tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/testimony-31062/articlesTestimony – The Conversation2023-09-28T12:28:47Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2108362023-09-28T12:28:47Z2023-09-28T12:28:47ZJuries that don’t understand forensic science can send innocent people to prison − a short training video could help<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550656/original/file-20230927-21-d5p74f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=928%2C0%2C7011%2C4916&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jurors tend to rely heavily on forensic testimony, even when they don't understand it.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/witness-addressing-the-courtroom-in-a-trial-royalty-free-image/844393098">andresr/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=5159">Ledura Watkins</a> was 19 years old when he was accused of murdering a public school teacher. At trial, a forensic expert testified that a single hair found at the scene was similar to Watkins’ and stated his conclusion was based on “reasonable scientific certainty.” He explained that he’d conducted thousands of hair analyses and “had never been wrong.”</p>
<p>This one hair was the only physical evidence tying Watkins to the crime. In 1976, Ledura Watkins was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.</p>
<p>Here’s the catch: The expert’s testimony was inappropriate and misleading, and the jury made a mistake. Watkins was innocent. Ledura Watkins lost over 41 years of his life to a <a href="https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=5159">wrongful conviction based on improper forensic testimony</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wR9V8s8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">Our interdisciplinary</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=syay8eEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">team of</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=m9pMkQcAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">legal psychologists</a>, <a href="https://gfjc.fiu.edu/">forensic experts</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=STmVsAgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">and an attorney</a> worked to develop an educational tool to help jurors avoid making similar mistakes in the future.</p>
<h2>Forensic testimony carries weight with jurors</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/ExonerationsContribFactorsByCrime.aspx">One out of every five wrongful convictions</a> cataloged through September 2023 by the <a href="https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/mission.aspx">National Registry of Exonerations</a> involved improper forensic evidence.</p>
<p>There is reason to be concerned about jurors’ ability to adequately evaluate forensic evidence. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01498976">Jurors tend</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1990.tb00400.x">to rely heavily</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000423">on forensic evidence</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8971.14.1.27">when making decisions</a> in a case, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022368801333">despite struggling to</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000027">understand the statistical analyses</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/428020">and language used</a> to explain forensic science. They might ignore the differences between appropriately worded forensic testimony <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000423">and testimony that violates best-practice guidelines</a>, fail to grasp the limitations of forensic science in expert witness testimony and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-008-9169-1">overly rely</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000103">on an expert’s experience</a> when evaluating the evidence.</p>
<p>Despite all these issues, jurors remain <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-008-9169-1">overconfident in their ability</a> to comprehend forensic testimony.</p>
<p>Researchers have long suggested that part of the problem is the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000423">way forensic evidence is presented</a> in courtrooms. In response to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25475240">calls by scientists</a>, the U.S. Department of Justice approved the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/olp/uniform-language-testimony-and-reports">Uniform Language for Testimony and Reports</a> in 2018. These <a href="https://www.justice.gov/media/1072031/dl?inline">guidelines</a> aimed to lessen misleading statements in forensic testimony and outlined five statements forensic experts should not make. The expert in Ledura Watkins’ case made several of these statements, including claiming that his examination was perfect because of the number of examinations he had conducted.</p>
<p><iframe id="2I1CZ" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/2I1CZ/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>It’s understandable that jurors are swayed by an expert who uses terms like “error free,” “perfect” or “scientific certainty.” We are interested in finding ways to help people critically evaluate the forensic testimony they hear in court.</p>
<h2>An informational video for jurors</h2>
<p>Inspired by one court’s use of <a href="https://www.wawd.uscourts.gov/jury/unconscious-bias">videos to help train jurors</a> on relevant concepts, our team developed what we call the forensic science informational video. It’s about 4½ minutes long and focuses on latent print examinations, including fingerprints, footwear impressions and tire impressions.</p>
<p>In the FSI video, a narrator explains what a forensic expert is and how they might testify in court. The video describes how latent print examinations are conducted and what types of statements are appropriate – or not – for an expert to make in their testimony, based on the DOJ guidelines.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fZJAlB9OgLA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Mock jurors watched this training video about forensic testimony.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In two different studies, we recruited jury-eligible adults to test whether our video had any effect on how jurors judged forensic testimony.</p>
<p>In our first study, some participants watched the FSI video and others didn’t. Participants who watched the FSI video were <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548231195112">more likely to give lower ratings to improper forensic testimony</a> and the forensic expert who gave it.</p>
<p>In our second study, we tested whether the video could help jurors <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000539">differentiate between low-quality and high-quality testimony</a> without creating a general distrust in forensic evidence. Participants watched a 45-minute mock trial video. Without training from the FSI video, participants rated both low- and high-quality forensic testimony highly. That is, they didn’t differentiate between testimony in which the expert violated three of the DOJ guidelines and testimony that followed the guidelines.</p>
<p>But participants who watched our informational video prior to the mock trial were more likely to differentiate between the low- and high-quality testimony, rating the expert giving low-quality testimony more poorly than the expert giving high-quality testimony.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550657/original/file-20230927-25-w5o665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="sign directing juror where to report for their service" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550657/original/file-20230927-25-w5o665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550657/original/file-20230927-25-w5o665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550657/original/file-20230927-25-w5o665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550657/original/file-20230927-25-w5o665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550657/original/file-20230927-25-w5o665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550657/original/file-20230927-25-w5o665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550657/original/file-20230927-25-w5o665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In-court instruction can provide everyday citizens with the knowledge they need to make good decisions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sign-detailing-instructions-for-jurors-lies-in-a-hallway-news-photo/57502325">Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Training helps jurors assess forensic testimony</h2>
<p>These findings suggest that our informational video helped mock jurors in two ways. Participants learned how to identify low-quality forensic testimony and how to adjust their evaluations of the expert and their testimony accordingly. Importantly, the video did not cause participants to distrust latent print evidence in general.</p>
<p>Our study is a promising first step in exploring ways to help jurors understand complex forensic testimony. A brief video like ours can provide standardized information about forensic experts and types of appropriate and inappropriate testimony to jurors across courts, much like similar <a href="https://www.wawd.uscourts.gov/jury/unconscious-bias">videos about implicit bias</a> already being used in some courts.</p>
