She Will Forever Be Missed
Sr. Dianna Ortiz
SEPTEMBER 1958 - FEBRUARY 2021
Ortiz, a Roman Catholic Ursuline nun, founded TASSC in 1998 and served as its first executive director for the following 10 years. Before launching TASSC, through her work with the Guatemala Human Rights Commission (USA), she came into contact with other survivors of torture and was struck by the common language she and other survivors used to describe the trauma and emotions they experienced.
This shared understanding helped her gain the insight she needed to start the first organization led by torture survivors to support other survivors.
In the years after her own torture, Ortiz began to speak to torture survivors from across the world—Armenia, Ethiopia, Honduras, the Philippines, and elsewhere.
Finally, this visionary advocate took the first step by bringing together a small group in Washington, DC—torture survivors along with individuals committed to human rights—to explore the idea of starting a nonprofit that would be dedicated to advocacy to end torture and to support the full range of survivors’ needs.
Though Ortiz was often identified as TASSC’s founder, she insisted that the organization never would have gotten off the ground without the support of this core dedicated group of survivors and donors, many of whom continue their support for TASSC today.
Ortiz said: “We turned to the larger community for both guidance and assistance--from lawyers to psychologists, from doctors to teachers to artists; from fundraisers to directors of NGOs. I think of Antonio Machado’s words: ‘Traveler, there is no path, the path must be forged as you walk.’ That’s exactly what we did. We forged forward with the support of the community.”