• Ja

This study discusses the question of how refugee women in the Netherlands, as indi-viduals and as members of a family and a group, act in response to their experiences of sexual violence, and why they regard silence as the best coping strategy. The women who participated in the research have different backgrounds: cultural, social, geographi-cal, and religious, as well as with respect to the kind of political conflict they fled from. But in spite of this, this research shows that all the women considered remaining silent about their experiences the best coping strategy. The emphasis in this study is on the subjective experiences of the women, and it shows that the way the women deal with their experiences is embedded in very complex and dynamic interactions occurring in and between different important contexts for them, such as the family, the social group, their culture of origin, and the Netherlands. In all this, the intra-psychic condition of the women is also of great impor-tance. Although the women suffer from their experiences, they do not talk about the cause of their suffering, because they think that if their secret became public it would de-stroy the connectedness with loved ones.

• Uploading his/her dissertation and additional information the author agrees with publication on this website. The author should in advance obtain permission from any other copyright holders for publication on this site.