New Treatment Centre for Torture Victims Opens

British charity the Freedom from Torture officially opens a new, purpose-built treatment centre for survivors of torture in London this Tuesday, June 22.

The opening ceremony will be performed by former Beirut hostage John McCarthy, who together with co-hostage Brian Keenan, is a patron of Freedom frmo Torture.

The new £5.8 million building in Isledon Road, Finsbury Park - limestone and lilac paint on the outside, with soaring glass windows and stripped wooden flooring within - is intended to be a safe and welcoming environment.

The needs of the patients, and of the staff who aid their rehabilitation, were paramount as architect Paul Hyett, former president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the company he chairs, RyderHKS, started designing the centre.

"From the beginning it was important to understand that this building was going to be receiving people who were in varying degrees of distress," said Hyett. "Much architecture is brutal and angular - even aggressive. We therefore had to guard against using shapes, or materials, with unpleasant connotations."

Corridors are curved and where possible naturally lit to avoid giving an institutional feel and consulting rooms are larger than those in previous premises, a great improvement given that the emotions that are often explored in counselling sessions - anger and fear - can appear overwhelming in confined spaces.

Freedom from Torture director Malcolm Smart said: "Torture is intended to cause shame, degradation, humiliation, and guilt. With the new centre, the Medical Foundation is better placed both to assist the rehabilitation of those on whom torture is perpetrated, and attack the silence and complicity on which it thrives."

Last year Freedom from Tortrue, which provides medical treatment, psychological support and practical assistance to torture victims, helped more than 2,100 new patients from nearly 100 different countries.

Freedom from Tortrue Press Office 020 7697 7792.