Justice Committee on Sept. 22nd, 2016

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Okay, I get it now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

We all know now how to ask our questions in a better way.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

I think the questions were excellent. I have quite enjoyed my time here. It really is an honour to speak with colleagues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

We appreciate your very articulate and well-reasoned explanation. I want to thank you so much for both bringing the bill and coming before us today. Thank you again, Mr. Fragiskatos.

Now we are going to have a brief break to let our next group of witnesses come forward. Ms. MacDonald and Ms. Sarson, if you could come up, that would be great.

We are going to be back in two minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Gentlemen, we are going to reconvene our meeting of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in the study of the proposed private member's bill, Bill C-242.

We are honoured to have before us two of the seminal writers in this area in Canada. I am pleased to welcome Linda MacDonald and Jeanne Sarson, who are here to testify.

Ladies, welcome. It is over to you, to make your opening statements.

[Jeanne Sarson, As an Individual]

Thank you.

[Linda MacDonald, As an Individual]

Thank you.

First, I want to say that Jeanne and I really support the bill, and we thank Peter for bringing it forward. It is an important piece of work.

In the three recommendations we have in the brief that we submitted to the committee, we would agree with the 14-year sentencing. We think that the naming of “torture” is crucial and we want to maintain that. The bill would not be symbolic. It would certainly be a concrete example of supporting human rights and legal rights in this country. Finally, intellectual disability does not always happen with non-state torture.

Jeanne and I come today carrying the voices of many invisible persons in our country, persons who have endured non-state torture or torture in the private sphere or private realm. Our testimony is based on what we have learned from their courageous voices. We have been advocating for 23 years for their human and legal rights. We are community health nurses, non-state, torture-informed counsellors, listeners of non-state torture atrocities, human rights activists, international lecturers, educators, writers, members of the NGO Canadian Federation of University Women, mothers, grandmothers, and proud feminists.

Jeanne and I live in Nova Scotia, and in 1993 began a small private nursing practice. In August of that year, we met the first woman we came to know as a survivor of non-state torture. Since then, we have provided complex support to 34 persons, mostly women. We have listened to and supported over 1,000 Canadians who have endured non-state torture and approximately 4,000 persons worldwide, from the U.S., the U.K., western Europe, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand.

The persons from Canada are Canadian-born. The majority endured non-state torture from infancy onward. That means they were little babies. Some married their torturers; some were their roommates. The majority were trafficked, forced into non-state torture pornography filming, or prostituted. The perpetrators of non-state torture are everyday persons such as parents, extended family, family friends, guardians, strangers, spouses, human traffickers, pornographers, pimps, and johns.

The children are groomed to endure torture as perpetrators pay money, knowing they can harm children who can withstand non-state torture. Bishop Raymond Lahey from Nova Scotia was jailed for possession of child pornography, and a file labelled “child torture” was found on his computer.

“Non-state actor” is a term used by the United Nations, and perpetrators who are non-state actors inflict torture in the private sphere. Key defining elements of torture are that it is intentional and purposeful, inflicting severe pain and suffering with the ultimate goal of shattering the persons' relationship with themselves.

To give you a better sense of what we mean by “non-state torture” and the brutality and gravity of the harm, I will read Lynne's story. She was a woman born in Nova Scotia whom Jeanne and I supported. Sadly, Lynne is now dead. This story was published in the journal of the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture.

I was called bitch, slut, whore and “piece of meat.” Stripped naked and raped—“broken in”—by three goons who, along with my husband, held me captive in a windowless room handcuffed to a radiator. Their laugher humiliated me as they tied me down spread-eagled for the men they sold my body to. Raped and tortured, their penises and semen suffocated me; I was choked or almost drowned when they held me underwater threatening to electrocute me in the tub. Pliers were used to twist my nipples, I was whipped with the looped wires of clothes hangers, ropes and electric cords; I was drugged, pulled around by my hair and forced to cut myself with razor blades for men’s sadistic pleasure. Guns threatened my life as they played Russian roulette with me. Starved, beaten with a baseball bat, kicked, and left cold and dirty, I suffered five pregnancies and violent beatings forced abortions. They beat the soles of my feet and when I tried to rub the pain away they beat me more. My husband enjoyed sodomizing me with a Hermit 827 wine bottle causing me to hemorrhage and I saw my blood everywhere when I was ganged raped with a knife. Every time his torturing created terror in my eyes, he’d say, “Look at me bitch; I like to see the terror in your eyes.” I never stopped fearing I was going to die. I escaped or maybe they let me escape thinking I’d die a Jane Doe on that cold November night.

