Status of Women committee  Of the perpetrators we know, none of them have ever been taken to court because the women are too terrified to go to the police because they're not believed. They're seen as mentally ill when they talk about torture in Canada. We only want to think about state torture. If they go

Status of Women committee  Yes, certainly. These should go back to the survivors, for sure. I do agree with that, yes.

Status of Women committee  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 a

Justice committee  One of the things I can't understand is why we're focused on trying to find ways to help women supposedly stay safe on the street instead of looking at the young people who are unsafe on the street now and providing them viable, safe options to get off the street. That's one of t

Justice committee  No, what we're saying is that families who have children to torture and to groom to endure torture deliberately traffic them for profit and for pleasure. They are a specific group. That's the knowledge that we have, our expertise: the families traffic them.

Justice committee  No, because there's no law and there's no research and data in this country to have it clearly identified. We've talked to many women in Canada and other countries, but we don't know the breadth of it. I can say that the London Abused Women's Centre is now collecting data on to

Justice committee  In other countries, the law has been changed. For some reason, Canada is resisting this. We're not sure why, except they're saying that aggravated assault is sufficient or that we would minimize state torture if we started recognizing the torture that women and girls endure. I do

Justice committee  Mr. Chair, we have dedicated the past 25 years exposing organized crime, family-based, non-state torture and human trafficking in Canada and internationally. We are published authors. Our latest co-authored chapter is titled “How Non-State Torture is Gendered and Invisibilized: C