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.