#faking torture

[scripttorture]

1 Thanks for your response about faking torture. A few things didn't get mentioned that seem important. The victim is never tortured. The fake torturer is the only person assumed to do so. The others are only kidnappers and got what they thought was person with a reputation for torture to get information. He isn't a torturer at all, but the victim's friend pretending. So he could enter the kidnapper's lair, visit his friend and stage a rescue. Also, I should mention the victim already has a few

2. cuts and bruises simply by fighting the kidnappers before they took him down. No actual torture ever happens. The kidnappers only need to hear sounds of torture and the victim appearing (mentally exhausted if not physical) a little worse for wear. There is also no doctor or lawyer to fool.

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Sorry it took so long to get back to this one.

 This question is following on from an earlier ask, here.

 I appreciate the additional details but my answer hasn’t changed much. I think you should read more about torture apologia and clean torture before you go forward with this (O’Mara’s Why Torture Doesn’t Work:The Neuroscience of Interrogation is a great starting point.)

 I don’t think this scenario is torture apologia but while writing it you will brush up against concepts and pre-conceptions that are common in torture apologia. Things like the assumption torture always leads to obvious external marks and the assumption that torture survivors without these marks are lying.

 You’ll find it a lot easier to navigate around those if you familiarise yourself with these tropes and their implications first.

 If you can’t access O’Mara, because it’s too expensive or unsafe, then take a look through my tags on ‘clean torture’ and ‘torture apologia’. It will probably be a longer, choppier process but it should help you get an over view.

 This post is designed as a starting point. There’s an old post on clean tortures specifically over here.

 In this kind of short term scenario around people who’ve never seen survivors before torture is pretty easy to fake. The vast majority of torture today is ‘clean’, which means it leaves no obvious external marks. The majority of these clean torture techniques have been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years. So even though scarring tortures and clean tortures were used side by side historically this sort of thing is still plausible in a historical setting.

 Tasers and stun guns, used according to instructions, sometimes leave a slightly red patch of skin, similar to a pinch or a bug bite. Waterboarding can make people throw up but aside from that the only immediately obvious sign is being wet, tired and distressed. Clean beatings might leave some slight redness but they don’t always.

 If there aren’t any experts to fool, or any close observation then this scenario is perfectly possible.

 My worry is that this sort of plot could end up implying that there are a lot of malicious torture accusations and that the majority of survivors could be ‘lying’ about their experiences.

 Because this character, who is acting tiredness, pain and distress? That’s how most torture survivors today would look immediately afterwards. The immediate aftermath is often easy to act.

 The life long disabilities, the memory problems and the effect on communities, on generations is not something that people can consistently fake.

 I guess what I keep circling back to is this: if torture isn’t going to have a lasting impact on this story why is it coming up at all? Is there really no other way to break this character out? A way that doesn’t risk implying that the most vulnerable people on our planet are liars.

 I approach the blog and the questions here with the assumption that the majority of us writers have not been tortured. We are writing about other people. People who are more vulnerable then us. People who are routinely dismissed, talked over and neglected throughout our global society.

 We owe it to them to do the best job we can. And I think sometimes that means not writing about them.

 Sometimes it means letting go of a plot we thought was neat or clever because it’s too difficult to navigate without risking harm to someone more vulnerable then we are.

 Ask yourself if you are really sure you can write this without propping up arguments that support torture today. I can not answer that for you. You know your story and your own abilities far better then I do.

 If you’re confident you can handle it I still think you need to do the reading. And if you’re even a tiny bit unsure then I think it might be better if you try and think of another method of escape.

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[scripttorture]

I have a situation in which torture is faked but has to appear real to others. What I need is how can the victim appear to look more hurt than they really are, both mentally and physically. The actual "torture" is not at all witnessed by eye so they can do whatever they actually want in there but it does have to sound real through the door.

Well that is possible but how convincing it is could vary a lot and it wouldn’t necessarily protect someone from torture.

 Before I go any further I think it’s important to say that stories where any traumatic event or atrocity are faked need to be handled carefully: far too many survivors are dismissed as ‘faking it’ or ‘lying’. Try not to add to that.

 And if you haven’t already take a quick look at this page which is there to help people who are getting started.

 Torturers are competitive and incredibly undisciplined. So the ‘fact’ that this character has already been tortured by someone else wouldn’t stop another torturer from abusing this character as well.

 Torturers often continue their abuse when there is no obvious ‘point’. They often target victims in front of other torturers as a way of showing off to each other.

 So if the idea behind this charade is to protect the ‘victim’ character I’d suggest coming up with something else as well. Because otherwise the most likely thing is that the faked torture is convincing but other torturers decide to have a go later anyway.

 I think that putting together a convincing (to the torturers) charade, should be possible especially if you put together a well thought through, fictional National Style.

 National Style is a term Rejali uses to describe the most common tortures practiced in a region. Because we do see broad patterns that break down more or less by country.