Further to this, I can share a questionnaire we give to persons who contact us. Bear in mind that these harms are not endured in isolation as many women tell us they suffered most harms all at that same moment in time. The questionnaire is something we send out to people who contact us, to try to help them see if indeed they could be a non-state torture survivor.

It includes the following: food/drink withheld; chained or handcuffed to stationary objects; savagely and repeatedly beaten, kicked, hung by limbs; burnt, cut, whipped; fingers and toes and limbs twisted; tied naked for prolonged periods; forced to lie naked on a floor; confined to a dark enclosed space or crate or box or cage; electric shock; forcibly aborted; forced to eat one's vomit or bowel movements; raped by one person; raped by a family group; raped by a weapon such as a gun; raped with animals; prevented from using the toilet; smeared with urine, feces or blood; forced under cold or burning-hot water; placed in a freezer; near drowned when held under water in a tub; drugged with alcohol, pills, injections; choked; pornography pictures taken; forced to harm others; forced to watch pets being harmed or killed; threatened that this will happen to you if you tell; called derogatory names.

In most cases, sadly, I can tell you that the majority of people can list off that they have endured most of these. That's a high standard of intention of harming.

The evidence of non-state torture occurring in Canada is not new. There are government reports dating back as far as 1979 noting the torture that women in this country have endured. In this report that we sent to the Minister of Justice we have documented all of the different government reports starting in 1979 stating that torture happened to women.

The first one was “Pornography and its effects: A survey of recent literature”. In 1985 there was a written report to the Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution. It mentions torture. In 1987 a booklet issued by the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women talked about torture and mutilation of women. In 1991 “The War Against Women” was the first report of the Standing Committee on Health and Welfare, Social Affairs, Seniors and the Status of Women. It talked about a husband who tortured his wife. In the 1993 report “Changing the landscape: ending violence, achieving equality” torture was mentioned. We spoke with persons involved with the report, and also the report itself mentioned that torture happened in every region of Canada.

The 2010 report “Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry” by Mr. Oppal talked about the right not to be subjected to torture. In 2010 again “Missing Women: Investigation Review” talked about the investigation of Donald Bakker regarding the torture of women in prostitution. In 2013 the RCMP report “Domestic Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation in Canada” talked about victims who also reported torture tactics. The 2014 report by the Native Women's Association of Canada mentioned torture many times and says that torture is torture.

This is what we, as a country, know about what's happened with regard to torture and women in our country.

A fundamental point supporting Bill C-242 is that presently there is a patriarchal divide creating discrimination between persons who endure state torture and those who endure non-state torture. The ordeals of torture are the same, yet section 269.1 of the Criminal Code names only state torture, leaving non-state torture to be misnamed and minimized as assault in section 268.

Jeanne and I have estimated that a woman, who we will call Sara, who was tortured and raped since infancy, had endured almost 24,000 rapes. This does not include the object and gang rapes or bestiality she was subjected to. Her suffering was not assault. The correct name for the ordeal Sara was forced to endure is non-state torture, because indeed suffering is not symbolic.

In 2012 Jeanne and I, as members of the Canadian Federation of University Women, gave expert testimony related to non-state torture to the committee against torture in Geneva. The committee agreed with the CFUW recommendation to amend the Criminal Code of Canada to include non-state torture by non-state actors, and I'll just read a section of their report:

The Committee is of the view that the incorporation of the Convention into Canadian law would not only be of a symbolic nature but that it would strengthen the protection of persons allowing them to invoke the provisions of the Convention directly before the courts.

Those are the committee against torture's own words.

In 2017, Canada will be reviewed by the committee against torture again. We have submitted a brief to the Department of Canadian Heritage with the same recommendation to revise the Criminal Code. If Bill C-242 is passed, we can go back to the committee and proudly report that Canada has shown great leadership in human rights by including non-state torture in our Criminal Code. The alternative is unconscionable.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you.

Ms. Sarson, do you also have a statement?

[Jeanne Sarson]

Yes, I do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Ms. MacDonald, you've exhausted the time I had provided for both of you, so Ms. Sarson, if you could be brief, it would be good.

