"We are dealing with a recording but we are bringing the recording back to life with the testifier, in her presence.."

As part of the COHDS-SOHC Summer Institute, the event 'The Effects of Being Heard' presented a conversation that employs performative methods to re-construct key moments of a healing journey from abuse. The conversation focusses how a social worker, a restorative justice facilitator or a performance creator can deploy listening and oral history interviewing techniques to support such a healing journey. However, naming and acknowledging what happened to a victim is crucial to the restorative justice process and therefore we will be referring to some of the violence experienced by Julie Ann.

Warning: This talk is about how a woman, a victim of incest by her father, went from being silenced to become an emerging public activist whose voice in support of victims of sexual violence resounds across different communities. We advise you to practice self-care as you listen to this talk and invite you to notice where the information that you are hearing sits in your body.

Julie Ann Carpini is a speaker and communicator whose desire to speak for sexual violence victims and survivors grew from her healing journey from relating deep traumatic wounds. As an activist, in partnership with Université de Montréal, she is one of five committee members at "Experte en Vécu" for the research project entitled "Cellule Trajectoires", which addresses major issues with domestic violence. Julie Ann is currently in a specialized training at Centre de Services de Justice Réparatrice in Montréal to accompany victims and offenders in a restorative justice process. She is also collaborating with Dr. Luis Carlos Sotelo Castro in a research-creation project that intersects performance and restorative justice in the Acts of Listening Lab at Concordia University.

Luis C. Sotelo Castro is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at Concordia University, Montreal (Quebec, Canada). He is also the second co-director of Concordia’s Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling. In 2018 he founded at Concordia the Acts of Listening Lab, a hub for research-creation on the transformative power of listening to painful narratives, with particular reference to testimonies by exiles from sites of conflict. His latest publications explore listening in the context of post-conflict performances of memory.