<p>We believe a training video has the potential to be easily implemented as an educational tool to improve the quality of jurors’ decision-making. A better understanding of the distinction between proper and improper testimony would improve the justice system by helping jurors fulfill their roles as objective fact-finders – and hopefully prevent wrongful convictions like that of Ledura Watkins.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210836/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Devon LaBat receives funding from the National Institute of Justice. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deborah Goldfarb receives funding from the National Institute of Justice. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacqueline R. Evans receives funding from the National Institute of Justice. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nadja Schreiber Compo received funding from the National Institute of Justice.</span></em></p>Educating mock jurors about what kinds of statements are appropriate − or not − led to more critical assessments of forensic testimony and improved the quality of their decisions.Devon LaBat, Doctoral Candidate in Legal Psychology, Florida International UniversityDeborah Goldfarb, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Florida International UniversityJacqueline R. Evans, Associate Professor of Psychology, Florida International UniversityNadja Schreiber Compo, Professor of Psychology, Florida International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2026312023-04-16T20:04:01Z2023-04-16T20:04:01ZReading the bones of the dead: the painstaking, painful process of returning genocide victims to their families<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520380/original/file-20230411-18-j1xcqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=117%2C50%2C5489%2C3682&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A forensic anthropologist analyses exhumed bones removed from a mass grave in one of Guatemala City's largest cemeteries, La Verbena, in 2011.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rodrigo Abd/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Who would like to share their <em>testimonio</em> with the North American anthropologist?” a local woman asks a room full of men, women and children, survivors of genocide in Guatemala. </p>
<p><em>Testimonio</em> is a ritual for the collective telling and sharing of stories of violence and loss. Alexa Hagerty, a US anthropologist who was present in the room, did not see this coming. She had spent months training with forensic teams in exhumation at mass grave sites, investigating human rights violations in Guatemala and Argentina, countries ravaged by dictatorships and genocide. </p>
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<p><em>Review: Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics and What Remains – Alexa Hagerty (Penguin Random House)</em></p>
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<p>In this room, in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quich%C3%A9_Department">El Quiché</a> region, in 2014, a local woman gestured to her to take a seat and to listen to <em>testimonios</em>. Hagerty did as she was told, but felt as though she was intruding in other people’s lives and their pain. She wondered if she was doing more harm than good by hearing stories of systemic persecution, of massacres, torture, rape, murdered children and pregnant women, destroyed villages and scorched fields.</p>
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<p>Hagerty knows that “taking the lid off sadness” could be retraumatising and will not necessarily bring meaningful change into the storytellers’ lives. It will not suddenly lift them from poverty or help them find peace. She “was slowly learning” that “the fieldwork” in Guatemala did not mean doing “one on one interviews” in a private setting. Instead, she found herself listening to “the soup pot of <em>testimonio</em>”; a chorus of “silence and words” from the abyss of grief and loss. </p>
<p>One of the longest armed conflicts in Latin America, the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/latin_america-jan-june11-timeline_03-07">Guatemalan Civil War</a> raged from 1960 to 1996 (when a peace accord was signed). Of almost 200,000 people who were killed or forcibly “disappeared”, 83% of victims were indigenous. Some 93% of civilian executions were carried out by government forces.</p>
<p>Similarly, in Argentina, 30,000 people were forcibly disappeared between 1976 and 1983. They are the <em>desaparecidos</em> Hagerty and teams of forensic anthropologists have been trying to uncover in their “work against impunity and forgetting”.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520377/original/file-20230411-24-w8pj5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520377/original/file-20230411-24-w8pj5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520377/original/file-20230411-24-w8pj5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520377/original/file-20230411-24-w8pj5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520377/original/file-20230411-24-w8pj5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520377/original/file-20230411-24-w8pj5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520377/original/file-20230411-24-w8pj5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520377/original/file-20230411-24-w8pj5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">An abandoned well in Tucumán, Argentina, used to dispose of the corpses of people kidnapped, detained in secret prisons, and killed by the dictatorship. It is 3.5 metres wide and 60 metres deep.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CAMIT (Tucumán Archaeology, Memory, and Identity Collective)</span></span>
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<p>The remains of thousands of Guatemalan and Argentinian women, men and children were buried in unmarked mass graves. It is a “painstakingly slow” job to “remove the dead from where they must not be” and piece together the “jigsaw puzzle” of exhumed bones. </p>
<p>More years are then needed to prove the victims’ identity – bones need to match DNA tests taken from their families. Only then are they returned to them. For forensic anthropologists, “working fast is imperative”, so the bones are returned while the families of the killed are “still alive to mourn and bury them”. Until then, the lives of these families are suspended as they wait for the dead to regain their names.</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/identifying-the-dead-after-mass-disasters-is-a-crucial-part-of-grieving-heres-how-forensic-experts-do-it-180616">Identifying the dead after mass disasters is a crucial part of grieving. Here's how forensic experts do it</a>
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<p>Hagerty’s book, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706009/still-life-with-bones-by-alexa-hagerty/">Still Life with Bones</a>, is a voyage into the brutality of the genocide that took place in Guatemala, and in Argentina’s “Dirty War”. It is also about the bureaucratic violence of state institutions, unfolding in the aftermath. </p>
<p>“Justice is expensive”, she writes; many families cannot afford to travel for DNA tests, even if the tests themselves are free. Victims’ families need a day’s wages to take a bus to the capital of Guatemala to file papers, attend a hearing, or get a cheek swab. Many cannot afford this, so matching is delayed, return of bones is delayed, and proper burial has to wait.</p>
<p>A government bureaucrat needs to sign the paperwork to “release the bodies”. Hagerty describes the maltreatment of poor indigenous families waiting to collect bones of their loved ones in Guatemalan governmental offices. </p>
<p>Today, Guatemala is not at war, yet Guatemala City remains one of the most violent places in the world. More than 80% of its indigenous population lives in poverty. People still live in terror. Hagerty writes: “victims and perpetrators still live side by side in many Guatemalan cities” – something that is common to most postwar and post-genocidal communities. They are “intimate enemies” – former friends and neighbours now trying to rebuild their lives together. </p>
<p>During and after Guatemala’s civil war, human rights activists have been executed for speaking up, she writes. On September 11 1990, anthropologist Myrna Mack was stabbed to death, or in legal terms <a href="https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/6100/chapter/2">“arbitrarily deprived of life”, by state military agents</a>. On March 7 2023 it was reported that three human rights defenders and one journalist <a href="https://www.ungeneva.org/en/news-media/meeting-summary/2023/03/afternoon-human-rights-council-hears-high-commissioners">were killed in Guatemala</a>. On March 31, another journalist was <a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/director-general-condemns-killing-journalist-eduardo-fernando-mendizabal-galvez-guatemala?TSPD_101_R0=080713870fab2000a372b09bf0c7bd86dbc5f287170d2dee383e871ddf4ef289112b13a47a9a960b087e3b6d0f143000e8eaaf66d55d64c5c7bfddc89f34eef57de45402a015e5cb59ddf14cc0d11ee78d6d82b61369436b446bf69573ffbe52">shot dead</a>.</p>
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<p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guatemala-25-years-later-firm-and-lasting-peace-is-nowhere-to-be-found-174153">Guatemala: 25 years later, 'firm and lasting peace' is nowhere to be found</a>
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<h2>Reburying ‘with a ritual and a name’</h2>
<p>Hagerty holds a PhD in anthropology from Stanford University and is an affiliate at the University of Cambridge. She trained in <a href="https://theconversation.com/forensic-anthropology-the-need-for-australian-standards-2142">forensic anthropology</a>, a sub-field of physical anthropology and the study of human skeletal remains; it uses techniques of archaeology to solve national and international criminal cases. </p>
<p>Hagerty tells us that “bones and texts are the same”; they can be both “articulated and read”. Oral histories give humanity to bones and help narrate a life. “Both words and bones must be arranged in the right order for their meaning to be clear.” </p>
<p>The lands in Guatemala and Argentina are soaked with bones of the dead, often victims of “enforced disappearance”, a crime against humanity only recently added officially to the plethora of international crimes. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520376/original/file-20230411-14-xw8ypb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520376/original/file-20230411-14-xw8ypb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520376/original/file-20230411-14-xw8ypb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520376/original/file-20230411-14-xw8ypb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520376/original/file-20230411-14-xw8ypb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520376/original/file-20230411-14-xw8ypb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520376/original/file-20230411-14-xw8ypb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520376/original/file-20230411-14-xw8ypb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The team members wear tyvek coveralls, a form of personal protective equipment, to descend into the Argentinian well.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CAMIT (Tucumán Archaeology, Memory, and Identity Collective)</span></span>
