Whenever you experience some form of torture or trauma
there's a break in the continuity.
When everything just gets fragmented there is chaos.
I wished for death, but it didn't happen.
And the best way to transcend that torture is to actually put life in perspective.
A lot of these techniques are done to silence people.
They give you acid and then they ask you questions step-by-step.
Because they know people won't be able to talk about these particular experiences.
Sometimes you've got to get creative.
And if there is an antidote, it's being able to put it all together.
-My name? -Yes.
My name is Pearl Fernandes.
Yep.
I am a clinical psychologist.
And, I've been at S.T.A.R.T.T.S for almost 20 years now.
I'm Yvette Aiello and I'm a clinical psychologist as well.
I'm the Senior Clinical Group Counsellor at S.T.A.R.T.T.S
And I have been here for about 5 years.
Okay.
In my interactions with you two, you kind of present as this double act.
So, just take me back to the beginning of how you two met .
Okay, good! I know there is a story there, fantastic.
Let's hear this one.
I came as a student and Pearl was my first supervisor here at S.T.A.R.T.T.S.
No that's not, that's not...okay.
That's the story.
Okay, go.
And this is exactly how it started.
No, and it was very professional for about six months.
Six minutes?
Not long.
The first time I actually met her was when she attended a training that I did.
Remember? Yeah.
There is something about Yvette. She is very honest.
But actually, we are not talking as much as you think we are
with each other.
We talk constantly.
Everyday she says "I had so many things to talk to you, and I didn't get a chance.
We've go to make time to talk."
And I think, "what do we do all day?"
Isn't that all we do?
Okay, so you're these two actually quite bright, bubbly, warm people
who talk and deal in some of the worst of human experiences.
Do you appreciate why that looks a bit odd from the outside?
What was the initial interest in it?
Dealing with people that have been through the worst.
I think there's something about
not only the vulnerability, but the strength.
To understand how people can survive experiences like that
is really fascinating.
And it's really empowering, or enriching to...
witness those journeys.
We actually have a block of ice in the middle of the group and
we are all like, "what the size about it?"
It's like, that's how we are all feeling right now
we are completely frozen.
We all feel really uncomfortable in this situation
and you just kind of put it out there.
We acknowledge our own...
We are like, "yeah we are a bit uncomfortable and that to."
You literally have a block of ice
in the middle of the room to symbolise how awkward you are?
Yes.
Cause it's great.
That is the weirdest thing I have ever heard.
Cause we were like, "Oh we need an ice-breaker for this group."
Yes, we have an ice in the room.
We bring in this block of ice on this plate and we put it in
the middle of the room and there's a whole group of
guys who have never met before.
Pretend they haven't seen it.
Everyone's avoiding the ice but also looking at the ice.
And avoiding each other.
There's many reasons we chose to use ice.
One, because it's funny.
Two because it's a metaphor for exactly how they're
feeling and how they're behaving in that first session.
So everybody is completely frozen.
Everybody's tight, there's barely any movement.
And they're all sitting in their seats, barely interacting.
The way it works is that you tend to
disconnect from your body.
Because the only way they would have survived
the brutality that they've gone through
is if they disconnect.
So it's a good metaphor for what happened then and what's continuing to happen.
Ali (not his real name) was kidnapped and tortured by ISIS in Iraq.
So we know that he was a police officer
and that he also diffused bombs.
He's Christian from the Chaldean background.
Obviously being Christian, they were targeted by ISIS.
Ali's family believed he was dead and even held a funeral for him.
Photos to show these are some of the suburbs
and you can see this is how I lived.
This is my daily life.
Ali's agreed to speak with us because he wants people
to understand what being tortured by ISIS is really like.
Do you remember the day you were taken?
The 6th of August, 2014.
What happened? How did they take you?
Well when they entered, I didn't think they would arrest us.
I thought they would just ask us to leave like other families
But actually they shocked us because they arrested us.
And they put plastic and they put us in a small caravan.
As you can see they broke my pelvic area, my spinal cord as well.
They injured my spinal cord.
There's a prolapse in the eyelid because they used to hit my on the eye on the head.
You can see the traces of electricity when they used to electrify me.
The nerve actually, because of the electricity they've been using on me,
the nerve is not working.
It's like a dead nerve now in the area.
These are the physical things that I'm suffering but you add to this the psychological status.
The mental status is very difficult.
I faced death six to five times a day.
I wished for death but it didn't happen.
Why do you think it didn't happen?
The will of God.
God's will.