[Linda MacDonald]

I thought we were here as individuals.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

My understanding was that you had 10 minutes together. If you're here as individuals that's fine, but that means we're going to have to shorten the questions in the question period.

Go ahead and make your statement. We'll just make it a shorter question period.

[Jeanne Sarson]

Okay.

In reference to naming the infliction of torture, non-state torture victimization causes grievous destructive dehumanization. Some women describe not knowing that they were human beings. Some did not know they had physical bodies or skin, or that having their anus hang outside of their body was not normal. These are impacts of repetitive non-state torture, of which sexualized torture is never-ending.

The severity of non-state torture pain becomes repeated when women's flashback memories surface. Flashbacks transport them into past ordeals, re-experienced at the age when they were tortured. They can refeel the burning and the cutting of their skin, the jaw pain, and the taste of oral torture rapes, trying not to panic when feelings of being unable to breath return. They can re-experience their body convulsing to the electric shock torture, re-experiencing the terror and the horror of when, for example, they were two.

I can shorten that and go on to say that Sara, who Linda mentioned, is 30 years old. She has a master's degree. When her memories came back, she talked about them at the age of two. When she was telling us about one experience, she said, “It can't go into the little door”, meaning her vagina. “The monster”, meaning penis, “is too big.” “The water is turning red,” meaning that she was hemorrhaging, “just like the crayons in my colouring book.”

What we found is that when women are trying to heal, their memories come back at the age they endured what happened to them.

The other thing that happens is that sometimes, when they're being water tortured, for example, and they're trying to breathe, the panic sets in. The terminology that we found universally is that they say, “We go into the blackness”, and we've understood that they go unconscious. Here, again, their suffering is not aggravated assault.

Under “interpretation”, I'd like to give you an example of why Linda and I are saying we'd like you to consider that in non-state torture it's not always a significant change in intellectual capacity. I'll give you another example. The youngest person who came to us was in her late teens. She wasn't being believed and she was accused of lying. She was struggling not to kill herself, which is a common response to mental suffering.

She disappeared after a couple of years of our support. Seven years went by, and out of the blue we got this email from a friend, “I'm sure you remember Sophie....she will be graduating from Nursing School with a Masters degree and above a 3.9 GPA. She is happy, enthusiastic participant in life.... She told me, the other day, that she hasn't considered killing herself in a long time. Your kindness and support to her surely helped. I thought you may want to know.”

That is evidence that we have to consider exactly what goes on.

In reference to some of the questions that were asked of Peter on why it is important to have legal naming, it's a very inexpensive national intervention. This is what Alex has written to us, “When society minimizes [non-State torture]...it is taken personally...and feels like it is...me...they are looking down on....reinforcing the feeling of how they minimized my worth when they tortured me.... Not having the law care enough...reinforces what the [torturers] said, 'No one will believe you. What makes you think you are so special that someone would even want to save you or care about you'.”

That was her take on why it's very important.

The other thing around naming is that it decreases the social isolation. Many women have told us that they feel like freaks because it's not known what they've endured. That was the other benefit to proper naming.

With regard to the issue of the need to toughen the laws and look at non-state actor torture and keep survivors and children safe, I reference what Jody Wilson-Raybould said about the mandate letter of Justin Trudeau that was sent to her, and Ms. Hajdu's mandate letter. They were asked to look at these issues.

The issue of naming non-state torture gives voice to infants, to preverbal children, and to older children who are not at this table, whose Internet pornographic victimization show sexualized torture and bondage of newborns and of children up to age eight increasing. They're victimized mainly by family and friends. That's documented by the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre, part of the national police services and Public Safety Canada. I have some of the data in this statement.

Just to let you understand that what we've learned is that people who are responsible for the safety of children.... One example they need to know is that stalking and harassment by family-based perpetrators can begin at age five when parents become volunteers in the school. That's a tactic that women have told us about. That keeps them silent and psychologically captive.

Also, in talking to the police—Linda and I have been talking to the police in the last little while—they are shocked probably by what we're telling them because they tell us they haven't heard some of this before. To educate police, they have to know that the crime of non-state torture happens and they have to know the tools that are used. For example, we surprised them when we said that women have told us that a hot light bulb is used to sexually torture them, if you will, when it's rammed into their vagina as little girls.