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<p>This crime has been widely practised in many countries, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chile, Cambodia and most recently Ukraine, to name a few. The bones unearthed, seen and touched by Hagerty, haunt her in dreams and during her travels to other excavation sites. The sensitive research she performs carries the risk of personal harm, and she does not shy away from telling us how her work has imprinted scars on her mind and body.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/moral-ambiguity-and-the-representation-of-genocide-is-there-a-limit-to-what-can-be-depicted-177537">Moral ambiguity and the representation of genocide – is there a limit to what can be depicted?</a>
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<p>Death is also “a booming business” for coffin makers, funeral homes and flower sellers. In a dire economy, the dead feed the living. Guatemala is a country where cemeteries run out of spaces. Failure to pay for the grave results in removal of the dead - their bones wrapped in a plastic bag and discarded with others in “a deep dry well of bones”. The rest – clothing, flowers and the coffin – is tossed into landfill. </p>
<p>Still, while hiding the traumatised dead, the earth also gives birth to minerals, water and plants. In Sarajevo, photographer Azem Kurtic recently held an exhibition of photographs of mass grave locations <a href="https://balkaninsight.com/2022/11/14/plants-found-at-bosnian-war-graves-exhibited-in-sarajevo/">scattered across Bosnia and Herzegovina</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520382/original/file-20230411-14-myyn2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520382/original/file-20230411-14-myyn2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520382/original/file-20230411-14-myyn2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520382/original/file-20230411-14-myyn2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520382/original/file-20230411-14-myyn2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520382/original/file-20230411-14-myyn2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520382/original/file-20230411-14-myyn2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520382/original/file-20230411-14-myyn2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Women mourn as they watch forensic experts exhuming bodies from a mass grave in Kozluk, northeast Bosnia, on 16 December 2015, near the site of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fehim Demir/EPA</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Kurtic realised “a deceased human body takes on another life as it nurtures grass and other plants.” Life and death intertwine under the ground where the “past and present converge”.</p>
<p>Still Life With Bones is a timely reminder of the legacies of war and genocide. This month, Rwanda marked the 29th anniversary of the start of the genocide in which neighbours killed neighbours, leaving almost one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520378/original/file-20230411-28-6ooavm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520378/original/file-20230411-28-6ooavm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520378/original/file-20230411-28-6ooavm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520378/original/file-20230411-28-6ooavm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520378/original/file-20230411-28-6ooavm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520378/original/file-20230411-28-6ooavm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520378/original/file-20230411-28-6ooavm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520378/original/file-20230411-28-6ooavm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Family photographs of some of those who died hang on display in an exhibition at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in Kigali, Rwanda in 2019 on the 25th anniversary of the genocide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ben Curtis/AP</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>As in Guatemala, most were slaughtered with the machetes kept around the house for harvesting crops: “a tool of life [was] made a weapon of death”. </p>
<p>Hagerty’s book is a lyrical and powerful meditation on the meaning of justice, grief and ritual. It speaks of her haunted and fascinating travel through time and places, interrupted by the dead and the living.</p>
<p>Told in visceral vignettes, it is a painful reminder that once war is over, the new war begins: for justice, compensation, and a proper burial of the dead, “but this time with ritual and a name”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202631/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olivera Simic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Forensic anthropologist Alexa Hagerty’s work faced her with the brutality of the genocides in Guatemala and in Argentina’s “Dirty War” – and with the bureaucratic violence of state institutions.Olivera Simic, Associate Professor, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1860102022-09-26T12:30:08Z2022-09-26T12:30:08ZChildren’s eyewitness testimony can be as accurate as adults’ or more so – if interviewers follow these guidelines<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485996/original/file-20220921-15817-m88a16.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C75%2C8213%2C5825&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Researchers know better ways to get accurate information from child witnesses.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/at-home-learning-royalty-free-image/1349504236">FatCamera/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Eyewitness memory has come under a lot of scrutiny in recent years, as organizations such as the Innocence Project suggest it was a key piece of information in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1525/nclr.2011.14.3.333">as many as 75%</a> of wrongful convictions in the United States. Unfortunately, human memory doesn’t work like a video camera recording a scene, allowing you to play memories back exactly as they happened. Instead, memories must be reconstructed every time they are used, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. All kinds of things can <a href="https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195837">influence this reconstruction process</a>, ranging from new information you learn after the event to simply the passage of time.</p>
<p>Adults are bad enough at providing accurate testimony, because of issues related to the reconstructive nature of memory as well as the ways memories can be influenced by new information and decay over time. Considering these limitations of human memory, how well do kids do? The reliability of child witnesses is especially important to understand given the <a href="https://calio.dspacedirect.org/handle/11212/384">large number of children</a> who become involved in the legal system every year. In cases involving child witnesses, the child’s testimony is often <a href="https://doi.org/10.1348/026151005X57657">the only available evidence</a>, so gaining reliable accounts may be the only way to keep dangerous offenders off the streets.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-lZihQgAAAAJ&hl=en">I’m a psychology lecturer</a> at Clemson University <a href="https://sites.google.com/view/ben-f-cotterill/research?authuser=0">who researches children’s eyewitness memory</a>. In my new book “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10382-7">Are Children Reliable Witnesses?</a>” I explore what can influence the accuracy of children’s testimonies, for better or worse. Research shows that children can be reliable witnesses, but it depends on both the individual child and the situation.</p>
<h2>Getting child witnesses to tell their stories</h2>
<p>Typically, police begin a forensic interview by asking witnesses, including children, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1489">to freely recall</a> everything they remember about the event. During this stage of the interview, even young children can be just as accurate as adults, but they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470773291">often miss many details</a>.</p>
<p>To elicit the most information possible, police will often then start asking different types of questions. Open-ended questions – for example, “Tell me more about what happened” – generate more accurate and coherent responses <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110413-030913">than any other type</a>.</p>
<p>Questions that include an option – like “Was he tall?” – can increase the amount of information a witness provides but often lead children to answer questions they actually don’t know the answer to. The overall accuracy of their recollections typically declines when kids are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1348/0261510041552710">given these kinds of questions</a>.</p>
<p>If investigators struggle to gain information from young children, they may resort to leading questions that suggest details the child has not already mentioned, such as asking about touching when the child has not brought up physical contact. Often, young children will comply with the suggestion of the interviewer <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110413-030913">even if it is untrue</a>. They may then <a href="https://doi.org/10.1006/jecp.2000.2610">incorporate that misinformation into their subsequent accounts</a> of the crime.</p>
<p>Sticking to a structured interview format makes investigators less likely to fall back on questions that are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1489">suggestive or pose limited options</a>.</p>
