Dr. Lewis Marshall and Dr. Michael Viola codirect the clinic team of physicians, nurses, interpreters, befrienders, and students.

Medicine For Peace Opens Health Center for Victims of Torture

Jacob’s Story….Jacob is a fifty-year-old man who is a citizen of Cameroon in West Africa. He lived in Douala, the country’s largest city, with his wife and two teenage sons, and worked as a truck driver hauling food products from the countryside into the city. Jacob had never been involved in any political activities, but his sister attended an antigovernment rally in 2006, protesting the lack of democratic reform and the corruption in the Cameroonian government. She was arrested, sentenced to six months in prison, but died before her release as a result of the harsh interrogation techniques known to be widespread in prisons in that country. After his sister’s death, Jacob was arbitrarily arrested twice, and imprisoned in Yabassi Prison during which he was tortured numerous times. He received multiple blows to the head by guards using gun-butts and steel tipped boots, which have severely incapacitated him. His wife bribed a guard to have him transferred to a prison hospital, and then bribed a doctor to allow him to escape from hospital. He escaped into the bush; while in hiding, the police issued a “third and final” summons for his arrest, tantamount to a death sentence.

Jacob was able to secure a short-term visa from the U.S. Embassy in Douala to visit a close relative living in the U.S. When he arrived in the U.S., his relative was concerned about his ill-health and brought him to the Advocates for Victims of Torture and Trauma (ASTT) in Baltimore. They began treating his severe depression, secured him a pro bono immigration lawyer, and assisted him in his application for asylum status in the U.S., on the grounds that he will be killed if he returns to Cameroon. ASTT referred Jacob to the MFP Health Clinic for medical evaluation and treatment, and for documentation of physical evidence of torture. A Medicine For Peace physician will testify in court at Jacobs’s asylum hearing. At that hearing, the judge will decide whether Jacob can remain in the United States or be forced to return to Cameroon.

Jacob’s story is not unique. There are 150 countries around the world that actively engage in governmentally condoned torture. Each year there are approximately 60,000 applications by foreign born individuals for asylum in the US, with a backlog of 350,000 cases to be decided. There are forty thousand asylum seekers in the greater DC area; many have a history similar to Jacob’s, and are seeking asylum based on their having been tortured in their home country and will be tortured or killed if they return home. Only one third of people seeking asylum in the US will be approved.

Over the past eighteen years, Medicine For Peace physicians and nurses have acquired considerable skill in caring for war trauma and torture victims through their work in El Salvador, Iraq, Bosnia and Haiti. Because of the special medical and mental health needs of this vulnerable group of patients, Medicine For Peace has opened the MFP Health Center for Victims of Torture in Hyattsville, Md. MFP has been assisted in the development of the Health Center by the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC), an organization dedicated to empower and assist torture survivors. The MFP Health Center is co-directed by Dr. Lewis Marshall and Dr. Michael Viola, and provides pro bono medical services for torture victims in the greater Washington and Baltimore area. The Health Center sees patients evenings and weekends, and is staffed by volunteer physicians, nurses, clinic administrators, drivers, befrienders, and interpreters.

The core activities of the MFP Health Center include performing medical-legal examinations of asylum seekers to document evidence of torture according to international guidelines (Istanbul Protocol), providing for the primary medical care needs of torture victims and making the necessary referrals to specialists, and assisting physicians who have been victims of torture in other countries in their continuing medical education and integration into the practice of medicine in the US. MFP has partnered with the Advocates for Survivors of Torture and Trauma (ASTT) to offer a wide range of medical, mental health and social services to torture victims. ASTT has been assisting torture survivors since 1994.

MFP acts for the prevention of torture by educating the general public and the medical profession about the devastating effects of torture on its victims and the wider society in general. MFP strongly advocates full disclosure of U.S. medical doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists who oversaw or participated in torture, and that they receive the appropriate disciplinary actions by professional licensing boards.

Return to News Archive