THEMATIC REPORT 2017 SEXUAL TORTURE about their ordeal years after the event. “Agata for instance, was markedly anxious and alarmed while describing what had exactly happened. She took out tranquillisers during our first counselling sessions, although 16 years had passed since the incident. Even after many years, she is not able to talk about it calmly.” Agata is one of many Serbian women who were victims of rape by police forces during the war in the Former Yugoslavia. She lost her home and was allotted temporary accommodation where she was frequently raped. “On several occasions, armed and uniformed men belonging to the police rushed in, threatening her that they would kill her, beating her up and raping her again and again,” her counsellor reported. For a long time, Agata suffered from severe PTSD. When she first approached RCT Croatia, she complained of sleeping problems, mistrust and anxiety. Since the rape, her menstrual bleeding had increased significantly. “We provided her with individual psychotherapy, with psychiatric treatment, including medication, as well as with gynaecological checks. Due to a lack of resources on our part, we had to stop treatment after three months, although it was clear that Agata needs assistance for many years.” The effects on physical health of sexual torture are very diverse. Depending on the method of torture used, its intensity and duration, a victim can subsequently suffer from symptoms like regular dizziness and fainting, headaches, breathing difficulties, tiredness, and sleeping disorders, damage to reproductive organs or the anus, sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS or HPV, irregularities of menstrual bleeding, infertility, or sexual dysfunction, loss of appetite and loss of weight, abdominal pain, or nausea, from back pain, venereal diseases and cervical cancer. The stories of José and Sereine from TCC Cameroon illustrate how the long-term physical consequences of sexual torture can affect a victim’s life for years or indeed for the rest of their lives. page 15 José TCC Cameroon “This experience had completely destroyed him, also physically. The rape was that brutal, that it had devastating effects on his digestive system. He is unable to contain both urine and stool. He has undergone two surgeries, but both of them did not succeed. It is hard to imagine how difficult it is to live with such a disability. It had strong consequences on his family too, of course. He was not strong enough to look for a job and simply also not able to pursue a job; he cannot work because the torture marked his body in such an extreme way. He walks with a lot of pain. He suffers from frequent back pain and headaches. He does not breathe very easily, which is the reason why he is permanently tired. He also has sleeping disorders.” Sereine TCC Cameroon “In terms of the physical and psychosomatic symptoms, she had a very high score in our evaluation system. As a consequence of the mass rapes that she experienced, she is HIV positive. She feels a constant pain in her abdomen, and complains of frequent headaches.”