Content warning: The following contains descriptions of torture, abuse, suicide, and sexual assault. Please proceed with caution and care. If you require support, there are resources available.
Creators of Persons Against Non-State Torture and authors of Women Unsilenced: Our Refusal to Let Torturer-Traffickers Win Linda MacDonald and Jeanne Sarson were invited to be witnesses at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women in Ottawa regarding the issue of human trafficking.
A day later, May 2, we spoke via zoom, but it was far from a celebratory interview. The internationally-recognized experts on non-State torture (NST) once again felt unheard.
The pair from Truro, N.S., submitted a two-page brief along with seven of their published articles and a copy of their book.
In their oral and written submissions, MacDonald and Sarson stated that their research clearly established that human traffickers commit behaviours and actions that manifest as NST.
NST is defined as acts of torture perpetrated by individuals rather than the state. NST mainly targets women and children. It can happen within families, relationships, human trafficking, prostitution, pornographic exploitation, and by groups and gangs.
In one woman’s case, life meant being tortured by her parents, their friends, other family members and strangers. Conditioned since childhood to commit suicide whenever she thought she might tell an outsider about the abuse, the woman thought being trafficked by her family was just a normal part of life.
Non-State torturers employ the same dehumanizing acts as those used by State torturers like police, military, and governmental staff. Yet, unlike State torture, NST is not deemed a torture crime or criminalized in Canada.
Instead, NST is characterized as aggravated assault and sexual assault. MacDonald and Sarson say that’s because of the patriarchal divide which privileges and benefits men. Being male gives them more status, power, and resources than women, even when it comes to their criminality.
The effects of non-State torture
The findings submitted by the researchers included a participatory universal NST questionnaire completed by survivors of sexualized human trafficking and NST. The study was made up of 44 women, four men and one gender-diverse person. Almost one-quarter of respondents were Canadian.
MacDonald and Sarson found interconnections between the physical, sexualized, psychological, and mental NST crimes listed. Survivors of NST described feeling terror, horror, a fear of going crazy, and being pathologized as being mentally ill rather than being recognized as a victim of NST crime and human trafficking.
Further analysis of the 48 acts of NST listed on the survey showed a ratio of 15 females to one male will suffer multiple forms of exploitation within family or other relationships and when trafficked or sold to non-family trafficker-torturers.
Survival responses to NST include disassociation, suicidality, self-cutting, and daily struggles with coping. Sexualized health issues can include surgical vaginal repairs, hysterectomies, repair of rectal prolapse, and sterility.
In a separate online questionnaire, the retired public health nurses asked respondents to choose between being a victim of assault and abuse or NST.
Of the 776 individuals who responded, 680 (88 per cent) chose assault and abuse because they said they knew that being tortured would be more destructive, dehumanizing, take them closer to death, and that they would probably not be believed if they tried to tell.
The same group indicated that 44 of the 48 acts described in the survey were acts of NST and not acts of assault or abuse when committed against one person.
‘Power and privilege’ help perpetrators avoid accountability
While answering questions from committee members, MacDonald and Sarson said perpetrators of NST are not prosecuted because women are afraid to go to the police. That’s because police have historically pathologized NST victims as being mentally ill once they start talking about the torture they have endured.
As detailed in their ground-breaking book, nothing ever happens to the perpetrators because many are fine, upstanding members of the community who often enjoy power and privilege.
The perpetrators include doctors, lawyers, politicians, judges, and even police officers. They often work through informal networks as well as organized crime.
At times, their testimony was difficult to fathom, but necessary to create an understanding of what NST really means. And, quite frankly, it was nothing new for those of us who have been following and writing about MacDonald and Sarson’s courageous efforts to have this crime of torture recognized in the Criminal Code of Canada.
One form of sexualized torture used to destroy a woman’s self-esteem, self-worth, and resolve is gang rape. On the first day of captivity, a victim is raped by multiple men. This euphemism for this type of gang rape is called “breaking in.”
Nursing research shows the more severe the violence, the greater the risk of suicidality.
Regaining dignity through NST-informed care
One woman, who we will call Lynn, was trafficked from Nova Scotia to Ontario by her husband and three of his male friends. Kept in a windowless room, she was fed water and rice and continuously handcuffed to a radiator.
Lynn was tortured by a steady stream of men for four and a half years – some of the men were police officers in full uniform. She was raped with guns, knives, and forcibly aborted five times.
With NST-informed care, Lynn healed and regained her dignity.
Canada’s Criminal Code calls acts like those Lynn lived through assault instead of torture. MacDonald and Sarson say that is discriminatory.
“Criminal Code amendments to NST crimes will hold traffickers accountable for the NST crimes they inflict,” Sarson recommended. “Criminal Code amendments will educate society about the severity of human trafficking and fosters developing NST victimization, traumatization-informed care and promote the healability of women and children.”
MacDonald and Sarson were surprised to find out that the funds confiscated from pimps and traffickers are reallocated to police departments to purchase cars.
While attacking the money may help deter traffickers, MacDonald and Sarson want to know why the confiscated funds are not used to help survivors find permanent housing, job training, cars of their own, and NST-informed care so they can heal and regain their dignity?
During the interview the pair did say that they were exceptionally pleased with the choice of Thai Troung for the next police chief of London, Ontario.
Both women have immense respect for Truong, calling him one of the top police officers addressing anti-human trafficking in Canada.
“He’s a very rare person,” said MacDonald.
Criminal Code amendments will make women feel safer
Addressing NST with amendments to the Criminal Code is the only way to move forward. Once NST is a law, then women will feel safer and more comfortable coming forward.
That will allow researchers like Sarson and MacDonald to start collecting data, design and implement education programs for police as well as the judicial and health care systems, and provide fully funded care-informed services for the women and girls who have experienced NST. Currently, there are no services of any kind.
MacDonald and Sarson recommended that the human right of all persons not be subjected to torture be addressed legally with amendments to the Criminal Code, to uphold respect for the human dignity and equality of all women and children experiencing NST and trafficking.
Yet, one has to wonder, with a lack of gender parity in Parliament coupled with the patriarchal divide, how long will the voices of NST survivors, advocates, and researchers fall on deaf ears?
It really is time to include NST in the Criminal Code of Canada.
A version of this article first appeared in Small Change.
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