<p><iframe id="7xwLa" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/7xwLa/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nichd.nih.gov">National Institute of Child Health and Human Development</a> provides one <a href="https://nichdprotocol.com/">evidence-based protocol</a> investigators can follow when working with young witnesses. It takes away some of the guesswork on the part of the investigator and ensures open-ended prompts are used before reverting to more focused questions. It also guides investigators to include practice interviews and rapport-building, both of which <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470773291">improve interview performance</a>, increasing the quality and quantity of information provided.</p>
<p>However, interviewers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000039">need regular training workshops</a> to maintain best practices.</p>
<h2>Setting up better lineup procedures</h2>
<p>After a child eyewitness has described an alleged perpetrator to the authorities, the child may be asked to look through a photo lineup. Usually, the lineup contains someone the police consider to be a suspect along with several people the police know to be innocent.</p>
<p>Lab research suggests that children as young as 6 can be just as accurate as adults when presented with a lineup that contains the alleged perpetrator, typically scoring accuracy rates of <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-08273-006">at least 60%</a>. However, when shown a lineup that doesn’t include the target, children are significantly more likely than adults to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2013.793334">make a false identification</a>. Researchers suspect children <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-011-9089-8">feel pressured into making a selection</a> and are less aware of the potential consequences of false identifications.</p>
<p><iframe id="7LJ5Q" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/7LJ5Q/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1511">One method</a> that works to reduce false identification rates is to add an additional photo consisting of a silhouette with a question mark to the lineup. In this situation, children are told to point to the silhouette card if they do not see the target in the lineup. In multiple studies, the silhouette card reduced false identifications while <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.2870">not reducing the likelihood of a witness’s making a correct identification</a> in the lineup. </p>
<h2>When children are better witnesses than adults</h2>
<p>Children are more <a href="https://doi.org/10.1006/jecp.2000.2610">vulnerable to external pressures</a>, such as leading questions. And their memories are more likely to be tainted by post-event misinformation. But they are less likely to have their interpretation of an event <a href="https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-010-0043-2">influenced by assumptions</a>, previous experiences, prior knowledge or stereotypes than grown-ups are.</p>
<p>For instance, adults in research studies are more likely than children to <a href="https://www.in-mind.org/article/children-are-poor-witnesses-or-are-they">misremember that a nonviolent bank robbery involved a weapon</a>. It’s also more common for adults to misreport having read a word on a list of words centered around a particular theme. For example, if the list included the words “dream,” “pillow,” “blanket” and “bed,” then adults would be more likely than children to <a href="https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-010-0043-2">misremember “sleep” having also been on the list</a>. </p>
<p>This area of research needs further exploration, but it seems when specific information cannot be remembered, adult memories often rely upon gist information – that is, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01373.x">overall structure, but not the specific details</a> – more so than children’s do. This tendency may make <a href="https://www.in-mind.org/article/children-are-poor-witnesses-or-are-they">adults more prone to spontaneous false memories</a> than children are. However, children are still more vulnerable to externally induced false memories, like those that stem from leading questions or learning new information after the event.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, every year in the U.S. thousands of criminal cases rely on children’s testimony in order to bring charges. Understanding the wide range of factors that can affect memory in these young witnesses is of the utmost importance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186010/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Cotterill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Human memory doesn’t work like a video camera, simply recording a scene as it happens. But researchers know how to help children recall information accurately.Ben Cotterill, Lecturer in Psychology, Clemson UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1573972021-03-31T15:01:01Z2021-03-31T15:01:01ZResidential school survivors’ stories and experiences must be remembered as class action settlement finishes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392594/original/file-20210330-17-tfnypq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1000%2C902&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students of the Metlakatla Indian Residential School, B.C.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(William James Topley. Library and Archives Canada, C-015037)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>March 31 marks the conclusion of the largest class action settlement in Canada’s history. After 14 years, the <a href="http://www.iap-pei.ca/home-eng.php">Independent Assessment Process (IAP)</a> — a compensation process established to resolve claims of serious physical, sexual or emotional abuse suffered at Indian residential schools — is officially over. </p>
<p>Despite the fact that it collected <a href="http://www.iap-pei.ca/media/information/publication/pdf/FinalReport/IAP-FR-2021-03-11-eng.pdf">claims from more than 38,000 Indian residential school survivors</a>, the IAP remains relatively unknown. </p>
<p>The court-ordered destruction of <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/residential-schools-records-supreme-court-1.4342475">IAP testimonies and records</a>, the biased and superficial mainstream news media reports and the continued <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/iap-final-report-residential-schools-1.5946103">emphasis on compensation and costs</a> ensure that <em>if</em> it is remembered, it will be through a colonial gaze. </p>
<p>This gaze represents the perspective through which the process is framed, what is explicitly valued or absent, and whose story is remembered: the colonial narrative is privileged and the Indigenous voice limited. </p>
<p>Our national study seeks to understand perspectives and the framing of the IAP to create public knowledge, in the wake of <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/residential-schools-records-supreme-court-1.4342475">the destruction of records</a>. The study analyzes government documents (<a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/35-2/house/hansard-index"><em>Hansard Index</em>, the traditional name of the transcripts of Parliamentary debates</a>), national and Indigenous media, along with transcripts produced through interviews and focus groups with survivors, health support workers, adjudicators, judges and lawyers. The results presented here are preliminary.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/residential-school-literature-can-teach-the-colonial-present-and-imagine-better-futures-120383">Residential school literature can teach the colonial present and imagine better futures</a>
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<h2>A bit of background</h2>
<p>Of the 38,000 survivors who applied to the IAP, almost 27,000 attended adjudications — an <a href="https://iap-pei.ca/stats-eng.php">out-of-court process</a>. The adjudication gave survivors the opportunity to tell their story of abuse to an adjudicator and government representative, with optional supports including a lawyer, health support worker, elder, translator or family. The <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/indian-residential-schools-records-supreme-court-1.4343259">fate of the records and testimonies from these hearings — 800,000 documents — was decided</a> by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2017. </p>
<p>The court upheld the position of the Indian Residential School Adjudication Secretariat, the body responsible for administering the IAP, that <a href="http://www.iap-pei.ca/records-eng.php">the testimonies would be destroyed unless individual survivors decided to claim or share their records</a>. Currently only a handful of survivors have requested their transcripts or offered to make (sometimes redacted) versions publicly accessible through the <a href="https://nctr.ca/map.php">National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR)</a>. In 2027, any remaining survivor <a href="http://myrecordsmychoice.ca/index-eng.php">testimonies and records will be destroyed</a>.</p>
<p>In January 2020 an Ontario Superior Court <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/court-decision-statistical-reports-residential-school-abuse-1.5579455">ruling blocked the creation of static reports</a>. These included information the secretariat gathered during the IAP about variables like the child’s age and sex, particularities of residential schools, types of abuses and community impacts. The case was appealed by the NCTR and the Ontario Court of Appeal’s <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/court-decision-statistical-reports-residential-school-abuse-1.5579455">judgment is pending</a>. </p>
<h2>Coverage of the IAP: Colonial and wanting</h2>
<p>Media coverage of the IAP is sparse. Preliminary results of our study reveal a focus on the trials and tribulations of a bureaucratic process that attempted to combine class action law with reconciliation-based gestures. Lost in this narrative is the survivors’ lived experiences within the IAP and a critical evaluation of the IAP’s overarching goals: <a href="http://www.iap-pei.ca/information-eng.php?act=2021-03-11-eng.php">healing and reconciliation</a>. </p>
