Senior Management Team
Sonya Sceats - Chief Executive
Sonya Sceats is Chief Executive of Freedom from Torture. She is a qualified Australian lawyer specialising in international human rights law. Sonya has over 20 years' experience working on domestic and international human rights issues for organisations including Chatham House, Amnesty International and the British Institute of Human Rights.
Kolbassia Haoussou - Director of Survivor Empowerment
Kolbassia Haoussou MBE is a torture survivor who came to the UK in 2005 after fleeing persecution in central Africa.
His career began with campaigning and advocating when he co-founded the Survivors Speak OUT (SSO) network in 2006, a network led by survivors, campaigning for survivors. He has worked at Freedom from Torture since 2009 where he has been instrumental in building Freedom from Torture’s survivor activism and making sure survivors eare centred in all aspects of the organisation.
Since launching SSO, Kolbassia has represented the network at the UN Human Rights Council, at meetings with the Special Rapporteur on Torture and at the Global Summit on Sexual Violence in London.
Alongside ambassadors Angelina Jolie and William Hague, Kolbassia called for improved international frameworks to eradicate torture.
In 2019, he became a survivor champion for the UK government's Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative and in 2020 received an MBE for his work with survivors.
Rocio Roberts - Director of Finance and Central Services
Rocio is Director of Finance and Central Services at Freedom from Torture, where she’s worked for more than 30 years.
In that time Rocio has played a key role in the growth and development of Freedom from Torture from a small London charity to becoming a national organisation. She ensures that sound financial management is in place and that major risks are mitigated as well as overseeing the ICT, facilities and reception functions.
Mel Oley - Director of Fundraising and Communications
Mel is Director of Fundraising and Communications, a post she’s held since January 2022.
Mel is an experienced fundraising professional and has previously held roles with Mental Health UK, ActionAid and Greenpeace.
Dr Katy Robjant - National Director of Clinical Services
Katy is a consultant clinical psychologist with decades of experience in treating PTSD and other trauma spectrum disorders in asylum seekers, refugees and survivors of torture and trafficking and providing medico-legal reports.
Katy served as Freedom from Torture's National Director of Clinical Services from 2019 to 2022 and after that was appointed as Executive Director of Clinical and Counter-Trafficking at the Helen Bamber Foundation.
Previously she led a trauma-related mental health project for victims of sexual and gender-based violence and former child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), served as head of therapy services at the Helen Bamber Foundation and worked in specialist post-traumatic stress disorder services in the NHS.
Katy has been a member of the British Psychological Society Presidential Taskforce on Asylum Seekers and Refugees, served as Vice President of Vivo International, and is co-founder of both Trauma Treatment International and the Narrative Exposure Therapy Institute. She has published widely on the treatment of severely traumatised and migrant populations and on the harmful impact of legal and political systems on the mental health of asylum seekers.