Your clients, too, are having to sort out their unhappy pasts, and can be expected to produce reports. If they have been through horrific experiences, they are probably having psychological problems and should not be thought of as liars or persons lacking in honor if they sometimes produce conflicting reports of the same event. Repressing information too painful to recall is a way of protecting ourselves from things we cannot cope with. Often, whole blocks of time are subject to this kind of amnesia and you may find refugee clients sporadically unable to remember crucial pieces of information. Uncooperativeness Owing to past suffering and fragile psychological states, clients may refuse you information or in other ways fail to cooperate with your efforts to help them.
Interrogators use harsh voices and fire questions during torture.
Do not confuse lack of education with stupidity. Few Third World people have enjoyed the privilege of education, but the distribution of intelligence there is about what it is here. If your client cannot read, or cannot tell time, help him or her to understand the forms that need to be signed, the appointments that need to be kept. Do not assume that people from rural areas in Central America have been exposed to elevators, complex transit systems, telephones, courtrooms, lawyers, or psychologists. All these, and much else, might frighten or bewilder them, and your appreciation of the difficulties they face in this alien environment can make a difference.