Confessions to Violence

Exploring Perpetrators’ Confessions to Violence and Sexual Crimes in Post-Conflict Contexts

The project investigates how perpetrators of violence—state agents, revolutionary groups, and armed actors—confess to their crimes in the aftermath of conflict. By studying public confessions to state violence, revolutionary violence, and rape, it seeks to understand how truth-telling can challenge denial, foster accountability, and contribute to transitional and restorative justice. Using comparative case studies and a global database of confessions, the project aims to identify the conditions under which these admissions lead to transformative, norms-enhancing outcomes that validate survivors and promote social repair.
Our Research Focus

Understanding Confessions After Conflict

We study how individuals and groups responsible for violence during armed conflicts confront their past through confession. Our work focuses on three areas: State perpetrators’ confessions to human rights abuses, Revolutionary left confessions to political and armed violence and Confessions to rape as a form of conflict-related sexual violence. By examining these practices, we aim to uncover how confessions shape memory, justice, and coexistence in post-conflict societies—revealing not only what perpetrators say, but how their words influence survivors, institutions, and democratic rebuilding.
State Perpetrators’ Confessions to Violence

Unsettling Accounts of State Violence

This line of research examines how agents of the state confess to human rights violations committed during authoritarian rule and armed conflict. Building on Leigh A. Payne’s Unsettling Accounts, it explores how these confessions disrupt official narratives, challenge collective memory, and provoke democratic debate rather than reconciliation or closure.

Grants and Awards

  • The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing Grant, 2001
  • Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Foundation, Global Security Program Fellowship on Conflict, Peace and Social Transformations, 2001
  • Franklin Center Book Award, Duke University Press, 2007
The Revolutionary Left’s Confessions to Violence

Reckoning with the Left’s Violent Past

Focusing on confessions by revolutionary and guerrilla movements, this study investigates how leftist actors confront their own responsibility in political violence. Through cases such as Argentina’s Montoneros and Colombia’s FARC, it traces how timing, politics, and power shifts shape public reactions—and how self-critical reflection can open paths toward accountability and democratic renewal.
How to Confess to Rape in the Aftermath of Conflict

Breaking the Silence on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

This pioneering project examines how perpetrators of wartime rape confess their crimes—and how such admissions can transform social norms, validate survivors, and prevent future violence. Using the first global database of rape confessions (CONFESS) and participatory fieldwork across continents, it develops theory and practice for confessions that promote truth, dignity, and justice after war.
Our Analytical Framework

A Global, Interdisciplinary Research Approach

We combine comparative analysis, field research, and data-driven methods to study confessional practices. Our mixed-method approach bridges qualitative and quantitative analysis to identify the social, political, and emotional conditions that make confessions transformative rather than performative.
document database

We created the CONFESS Database

The first cross-national collection of perpetrator confessions to violence and rape following armed conflict.
research

We conduct in-depth fieldwork

In emblematic cases across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe.
comunity

We engage in critical participatory action research (CPAR)

Co-designing best practices with affected communities.

Publications

Key Publications and Research Outputs

View all
Confessions to Violence
Confessions to intimate violence: FARC testimonies to sexual violations in the Colombian conflict
This article analyzes rare FARC confessions to sexual violence, tracing their shift from denial to remorse. Using a dramaturgical lens, it shows how these acts challenge silence, reshape narratives, and strengthen norms condemning sexual violence.
Confessions to Violence
Narratives of Mass Atrocity: Victims and Perpetrators in the Aftermath
This book examines the blurred boundaries between victims and perpetrators in mass violence, proposing a reflexive approach to justice and peacebuilding that embraces complex identities and overlapping roles in post-conflict contexts.
Confessions to Violence
The Routledge International Handbook of Perpetrator Studies
This handbook maps the evolution of perpetrator studies, examining definitions, motives, guilt, and representation of those responsible for mass violence, and offering new interdisciplinary perspectives and directions for future research.
Confessions to Violence
Introduction to Conflict Resolution: Discourses and Dynamics
This book traces the evolution of conflict resolution across three historical eras, offering students a critical framework to analyze global conflicts, question theories, and build skills in argumentation and analytical inquiry.
Confessions to Violence
El resurgir del pasado en España: Fosas de víctimas y confesiones de verdugos
Once seen as exemplary, Spain’s Transition is now questioned as exhumations and confessions expose Francoist crimes, challenging the pact of silence and revealing a renewed pursuit of truth and justice.
Confessions to Violence
Legacies of Violence in Contemporary Spain: Exhuming the Past, Understanding the Present
This book offers an interdisciplinary study of Francoist violence’s legacies in Spain, focusing on mass grave exhumations and how society confronts past state violence through history, law, culture, and human rights perspectives.
Where Our Work Happens

Global Fieldwork in Post-Conflict Societies

Our research spans multiple continents, focusing on societies emerging from prolonged violence.
We currently work in:

  • Latin America: Colombia, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru

  • Africa: South Africa, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo

  • Asia: Myanmar, Sri Lanka

  • Europe: Bosnia and Kosovo

Each site contributes unique insights into how societies confront past violence, seek truth, and rebuild norms around justice and accountability.

Working Together for Justice

An International, Collaborative Research Network

This project is led by Leigh A. Payne and Kiran Stallone during their fellowship at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, supported by a research team including Sofía Chavez, Michelle Canas García, Diego García Moreno, and Katherine Villanueva. Together, we aim to produce actionable knowledge that bridges scholarship, survivor experience, and policy reform.
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University of Oxford

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Dejusticia

Our team

Meet the Team Behind the Work for Justice

Different researchers, practitioners, and advocates from across the globe have contributed to the research projects, united by a shared commitment to human rights and accountability. With expertise spanning law, sociology, political science, and community engagement, we work collaboratively to support victims, produce impactful research, and drive systemic change.

Professor Leigh Payne

Professor of Sociology at the Latin American Centre and a member of St Antony’s College Governing Body. Her research focuses on building human rights cultures in the Americas by addressing past abuses and ongoing violations, with an emphasis on victims’ rights to truth, justice, and remedy. Her work explores transitional justice, justice from below, and contentious coexistence. She teaches Latin American sociology and human rights, and supervises graduate research in related areas, welcoming applications in these fields.

Kiran Stallone

Senior Researcher specializing in gendered violence, backlash, and civilian protection in conflict settings. She holds a PhD in Sociology from UC Berkeley and an MSc in Latin American Studies from Oxford. Her work has appeared in top journals and in the 2025 book Brave Women, co-edited with Julia Zulver. Kiran also consults on gender issues for UN agencies and NGOs, and is currently a Senior Researcher at Ladysmith and a 2025–2026 Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard.

© 2026 Leigh A. Payne. All rights reserved.

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