<p>Through our study, “Reconciling Perspectives and Building Public Memory: Learning from the Independent Assessment Process,” we established factors that played key roles in healing: giving testimony, and supporting, believing and validating the survivors. This perspective was largely forgotten by the media and instead reports often focused on the credibility of survivors’ claims of abuse, financial compensations and court cases. It was, however, acknowledged in the <a href="http://www.iap-pei.ca/media/information/publication/pdf/FinalReport/IAP-FR-2021-03-11-eng.pdf">IAP’s final report</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Students sit in classroom at Indian Residential School" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392598/original/file-20210330-21-1m0bp85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392598/original/file-20210330-21-1m0bp85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392598/original/file-20210330-21-1m0bp85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392598/original/file-20210330-21-1m0bp85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392598/original/file-20210330-21-1m0bp85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392598/original/file-20210330-21-1m0bp85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392598/original/file-20210330-21-1m0bp85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Cree students sit in class at All Saints Indian Residential School in Lac La Ronge, Sask., in March 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Bud Glunz/Library and Archives Canada, PA-134110)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The dominant narrative conflated success of the IAP with compensation. For example, the secretariat reported success when the claimant garnered a cash settlement (<a href="http://www.iap-pei.ca/stats-eng.php">89 per cent success rate with an average of $91,000 in compensation</a>). And although compensation metrics are certainly one indicator of success, the experiences of survivors telling their stories are key to considering the IAP’s larger goals. </p>
<p>The defensive posture of the federal government recently surfaced. An <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/ottawa-stannes-legal-compensation-1.5965483">independent review of claims (specifically those from St. Anne’s Indian Residential School)</a> was recently announced following critiques by survivors and public officials like former senator Murray Sinclair and MP Charlie Angus. </p>
<p>Elected officials in the House of Commons had an opportunity to contribute to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.181">public memory</a> based on meaningful reconciliation, but it was largely swept away in partisan politics. Looking at <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/35-2/house/hansard-index"><em>Hansard Index</em> debates from 2004-19</a>, we found the IAP was discussed only 28 times.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/indian-day-school-survivors-are-seeking-truth-and-justice-146655">Indian day school survivors are seeking truth and justice</a>
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<p>The significance of Indian residential school abuses, the damage the system did to families and communities, the litigation and compensation settlements that came after the IAP <a href="https://doi.org/10.18584/iipj.2016.7.1.3">can only be fully comprehended within Canada’s long history of denial of Indigenous human and gender rights</a>. </p>
<p>The move from explicit systems of violence to concealed structures of domination cannot be mistaken for reconciliation. We must examine the ways in which Indigenous rights are both explicitly and implicitly <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.181">advanced</a> or denied: this was highlighted in an earlier IAP study that found that although residential schools taught girls domestic tasks, unpaid work caring for children <a href="https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/gender-lens-needed-on-indigenous-claims-415179984.html">was not acknowledged or compensated in the IAP model</a>. </p>
<h2>Remembering for a common future</h2>
<p>We fear additional tragedies are inevitable without abundant data regarding abuse factors, or intergenerational and community impacts. These data add a quantifiable dimension to the horrors of residential schools and remind us of the consequences of <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-reconciliation-means-canadians-have-a-duty-to-remember-the-injustice/">racist public policy</a>. Such policy is not just about the individuals impacted; it affects the consciousness of collectives and communities. </p>
<p>Public records are valuable for understanding how public memory is created, and who is directing its narrative. Unless attention is paid to the ways in which the media and Canada continue to decentre Indigenous voices and experiences the colonial gaze will endure. </p>
<p>How residential schools and the IAP are remembered is not only relevant to Canada’s identity but for government-Indigenous and public-Indigenous relations, now and into the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157397/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cindy Hanson received funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (Insight Grant) for the study this article is based on.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Curtis J Shuba is a paid research associate on this SSHRC Insight Grant (on which this article is based).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sidey Deska-Gauthier is a paid research associate on this SSHRC Insight Grant (on which this article is based).</span></em></p>The destruction of IAP residential school records and media reports that continually emphasize compensation will ensure that if remembered, the process will be remembered through a colonial gaze.Cindy Hanson, Professor, Dept of Sociology and Social Studies, University of ReginaCurtis J Shuba, Research Associate, Sociology and Social Studies, University of ReginaSidey Deska-Gauthier, Research Associate, Political Science, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/788962017-06-08T02:36:53Z2017-06-08T02:36:53ZJ Edgar Hoover’s oversteps: Why FBI directors are forbidden from getting cozy with presidents<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172825/original/file-20170607-29563-t1c9ub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How are U.S. presidents and FBI directors supposed to communicate?</p>
<p>A new FBI director has recently been nominated, former Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray. He will certainly be thinking carefully about this question as he awaits confirmation.</p>
<p>Former FBI Director James Comey’s relationship with President Donald Trump was strained at best. Comey was concerned that Trump had approached him on <a href="https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-jcomey-060817.pdf">nine different occasions</a> in two months. In his testimony to Congress, Comey stated that under President Barack Obama, he had spoken with the president only twice in three years.</p>
<p>Comey expressed concern about this to colleagues, and tried to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/us/politics/comey-sessions-trump.html">distance himself</a> from the president. He tried to tell Trump the proper procedures for communicating with the FBI. These policies have been enmeshed in <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/white-house-interference-justice-department-investigations-2009-holder-memo">Justice Department guidelines</a>. And for good reason.</p>
<p>FBI historians <a href="http://greaterallegheny.psu.edu/person/douglas-m-charles-phd">like myself</a> know that, since the 1970s, bureau directors try to maintain a discrete distance from the president. This tradition grew out of reforms that followed the often questionable behavior of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who served from 1924 to 1972.</p>
<p>Over this long period, Hoover’s relationships with six different presidents often became dangerously close, crossing ethical and legal lines. This history can help us understand Comey’s concerns about Trump and help put his testimony into larger context.</p>
<p>As the nation’s chief law enforcement arm, the FBI today is tasked with three main responsibilities: investigating violations of federal law, pursuing counterterrorism cases and disrupting the work of foreign intelligence operatives. Anything beyond these raises serious ethical questions.</p>
<h2>From FDR to Nixon</h2>
<p>When Franklin Roosevelt became president in 1933, <a href="https://ohiostatepress.org/books/Book%20Pages/Charles%20Edgar.html">Hoover worked hard</a> to develop a close working relationship with the president. Roosevelt helped promote Hoover’s crime control program and expand FBI authority. Hoover grew the FBI from a small, relatively limited agency into a large and influential one. He then provided the president with information on his critics, and even some <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684520500133836">foreign intelligence</a>, all while <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/dmc166/Hoover%20FDR.JPG">ingratiating himself</a> with FDR to retain his job.</p>
<p>President Harry Truman <a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,879566-3,00.html">didn’t much like Hoover</a>, and thought his FBI was a potential “<a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Truman/David-McCullough/9780671869205">citizen spy system</a>.” </p>
<p>Hoover found President Dwight Eisenhower to be an ideological ally with an interest in expanding FBI surveillance. This <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-1345-8.html">led to increased FBI use</a> of illegal microphones and wiretaps. The president looked the other way as the FBI carried out its sometimes questionable investigations. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172546/original/file-20170606-3677-mtgq0v.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Director of FBI J. Edgar Hoover.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Visit_of_Attorney_General_and_Director_of_FBI._President_Kennedy%2C_J.Edgar_Hoover%2C_Robert_F._Kennedy._White_House..._-_NARA_-_194173.jpg">Wikimedia Commons/Abbie Rowe</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But when John F. Kennedy became president in 1961, <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/572_reg.html">Hoover’s relationship with the president faced a challenge</a>. JFK’s brother, Robert Kennedy, was made attorney general. Given JFK’s close relationship with his brother, Hoover could no longer bypass his boss and deal directly with the president, as he so often did in the past. Not seeing eye to eye with the Kennedys, Hoover cut back on volunteering political intelligence reports to the White House. Instead, he only responded to requests, while collecting information on JFK’s extramarital affairs.</p>
