In refusing to hide or be silenced, in insisting that rape is a public matter, and in demanding social change, survivors create their own living monument.

People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory and fragmented manner.

It has become clear that, as Janet observed one hundred years ago, dissociation lies at the heart of the traumatic stress disorders. Studies of survivors of disasters, terrorist attacks, and combat have demonstrated that people who enter a dissociative state at the time of the traumatic event are among most likely to develop long-lasting PTSD.