Truth-Telling: Acknowledging the Patriarchal Silencing of the “Non-State Torture War” against Women and Girls

By Jeanne Sarson and Linda MacDonald (www.nonstatetorture.org)

In August, 1993, a Canadian woman named Sara (not her real name) entered our lives, changing forever our reality about the degree of violence that is committed against women and girls. She trusted us to listen to her truth-telling of being subjected to torture by family and non-family perpetrators. We learned she was also trafficked from the time she was a toddler. Sara would not be the first and last woman to disclose such torture-trafficking victimizations. When acts of torture are committed by private individuals or groups they are known as non-State actors; when torturers are employees of a State such as police, military, or embassy staff, they are known as State actors, thus the naming of State torture and non-State torture (NST). 

Over the past 28 years, women have contacted us, and completed our participatory NST research questionnaires. They are not only from Canada; they are from the U.S., Mexico, the UK, Western Europe, Israel, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand. Then there are all the women who attend the CSW, listening to their truth-telling of the NST committed against them when they were trafficked and exploited into prostitution. We’ve come to the realization that extensive human rights violations committed against women and girls manifest as acts of torture committed by non-State actors. Expanding this reality came from reading the reports of United Nations Special Rapporteurs so we created this model of Naming Global Categories of NST Victimization of Women and Girls.

Naming Global Categories of Non-State Torture Committed against Women and Girls 

Category 1. The specific use of the term “classic” when referring to NST in this category is because the acts of torture listed are similar to the acts committed by State torturers. The literature often describes acts of State torture as “classic” torture. However, women’s truth-telling and women’s participation in our research reveals that these same horrific acts of torture are perpetrated by non-State actors including parents, other family members, family friends, a spouse, guardians, a peer, a stranger, and like-minded others. Therefore, we have used the term “classic” to illustrate this truth as these are the acts of NST women disclose.

Category 2. This grouping of “classic” commercial-based torture by non-State actors refers to the fact that there are financial or other benefits gained by these non-State torture-traffickers and exploiters. They can also be connected to organized criminal groups within their communities, their country, and even be transnational. Migrant domestic workers have been tortured and enslaved by employers.  

Category 3.  Listed under socio-cultural norms, traditional or religious-based acts are human rights violations that United Nations Special Rapporteurs have stated manifested as forms of torture inflicted against women and girls because of who they are—because they are women and girls—because of their human inequality within patriarchal society—because they are “the Other.” 

Silencing Truth-Telling of NST Human Rights Violations against Women and Girls

 The massive forms of violence perpetrated against women and girls that collectively manifest as torture perpetrated by non-State actors has been almost socially invisibilized. To reverse this invisibilization we created this model of the “Patriarchal Silencing of the ‘Non-State Torture War’ against Women and Girls.” 

The infliction of acts of torture is never accidental, it is intentional, and for non-State actors there are various purposes, such as gaining:

1. Power—the exertion of positional power and totalitarian control,
2. Pleasure—women speak of knowing the torturers had pleasure torturing them 
3. Profit—if engaged in human trafficking for example
4. Protection—by inflicting acts of torture to terrorize women and girls to never tell is a means of ensuring the torturer’s protection

This model provides a global vision and continuum into the three global categories of acts of violence perpetrated against women and girls and where NST victimization is known to exist. Where possible information from reports of global data are shown, but we can also explain what happens when NST is not included in research directed at identifying forms of violence against women and girls. 

For example, the statement that one-third of women and girls over the age of 15 years suffer physical and or sexualized violence is research by the World Health Organization (WHO). However, NST is not included nor defined as a form of violence in the WHO research, thus this reality is missing. Therefore, we identify NST occurs within families because this is not only the knowledge we have gained over the past 28 years. From families there is a connection to the research conducted by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection that reveals that parents have been identified as torturers and who perpetrate cybercrimes of the NST of their child. This truth-telling interlinks to the research finding that one million children were victimized including non-State tortured in the commercial sexualized exploitation crimes.  Furthermore, the model shocks more truth that children are tortured and killed by perpetrators of “snuff” crimes.  This explanation is about unsilencing truth-telling. For further details and the NST ordeals of women and girls who have survived the human rights crime of NST please read our blog on FiLiA.     

What to do? 

1. Tell women and girls you believe them when they disclose they survived “torture” and validate their disclosure by reflecting back to them using the term of “torture.” Do not replace their NST disclosures with another word such as abuse or assault because this disregards their truth-telling.  
2. When working with violence against women and girls name and include NST as a form of violence committed against women and girls. This promotes global truth-telling. 
3. If resources are needed remember the whrtlar module on Freedom from violence, stigma and stereotypes, it includes this Non-State Torture (NST) subtopic. 
4. Other resources we share include:
   • Unsilencing Non-State Torture (NST) is a webinar presented to the NGO members of Women-Graduate-USA [YouTube].
   • If seeking information on category 2, we presented research at the 2021 Canadian Sexual Exploitation Summit entitled, “Non-State Torture and Sexualized Exploitation: Lynn’s Story—Challenging Sellers and Buyers’ Impunity” .
   • A resource on NST in pornographic victimizations is addressed in this webinar, “Women Unsilenced: We’re naming their violence torture” [YouTube].
   • Women Unsilenced Our Refusal To Let Torturer-Traffickers Win is our book just released.