<p>By contrast, President Lyndon Johnson had a voracious appetite for FBI political intelligence reports. Under his presidency, the FBI became a direct vehicle for servicing the president’s political interests. LBJ issued <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/dmc166/IMG_0249.jpg">an executive order</a> exempting Hoover from mandatory retirement at the time, when the FBI director reached age 70. Owing his job to LBJ, Hoover designated a top FBI official, FBI Assistant Director <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4390370/cartha-deloach">Cartha “Deke” DeLoach</a>, as the official FBI liaison to the president.</p>
<p>The FBI monitored the Democratic National Convention at LBJ’s request. When Johnson’s aide, Walter Jenkins, was caught soliciting gay sex in a YMCA, <a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/dmc166/Oct%2014,%201964%20Deloach%205884.mp3">Deke DeLoach worked directly</a> with the president in dealing with the backlash. </p>
<p>One might think that when Richard Nixon ascended to the presidency in 1968, he would have found an ally in Hoover, given their shared anti-Communism. <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-1345-8.html">Hoover continued</a> to provide a wealth of political intelligence to Nixon through a formal program called INLET. However, <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/572_reg.html">Hoover also felt vulnerable</a> given intensified public protest due to the Vietnam War and public focus on his actions at the FBI. </p>
<p>Hoover held back in using intrusive surveillance such as wiretaps, microphones and break-ins as he had in the past. He resisted Nixon’s attempts to centralize intelligence coordination in the White House, especially when Nixon asked that the FBI use intrusive surveillance to find White House leaks. Not satisfied, the Nixon administration created its own leak-stopping unit: the White House plumbers – which ended in the Watergate scandal.</p>
<p>Not until after Hoover’s death did Americans learn of his <a href="https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94intelligence_activities_VI.pdf">abuses of authority</a>. Reform followed. </p>
<p>In 1976, Congress <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/directors">mandated a 10-year term</a> for FBI directors. The Justice Department later issued <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1981/01/17/guidelines-are-civilettis-monument/9034b608-b761-4f8b-9fe0-49dc007dda9e/?utm_term=.1402e4ec7a01">guidelines</a> on how the FBI director was to deal with the White House and the president, and how to conduct investigations. These guidelines have been reaffirmed, revised and reissued by subsequent attorneys general, <a href="https://lawfare.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/staging/2017/2009%20Eric%20Holder%20memo.pdf">most recently in 2009</a>. The guidelines state, for example: “Initial communications between the Department and the White House concerning pending or contemplated criminal investigations or cases will involve only the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General.”</p>
<p>These rules were intended to ensure the integrity of criminal investigations, avoid political influence and protect both the Justice Department and president. If Trump attempted to bypass these guidelines and woo Comey, that would represent a potentially dangerous return to the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78896/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Douglas M. Charles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hoover abused his power as FBI director to serve presidents’ interests. The reforms that followed were set up to prevent it from happening again.Douglas M. Charles, Associate Professor of History, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/650902016-09-08T20:05:21Z2016-09-08T20:05:21ZFriday essay: Svetlana Alexeviech didn’t make it to the Royal Commission<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137010/original/image-20160908-25231-5ksdsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A doll lies in the ghost town of Pripyat, abandoned since the nearby Chernobyl power plant suffered a catastrophic meltdown in 1986.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Henrik Ismarker/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an edited version of a public lecture given at Melbourne University this week.</em></p>
<p><br></p>
<p>Just the other day I was sitting in my office here on campus waiting to chair some event I stupidly said yes to, eating a Portuguese tart out of a brown paper bag. I had ten minutes.</p>
<p>I picked up Svetlana Alexievich’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/357486.Voices_from_Chernobyl">Voices from Chernobyl</a> (1997). Started reading the prologue. The prologue has a name: “A Solitary Human Voice”. I’d read it many times before, in Russian and in English, and I taught it too and I loved my students for being devastated by it, for not judging a six-months pregnant woman who touches the husband she is forbidden to touch, hugs him, holds him, kisses him, cuts his hair when clumps start falling out, a husband called to the Chernobyl nuclear reactor when the fire broke and who went as he was, in his short sleeves, and now is dying torturously, it’s a phantasmagoric death, in front of her, and I loved them for not thinking this woman is unethical or a child murderer or deranged by trauma or the victim of a system in which her husband’s life, and hers, and their already dead unborn child’s, are worth nothing. Somehow my students knew this woman’s, Lyusya’s, capacity for love and pity was incredible, too big to witness fully.</p>
<p>The prologue goes –</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Someone is saying: ‘You have to understand: This is not your husband anymore, not a beloved person, but a radioactive object with a strong density of poisoning. You’re not suicidal. Get ahold of yourself.’ And I’m like someone who’s lost her mind: ‘But I love him! I love him!’ He’s sleeping, and I’m whispering: ‘I love you!’ Walking in the hospital courtyard, ‘I love you.’ Carrying his sanitary tray, ‘I love you.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I was in my office with Portuguese crumbs all over my jeans while reading Alexievich. Several of my friends who discovered Alexievich post-Nobel (she got the NP last year) said this to me: “She is something else.” That evening a few days ago, she emptied out my office, in a minute, and refilled it with her air.</p>
<p>More –</p>
<blockquote>
<p>None of the doctors knew I was staying with him at night in the bio-chamber. The nurses let me in. At first they pleaded with me: ‘You’re young. Why are you doing this? That’s not a person anymore, that’s a nuclear reactor. You’ll just burn together.’ … In the mornings, just before eight, when the doctors started their rounds, they’d be there on the other side of the film: ‘Run!’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I was by the way in the Ukraine when Chernobyl happened. Eleven, clueless, but then the whole country was clueless. We’ll talk about clueless countries again tonight.</p>
<p>I’ve listened to and read most things I can find on Alexievich, every interview Alexievich has given, just about – in English and in Russian – including the one hosted by New York Public Library where Masha Gessen asked about her <a href="https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2016/06/13/svetlana-alexievich">experience of “extreme fame”</a>. “Oh, Masha, it’s terrible,” Alexievich said so very quickly.</p>
<p>And I haven’t been able to find an explanation of what happens in her books.</p>
<p>She says, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I compose my books out of thousands of voices, destinies, fragments of our life and being.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Alexievich’s people exist on the edge of what is tolerable. Each of their voices is a solitary human voice. And then they come together – Alexievich makes them – into a chorus. And it’s this chorus that is history. The kind of history you write after Chernobyl.</p>
<p>Music, at least in the West, has become the language for talking about the Alexievich method: voices, a choir, symphonic, polyphonic. I am not a musical person. Besides I don’t think taking a mystery and simply transposing it onto another domain, flooding it with another kind of language, is a way of getting close to it.</p>
<p>Of the method, we know Alexievich uses only a small proportion of actual transcripts and picks a hundred or so voices out of sometimes three or five hundred interviews, and of the hundred, ten to twenty will become “pillars”. Alexievich goes back and speaks to her pillars up to twenty times each. She describes it as having “conversations about life” with people, as distinct from conducting interviews, and she says “if the person is older, they are like an older sister or brother to me” and “if they are younger, they are like a younger sister or brother to me”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136991/original/image-20160908-25266-f9rroj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136991/original/image-20160908-25266-f9rroj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136991/original/image-20160908-25266-f9rroj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136991/original/image-20160908-25266-f9rroj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136991/original/image-20160908-25266-f9rroj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136991/original/image-20160908-25266-f9rroj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136991/original/image-20160908-25266-f9rroj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136991/original/image-20160908-25266-f9rroj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Svetlana Alexievich.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Margarita Kabakova</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That still doesn’t begin to explain what happens on the page.</p>
