THEMATIC REPORT 2017 SEXUAL TORTURE This report follows the definition of the UN Convention against Torture (UNCAT) that ‘torture’ is ‘any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions’. In the context of this report, sexual torture will employ the above definition to acts of a sexual nature. Forms of sexual torture The centres involved in the report have supported victims that have experienced diverse and horrific methods of sexual torture. These include sexual humiliation and molestation; forced nakedness; different forms of rape; kicking or punching, electric shocks to, and cutting or stabbing of genitalia; forced sterilisation or castration; and, forced prostitution or sexual slavery over long periods of time.1 Rape is a method of sexual torture, which is frequently used as a weapon during war or conflict by the military and rebel groups, among others. A counsellor from the CAPREC centre in Senegal recalls the story of a student who was raped when soldiers stormed a stadium in Conakry, the capital of her home country Guinea in September 2009. “They ripped her blouse off her, and tore her jeans off. One of the soldiers pressed his head between her knees and beat her buttocks. She was having her period, it was the second day. He spread her legs with violence, he inserted the end of a stick into her vagina and imitated the sexual act with it. She grew stiff with pain, fear and shame.” Experiences like this have a long lasting effect on the survivor and some people endure this every day as victims of slavery. Such was the case of Sereine, who is a TCC Cameroon client. “They started beating her, and they took her with them to their camp, to where they were lodging. For a whole month, she was held as their sexual object. She had to do everything that a woman could do for them, like cooking, washing, getting water, and all those things, and she was raped almost every day by four men, almost every day for a whole month.” While the methods of sexual torture mentioned above are clearly illegal, in some countries governments continue to enforce practices such as virginity testing as part of the application process for the military or police. For example, in 2014 it emerged that the national government of Indonesia subjected female applicants for the National Police to discriminatory and degrading virginity tests. The International Forensic Expert Group (IFEG), a medicolegal expert body created by the IRCT, which is made up of more than 30 of the world’s leading forensic experts, have found that virginity testing constitutes torture. The IFEG stated that ”forcibly conducted virginity testing is likely to cause severe and lasting psychological symptoms and disabilities that remain over time”. The invasive approach is often employed as a public and social means to control sexuality. The IFEG found the process to be physically and mentally distressing, causing women to suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alongside feelings of humiliation, self-disgust and worthlessness, and to interfere with the fundamental human right to physical integrity and private life. One of the more common methods of sexual torture is verbal humiliation of a sexual nature. Camila, a client at ITEI in Bolivia says, “I still hear what they yelled at us, the exact words they used. Whenever this happens, I immediately feel scared again. When I am at university, where they abducted us, all of a sudden it feels like I am back in the military base, I see soldiers and I fear that they are going to yell at me again. Whenever I wake up, I hear yells.” Who are the perpetrators? The centres reported cases of sexual torture carried out by a variety of state security forces, including police, military, special units (such as anti-terrorism units), and detention personnel. The locations where sexual torture occurs are much the same as where other methods of torture are page 9