Teaching Client Responses to Trauma & Persuasive Storytelling

As I’ve blogged about before, I’ve been using this John Oliver clip to teach students about SIVs for wartime translators.

One of the key takeaways for me is how one translator appears on the program and talks with a very flat affect about the murder of his father and the kidnapping of his young brother. I’ve found this to be a good introduction to discussion of how client trauma presents in wildly different ways and in ways that students may not be expecting.

This year I offered an unexpected pairing to the above video:

Yes, that’s acclaimed actress Bryce Dallas Howard crying on command while Conan O’Brien talks about shopping at Home Depot.

I asked my students to think about how they would expect someone to present when talking about their trauma. Why people might present differently — everything from cultural norms to survival tactics.

I’ll be re-raising the Howard video when we watch clips from Well Founded Fear and hear the one asylum officer complain about how: “People are actually coached… They tell them, well, you really should cry in the interview. Not that that’s really gonna help them. But they think if they cry that that’s gonna get them a grant.”

That comment, of course, begs this question: Will a failure to show any emotion when recounting a horrific story show lack of truthfulness? Should a lawyer anticipate that problem? How can they proactively address it?

-KitJ