Elizabeth Dauphinee is a researcher who has dedicated her career to making sense of mass atrocities or more specifically the genocide that occurred in the former Yugoslavia. She illustrates the experience of her research being turned upside down through the addition of another lens: the perpetrator's lens. However, the title of the perpetrator is challenged through Dauphinee's rehumanization of those who have committed mass atrocities. 

She meets a Bosnian-Serb, Stojan Sokolovic, which causes her to question her approach to prevention. Stojan manages to alter Dauphinee's perspective through storytelling and continuous conversation. Stojan's own goals of their interactions shifts throughout their meetings however he comes back to a main goal: to understand why the war happened. She is aiming to develop a lens that provides an understanding of the perpetrator's lack of an agenda and a weak agency.

In a way portraying perpetrators as victims of circumstance and a lack of both agency and an agenda through intense political, economic, and social control per nationalistic movements. Never taking away the indisputable truth of the responsibility that is beared by those who contributed to the genocide. However, understanding the complexity of the position of this perpetrator as it is not as cut and dry is essential in the development of strong prevention strategies.