Thank you.
Jeanne Sarson and I are feminist grassroots activists working in Nova Scotia, Canada and globally, with 31 years of expertise in supporting women who have been subjected to non-state torture. We are also members of the NGO, the National Council of Women of Canada.
Coercive control is often a very large component of non-state torture. Keeping women captive and the coercion of older women is very invisible.
As a nurse, I supported a woman in her 80s who had been tortured and trafficked as a young mother, with her two little boys present, by men in a Nova Scotia fishing village where she lived. Escaping this torture, she brought up her family and remarried. After retiring, her second husband began coercing her by taking control of her money, isolating her from her family and friends, making intentional medication errors, dehumanizing her with constant psychological abuse and terrifying her by claiming she had memory loss.
These coercive control tactics triggered her into previous non-state torture flashbacks to the point that she became constantly triggered, losing control of her independence and eventually having to be placed in long-term care.
Coming from Nova Scotia provides our voices extra weight because we were participants in the Mass Casualty Commission inquiry after one man shot and killed 22 people, including 13 women.
Earlier this month, the Nova Scotia provincial government passed a bill declaring domestic violence an epidemic in Nova Scotia, which flows from the Mass Casualty Commission's findings about Nova Scotia and Canada. Coercive control is often combined with other forms of male violence against women, intimate partner or domestic violence, and if considered a serious crime, it can prevent suicide and fatal crimes such as femicide and even mass shootings.
As participants of the Mass Casualty Commission, we heard about the extensive coercion that the gunman forced onto his partner, making her terrified to leave him. She was also strangled by him, but this crime was not taken seriously.
Jeanne and I joined with other Nova Scotia feminists, recommending that coercive control become part of the Criminal Code of Canada. As persons against non-state torture, we recommended that strangulation and femicide, as distinct crimes, be added to the Criminal Code. We submit these recommendations again today.
As Anne Frank said, “What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again.”