Dr Juliet Cohen

Dr Juliet Cohen has written more than 1,000 medico-legal reports on evidence of torture. She is head of doctors for Freedom from Torture’s medico-legal report service and a forensic physician, specialising in examination of victims of torture, domestic violence and trafficking for servitude and prostitution.

She has extensive experience as a GP working in Hong Kong for the British Red Cross at a Vietnamese detention centre and in Sydney at a sexual assault referral centre, making forensic medical assessments of rape victims. From 2001 to 2006 Dr Cohen worked as a GP with Specialist Interest to set up a mental health support service in Oxford for asylum seekers and refugees, bridging the gap between primary and secondary care.

At Freedom from Torture Dr Cohen attends and speaks at twice yearly study days, provides in-house training and regularly attends doctors' meetings. She has devised and delivers training for new Freedom from Torture doctors, and attends the medical and legal reviewers’ forum and new referrals panel. She attends UK Border Agency Detention Users Group Medical sub-group meetings as a NGO member.

In 2011 Dr Cohen presented on both ‘Victims of the Slave Trade’ and documentation of torture and the Istanbul Protocol to the International Association of Forensic Science Triennial symposium. In 2012 she provided an expert witness report for the UK police on slavery and was accepted by the court as an expert in this respect. She provided an expert witness statement on late disclosure of sexual violence for the European Court of Human Rights and has provided further expert witness statements on immigration detention of torture survivors and those with mental health problems. In 2013 she provided training on assessment of expert evidence at the first tier tribunal immigration judges residential training and she presented the findings of Freedom from Torture’s research on torture in Iran post the 2009 elections at a side event of the Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva.

Research interests include sleep disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, late disclosure, capacity, suicide and self harm in asylum seekers and domestic violence. She is a regular reviewer of papers for the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine and occasional reviewer for Torture, the journal of the IRCT and other journals. She is a fellow of the Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians.