There was a knock on the door.
Then soldiers stormed into the home, grabbing the grandmother and her daughter. As family members watched in horror, the soldiers hacked at the women’s feet.
Angela Vassallo has had those vivid dreams of persecution and of beatings — intense enough to startle her awake. For Vassallo, they are nightmares. But such torture has been a painful reality for the immigrants with whom she works.
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Vassallo is case manager at the Dallas Center for Survivors of Torture. Her dreams have been based on the stories she has heard from the people who lived to tell them.
Her clients are traumatized by the persecution they received in their homeland before they fled to the U.S. It is Vassallo’s job to provide services that will help them lead a semblance of a normal life.
It’s challenging work for Vassallo, 26, who could be in New York pursuing a graduate degree in human rights or continuing her travels to Africa, where she has lived for short stints.
Vassallo’s role as advocate for torture victims is not easily defined. She serves as counselor, confidante, troubleshooter and driver for a group of people who have been stripped of their dignity, and who fear for their safety if they return home.
“There’s a prevailing sadness many of them have,” says Vassallo, who came to the job nine months ago.
“Either they don’t emote or they emote too much. They are constantly ill.”
Almost daily, Vassallo interacts with people who have been raped and sodomized, beaten or endured electric shocks. Some have been mutilated, their limbs severed or body parts burned. The scars are physical and emotional.
It is her job to make services available to ease their trauma as they attempt to settle in the United States.
No day is typical for Vassallo, an energetic woman who relies on a morning dose of black coffee to give her the boost she needs to get through the day. Her work often takes her well into the evening.
Sometimes she spends full days in her Dallas office fielding calls from potential clients, immigration attorneys or the stable of volunteers who serve as interpreters, provide medical services or drive clients to their appointments.
Her office, appointed with artifacts from Africa, wall maps of the world and a sofa, sometimes doubles as a lounge for her clients, who find a comfortable place to briefly get away from their troubles.
Another day might be spent teaching a Congolese client to use a pay phone, taking a native of Sierra Leone to the dentist and assisting a volunteer psychologist as he interviews a torture victim from Nigeria.
“The nature of my work is so random,” she says. “I live by my calendar, but it has tons of Wite-Out on it,” she says, referring to how often she has to blot out appointments and make last-minute changes, often because clients are tardy or don’t show up.
It’s a job that requires patience, and Vassallo admits she often loses her cool.
She deals with clients who held high positions in their country and are accustomed to giving orders. Most of them are older and expect a degree of deference from someone as young as she. She understands how difficult it is for them to suddenly find themselves powerless and having to rely on a twentysomething caseworker for some of their basic needs.
“It’s frustrating for them,” she says.
Vassallo is one of four paid staff members at the Dallas center. It is one of about 150 survivor centers worldwide and one of 12 in the United States.
The Dallas center is an extension of Proyecto Adelante/Project Onward, a 17-year-old church-based agency that provides legal representation and counseling for refugees seeking asylum in the United States.
Proyecto Adelante officials set up the Dallas center after noticing that many of the clients they saw had mental and emotional problems that stemmed from the torture they received or witnessed in their homeland.
The nonprofit center started with five clients from Central America in 1997 and now has slightly more than 100. Eighty percent of the clients are from Africa. Proyecto Adelante officials estimate that 20,000 survivors of torture from Africa, Central and South America and Eastern Europe live in North Texas.
Vassallo works with a director and the founder, who primarily raise funds, and a clinical psychologist. The others are volunteers, mainly physicians, interpreters and drivers.
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She often uses students of a human-rights class at Southern Methodist University. The students get class credit to serve as drivers and escorts for the clients. But many times, she finds herself shuttling clients to various appointments in her own car.