Abstract

WILCHES, Ivonne. What We Have Learned about Treating Female Victims of Sexual Violence in the Colombian Armed Conflict. rev.estud.soc. [online]. 2010, n.36, pp.86-94. ISSN 0123-885X.

The article describes what we have learned about psychosocially and psycho-legally treating female victims of sexual violence in Colombia's armed conflict. Sexual violence has characteristics that differentiate it from other forms of violence against women: the strong tendency for victims to remain silent "invisiblizes" the crime. This silence arises from the sense of guilt and shame that stem from cultural imaginaries and patriarchal ideologies which maintain that women can avoid being raped and assumes that somehow they provoked the attack if they were. This strong cultural prejudice makes women keep quiet and not report the crime. In the armed conflict, sexual violence has been systematically used as an effective weapon, but one that has been silenced and is neither admitted by its victims nor its perpetrators. The psychosoical treatment of sexual violence in the conflict should consider the issues of gender, human rights, and political position in order to help victims stop seeing themselves as such and become, instead, citizens who demand their rights.

Keywords : Gender; Identity; Gendered Violence; Guilt; Resilience; Psychosocial Support; Psycho-Legal Support; Human Rights.

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