I think lots of people see the news about ISIS
and I think they see bombings and headlines,
and I don't think they really understand what it means on the ground.
To the extent that you are happy to share, what do you think people should really know
about what happens when ISIS moves into a town?
They can't imagine the slaughtering, the killing, taking out organs from people while they are alive.
All these kinds of practises.
They actually slaughtered a girl, but they didn't do it from the neck.
They actually, while she was alive, they widely opened her tummy.
From the chest to the tummy.
And they took out her organs, she's alive, and then they slaughtered and killed her because they said
it's better to kill her at this age rather than growing up to become a slut.
What age?
3 years.
We realise that the brain can't delete information, you can't actually just forget something.
Because you can't take the memory out of your brain.
So you can try to forget but you're asking something that your brain isn't built to do.
As I understand it, part of the goal here is to get them to the place where
they can and still remember it but they're not reliving it.
So how do you get people to a place where
these horrible things are there but they are not debilitating
If you are able to remember and make sense of or make meaning of those experiences in your life
through that, they become...
That's the healing process.
And they won't keep coming up when you don't want them to.
It's kind of like facing the monster, I guess.
Sometimes you've got to get creative.
Can I ask what that is?
You can, it is a tire,
that we use in the group as one of our exercises to help introduce the concept of trauma recovery.
Where did the tire come from?
The street.
Did you just steal a tire off the street for therapeutic purposes?
Yes.
We tie a number of cords to it, number of strings.
Typical speaking, how many guys do you have?
We usually have about eight men in the group, each of them would have a string.
And then we'll just ask them to just
it's also a bit of a get to know you game.
So call out the person's name, swap sides.
So Marc, I'll swap with you.
Ah, Yvette.
Okay let's cross again.
Pearl.
Jump on through.
After we've done this for a while, we've got a really nice knot in the middle there.
This part I can do.
Alright let's create some nice knots here.
You take that one, I'll take that one.
Okay, that's a nice mess.
This a proper allegory, I can get behind.
You're looking at the person, calling the person's name, making eye contact.
Because most of them do not know each other, they're all strangers
We understand that when you have been through trauma, the way that your memory processes occur,
they often become quite confused and we say the wires are tangled.
And that's a really nice concept that they can relate to and they often say,
"Yeah, it feels like my brain is tangled."
And all the wires are just crossed and I'm not getting signals where I want them to go.
Things are coming up when I don't want them to come up.
So I say, this is kind of a representation of those tangled wires in our brain.
So what do we do about it?
You actually have to retrace your steps, because if you want to untangle it,
you actually have to go back.
Can you tell me about the first time you met Pearl and Yvette?
The first time I met them, I felt scared.
Feel not sleep, I can't eat.
Physically, mentally, I have problem.
He was captured by the Sri Lankan Army
and during that time he was brutally tortured including sexually violated
by the officers over multiple nights.
Different people come and take off their clothes and have a sexual touch.
Then people laugh.
He had really bad internal injuries from that.
Having escaped that, and trying to escape the country, he was then again caught in Malaysia.
And was again imprisoned and again sexually violated.
By whom?
Other inmates.
I feel like I want to die or something like that but my parents protect my life.
Did they know what happened to you?
They know because when I go toilet, I can't sit properly on the toilet.
They hold me when I sit down.
They hold me.
Have either of you ever considered quitting?
No!
So the fact that it is so horrible is why it's so important to do.
I think it hurts that one man can be so cruel to another for no reason.
But when you are there and you kind of feel the trust that the men have...
actually disclosed this level of intimacy to you.
Something happens.
You don't want to walk away.
So we lay the rope out, so at one end we have birth.
The other end is still a bit tangled up because that's life yet to come.
Stones.
Stones are a representation of the difficult experiences in their life.
And the flowers are about the positive experiences in your life.
Whenever you experience some form of torture or trauma
there's a break in the continuity.
Your thoughts your emotions and your feelings.
But often because you're in it you don't see that is whats happened.
So we are kind of bringing it together.
What we do is we help them look at life as a whole.
And the best way to transcend that torture and the trauma
is to actually put life into perspective.
Before I feel angry, I get upset,
but when I came here I'm slowly, slowly better.
In the years that you've spent here at S.T.A.R.T.T.S
what have you learnt about yourself?
That we don't know everything.
We continue to learn every day.
And life is the best university really,
but we learn it though our clients.
They teach us how much more there is to life.
We work with many clients who had their bodies broken
but there is something about the human spirit that never gives up.