13 female, that there were major cultural and gender obstacles in the path of fully giving voice to these traumatic experiences. The transcripts make clear that many of the direct perpetrators of violence were themselves young, impoverished community members whose incorporation into the ranks of the militias is highly likely to have included themselves experiencing or being threatened with torture and abuse. There is clearly a need to fully investigate this group in order to establish the most appropriate mode of therapeutic intervention. Recurrent in these very painful stories is the theme of revenge and the dominant idea that only revenge will give peace to these victims. We are motivated to find alternative, non-violent modes of release and restitution that might bring peace to both victims and perpetrators and the deeply wounded communities from which they both come. What was also striking is how strongly the clients were negatively affected by the break up of family and community ties. How these people are re-integrated back into their communities will be an important issue to address in the future. Conclusion & Recommendations It should be re-iterated that this was a pilot study based only on the 13 weeks prior to the Presidential elections. This data represents a very small sample from the larger group and the total figures of people in need are overwhelming. Further investigation to obtain true prevalence rates will be essential in order to establish the extent of the need. However, we believe that the study provides support for the establishment of a formal counselling service for both primary and secondary victims of OVT. It will be important that such a service provides a clinical service that is sensitive to cultural variations. For example, the pilot provided a one-off session for the individual. We anticipate that a more appropriate service would be able to be flexible with regard to the number of sessions as well as the configurations of clients that might attend such sessions. Based on both the information collected from the stories told by the clients and the very significant silence on certain information (e.g. rape and sexual assault) there is an enormous need for further support for the people who have experienced trauma and the communities in which they are apart. An established counselling service will need balanced gender representation amongst its staff in order to begin to address these issues. The psychosocial damage that is evident due to the current and longer-term political violence makes it essential to address the clients at an individual level. However, although the individual AMANI Trust: At the boiling point of the pain. Report of a pilot study examining the eficacy of psychotherapy for torture survivors.