Linda and I have just returned from presenting on a parallel event panel during the 60th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). The panel was titled, The world's Oldest Oppression: Violence and Torture…
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL The Amnesty International’s draft policy passed a resolution on “sex work”. In effect, legitimatizing prostitution as the work of women and I will also add of girls because most women who are…
To MPs: Joy Smith, joy.smith@parl.gc.ca Bob Dechert, bob.dechert@parl.gc.ca Stella Ambler, Stella.Ambler@parl.gc.ca , and Françoise Boivin, francoise.boivin@parl.gc.ca I write to each of you because you were on the House of…
Halloween is over. For women triggered by Halloween they may now be breathing a sigh of relief. Non-State torturers use Halloween, or any holiday, as opportunistic times to distort myths and or use holiday-based costumes as a cover to hide their…
For years there have been discussions of concern about how women and girls as persons and their bodies have been objectified and sexualized for commoditization—used for sale. Today I am outraged by the sexualized pedophilic torture messages…
To make sense of my looking through the glass window at this year’s United Nations CSW57th Session and how this created a painful disquieting knot in my feminist gut I, first, have to share bits of herstorical and historical reflections about…
Probably like many others, I have been reading Forsaken The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry or listening to Wally Oppal speak about his report that gave names and womanhood value to 67 women who had for years been forsaken…
2012 is closing with the ever widening reality of the global oppression and violence against women and girls, including torture by private individuals, families, or groups/gangs. There are insufficient words that can be spoken or written that can…
Recently I received a message from the Center for Victims of Torture. They created Torture “Without Scars”, an educational tool with dramatization videos of State torture accompanied by the statement that the images “can be…
Last week I read various accounts of shockingly disturbing yet not surprising articles. The reporters, Hoffman,[1] and Bakken,[2] discussed that the student council in a Minnesota high school organized a “Prey and Predator Day”. This…
Twenty years. It’s unbelievable to me that Linda and I will soon be entering our 20th year of ‘digesting’ the reality that torture victimization can and does begin in infancy. Women who were so victimized have spoken to us of…
No Safe Place: Sexual Assault in the Lives of Homeless Women,[1] is an important read. Written by Lisa Goodman, Katya Fels and Catherine Glenn with contributions by Judy Benitez, it chronicled a well-researched discourse on the complex…
THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN was the title written in bolded black on the plain white paper cover of the June 1991 report. Presented to the House of Commons by a Sub-Committee assigned to examine the status of women in Canada, it contained the…
William who? William Sampson. He died. Last week, on the 29th of March, the Huffington Post announced his death from an apparent heart attack, he was 52.[1] Sadly, I didn’t know him. But, I read his book and he helped me. His book…
Sitting with a wise lawyer, he, his partner, Linda and I were discussing how simple it would be to fix the Criminal Code of Canada so that non-state torture (NST) would be criminalized. His words were, “It’s a no-brainer.”…
Non-state torture (NST) is the crime the unidentified victimized person repeatedly stated he suffered. There is no section in the Criminal Code of Canada that permitted this victimized person, or permits any Canadian citizen, so harmed to…
“How the killers were caught,”[1] and “Afghan wife slain for having baby girl,”[2] were the headlines occupying the front page of the ‘B’ section of The Chronicle Herald on January 31st, 2012. Under the…
A three month torture ordeal He was forced to exist in a dark bedroom closet of a Toronto basement apartment, malnourished, naked, cold, shivering and wounded—he was/is an adult male. Razor blades were used to slice into his body. Punched…
Everywhere I look media articles and cartoons take aim at the New Year's resolution ritual. I read that taking action to eat healthy foods and be physically active by walking will improve wellness.[1] And according to Ruth, she says she always…
Organized Acts of Human Evil Who best to explain what it means—how it feels—to be held captive by the acts and ordeals of everyday evil than those who speak of having survived such atrocities? Writing this Blog is to share with…
As a writer my focus is on sharing the supportive and research work that began for Linda and I in August of 1993 when a woman ‘introduced’ us to the reality of the torture victimization she suffered, that was inflicted by private individuals or ‘non-state actors’. Linda and I hold a relational feminist and human rights perspective so my writings reflect this position, as does the editing that Linda and I do. Being entrusted with person’s victimization knowledge and healing work our goal also includes sharing their voices in our articles.
Without this participatory partnership we could not break the global patriarchal socio-cultural resistance that has silenced the existence of the many forms of non-state torture (NST) victimization that can be/are inflicted from birth. Writings share our wisdom and focuses on gaining the human rights of victimized persons not to be subjected to torture, and to assert the necessity that NST must be specifically and distinctly criminalized in all nations on this planet.