Director of Psychology, Co-Director of Clinical Services, Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture

Hawthorne "Hawk" Smith grew up in Langhorne, Pennsylvania and earned a degree in African Studies in Dakar, Senegal. He is Co-Director of Clinical Services and Psychology Director at the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture (P.S.O.T.). This organization provides safe and supportive therapy for individuals, groups and families from more than 50 countries.

Today, with one in three New Yorkers born in another country, the struggles of immigrants are central to the fight against poverty. An estimated 100,000 New York City immigrants are torture victims. P.S.O.T. provides palliative care when necessary and intensive counseling to help them and their families overcome the physical and emotional traumas they have experienced. The staff connects torture survivors to housing and legal assistance, helping them to find their place in American life.

P.S.O.T. received its first Robin Hood grant in 2002 after coming to Robin Hood’s attention as part of the 9/11 Relief Fund outreach. Thirty of the people working with the organization were directly impacted by 9/11 and required longer and more intensive treatment.

Dr. Smith’s work is best seen through the remarkable progress of some of the people he has served:

Boubacor Traore, a student activist from Guinea who was tortured so brutally in prison that his leg had to be amputated. After working with Dr. Smith and receiving services from the P.S.O.T., he is now preparing for the LSAT to achieve his dream of becoming a lawyer. Traore just completed his fifth New York City marathon.

The family of Dr. Muana Kayumba, a physician and human rights advocate, and his wife Hubertine Ngamala, a psychologist, was shattered by the military. Thanks to P.S.O.T., the family reunited in New York City and the five children are now going to school. Cancer took Dr. Kayumba’s life, but Hubertine is studying to become a nurse.

"I am very much a student," says Dr. Smith, "humbled by survivors like Boubacor and the Kayumbas, whose insights help me to grapple with life’s complexities and contradictions."