ABSTRACT
Torture writ broadly is the intentional iniction of physical or psychologic pain.1 The term includes a wide variety of conduct ranging from that instigated by authorities to gain confessions or information to that caused by private actors in the course of domestic abuse or in the intimidation of neighbors or disliked ethnic or religious minorities. Most legal denitions of torture, however, restrict its denition by requiring an element of state action; thus, for example, the United Nations Convention against Torture denes it as follows:
Similarly, the damage done by torture and the evidence of the same range widely. On the one hand, some persons torturing others seek to injure their victims in a way that is highly visible and consequently damaging to the victim’s psyche (and serve as a threat to anyone who sees the victim). Cases in which perpetrators burn women chemically or thermally for failing to accept proposals or in defense of a family’s “honor” will fall into this category. Such injuries can also lead to secondary complications such as skin infection and scar-related contractures. On the other hand, other forms of torture, although extremely painful and devastating to the victim, are expressly designed to leave no visible mark on the skin whatsoever, in large part to allow the torturer to deny the torture. Without in any way diminishing the severity, horror, and tragedy of the latter, this chapter focuses on the former in the context of addressing such injuries in an emergency situation.
