Inherited trauma among the children born as a result of rape during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 against the Tutsi
Type de matériel :
74
This article studies the trauma inherited from the mothers and the family contexts of those born as a result of the rape committed by the Interahamwe militia against Tutsi girls and women. Nineteen young people (all seventeen years old at the time of the study in 2012), and their mothers, aged between thirty-three and forty-five, participated in this research. The tools used in association with the systemic approach were: free and imaginary genograms, family drawings, and the exploration of the family motto, as well as the approach of the action-oriented research that lasted four years. These tools facilitated the participants’ expression of their thoughts and feelings. The results reveal that: i) there is a relationship between the atrocity of the rape committed during the genocide against the Tutsi and the transmission of trauma to the children born as a result of this rape; ii) feelings of sadness, sorrow, and shame are connected with the makeup of their families; iii) despair and the lack of a sense of identity in these children are connected to the suffering of their mothers. This study not only highlights the vulnerabilities and the psychic and relational resources available to these children and their families, but it also provides the bases that allow the establishment of the means and conditions of a systemic framework that might be able to help these children and their mothers’ psychological recovery.
Réseaux sociaux