Rule of Law and Accountability
Sexual and Gender-Based Violence
Trauma Mental Health

Human Rights in Trauma Mental Health Program contributes to landmark rape cases in Fiji

Dr. Daryn Reicherter, director of Stanford’s Human Rights in Trauma Mental Health Program (HRTMH), recently contributed to a landmark court ruling on rape in Fiji. Program Director Dr. Reicherter testified in the appeal hearing of a man convicted of over 400 incidents of rape and sexual assault over the course of 31 years. The man had repeatedly raped his daughter and, after she bore a child resulting from his rape, had raped her child when she was 10 years old. Dr. Reicherter called the case one of the worst he had ever seen. Dr. Reicherter presented expert evidence from his HRTMH report, “The Mental Health Consequences of Sexual Violence, Rape, and Child Rape in the Context of Child Rape in Fiji.”

The prosecutor’s office employed the HRTMH report in another recent—but separate—case involving a father charged with raping his two young daughters. In that case, the defendant had asked the Supreme Court of Fiji to reduce his 13-year prison sentence. The Supreme Court President instead sentenced the defendant to 17 years and lengthened the prescribed sentence for rape against children to range between 11 to 20 years imprisonment.

In October, Dr. Reicherter also conducted a training on mental health of trauma victims for Fiji’s prosecutor’s office, members of the Fiji Police Force, the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre and Empower Pacific Fiji. The Director of Public Prosecutions for Fiji, Christopher Pryde, commended Dr. Reicherter and the HRTMH faculty for their contributions to the case.