Bringing Torturers To Justice

San Francisco (CBS 5)  -- From Chile to Bosnia to Rwanda, images of torture and murder are hard for anyone to forget, especially if your loved one has been a victim. It’s shocking, but hundreds and perhaps thousands of people who have tortured and killed in foreign countries are now living in the United States.

Zita Cabello-Barrueto’s brother Winston was tortured and killed in 1973 during the reign of Chilean Dictators Augosto Pinochet. Years later, after she and her family had escaped the horrors, she discovered her brother’s killer, Armando Fernandez Larios, was living in Florida.

"Knowing that this man now was living in Miami, there was one way to hold him accountable for his crimes," Zita says.

The man who helped Zita find a way to bring her brother’s murderer to justice was Psychologist Gerald Gray, co-director and founder of the Institute for Redress and Recovery.

“The institute is formed to deal with the problem of impunity, which means the problem of lack of punishment for those who commit human rights crimes," says Gerald.

Gerald got angry enough to do something about torture when he read an article saying that psychologists were often involved in designing it.

"I figured these people were my enemies within my own profession,” he recalls. “They were putting people in my waiting room while I was trying to get them out."

That was in 1986, when Gray began by establishing a treatment center, counseling victims of torture from all over the world, helping them overcome the trauma of their experiences. Then, a surprise encounter led him to expand his mission.

"One of my clients ran into his torturer in San Francisco,” he recalls. “I just lost my temper a second time. I closed my private practice and decided to found a legal center which would also use private investigators to track these people in this country and do something about them.”

The Center for Justice and Accountability was born. Through it and the institute, Gray has helped hundreds of refugees. Among them is Armina Husic from Bosnia.

"To help those people to not be hopeless and desperate... that's what Gerald does,” says Husic.

Gerald’s organizations have helped track down at least 30 of the criminals from Husic’s area. A few have even faced trials in civil court, including the murderer of Zita’s brother.

“In terms of the legal implications of this case, it's so important because for the first time in U.S. History, a jury found somebody responsible for crimes against humanity," Gerald says.

For helping survivors of torture to heal and for paving the way to bring human rights criminals to justice, this week’s Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Gerald Gray.

By Barbara Rodgers

For more information on Gerald's work, see:

Institute for Redress & Recovery
The Center for Justice & Accountability