Introduction

Domestic violence, child abuse and violence against women are deep-rooted problems in our society with a far-reaching impact on the lives of all those affected by them. In addition to feelings of shame and/or guilt, many victims encounter taboos in their search for safety, legal support and assistance. User involvement against these types of oppression can take many forms, as the projects of the author of this chapter, Har Tortike, prove. Since 2005, Har has been involved in numerous creative projects in cooperation with young people and women who have experienced oppression, domestic violence and violation of their rights. Besides videos, books, curricula, blogs and television broadcasting, they organise forum theatre and workshops. All projects are intended to make people realise that they are allowed to throw off the ‘blanket of shame’, to speak openly about oppression and to organise new ways of living without it.

Since the voices of the experts by experience have a strong impact on practitioners, policymakers, teachers and students, Har and his groups are always looking for opportunities to influence the policies of civil society organisations and governments.

Three sources of knowledge

After being a Dutch cameraman and documentary filmmaker for 25 years, in 2005 Har started working with young people and women who experienced oppression. In this work, he combines three sources of knowledge: an academic expertise in psychology, which he studied for four years, a ‘professional’ expertise in film and theatre developed at the Psychopolis Free Art Academy and an ‘experiential’ expertise through his experiences of forms of child abuse as a child of parents traumatised by Japanese imprisonment during World War II. In later life, Har managed to refer to his childhood experiences as ‘trans-generational traumatisation’, and wondered why ‘no one had ever told him this before’. This question became the foundation of his later creative work.

School dropouts as experiential experts

In 2005, Har supervised a ‘camera-acting’ training course for young school dropouts, aged 12 to 18 years. Because of his openness about his own struggles, the youngsters felt safe and free to speak. They took the initiative of creating a theatre performance about their experiences with child abuse.