ABSTRACT
Traumatic experiences can influence the child’s emotional, cognitive and moral development, because it influences its self-image and its expectations of self and environment. Children of torture survivors are therefore a particularly vulnerable group who are often severely affected both by their own experiences of organized violence and by that of their parents. The acute emotional reactions of children following concrete, war related experiences can be summarized within the concept of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The main purpose of torture is to break down a person’s integrity and personality in order then to use that broken person to spread terror throughout the community. A deep change in the protecting quality of the family atmosphere is an effect of torture which has severe consequences for the children. Too detailed information of experiences like torture however, can also have negative consequences for the child, if the parents do not manage to take care of the child’s anxiety, but rather overwhelm it with their own.