<p>I think you know by now I don’t want to talk about music tonight.</p>
<p>For me, the idea of common humanity is linked inextricably to witnessing other people’s suffering. And it is unwitnessed human pain that I think of when trying to understand why this idea – common humanity – feels particularly, acutely fragile in today’s world. It is what <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/primo-levi-9380562">Primo Levi</a> described all those years ago. “The ever-repeated scene of the unlistened-to story.”</p>
<p>This is the bit I know. What I don’t know, what I believe is becoming harder to know, is what witnessing is.</p>
<p>I do know, I think, what it is not.</p>
<p>It is not taking someone’s pain and putting it in a box with your name or some organisation’s name on it and calling this box a book, or a report, or a recommendation, film script or thesis. It is not an act of taking, or of re-assembly, or of what Nicolas Rothwell has described, in relation to books of <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/the-art-of-time-travel-historians-and-their-craft-by-tom-griffiths/news-story/bd4c125fc08417510386cb8788bfacc2">Aboriginal history written by non-indigenous historians</a>, often with great intentions, as works of preservation that always get sucked into processes of cultural dispersion.</p>
<p>Primo Levi talked about the story being unlistened-to. But pain doesn’t fall out of most people in the form of a story; more often that kind of personal and shared history comes to us as, in the words of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/apr/28/internationaleducationnews.socialsciences">Eva Hoffman</a>, “speech broken under the pressure of pain”. It comes to us as a <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/409167.After_Such_Knowledge">certain kind of silence</a>. Or as words, but words seemingly about something else. As a glimpse of a human body – the vehicle? the vessel? the temple? the damn prison? – twisting, contorting under the burden of suffering and secrecy.</p>
<p>It was Alexievich who made me ask whether witnessing was more like spending the night with the person in the bio-chamber. The night in which you burn together: this may sound almost obscenely romantic. Burning together! Bio-chamber without the protective gear! But this is what she does, isn’t it? And this thing she does has nothing to do with insisting that vicarious traumatisation is an ethical precondition to witnessing, and it cannot be summed up by Dominick LaCapra’s good term “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1032212.Writing_History_Writing_Trauma">empathic unsettlement</a>”. It’s just, as my friends say, “something else”.</p>
<p>Until recently I thought taking someone else’s pain and putting it in a box and filling this box with people in wigs and special costumes and calling this box a Tribunal, or a Royal Commission, and giving the people in costumes expressions of sorrowful intensity and the tasks and the tools of naming previously unnamed things, and of bringing to justice those people who are as skilled at hiding in the shadows as they are at torturing other human beings – I’d thought this was one of the main kinds of witnessing available to us. Nuremberg. The Hague. South Africa. Justice. Truth. Criminal prosecution. Public validation of the truths of people’s broken lives. Spade being named a spade in a public square through a loudspeaker.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136979/original/image-20160908-25266-u4c54a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136979/original/image-20160908-25266-u4c54a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136979/original/image-20160908-25266-u4c54a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136979/original/image-20160908-25266-u4c54a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136979/original/image-20160908-25266-u4c54a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136979/original/image-20160908-25266-u4c54a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136979/original/image-20160908-25266-u4c54a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136979/original/image-20160908-25266-u4c54a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Australian ‘survivor’ of sex abuse outside the Quirinale Hotel in Rome, Italy, 28 February 2016. He is wearing a shirt with an image of himself as a child printed on it. Australian Roman Catholic Cardinal George Pell was in Rome at the time to give evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse via video link.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/CLAUDIO PERI</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All these things must continue, they must be done, but I wonder what price we may be paying for believing that’s pretty much all there is to witnessing. Or perhaps it’s never “we” who pay the price. It’s always those people who testify of their anguish into what might end up feeling like a black hole. Another echoey box with an empty centre.</p>
<p>I ask Nigel Denning and Linda Tilgner, “Have we outsourced the witnessing of child sexual abuse in Australia to the Royal Commission?” Nigel and Linda are psychologists. Nigel is here tonight. They work with survivors of institutional sex abuse. They are not surprised by my question. They say, “Yes, we have outsourced it.”</p>
<p>How does one witness the earth-shattering revelations and testimonies the <a href="http://childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/">Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse</a> has been eliciting and documenting?</p>
<p>Linda Tilgner says,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>there is a perception that those proceedings in themselves have produced something. And they haven’t. Royal Commission – the danger is that people see it as the first and the last step. I think it is an absolutely essential first step. It focuses a large amount of energy, mobilises research, mobilises discussion, has the potential to lead to something very transformative.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Linda says,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is a window of opportunity around the Royal Commission. If that window closes, it’s gone. The opportunity is to make some kind of meaningful change on a societal level. The danger is that the Royal Commission actually becomes a destructive process because it creates a false perception that we have done something when we haven’t.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nigel Denning says,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Testifying at the Royal Commission … I can think of a few people who felt relieved, thank God, two years of my life have gone into writing my story. This is literally what people are doing – putting lives on hold for a year, or more, to write their childhoods. There’s relief in vocalising and for a week, two weeks, a month afterwards, they feel that relief but, by and large, there is a collapse back. There is no redress, no social support out there to perpetuate their witnessing. They’ve had that one experience and now they’re back to washing dishes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Is there a role for our society in all of this?” I ask.</p>
<p>Linda and Nigel answer in unison, “Totally.”</p>
<p>“What is that role?”</p>
<p>“Witnessing,” says Nigel. “It’s being there and being present. Saying it happened, it was wrong, and as a society we’re doing things for it to stop.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136983/original/image-20160908-25237-4ipm4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136983/original/image-20160908-25237-4ipm4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136983/original/image-20160908-25237-4ipm4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136983/original/image-20160908-25237-4ipm4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136983/original/image-20160908-25237-4ipm4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136983/original/image-20160908-25237-4ipm4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136983/original/image-20160908-25237-4ipm4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136983/original/image-20160908-25237-4ipm4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Justice Jennifer Coates (right) looking on as Chair of Royal Commission into child sex abuse Justice Peter McClellan speaks during the first day of the Royal Commission into the Sexual Abuse of Children at the County Court in Melbourne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Les O'Rourke/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The problem with “being there and being present” is not only us having to reckon with so many stories and lives, a total sickening epidemic, everywhere, whole networks of them supporting each other, covering up for each other – if only this was all we were faced with. It goes beyond that. We need to find a way of witnessing not just the crimes of individuals, the betrayal of institutions, the pain of these children now talking to us from their hurting adult bodies, it’s the betrayal of the whole society, a breaking of the fundamental social contract.</p>
<p>We – I’ve said “we” so many times already tonight; g-d knows I am not a friend of “we” and look at me now – is already a kind of a disaster. We, the social debt, community, the wider society … So easy for that “we” to become polemical, to become nothing. Worse, so easy for that “we” to dilute or dissolve altogether the essence of what is being called to attention. Susan Sontag’s injunction from decades back holds: “No ‘we’ should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people’s pain.”</p>
<p>I want you to hear a solitary human voice tonight. I want this voice to talk to you directly about the Royal Commission. I thank profoundly the woman whose voice it is, who spoke to me, she too is “something else” but I will not reveal her name. She will, I hope, use her name for the telling that is hers and hers only. I’ve taken all the specific details out about what happened to her in one of those institutions. That part of the story is not mine to tell.</p>
