Pope ends a secrecy rule for Catholic sexual abuse cases, but for victims many barriers to justice remain

January 13, 2020

Pope Francis recently removed a secrecy rule to increase transparency
 for sexual abuse cases. AP Photo/Andrew Medichini

Pope Francis recently removed one of the barriers facing sex abuse victims looking for justice – the “Rule of Pontifical Secrecy.”

The rule is an obligation under the church’s laws to keep sensitive information regarding the Catholic Church’s governance strictly confidential. This rule allowed church officials to withhold information in sexual abuse cases, even where there was an alleged cover-up or a failure to report allegations. The clergy could claim secrecy even from victims or legal authorities.

Pope Francis stated on Dec. 17, 2019, in a press release “On the Topic of Confidentiality in Legal Proceedings,” that his intention in ending papal secrecy was to increase transparency in child abuse cases.

As a legal scholar, I have extensively analyzed the use of evidence rules that shield confidential communications with clergy. I argue that even with the removal of the papal secrecy rule, transparency might remain illusive for abuse victims.

The Catholic Church has other practices it can rely on to conceal information.
Papal secrecy rule

The Rule of Pontifical Secrecy is part of the church’s canon laws – ordinances that regulate the church and its members. It traces its roots to the twelfth century, when the church set up the institution of Inquisition for punishing heresy. This quest was rooted in secrecy and led to the torture and execution of thousands of people throughout Europe and the Americas.

The rule is the church’s highest level of secrecy. Historically, it applied primarily to issues of church governance. This includes drafts of canon law, papal conclaves and also internal church investigations of misconduct by clergy.

The rule is intended, in part, to protect the names of accusers and the accused in church-related disputes until there had been some clear finding of wrongdoing. The penalty for disclosing information can include excommunication.
Rule hindered justice

In application, though, the rule of secrecy has hindered efforts by child abuse victims to seek justice against the church.

It became a way for church officials to avoid reporting allegations of abuse to law officials. Officials also relied on the rule to refuse to cooperate with legal authorities investigating allegations of wrongdoing.

Critics also feared the rule hindered victims from coming forward. For those who did come forward, the rule made it more difficult to obtain information pertinent to any subsequent litigation.

When the pope issued the instruction to remove the rule from the canon law in December, his decision lifted only the veil of pontifical secrecy from three categories of cases: sexual abuse of minors or vulnerable persons; failure to report or efforts to cover up such abuse; and possession of pornography by a cleric.

All other matters previously covered by this rule, such as diplomatic correspondences and personal issues, remain subject to papal secrecy.
Other confidential communication

However, Catholic sexual abuse victims face other barriers to seeking justice.

Victims often seek information regarding what church officials knew about particular instances of abuse, including whether other victims made similar accusations against a particular cleric or details of any internal church investigation. Lifting the rule of pontifical secrecy does not clarify church official’s obligations to comply with such requests.

Further, as my research shows, the pontifical secret is only one avenue for shielding information about wrongdoing in the church.

The seal of confession prevents priests from sharing information received during confession at risk of excommunication. This has included information that victims of abuse have sought to build their cases.

The privilege has also been asserted as a workaround to mandatory reporting obligations for clergy.

Additionally, every state in the United States recognizes clergy privilege – a legal rule that shields clergy from forced disclosure of confidential spiritual communication. This protection applies not only to confessions but also to conversations in which clergy provide solace, comfort or aid.

In practice, clergy privilege means priests can refuse to testify, at any stage of litigation, regarding protected conversations. Yet in these conversations, abusers may well admit to harming children.
Inconsistent privilege assertions

Religious institutions have been inconsistent in their assertion of the clergy privilege.

In some instances, clerics willingly forgo the privilege. For example, in the 2014 Tennessee state case, State v. Cartmell, a chaplain testified about a conversation in which the defendant disclosed details about a murder. The defendant asserted the communication was privileged, but the chaplain maintained he could testify.

The chaplain acknowledged he was with the defendant in his religious capacity but framed the conversations not as being spiritual. He claimed it was a means to assist the defendant “make peace” with what happened.

In other cases, clergy have asserted the privilege to shield confidential communications in alleged child abuse cases. In Commonwealth v. Cane, a 1983 decision from the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, a Roman Catholic priest withheld evidence in a murder and child abuse case. The defendant waived any privilege over his conversation with the priest. Nonetheless, the priest refused to testify.

Despite the pope’s efforts, the transparency the Catholic Church seeks will take far more chipping away at the remaining obstacles to justice.

