Thank you.
I'm Linda MacDonald and this is Jeanne Sarson. We are from Persons Against Non-State Torture and members of the National Council of Women of Canada. We are retired public health nurses and grassroots feminist activists.
For 31 years, we have supported women in Canada who have been subjected to torture by non-state actors—non-state torture. This started with one woman in our community in Nova Scotia. We proudly bring these women's voices. Many have endured non-state torture from infancy onward, and they have all endured grave discrimination.
Non-state torture is torture that occurs in the domestic or private sphere in relationships perpetrated within families and in human trafficking, prostitution, pornographic exploitation, and violent groups and gangs. It is dismissed as socio-cultural, traditional or religious acts or norms, and it can be committed through migration, displacement and humanitarian unrest.
Non-state actors, as defined by the UN Security Council, are any individuals or entities “not acting under the lawful authority” of the state.
Acts of non-state torture are intentional and can include mental or physical severe pain and suffering through electric shocking, water torture, forced drugging, group or gang rapes, beatings, whippings, cutting, burning, forced impregnation and abortions. Because Canada's Criminal Code lacks a law against non-state torture, women are invisiblized, pathologized and mislabelled as mentally ill. Their normal response to non-state torture is seen as a disorder, and discrimination prevents them from receiving the proper mental health care they need to heal with dignity from such serious crimes and human rights violations.
A simple example is Sara, a survivor of non-state torture getting blood work done at our local hospital. Seeing blood tubes in the elevator, she got triggered and fell to the floor. The hospital staff misunderstood her response. They placed her on a stretcher with raised side rails and she was watched by a uniformed commissioner, who stopped her from escaping. After eight hours, she called us to the hospital and we helped settle her. If the staff had understood that this is a normal response to the terror of seeing her own blood, this eight-hour ordeal could have been prevented.
Using our own victimization- and traumatization-informed model of care, we have been successful in helping women heal from non-state torture.