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GENDER PERSPECTIVES ON TORTURE: Law and Practice
after escaping. This occurred when Sara (not her real name) who, several decades after first dis
closing non-State torture victimization, explained the tactic her parents used to traffic her as a
youth. Sara’s parents gave her a code name before leaving home for school and told her to walk
home rather than take the school bus. When a car drove up, stopped, and said the code name, she
‘simply’ got into the car. This was her relational norm. For the specific population of women born
to family-based, non-State torturers, traffickers, and exploiters, their victimization is relationally
complicated in that surviving meant bonding with a family that was supposed to nurture them
rather than destroy them. This kind of torturer intends to cause destruction. When torture victim
ization begins in infancy, the destruction to a woman’s relationship with herself as a human being
is swift. Women frequently describe their Self-perception as being an “it”, a “thing”, or a “nobody”.
(Sarson, & MacDonald, 2014a).
Women in all three groups lack access to State supportive justice. For the Canadian women
identified in this chapter, justice for non-State torture crimes is directly denied by the refusal of the
Canadian Government to amend the Criminal Code. Patriarchal discrimination that legally invisibi
lizes non-State torture continues in countries other than Canada. For example, Garcia and Santos
(2009) wrote that when the Philippines created their anti-torture law, Republic Act No. 9745 (The
LAWPHiL Project, 2009), non-State torture was not addressed. Other countries, such as Belgium,
have not restricted their laws on torture to require State involvement. The Belgian law has report
edly been used only twice for non-State torture—once in a case involving acid burning, the second
time in a case where an exorcism resulted in a woman’s death (REDRESS, & European Centre for
Constitutional and Human Rights, 2012). In Queensland, Australia, in the case of R v. HAC, a hus
band was found guilty of torturing his wife over a period of six months (2006).
Acquiescence of the State: Canada knew of Non-State Torture
The Government of Canada knows non-State torture, including the sexualized exploitative
torture of Canadian women, children, and infants, occurs and that, for some, it has occurred for
decades (Sarson, & MacDonald, 2016b; Sarson, & MacDonald, 2015). A herstorical awareness
began before Canada ratified the UNCAT in 1987. For example, in the 1985 report, Pornography
and Prostitution in Canada, “Women are represented in scenarios of degradation, injury, abasement,
torture, shown as filthy and inferior, bleeding, bruised, or hurt in a context that makes these condi
tions sexual” (Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution, p. 55). Prior to this, Robertson
(1979) referred to a quote in a testimony given before the House of Commons Justice Committee
that said, “johns want ‘to burn, torture and beat . . . .’ the women prostituted” (p. 13). Reference to
the torture of women continued to be delivered to the Canadian Government, including in the 1993
Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women report given to the Minister Responsible for the Status
of Women. It said, “Every day in this country women are maligned, humiliated, shunned, screamed
at, pushed, kicked, punched, assaulted, beaten, raped, physically disfigured, tortured, threatened
with weapons and murdered” (p. 3). In 2010, LePard reported sadistic and sexualized torture of
several women in prostitution; in 2013 the Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre gave
examples of acts of non-State torture perpetrated against domestically trafficked young women;
and in the 2014 report by the Native Women’s Association of Canada, a sexually exploited and
trafficked woman said, “Torture is torture. I survived it. I’m an expert of it.” Additionally, when
the Canadian Government was studying Bill C-36 to shape Canada’s position on the prostitution
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