Author
 

Christine P. Bartholomew
Associate Professor of Law, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
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Christine P. Bartholomew does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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The long history and current consequences of the Iranian-American conflict

January 13, 2020 

Protesters chant slogans and hold up posters of Qassem Soleimani

 during a demonstration in front of the British Embassy in Tehran on

 Jan. 12, 2020. AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi

Understanding historical cause and effect can be difficult and contentious. The downing of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752 is a prime example.

While there’s now no question about the Iranian regime’s responsibility for attack, the broader blame game is ongoing. Indeed, it is integral to Tehran’s defence in the face of international condemnation and increasing domestic unrest.

Historians trace the state of Iranian-American relations to 1953, when the Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated a coup against Mohammed Mossadegh and installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a puppet ruler for 25 years. 

In this September 1951 photo, Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh rides on the shoulders of cheering crowds outside Tehran’s parliament building after reiterating his oil nationalization views to his supporters. The U.S. overthrew his government two years later. AP Photo, File

The 1978 Iranian Revolution ensued, ultimately producing the authoritarian theocracy in power today. Iran’s brutal war from 1980 to 1988 with neighbouring Iraq, then an American ally, helped to entrench the Islamist regime and fuelled further enmity with the U.S.

So too has constant American support for Israel and Saudi Arabia, and Iran’s wide-ranging “proxy wars” in the Middle East through militias and terrorist organizations.

More recently, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq provided a lightning rod for conflict. It simultaneously threatened Iran with perceived regime change while creating the conditions for the country’s expanded influence in the region through control of disaffected Shia. The subsequent civil war in Syria, the rise of the Islamic State (IS) and the ongoing conflict in Yemen furthered opportunities for Tehran to project its power.
Support for reformists

To be sure, there have been glimmers of hope for a better relationship over the years.

The so-called Green Movement in Iran in 2009 signalled that not all was well with the fundamentalist regime. Support for reformists since the late 1990s, while intermittent, also points to a more diverse, progressive society in Iran than is often imagined.

On the international stage, the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (better known as the Iran nuclear deal) provided at least an initial framework for dialogue, however debatable its effectiveness. But that process ended with the withdrawal from the protocol in 2018 by Donald Trump’s administration.

The more recent decision to assassinate Qassem Soleimani, major general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and commander of the Quds Force — and one of the most important officials in the Iranian government — was an even more obvious hard turn away from any diplomacy with Tehran.

Soleimani’s murder necessitated a response from Iran.

After many threats, that response was Iranian missile attacks on American military bases in Iraq. It was an expected and relatively restrained response from a regime cornered between appearing tough in the face of American aggression and running the risk of a major military escalation with the U.S. that could conceivably imperil its very existence.

Read more: Iran vows revenge for Soleimani's killing, but here's why it won't seek direct confrontation with the US

It is of course too early to know if that’s the extent of Tehran’s response. Soleimani’s death is a major blow to Iranian operations in Iraq and Syria, where he served as the political and military point-man. At the head of the Quds Force, he ran myriad clandestine operations through proxies in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Afghanistan. The U.S. ranked him as one of the most important terrorists in the world.
Soleimani a national hero

Soleimani’s assassination was taken as a clear, personal attack on the regime and particularly Iran’s theocracy. 

In this picture released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks to a group of residents of the city of Qom, in Iran on Jan. 8, 2020. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

Quite separate from the Iranian military, the IRGC answers directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Historically, the IRGC has also been a kind of barometer of the regime’s integrity with the Iranian populace.

Initially the vanguard of the revolution, the IRGC came to epitomize the oppressive nature of clerical rule and had lost much of its support among Iranians.

Soleimani was key to its rehabilitation, especially in the face of what many saw as American military adventurism in the Middle East.

His status as a national hero was premised largely on the notion that the IRGC was, once again, defending Iranian sovereignty: challenging the U.S. and its allies throughout the region. In many respects he had tapped into an even deeper sense of Persian nationalism — he represented the legitimate regional aspirations of an ancient and proud people, long besieged by enemies on all fronts. He was, to some degree, a symbol of unity in a fractured state.

It is dangerous to leap from Soleimani’s death to the downing of Flight PS752, or to ultimately blame Washington as Iran now seeks to do. But cause and effect still cast their shadows.
Iran feared further escalation

Clearly Iranian authorities feared military escalation from the U.S. after their reprisal for the assassination. And clearly their fears were exacerbated by incompetency evident now on multiple levels, particularly the Iranian Civil Aviation Authority for not closing airspace over Tehran.

