As I was saying, Maria Barile faced many challenges and suffered a great deal of discrimination. I could mention a serious incident that was a catalyst for her work following her arrival in Quebec and Canada.
When she was 11 years old, she attended a special school for people who were deaf or hearing impaired, the MacKay School for the Deaf. She was already experiencing discrimination at the time because she was being told that she could not take her education any farther. That's what she would have wanted, but she was being told that she would be incapable of learning more than she already had. She experienced lots of discrimination.
She used public transportation a lot. She was disabled and also deaf, which no one knew. She tried to hide it, because she was afraid. She also experienced health problems, and occasional muscle spasms caused by dystonia. She visibly had a disability.
Her brother allowed me to read it. She tells about being attacked and explains how vulnerable it made her feel. Two people accosted her in a dark area of the subway. All she was worried about was the fact that she had some research work to submit. She never even thought about her safety or her health. Her only worry was that she didn't know how she would manage to turn in her work. She was being attacked and had lost her purse. That was her concern.
When she asked for help, no one in the subway supported or helped her immediately. When she ended up at the police station, no adaptation measures were available. She had trouble speaking because of her disability and what she was saying was often not believed. When she talked about the attack, its severity was downplayed. They thought she might have made it up, even though it had really happened. In her notebook, she wrote that she felt alone and that nobody was there to support her when she made a complaint. She had to work hard to get the police to believe her, and for them to pursue the matter. In the end, nothing was done.
She was emphatic about her claim that a victim could end up alone in circumstances like that when they weren't being believed. A powerless victim was undergoing trauma, but there was nobody there to support her. At the police station, there were no adaptive measures to provide support. Here she was, a disabled person who had just experienced trauma and she couldn't hear what was going on. She didn't understand what was happening around her and was not receiving any support from the police or the caseworkers. At one point, there were only the members of her family.
This trauma was something that haunted her throughout her life and led her to work to support all women who survive violence, whoever they may be. For her, the most important thing would have been to have had someone by her side to give her support when making the complaint, and afterwards, to combat violence.