marjorie murphy
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Imagine the life long pain. That's torture. It actually happened to me. An event that effected me physically for the rest of my life. (GSW). Is it torture? Physically it has been. It doesn't go away...ever.
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Torture Vs Abuse
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The reason the UN law says "public official" is because the purpose of the law is to regulate governments. The wording has nothing to do with defining a type of trauma or processing trauma. It is establishing jurisdiction over national governments. If Hannibal Lecter kidnaps and tortures you, you don't go to the International Criminal Court in Den Hague and prosecute. Instead you prosecute in your local, state/province or national court. If Heinrich Himmler tortures you, you can't go to Hitler and say, hey I want to prosecute Heinrich in the Nazi court. But you can go to Den Hague and prosecute there. That is why the UN remedy exists. Because Adolf and Heinrich are on the same team and you won't get justice from them. It has nothing, nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of trauma. It has to do with providing a supranational judicial remedy where none (or insufficient) exists on the national level. Period.
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Nope.
It's used as citation in cases fully contained within local jurisdictions. In other words: has been cited when applicable in crimes occurring on US soil, under state law, utterly not international.
It defines a specific kind of trauma.
Opinions are not facts.
Edit to add: It also works the other way around - the legal concept of Universal Jurisdiction: local crimes considered heinous enough to be deemed 'crimes against humanity', and therefore become subject to international law.
Torture is a segment of abuse.
I say that because there are two thoughts of the mind of the abuser
Abuse is more originating from explosive anger and of hatred by the abuser
An abusive boyfriend I had put my head through the wall because he misplaced tickets to the Who. I was not even home when he misplaced them but I came home and I became the object he could display his frustration. He'd say sorry, that he would not do it again, and I'd forgive him. then it became a habitual abusive act. Thus became Torture
I don't know I think there is something more in premeditated and some joy that the abuse is torture. A game of superiority. Especially if the victim returns or constantly forgive.
Then again, if you are a child, as I was, and my father would give me black eyes or throw me across the room by the hair. between ages 2 to 8. He never gave my younger sister that same treatment. I was a target. The punching bag
I say that because there are two thoughts of the mind of the abuser
Abuse is more originating from explosive anger and of hatred by the abuser
An abusive boyfriend I had put my head through the wall because he misplaced tickets to the Who. I was not even home when he misplaced them but I came home and I became the object he could display his frustration. He'd say sorry, that he would not do it again, and I'd forgive him. then it became a habitual abusive act. Thus became Torture
I don't know I think there is something more in premeditated and some joy that the abuse is torture. A game of superiority. Especially if the victim returns or constantly forgive.
Then again, if you are a child, as I was, and my father would give me black eyes or throw me across the room by the hair. between ages 2 to 8. He never gave my younger sister that same treatment. I was a target. The punching bag
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@Cashew
<rueful> Same. Start writing, 37 paragraphs later, give it up as a bad job, all over the damn place, too much information, too personal, too hiding in words, too many perspectives, too many thought streams, too many memories, too impersonal, too biased, too FFS brain. It's a simple thing. But it's not. But it is. But it's not. But, f*ck. f*ck it. Not writing an academic paper here.
Trying to cut myself some slack. Explain Torture. It's like trying to explain combat. Or abuse. Or colors. IDK.
See... To me... This is the almost the purest definition of abuse.
You're coming home.
Someone can be tortured, and returned to normal life. Picked up again, and returned to normal life. It can repeat. Or it can be a block of time. Someone can be tortured over the course of hours, days, months, years. But those long times? When you're being held? Or holding someone? You can torture them continually for very short periods of time. Including things like leaving them in a light box, or using sound, or temperature, or anything else slow. No one has to actually be there applying certain kinds of torture, and they'll break, then start to break down, and then they'll die. You can't torture someone continuously for very long. Our bodies are too fragile. Hours - Days ...is the max. The absolute max. And every individual has their own unique limits. It takes a fair bit of skill not to break people, or kill people, on accident.
Trying to explain to some people why you can't abuse prisoners you're also torturing if you want them to last is like shouting into the wind. People can survive long periods of abuse. But they can't survive long periods of abuse and torture. Abuse on top of torture is lethal. Always.
Its a good tell, actually. How you're treated when you're not being tortured. If they're feeding you unpoisoned food? Keeping you relatively clean? Leaving you alone for longish or at least regular periods of time in order to recover? They're keeping you alive. You have some kind of value to them. If you're being held by amateurs, or you're being abused on top of torture? Don't expect to live long. Either they don't know how to keep you alive, or they don't care if you die.
What normal life is? Whether it's being held/imprisoned, or white picket fences and Labrador on the lawn with kids playing in the street? Doesn't really matter. They are two very distinct pieces to being tortured. When you are & when you're not. How you're treated on top of that? That's a whole 3rd thing. You might be being abused. You might be well taken care of, comparatively, not-necessarily comfortably. You might be returned to your everyday life.
What people who've never been abused just don't get is how it's woven into normal life. How it becomes normal life. Which is part of why "normal life" is so f*cking hard after being abused. While I suppose it's theoretically possible for an abuser to be abusive all of the time, most aren't. Most make pancakes. Take you on pic-nics. Go to work & come home. Et cetera. You go about your normal life whilst being abused. Going to school or work. Have birthdays. Shopping. Cooking. Cleaning. Making friends. But the abuse is always there. Whether you're abused daily, or your abuser only abuses you twice a year, it's there. Waiting. People have a zillion different common household triggers surrounding abuse, just because it's so woven into normal living.
It's a very deliberate interrogation technique to interject normal life into torture. Unlike abuse, which is woven in naturally, it has to be done very deliberately. And it kind of makes your brain fall out of your head if you're the one being tortured. The cognitive dissonance is beyond huge. Again, one of the opposite things from being abused.
Bringing in aspects of normal life... Either intensifies pain about a zillion fold, or cracks your reality to pieces, and starts forming trust/emotional bonds/dependency on a whole new scale. The closer they can get it to your real normal life? Your actual brand of cereal? Something owned by someone you love? The harder the hit. It's... Hard to explain. Something that reminds you of home. No matter how good, how bad it's... Wrong. It's wrong for it to be here. A photograph can leave someone screaming. While sharing their everyday casual breakfast with them can leave them ready to die for you, even though they want you dead. It's complicated. It's also very risky and very delicate, if you're the one doing it. Some people, some governments, are known for this. It's completely different from Stockholm Syndrome. And it's applied in different ways with different results. It happens on accident, too. Far too often. A guard. An aid worker. Someone. Trying to do something "nice", or to give them hope. It's a brutal thing to do.
I'm really tempted to say that the easiest way to draw a line is that abuse is woven into normal life, while torture exists completely outside of it // It's not something that ever normalizes. At least, not in my experience. Expected? Yes. But not normalizes. ...Tempted, but I don't know if I'm right // ***I could be very wrong here***. It's right inside of my experience but... My experience with torture is political / criminal. Different places, but in that sphere. I do know, though, that some religious cults use torture on kids and new members as part of brainwashing them. Part of fragmenting reality & creating dependence. That kind of torture may well normalize, but I'd have nooooooo idea what that does to a person.. Or it may be its own seperate thing... There's torture, there's abuse, there's brainwashing, maybe?. 3 different things, with 3 very different realities and long term effect? . I don't know. I've never been involved in it / it's outside of my experience.
I'm using too many words. Talking too much. Sorry for anyone who's gotten through this. It's... Really difficult to explain certain things.
.
<rueful> Same. Start writing, 37 paragraphs later, give it up as a bad job, all over the damn place, too much information, too personal, too hiding in words, too many perspectives, too many thought streams, too many memories, too impersonal, too biased, too FFS brain. It's a simple thing. But it's not. But it is. But it's not. But, f*ck. f*ck it. Not writing an academic paper here.
