ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the domain and scope of interpersonal trust, some of the primary elements of interpersonal trust, the interlinking between interpersonal trust and the social, and the role of repair and forgiveness when interpersonal trust goes wrong. Apart from these systemic forms of distrust resulting from the social imaginary, there are specific practices that can infect reciprocal interpersonal trust relationships and even with whom we form interpersonal relationships. Sources of damaged trust are found, for example, in social practices like rape, sexual assault, and criminalization of people of color. Crimes such as most sexual assaults, rape crimes, hate crimes and ongoing discrimination, disadvantage, marginalization, damage trust in the world: they call into question whether it ever makes sense to trust in, or in the functioning world. Sexual violence and other forms of traumatic violence shake us to our core: they call into question some of the most fundamental assumptions about the world we live in and how it functions.