 If you put together a ‘National Style’ for your fictional world that is mostly based on ‘clean’ tortures then what you want should be relatively straight forward.

 Clean torture is another term I borrowed from Rejali and other people in the field can use different terms. It means the types of torture which don’t (usually) leave obvious external marks or scars.

 So for instance a punch in the face, which might leave a black eye or a split lip, probably wouldn’t be classed as a clean torture. But a slap to a fatty area of the body, which might redden but is unlikely to bruise or cut, is more likely to be ‘clean’.

 Most torture nowadays is clean. Rejali puts forward a very convincing argument that this is because of increased investigation and torture trials: essentially Rejali thinks it’s torturers trying to hide the evidence.

 In a fictional scenario like this one that can be played against the torturers. Because they would not expect to find any lasting marks or scars.

 The easiest torture to ‘fake’ in these circumstances would be using a Taser or stun gun. These rarely leave any form of mark even on victims who are tortured to death. It makes torture by Taser one of the hardest forms to prove.

 But it also means that if your false-torturer goes into a cell with a Taser, there’s a loud thump, like a body hitting the floor and screams- Well then that’s pretty much all the ‘evidence’ the other torturers would expect.

 Some victims do piss or shit themselves during electrical torture. But I think the lack of this could be ‘explained’ with a loud charade of the ‘guard’ forcing the ‘victim’ to clean it up.

 A clean form of falaka would also fit with this idea. Falaka is beating the soles of the feet and depending on the implement used it can be lethal, maiming, scarring or clean. Nowadays the clean form is generally done using soft, rounded implements like hosepipes.

 The outward signs of this would be a temporary redness and a slight swelling in the feet. The swelling could be mimicked by soaking the feet in water. I’m not sure how the redness could be ‘faked’ but it can vanish very quickly, sometimes within minutes.

 ‘Pepper’ is another one that would be very easy to act. This is putting irritants, such as chilli and pepper, into a mucous membrane, like the mouth, nose, eyes, genitals and anus. There’s actually a pretty good account of faking this in Hafner’s I was Never Here and This Never Happened, she describes pretending to be abused in this way in order to avoid the real thing in her school.

 Some common clean tortures that I don’t think could be ‘faked’ are sleep deprivation and starvation. Essentially because studies that talk about the way people look after they haven’t eaten for a long period or haven’t had enough sleep show that we can tell.

 We can’t necessarily consciously say ‘oh yes that person didn’t get enough sleep’, but there is a visual difference. Which means that people looking at this fake-victim would be able to tell something was ‘off’ compared to real victims, even if they couldn’t identify exactly what was different.

 I also don’t think that stress positions would be easy to fake. Because while the swelling they cause goes down quickly and the ulcers heal over this takes hours or days. What makes stress positions isn’t a total lack of visible signs but the fact that these signs can be symptoms of other things, such as disease or malnutrition.

 This is probably a good time to state that while I think what I’ve described could fool a guard or a torturer I do not think it could fool a doctor, trauma specialist or a lawyer who’d dealt with torture cases before.

 Torturers are notoriously terrible at conducting investigations or paying attention to evidence. So I don’t think that it would be particularly difficult to fool them. Dangerous, yes, but not difficult.

 From the point of view of the ‘victim’ they’d need to act as if they were exhausted and in a lot of pain, with the exhaustion perhaps as the key point. Falaka makes walking difficult and painful. Electrical torture can cause lasting muscular pain and temporary difficulty with coordination and fine motor control as a result.

 As for psychological symptoms, it’s hard to estimate what torturers see and what they recognise.

 Victims describe anxiety, depression and hypervigilance around torturers and guards. But they also describe defiance, resistance (non-violent and violent) and even baiting behaviour.

 Victims describe a range of behaviours and responses. Torturers on the other hand describe their victims as if everyone responds in a consistent and controlled way.

 The evidence overwhelmingly shows that the torturers are wrong but it is difficult to say whether they are deliberately misrepresenting what happened or if this behaviour is a result of memory problems or if they’re just plain delusional.

 What I’m driving at here is that because we don’t know enough about torturers it’s difficult to say how accurate and convincing this ‘victim’ character’s acting would need to be.

 Especially since there’s considerable variety in how people respond to and express pain.

 In general acting incredibly tired and as if it is difficult to do everyday activities would go a long way. Acting scared would pander to what torturers seem to want and expect but would not represent all victims.

 Catatonia, hallucinations, psychosis and movie-style-amnesia are all (barring very unusual circumstances or solitary confinement particularly) incredibly unlikely.

 Wrapping up, I’d suggest thinking carefully about how you present this plot line and any real torture survivors in the story. Because a lot of torture apologia today works by saying that some victims don’t count. That they’re liars or that the abuse they suffered is somehow not ‘bad enough’ to count.

 I don’t think the scenario that you’ve presented is apologia but I do think you should be aware of how and when it brushes up against similar ideas. You might find this post on clean torture useful, and I think this post on the definition of torture could also be beneficial.

 I hope that helps. :)

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