Trauma-Informed Inquiries—Balancing Empathy with Principles of Natural Justice
Conducting a POSH inquiry requires an Internal Committee to walk a fine legal line: maintaining strict procedural neutrality while ensuring the inquiry environment does not re-traumatize the complainant. Traditional court-style cross-examinations often rely on aggressive, adversarial questioning that can trigger defense mechanisms or emotional shutdown in an individual who has experienced trauma. Applying a trauma-informed lens allows the IC to gather complete, accurate testimony without compromising principles of natural justice. Trauma alters memory encoding and retrieval processes in the human brain. Under severe stress or fear, peripheral details—such as exact chronological sequences, timestamps, or ambient environment facts—may become fragmented or temporarily inaccessible, while core emotional details remain vivid. An IC that mistakes these trauma-induced memory gaps for deliberate inconsistency risks misinterpreting credibility. Understanding how trauma manif...