Thank you.
I'm Linda MacDonald, and this is Jeanne Sarson. We are activists and retired public health nurses with over 30 years of expertise supporting women who were trafficked and tortured, mainly by their parents when they were little girls, other human traffickers, spouses and in prostitution and pornography—all involving informal networks and organized crime.
We coined the phrase “non-state torture” to differentiate the torture by the everyday person versus persons employed by the state. Referring to the “patriarchal divide model” on the first page of our brief submitted to you, I point out that some acts of torture occur by both state and non-state torture. The only difference is the perpetrator.
Some of the acts listed are electric shocking, water torture, forced drugging, dehumanizing psychological torture and sexualized torture like gang raping.
Gang rape is a very common torture act. The woman or girl is raped on the first day of captivity by as many as five or more men. This is called “breaking in” by the traffickers, with the goal to destroy the woman's or girl's relationship with herself. This brutal act is so shattering that women often become suicidal. Nursing research shows that the more severe the violence, the risk for being suicidal increases.
As a nurse, I cared for a woman named Lynne, who was trafficked to Ontario from Nova Scotia by her husband and his three male friends. She was kept in a windowless room, fed nothing but water and rice, handcuffed to a radiator and tortured by a steady stream of men for four and a half years. Some of the men were police in uniform. She was raped with guns, knives and was forcibly aborted five times. She was dehumanized, never called “Lynne” by them again, only being referred to as a piece of meat. With non-state torture informed care, she healed, regaining her dignity and sense of self.
In Canada, these horrendous acts of torture, when inflicted on women and girls, are called “assaul” versus “torture”, which is clearly discriminatory.