<p>She says,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I chose to do a statement. My health wasn’t good. It was an almighty time for all of us. So hard to do everything – reliving a lot of things and being ill at the same time. I got a friend to drive me there. My psych. She has been with me for twenty years. I went into the room. There were six or seven people and a glass table. People taking notes.</p>
<p>I was trying to tell of a male officer who abused me. I couldn’t say what he did to me. All my life I have feared retribution. And someone in the room said, ‘The person you are talking about is dead.’ I felt the dead weight lift off me. I was able to talk.</p>
<p>It does something to the body, talking about it. I broke out in sweat. Put my head down. Didn’t touch the glass table. I was not going to leave fingerprints. I told them very clearly that no one should shake my hands. They kept their hands down respectfully. I wondered, if I am telling people something horrible, will they get sick?</p>
<p>Two hours of talking to them, maybe two and a half. Time disappeared. I felt like I told a story that could be turned into a horror movie. They didn’t me ask many questions. Just listened. You travel back, you go back to all the horrible stuff, you re-experience it. My kids didn’t even know.</p>
<p>I came out and the first thing I said to my friend, ‘How did I sound? Did I sound all right?’ Straight away I had no memory about what happened in the room. She said, ‘You did really, really well.’ When I came out I had to sleep. It’s the fear thing. I’ve reached an overload.</p>
<p>When I left that room I walked out with the burden. There isn’t a band-aid big enough to fix abuse. Therapy shifted it to another part, but it’s still inside of me.</p>
<p>Not once in my life did anyone come up to me and say, ‘What’s wrong?’ I always had to scream out.</p>
<p>My children, when I finally told them, had great fear that I would get sick again. I worked hard to be well. I am a government child. I am a government adult. How dare they do it to me? How do I get over it?</p>
<p>I don’t look at monetary things. I just want the respect. The government owes me peace. I don’t want to sign any papers anymore. I just don’t want the government to come anywhere near me ever again. They don’t own any rights to me. They blew their rights when I was ten years old.</p>
<p>I put myself out there. My name is out there. Why aren’t we hearing any more about the Royal Commission? It has served no purpose to many women I know who testified. We have been re-traumatised. We have no result. There is no one to reassure us that it will continue. They will run out of money.</p>
<p>If someone would come to me and say, ‘I am really sorry. I want to take away what you experienced. Let me take the burden off your shoulders. I want to take it away from you,’ it would be amazing. You know, just amazing.</p>
<p>The Commission is still happening, is it? Everything’s taking so long.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How does a society witness itself? Witness itself failing at its most fundamental duty?</p>
<p>When this feels like an impossible task, I read Alexievich. The “we” Alexievich speaks to in her books doesn’t exist, it is created by her address, by the space she makes for the solitary human voice to speak, and be heard, anew.</p>
<p>I was having a chat to my friend Melinda Harvey (Melinda’s here, tonight) about this lecture, I was feeling rather anxious about it, and I said, “Why am I talking about Alexievich in trying to talk about the Royal Commission?” And my smart friend said, “Partially, it’s because institutional sexual abuse is like radiation poisoning.”</p>
<p>And of course it is like radiation poisoning, omnipresent and invisible. It stays in people’s lives like radiation stays in the soil for thousands of years. It stays in families and physical places. It kills people. It makes people sick for generations to come. It is that future that is already here. No colour. No smell. Nothing to tell us it’s here.</p>
<p>I think a lot about invisibility. When I am walking streets of Melbourne, I cannot stop myself from imagining abused children hiding in adult bodies. Could witnessing call on us to make invisible suffering visible?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136980/original/image-20160908-25266-88iugi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136980/original/image-20160908-25266-88iugi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136980/original/image-20160908-25266-88iugi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136980/original/image-20160908-25266-88iugi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136980/original/image-20160908-25266-88iugi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136980/original/image-20160908-25266-88iugi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136980/original/image-20160908-25266-88iugi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136980/original/image-20160908-25266-88iugi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former head of the central Queensland diocese of Rockhampton Brian Heenan (right) and Francis Sullivan from the Catholic Church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council, leave after giving evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse public hearing in Rockhampton, Friday, April 17, 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Miranda Forster/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“There is no social movement,” Nigel Denning says to me, “around systemic child sexual abuse. We are so far off as a society in acknowledging the systemic perpetration.” He says, “It’s almost a public shaming of institutions that’s needed. Like holding a mirror to an institution to say this is what you have done. This is the result of your strategies, your management.”</p>
<p>“But then,” says Linda Tilgner, “if you think about society as a series of systems, or a series of institutions, everything is a form of an institution. Educational institutions. Family is a type of an institution. Workplace. In a sense, it’s like a series of boxes on boxes on boxes.”</p>
<p>Remember Lyusya’s husband, the “human nuclear reactor”, from Voices from Chernobyl? He was buried barefoot – no shoes would fit him – in his formal wear. They took his body and put it in a cellophane bag and tied the bag up. They put the bag with the body in it in a wooden coffin. They tied the coffin with another plastic bag. The plastic bag was “thick like a tablecloth”. Then they put the wooden coffin wrapped in the plastic bag into a zinc coffin. How many boxes does one dead man need?</p>
<p>Some years ago I interviewed psychiatrist <a href="http://www.paulvalent.com/">Paul Valent</a> and he said, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some people call child sexual abuse ‘soul murder’. It is a real destruction of a person’s value and dignity … Generationally too … It interferes with love. It is the opposite of loving. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He told me that of all the traumatised populations he had come across in his work, child survivors of sexual abuse, at least some of them, were more traumatised than any other group. Paul Valent is a child survivor of the Holocaust.</p>
<p>The Royal Commission is flawed, disappointing, necessary, vital, too institutional, too diffuse, a massive improvement on everything else, a let-down, a revolution, but it will not matter in the end if we continue relying on it to do the work of public reckoning with the history of systemic sexual abuse of children in this country. Our work.</p>
<p>The Royal Commission has inspired one of the best episodes of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3198302/?ref_=ttep_ep5">Rake, Season 3</a>. In which criminal barrister Cleaver Green, played by Richard Roxburgh, is just out of jail, but still in disgrace, desperate for the shittiest gigs going, he’s practically begging drink-driving offenders to let him represent them, when all of a sudden he has three Royal Commissions to be at in one day because Sydney has run out of lawyers and even Cleaver can now get a Royal Commission gig. Yes, three Royal Commissions in one day: a Royal Commission into institutional child sex abuse, plus one into government corruption, plus another called the Orphanos Royal Commission, investigating unlawful stock market trading.</p>
<p>Three in one afternoon – it cannot be done, smart people tell Cleaver. Yes, it can, he says. He runs between these Royal Commissions like a madman. And his best friend Barney, he’s a solicitor, runs between them too – except Barney is sick as buggery having just finished the latest course of chemo – and in all that slapsticky, desperate running, Cleaver pushes a pram down some steps in a scene that references slyly the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps-v-kZzfec">Odessa steps sequence</a> in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015648/">Battleship Potemkin</a>.</p>
<p>The Rake baby survives, please be assured. And Cleaver makes it, just.</p>
<p>It’s inspired comedy. Unbelievably good. This may seem frivolous; except I am convinced it’s not. Laughing and crying at the same time. Talking about it as part of our lives, not as something completely separate. Not as something over there. It is over here. Right in the centre. Where the heart is. Where our culture is. We are running to it. We are running away from it. It’s impossible to get there. We’ll get there somehow. What choice do we have?</p>
<p><br></p>
<hr>
<p><em>An expanded version of this lecture was originally given on Wednesday September 7 as part of the series The Wednesday Lectures, held at the University of Melbourne.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65090/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maria Tumarkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse has documented heart-rending testimonies and elicited shattering revelations. But how does a society witness itself failing at its most fundamental duty?Maria Tumarkin, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.