LEWISTON — For two-and-a-half years, David Harris was the one torture victims told their nightmares to.

He was sometimes the first person — sometimes the only person, aside from someone in the immigration court — to learn the details of their sexual abuse or the beatings or the psychological warfare they went through in their home countries.

He was the therapist who taught them how to relax enough to sleep for four or five hours a night, the longest many had slept in years.

“I would suffer up to now. It was inside me. It was killing me,” said 42-year-old Makuntima Francis of Lewiston who asked that only his first and middle names be used because he feared for his safety.

Jailed and tortured in the Democratic Republic of the Congo because of his political views, Makuntima has met with Harris every week for the past year. He credits Harris with changing his life.

However, Harris will no longer be available to help asylum-seekers in central Maine. The grant Tri-County Mental Health Services was using to pay him ran out and the Lewiston-based agency hasn’t been able to secure another.

At the end of October, Harris took down his map of Africa, packed up his books and said good-bye to his clients. His first Lewiston-Auburn client, a woman who’d overcome years of horrific torture with Harris’ help, reached out and gave him a hug.  

“I’m going to miss these people,” Harris said.

Harris, 60, originally planned a career in the arts. He majored in fine arts at Earlham College, a Quaker school in Indiana, and received a master’s degree in performance studies at New York University. For several years he worked as a choreographer in New York and a writer for humanitarian organizations that helped people in Haiti.

It was through one of those humanitarian groups that he traveled to Haiti as an observer to the country’s free elections. Around that time, he read a book on therapy for torture survivors. The humanitarian in him understood the need. The dancer in him liked the mind-body approach the therapy took.

“Working at the body level and the mind level at the same time struck me as the way to go,” Harris said.

He trained as a counselor and over the years worked with child soldiers, trafficking victims and other survivors of torture. Many were from Africa. 

A few years ago, Portland Refugee Services received a federal grant to help torture survivors and Tri-County Mental Health Services was asked to participate. Tri-County agreed and, after a search, hired Harris. 

Tri-County liked his experience.

“His work was exceptional,” said Catherine Ryder, Tri-County’s executive director. “He does something that very few people in this country and probably in this world do. He is uniquely trained to address the issues of survivors of torture. He has received national recognition for that work, he’s a sought-after presenter and he’s done a fair amount of documented research. He came with a skill set that none of us could even imagine.”

Harris liked the opportunity to work with Lewiston-Auburn’s asylum-seekers, almost all of them from Africa.

“Healing takes place in different ways, in different environments,” Harris said. “What I’ve done is try to adjust my knowledge to the needs and knowledge of the people who are here and have come to see me.”

Not that it was always easy to get people to go see him. Some cultures had no such thing as counseling. Some torture survivors did not trust that he could help. But one by one, he began building relationships.

In the past two-and-a-half years, he’s seen 81 clients.

Makuntima was one of them.

In the Congo he was jailed, beaten, starved and tortured. He watched his fellow inmates disappear and was told they’d gone to the cemetery.

“They were not coming back. They were being killed,” he said.

After he was free, Makuntima had trouble sleeping at night and getting through the day as his bad memories intruded. He kept his past to himself; not even his wife knew everything that had happened.

Then he found Harris.

For the past year, Harris has taught Makuntima relaxation techniques. He’s helped Makuntima talk about his experiences, sometimes for the first time, sometimes in French or using gestures when the words wouldn’t come in English. 

“He teaches me how to overcome my torture,” Makuntima said.  

Because he was the only Lewiston-area clinician in the Minds & Hearts in Harmony program, Harris did more than offer relaxation techniques and talk. He also served as case manager, advocating for clients and coordinating with their doctors and lawyers through the asylum process.    

It was work no one else was doing in the community.

But the grant Tri-County was using ran out and was not renewed. The agency applied for another, similar grant but didn’t get it.

Harris began telling his clients over the summer that the program may have to end. He learned in October that it definitely would.

Ryder said Tri-County would love to keep Harris and the program, but it has no grant and asylum-seekers have no insurance or any other way to pay for the counseling on their own. Without outside funding, Tri-County can’t afford to keep it running. 

What will happen to Harris’ clients now?

“That’s the question of the hour,” Ryder said. “We’ll continue to do as much as we can with the resources that we have, but it’s not going to be David.”

Two of Harris’ clients have found another therapist.

Some won’t need additional help. Makuntima, for example, has gotten his General Education Development certificate, is studying computer technology at Central Maine Community College and is waiting to hear on his asylum application. He’s sleeping for five hours a night, the most he has in years.

He feels optimistic.

“I was sick and I got healed,” Makuntima said.

Harris has applied for work in seven states. He’s thinking of applying for work in Jordan with people from Syria.

Ryder and Harris’ clients commend him. But to Harris, his clients are the ones to be applauded. 

“It takes a great deal of courage to come here week after week and talk about torture. I really admire Makuntima and so many of the people that I work with,” he said.

ltice@sunjournal.com