Just to talk about law that can inform educational sessions, Linda and I were asked by a grade 12 teacher of students who were studying political science to talk about political advocacy on Bill C-242. The scenario we presented to the students is that they imagine that they're MPs and they have to study Bill C-242 and learn about what non-state torture is. First they started with a questionnaire where they had to decide what they thought the difference was between torture and assault, and I can tell you they picked assault as a lesser crime than torture. After we taught them, they had to make a decision how they would vote on Bill C-242. That's what happened, and they were quite dismayed that there was no non-state torture law in Canada. They believed that such a law is not symbolic and they voted to amend the Criminal Code.

I guess what Peter has said about article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.... That's where we started in 1993 when we were shocked to find out that Canada was not recognizing non-state torture as a crime. I think for Canadian society, if we're going to be truth-tellers, we have to admit to what's happening to children of all ages—and adults—in this country.

I hope that's quick.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Actually, you took pretty much the whole time, so I'm glad you made it shorter because I think otherwise you would have gone over your 10 minutes.

Thank you very much, ladies.

Unfortunately, because the transport committee was a little slow in clearing out of the room, we're a little bit behind. I'm going to ask for four minutes for this round of questions instead of six minutes so that we can be out of the room at one o'clock to respect the time.

Mr. Cooper.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you, Ms. Sarson and Ms. MacDonald, for your testimony. Certainly, it was very graphic testimony that reinforced, if there was ever any doubt, how profoundly evil torture is.

You touched a little bit in both of your presentations on this, but I would perhaps ask you to elaborate a little bit. When you look at the Criminal Code and the fact that we have various different sections of the Criminal Code that could apply to various acts of torture, depending upon the nature and the scope of the offence, whether it be under kidnapping, aggravated assault, or forceable confinement, where do you see the real void as it stands now in the Criminal Code?

[Jeanne Sarson]

For me, from listening to all the women we've listened to, it's the naming. If it's not named, they tell us over and over again that's a void. It has to be named torture by private individuals or non-state actors.

[Linda MacDonald]

We've been told by victims who have gone to court that torture named in their victim impact statement was redacted from their statement. They weren't allowed to use the word in court. We know now from research that, when you use a word, it changes your brain, so when you've endured torture and you have to name it something else, then your brain goes into a sense of incongruity or harm. If you can name something correctly, then it promotes healing in your brain.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you.

You would agree, then, that under the current Criminal Code, there are not perpetrators who commit acts of torture who are prosecuted under the existing Criminal Code provisions who are getting off in any way, but rather, to the point of doing justice and making sure that justice is done for the victims and their families, they need to call torture what it is, which is torture. Is that a fair interpretation of your previous answer?

[Linda MacDonald]

I would say, but I would also say that, if we did have a crime of non-state torture in the criminal court, more people would come forward, probably, with their stories. I've also been witness to a woman talking to her lawyer about what she had endured, and many of these things that I read about she talked to her lawyer about and he said, “If you brought that in the courtroom, there would be blood on the floor; your blood on the floor. It's not safe for you to mention those things.” That was many years ago. We have evolved, but I do believe that we have to become more open to the atrocities that happen in Canadian homes.

[Jeanne Sarson]

I would just expand that to society. You said the victimized person, but I think every citizen in this country has to understand, too. The law is what names. It helps us understand the culture we live in and the society that is evolving around us. I think it's in a broader context too. Law educates us differently.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

That's okay, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much.

Next we're going to go to Mr. Fraser.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to be sharing my time with Bill Casey.

Thank you very much for your presentation, for coming here today. Thank you for your 23 years of advocacy on behalf of human rights, and it's really a pleasure to meet you. I'm thankful that you're here today.

With regard to putting non-state torture in the law, you mentioned one of the benefits for the victim is that they feel that naming what they've gone through is somehow a sense of acknowledgement. I wonder if there are other benefits of this as well, and I'm thinking in terms of the deterrent aspect. Do you think that any deterrence is possible if more people are coming forward or there's more chance of people receiving a different type of criminal conviction?

[Linda MacDonald]

I think that prevention would be possible. The groups that we know are very persistent in harming the victim. If people have children in these families and we access and save the children more quickly, the trauma that they would endure would be much less. If we have people who come forward earlier, health care providers or first responders who know how to recognize non-state torture early in a child's life, and we can bring that to court, then the child can be protected and the prevention of long-term trauma would definitely occur.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Just quickly, do you support the proposed amendment, then, that was put forward by Mr. Fragiskatos?