2 5. It is not by mere chance that, in cases of violations of human rights marked by extreme violence, the Inter-American Court has seen it fit to receive in public hearings the declarations of psychologists (as to reparations, as in the cases of the "Street Children", and of Paniagua Morales and Others), and of forensic doctors (as in the Gangaram Panday case, merits, 1994). Likewise, in other cases, with distinct characteristics (e.g., with a high density of the cultural element), the Court has deemed it appropriate to listen in pubic hearings to the declarations of anthropologists or social scientists (as in, e.g., the cases of Aloeboetoe and Others, reparations, 1993, and the Community Mayagna Awas Tingni, merits, 2001). Definitively, contrary to what in the past positivists assumed with unjustified self-sufficiency, Law has, in my view, much to learn from other branches of human knowledge, and viceversa. 6. In one of the declarations in the public hearing before the Court, of 11 August 2000, in the case of Paniagua Morales and Others, it was stressed that the torture inflicted upon, and the violent death of, a beloved one, can affect, in a disrupting way, his family circle as a whole; hence the importance of knowing the truth of the facts and of imparting justice, so as also to structure the psychic life of the indirect victims (the close relatives). The realization of justice contributes to set in order human relations, having a structuring function of the human psychism itself: the threats, the fear and the impunity, do affect the psychic life of human beings, aggravating the situation of pain, whilst the truth and justice help at least to heal, with the passing of time, the deep wounds caused by the violent death of a dear relative1. 7. In fact, the violent death of a beloved one throws ineluctably the surviving relatives into the dense shadows of human existence: - "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, chè la diritta via era smarrita"2. In the brutalized world in which we live, any person can find himself in a "selva oscura", at any moment of his life, - in the middle of it, at the very beginning, or at the end (as it may be inferred from the cases of the "Street Children" and of Paniagua Morales and Others). It is for this reason that Sophocles used to warn - with an insight which appears perennially contemporary - that one is not to consider any person truly happy, until he has passed the final limit of human existence - death - secure from pain3. 8. In the present case of the "Street Children", is seems evident to me the intense suffering of the mothers of the murdered youngsters, and the grandmother of the one of them; in the case of Paniagua Morales and Others, in which the victims of the "White Van" had their throats cut or were tortured, the same intense suffering is experienced by the relatives - parents or sons - of the direct victims. The determination of the reparations, - in their distinct forms (among which rank the satisfaction and the rehabilitation), - due to the indirect victims, has, in my understanding, as a central 1 . Cf. Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), Case Paniagua Morales and Others / Reparations - Transcripción de la Audiencia Pública Celebrada en la Sede de la Corte los Días 11 y 12 de Agosto de 2000, pp. 144-175 (unpublished document, of internal circulation). 2 . Dante Allighieri, La Divina Comedia - Inferno (1309), verses I, 1-3. 3 . Sophocles, Oedipus the King (428-425 before Christ), verses 1528-1530.