Trying to cut myself some slack. Explain Torture. It's like trying to explain combat. Or abuse. Or colors. IDK.
See... To me... This is the almost the purest definition of abuse.
You're coming home.
Someone can be tortured, and returned to normal life. Picked up again, and returned to normal life. It can repeat. Or it can be a block of time. Someone can be tortured over the course of hours, days, months, years. But those long times? When you're being held? Or holding someone? You can torture them continually for very short periods of time. Including things like leaving them in a light box, or using sound, or temperature, or anything else slow. No one has to actually be there applying certain kinds of torture, and they'll break, then start to break down, and then they'll die. You can't torture someone continuously for very long. Our bodies are too fragile. Hours - Days ...is the max. The absolute max. And every individual has their own unique limits. It takes a fair bit of skill not to break people, or kill people, on accident.
Trying to explain to some people why you can't abuse prisoners you're also torturing if you want them to last is like shouting into the wind. People can survive long periods of abuse. But they can't survive long periods of abuse and torture. Abuse on top of torture is lethal. Always.
Its a good tell, actually. How you're treated when you're not being tortured. If they're feeding you unpoisoned food? Keeping you relatively clean? Leaving you alone for longish or at least regular periods of time in order to recover? They're keeping you alive. You have some kind of value to them. If you're being held by amateurs, or you're being abused on top of torture? Don't expect to live long. Either they don't know how to keep you alive, or they don't care if you die.
What normal life is? Whether it's being held/imprisoned, or white picket fences and Labrador on the lawn with kids playing in the street? Doesn't really matter. They are two very distinct pieces to being tortured. When you are & when you're not. How you're treated on top of that? That's a whole 3rd thing. You might be being abused. You might be well taken care of, comparatively, not-necessarily comfortably. You might be returned to your everyday life.
What people who've never been abused just don't get is how it's woven into normal life. How it becomes normal life. Which is part of why "normal life" is so f*cking hard after being abused. While I suppose it's theoretically possible for an abuser to be abusive all of the time, most aren't. Most make pancakes. Take you on pic-nics. Go to work & come home. Et cetera. You go about your normal life whilst being abused. Going to school or work. Have birthdays. Shopping. Cooking. Cleaning. Making friends. But the abuse is always there. Whether you're abused daily, or your abuser only abuses you twice a year, it's there. Waiting. People have a zillion different common household triggers surrounding abuse, just because it's so woven into normal living.
It's a very deliberate interrogation technique to interject normal life into torture. Unlike abuse, which is woven in naturally, it has to be done very deliberately. And it kind of makes your brain fall out of your head if you're the one being tortured. The cognitive dissonance is beyond huge. Again, one of the opposite things from being abused.
Bringing in aspects of normal life... Either intensifies pain about a zillion fold, or cracks your reality to pieces, and starts forming trust/emotional bonds/dependency on a whole new scale. The closer they can get it to your real normal life? Your actual brand of cereal? Something owned by someone you love? The harder the hit. It's... Hard to explain. Something that reminds you of home. No matter how good, how bad it's... Wrong. It's wrong for it to be here. A photograph can leave someone screaming. While sharing their everyday casual breakfast with them can leave them ready to die for you, even though they want you dead. It's complicated. It's also very risky and very delicate, if you're the one doing it. Some people, some governments, are known for this. It's completely different from Stockholm Syndrome. And it's applied in different ways with different results. It happens on accident, too. Far too often. A guard. An aid worker. Someone. Trying to do something "nice", or to give them hope. It's a brutal thing to do.
I'm really tempted to say that the easiest way to draw a line is that abuse is woven into normal life, while torture exists completely outside of it // It's not something that ever normalizes. At least, not in my experience. Expected? Yes. But not normalizes. ...Tempted, but I don't know if I'm right // ***I could be very wrong here***. It's right inside of my experience but... My experience with torture is political / criminal. Different places, but in that sphere. I do know, though, that some religious cults use torture on kids and new members as part of brainwashing them. Part of fragmenting reality & creating dependence. That kind of torture may well normalize, but I'd have nooooooo idea what that does to a person.. Or it may be its own seperate thing... There's torture, there's abuse, there's brainwashing, maybe?. 3 different things, with 3 very different realities and long term effect? . I don't know. I've never been involved in it / it's outside of my experience.
