Yael Danieli, Massive Trauma and the Healing Role of Reparative Justice
Emphasizing the need for a multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary, integrative framework for understanding massive trauma and its aftermath, this presentation examines victims/survivors’ experiences primarily from the psychological perspective. It briefly describes how victims are affected by mass atrocities, their reactions, concerns and needs. Delineating necessary elements in the recovery processes from the victims’ point of view, the presentation will focus in particular on those elements of healing that are related to justice processes and victims’ experiences of such processes. Reparative justice insists that every step throughout the justice experience -- from the first moment of encounter of the Court with a potential witness through the follow-up of witnesses after their return home to the aftermath of the completion of the case -- presents an opportunity for redress and healing, a risk of missing or neglecting the opportunity for healing victims and reintegrating them into their communities and societies, or, worse, causing (re)victimization and (re)traumatization. While restitution, rehabilitation or compensation may only come after the process has concluded, there are still opportunities along the way. Although not sufficient in itself, reparative justice is nonetheless an important, if not necessary, dynamic component among the healing processes. Missed opportunities and negative experiences will be examined as a means to better understand the critical junctures of the trial and victims’ role within the process that can, if conducted optimally, lead to opportunities for healing. Yael Danieli is a clinical psychologist in private practice; victimologist; Director of the Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and their Children (which she co-founded in 1975 in the New York City area) and Founding Co-President of the International network of Holocaust and Genocide Survivors and their Friends. She has done extensive psychotherapeutic work with survivors and children of survivors on individual, family, group and community bases. Dr. Danieli has studied in depth post-war responses and attitudes toward them, and the impact these and the Holocaust had on their lives. She has lectured and published worldwide in numerous books and journals, translated into at least 17 languages on optimal care and training for this and other victim/survivor populations, and received several awards for her work, the most recent of which is the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS). In 2008 she was appointed Advisor on Victims of Terrorism for the office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and helped organize the first Symposium on Supporting Victims of Terrorism at the UN. She was appointed Distinguished Professor of International Psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, helping to build the first doctoral program in international psychology. She has served as consultant to the International Criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Court on issues related to victims and staff care, consultant to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Rwanda government on reparations for victims, and has led ongoing Projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Promoting a Dialogue: "Democracy Cannot Be Built with the Hands of Broken Souls") and in northern Ireland.