“The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily but not be touched by it is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet” Rachel Naomi Ramen.
Mental and allied health professionals, lawyers, the judiciary, and corrective services staff intersect the lives of others at critical and often traumatic junctures. These professions are frequently indirectly exposed to trauma through listening to accounts of traumatic events, exposure to distressing images, reading police, psychological and medical reports and victim impact statements.
In this article, the authors reflect on the VT experience of lawyers and mental health professionals working with victim-survivors of sexual abuse, harassment, assault and rape. Josh Bornstein is Principal lawyer in Industrial Relations and Employment Law at Maurice Blackburn, practicing in this field for over 20 years. Naomi Halpern is director of Delphi Training and Consulting. She has over 30 years’ experience working with victim-survivors of trauma and abuse.
Moral injury is an invisible wounding of profound intrapsychic harm. It is imperative at-risk professions, and as a society we lift the veil of betrayal blindness, see these invisible wounds, assist those who are suffering and take measures to address the systemic failures that inflict and perpetuate MI.
Moral injury is not a weakness. Concern for the wellbeing and safety of others is central to human relationships. For all democracy’s failings, moral principles, ethics, values, rule of law and empathy for others are the foundations upon which civil society is built. Viktor Frankl said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one’s own way”. Moral injury is therefore, a consequence of humanness.