I'm using too many words. Talking too much. Sorry for anyone who's gotten through this. It's... Really difficult to explain certain things.
.
Or: Settings & variables. Back to square one.
The same thing can be X types of abuse, and X types of intensity, and X types of effect, without being torture.
The same thing, with the same actors & dynamics, can be torture in different settings.
Saying one is torture just because it was very bad abuse doesn't help, as the healing from it is going to have its specifics that happen with extreme abuse land but not torture one.
Saying the other is abuse doesn't help because they're not quite the same.
And neither of that helps in case the dynamic is that some acts are extreme abuse, some are abuse, and others are torture, with the same players.
Same cards, different games.
What game you're playing matters, the rules are different, the gains & losses are different.
Btw. using 'extreme abuse' here interchangeably where I mean two different things: extreme abuse as an intensity of abuse, and extreme abuse as a type of abuse that's different from abuse, and closer to torture, in what it is and what are its effects.
The same thing can be X types of abuse, and X types of intensity, and X types of effect, without being torture.
The same thing, with the same actors & dynamics, can be torture in different settings.
Saying one is torture just because it was very bad abuse doesn't help, as the healing from it is going to have its specifics that happen with extreme abuse land but not torture one.
Saying the other is abuse doesn't help because they're not quite the same.
And neither of that helps in case the dynamic is that some acts are extreme abuse, some are abuse, and others are torture, with the same players.
Same cards, different games.
What game you're playing matters, the rules are different, the gains & losses are different.
Btw. using 'extreme abuse' here interchangeably where I mean two different things: extreme abuse as an intensity of abuse, and extreme abuse as a type of abuse that's different from abuse, and closer to torture, in what it is and what are its effects.
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One of the things I realized last night... That woven into normal life in abuse versus on/off with T.
I've known for a long time that the "good times"/quiet times are increasing anxiety periods for abuse. The longer the no-abuse, the higher the anxiety. Waiting for the shoe to drop. That's pretty well known / talked about / understood in DV & abuse circles. If it's good times? It's coming to an end. Sooner or later. You never know when they're going to snap. It's the waiting. omg they're being nice. How long? How long will this extend for, how long will it last? How can I make it last. = a lot of the selfblame. Etc. But it's the good times that are hardest for a lot of people.
But T isn't like that. At least, not my experience. It's that switch from whatever it is while you're not, to while you are.
Transitions.
Transitions f*ck me sideways.
Anyhow, just never realized until last night how much the T-piece ties into that. How any very binary change from this to that is just skyrocketing anxiety, and flat out internal refusal on my part. No. No. No. No. NOT transitioning. Way above and beyond my PTSD transition problems from before T. And way above what's called for. Any time I have to shift gears from one thing into the next its... Incredibly difficult.
IDK if that rings true for anyone else who's done the torture thing. Or if it's just a me thing. It's hard to find people who have been / it so often gets conflated into DV & Abuse which have so many different norms.
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Not just a you thing.
Something I'll come back to answering / extrapolating on a bit later.
Need to be farther away from some personal bullshit right now aka back to braining to find words. But I'd have coffee of solidarity that's not sympathy. :D
It's not defining a specific trauma, but a specific crime. The purpose of the law is not to define trauma for survivors, but to assign remedies and punishments. The fact that a case gets cited in another jurisdiction is irrelevant, but I'll take a look at your citations if you want.
Have you read Derailing For Dummies, or is this all just your own head?
While we're all about talking semantics, pulling definitions on something so personal and traumatizing as torture over a torture survivor, while talking on a board of survivors, is highly disrespectful, and it would be appreciated if you didn't continue in that tendency.
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