Think of a sit­u­a­tion when you expe­ri­enced an abuse, threat, vio­lence… When you felt intense fear for your­self and your loved ones and loss of con­trol in impor­tant areas of life. This sit­u­a­tion may have been an iso­la­tion, lack of sup­port and help­less­ness. You felt so ashamed that you wished to dis­ap­pear, and the guilt that „it” was hap­pen­ing to you was over­whelm­ing, even though you clear­ly knew that you had noth­ing to do with the harm that was inflict­ed on you. We are talk­ing about an expe­ri­ence when your feel­ings, inti­ma­cy, safe­ty, integri­ty, dig­ni­ty, hon­our or body expe­ri­enced some kind of threat. It was dif­fi­cult for you to con­fide to anoth­er per­son about the expe­ri­ence, you were afraid that they would not believe you… Unfor­tu­nate­ly, your appre­hen­sion was jus­ti­fied: many shook their heads scep­ti­cal­ly, assured you that it „wasn’t real­ly like that” and that it „wasn’t that impor­tant”, or made unsavoury jokes …

I invite all read­ers of this Man­u­al to pic­ture a hypo­thet­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, in which your painful rec­ol­lect­ed expe­ri­ence is made pub­lic in print, visu­al, dig­i­tal media — with your full name or ini­tials. Tru­ly, semi-false­ly or false­ly described, but every­one may feel invit­ed to fur­ther hurt, insult, intim­i­date you in the com­ments. In addi­tion, I ask you to imag­ine that it would for­ev­er remain in the sphere of vir­tu­al real­i­ty, the Inter­net, the cloud. One click would always be enough for your trau­ma to be exploit­ed again, for dif­fer­ent and often dis­grace­ful rea­sons.
The con­se­quences of unpro­fes­sion­al report­ing rep­re­sent a new form of vio­lence against the vic­tims, espe­cial­ly when we talk about sur­vivors of the trau­ma of human traf­fick­ing, a com­plex trau­ma that is clas­si­fied as tor­ture (the most seri­ous attack on human life). Also, every time they see them­selves, their name, or ini­tials, or when the abusers (traf­fick­ers, their helpers, sym­pa­thet­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the media, insti­tu­tions and the com­mu­ni­ty in which they live) deny the crime or to praise their deeds, the sur­vivors become vic­tims again, reliv­ing the trau­ma they have already expe­ri­enced. And not only that — through the uneth­i­cal actions described, they expe­ri­ence anoth­er form of vio­lence. The spi­ral of vio­lence does not stop.
Regard­less indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences, all sur­vivors’ needs can be summed up in the „5P formula1”: sup­port, trust, con­nec­tion, help and friend­ship. They need to feel safe first, so that the wounds heal at least to some extent, and then jus­tice should be served. The con­tin­u­a­tion of life, with the feel­ing that the future is cer­tain, is insep­a­ra­ble from restor­ing faith in one’s own val­ues and in the peo­ple around them. It is essen­tial that the sur­vivors feel a gen­uine con­nec­tion with oth­ers again. Only then can we use the term — integration.

„The con­flict between the will to deny hor­ri­ble events and the will to pro­claim them aloud is the cen­tral dialec­tic of psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma,” said author J.L. Her­man in “Trau­ma and Recov­ery”.
The above quote indi­cates how del­i­cate the con­di­tion of the sur­vivors is, and there­fore the com­plex­i­ty of report­ing on the events and painful expe­ri­ences of these peo­ple, their loved ones and affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties. In order not to become sym­bol­ic accom­plices of vio­lence while report­ing on the trau­ma of human traf­fick­ing, I invite you to pro­tect the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of per­son­al data, vic­tims’ tes­ti­monies, their hon­our and dig­ni­ty, human and civ­il rights, and espe­cial­ly the rights of child victims.

Through psy­chother­a­py with sur­vivors of the human traf­fick­ing trau­ma, I have learned that most of them want the pub­lic and the media to talk and write about human traf­fick­ing as a bru­tal, orga­nized crime. It is espe­cial­ly impor­tant to sur­vivors to pre­vent that some oth­er chil­dren, girls, women and men have the same expe­ri­ence. Even­tu­al­ly, when the sur­vivors feel a strong need to tell every­thing — to the cam­era or the recorder, you should remem­ber that you are cer­tain­ly more pow­er­ful than them, and there­fore you should pro­tect them from exces­sive expo­sure and poten­tial retal­i­a­tion. Report­ing on dan­gers to chil­dren and peo­ple, risks, self-pro­tec­tion, insti­tu­tions and orga­ni­za­tions whose com­pe­tence is the pre­ven­tion and pro­tec­tion of vic­tims, is the best way of social­ly respon­si­ble report­ing on human traf­fick­ing. At the same time, it is an immea­sur­able sup­port to the survivors.

How­ev­er, even when it is over, the wounds still remain with the sur­vivors. The pro­fes­sion­al ethics of jour­nal­ists, edi­tors, pho­tog­ra­phers, the hon­esty, respect and empa­thy are impor­tant links in the recov­ery of per­sons who have sur­vived the trau­ma of human trafficking.

I invite you to remem­ber the men­tal exer­cise from the begin­ning of this text when­ev­er you report on human traf­fick­ing, gen­der-based vio­lence, vio­lence against chil­dren and oth­er forms of vio­lence when peo­ple and their loved ones suf­fered injuries or, unfor­tu­nate­ly, lost their lives.

Kind regards,
Bil­jana Slavković
Psy­chother­a­pist, Insti­tute for Psychodrama