. Read more about how we create new allies against torture and new resources to heal survivors.
Download: 2013_November.pdf -
Strengthening Torture Rehabilitation Centers
August 2013
In Sierra Leone, CVT psychotherapist/trainer Jesus Perez Cazorla is working with the Community Association for Psychosocial Services (CAPS), one of the partners in our Partners in Trauma Healing (PATH) project, to train, mentor and support the clinical staff. PATH is providing professional, intellectual and emotional support to ten torture rehabilitation centers to help them grow and develop so that more men and women can receive the mental health care they need.
Download: Storycloth_August2013.pdf -
Asylum: A Lifeline for Healing from Torture
May 2013
In our St. Paul Healing Center, nearly two-thirds of all clients are seeking asylum—some waiting up to four years for an answer. Until asylum is granted, though, survivors face the risk of being forced to return to the countries responsible for their torture.
Download: 2013_May.pdf -
Healing in the Heart of Nairobi
February 2013
A group of men, women and children lives in the bustle of Nairobi, Kenya, yet remains largely unnoticed. They are refugees who have fled civil war, tribal conflicts and persecution at the hands of authorities. While they seek more peaceful lives, their tortured pasts often follow them in the form of nightmares, despair or anxiety. This spring, the Center for Victims of Torture is launching its newest international project in Nairobi to bring hope and healing to these urban refugees.
Download: 2013_February.pdf -
Healing Through Storytelling
November 2012
Every torture survivor has a story to tell. Left untold, it festers and erupts in nightmares, anxiety, shame and panic attacks. But when survivors tell their stories in a therapeutic setting, they start down the path to healing. In this issue of our Storycloth newsletter, you’ll learn how important it is for torture survivors to tell their story as part of the healing process.
Download: 2012_November.pdf -
Living and Healing Internationally
August 2012
At CVT we rely on expatriate professionals to provide high quality mental health care to survivors of torture and war trauma. They do this under difficult circumstances, working in refugee camps and post-conflict countries where infrastructure and services are limited. New expats must also be prepared to deal with the emotional aspects of their work, including hearing stories of torture and trauma regularly and living as a stranger in a community. The life of an expat is not easy, yet it is filled with intangible rewards of watching local counselors learn and hearing directly from the survivors how their lives have changed.
Download: 2012_August.pdf
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Media Contact
Betsy Brown
Communications Director
bbrown [at] cvt.org