Read more: Flight PS752: A deadly combination of Iran's recklessness and incompetence

Most problematic for the regime is that the IRGC — the only unit with the Russian-made Tor system in question — ultimately bears responsibility for launching the missiles. Admitting to the attack, especially after a series of vigorous denials, has humiliated the regime.

Evidenced by anti-government protests in Iran soon after its admission, it’s also exposed the leadership to precisely what it fears most: the domestic opposition it has been battling for years.

Often overlooked by Westerners in this calculation is the 1988 Iranian Airlines Flight 655 incident, when missiles from the USS Vincennes were mistakenly launched at the civilian jet, killing all on board.

That event became a central pillar of the clerics’ attempts to carve a collective Iranian identity built principally on vehement anti-Americanism, and to consequently legitimize their own control.

 

In this July 1988 file photo, a funeral procession is held for six Pakistani and Indian nationals who were killed aboard Iran Air Flight 655. AP Photo

Commemorated in speeches, educational curriculums, even postage stamps, Flight 655 reinforced notions that Iran was perpetually under attack. Indeed, just a couple of days before the attack on Ukrainian International Airlines, tweets from senior Iranian officials reminded followers about Flight 655.

Now, with Flight PS752, Iran was the attacker. Hypocrisies were revealed, and opportunities to exploit both domestic and international support in the face of American actions were lost.
Justification changes

So what about the United States? As Trump so quickly pointed out, the “mistake” most definitely came “from the other side.” But his decisions still loom large in a fair discussion of cause and effect.

There are serious questions about what went into the decision to kill Soleimani. Parallels to Osama bin Laden are inevitable, but neither the context nor the consequences are analogous.

Attacks on Iranian interests have the potential of far greater, and faster, escalation than any involving al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations. And the initial rationale — that Soleimani was planning an “imminent attack” on U.S. interests — has changed. Instead, Trump argued, the hit was for past actions.

That’s a very different calculation, especially in the eyes of public opinion.

Even if the assassination is still considered legitimate, questions about possible consequences seem to have been ignored. Soleimani’s status as a national hero doesn’t seem to have registered. A sophisticated understanding of the Iranian regime and its need to respond to any attack on its interests also seems to have been lacking. 

Demonstrators protest outside of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 9, 2020. 

AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

Historical calculations were probably never even entertained in calculating what might happen after the hit. In an administration notorious for its revolving door of senior officials and advisers, whose expertise was instrumental in making a decision of that magnitude? Was any sought at all?

Regardless of any moral and ethical considerations, the assassination of Soleimani constitutes a dramatic escalation in a region already dangerously volatile, and it was arguably disproportionate to the threat he posed.
Stephen Harper cut diplomatic ties

Questions about cause and effect don’t spare Canada, either. The 2012 decision by the government of Stephen Harper to cut diplomatic ties with Iran now significantly complicates Ottawa’s efforts to take part in the investigation of Flight PS752 and to best represent Canadian victims.

Read more: Canada's non-diplomacy puts Canadians at risk in an unstable Middle East

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s demands for a full, open, international investigation into the incident are helped by Iran’s belated admissions, but he cannot expect the regime to fully comply in straightforward fashion. A significant improvement in Iranian-Canadian relations remains a distant dream.

Perhaps even more important is the disturbing fact that Ottawa was left in the dark about Trump’s Soleimani intentions. Especially with allies so close, it is customary — and necessary — to consult in matters of national security. 

Members of the Iranian community break down during a 

memorial for the victims of the Ukrainian plane disaster

in Iran in Edmonton on Jan. 12, 2020. 

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Todd Korol

Canadians, both soldiers and civilians, who were potentially in danger in the region could have been warned if Ottawa had been informed. It also raises serious questions about the current state of the Canada-U.S. relationship.

Trump’s personal dislike of Trudeau, and evident disregard for Canada, is obvious. Less clear is how the historically high degree of communication and integration between the two countries has changed under Trump’s watch.

Asked directly about whether he thought the U.S. bore some responsibility for the downing of PS752, Trudeau said: “I think it is too soon to be drawing conclusions or assigning blame or responsibility in whatever proportions.”

It was a quiet but obvious suggestion that the Trump administration was not above reproach in a great tragedy with significant international consequences.

Author
 

Arne Kislenko

Associate Professor of History, Ryerson University
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Arne Kislenko does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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Iran-U.S. crisis reminds us how culture matters in war time

January 14, 2020

As tensions have ratcheted up between the United States and Iran, a series of tweets by President Donald Trump threatening the deliberate targeting of Iranian cultural sites triggered a strong negative reaction around the world.

In fact, following Trump’s tweets, Pentagon officials reassured the world that the U.S. would not target Iran’s cultural sites, and would follow the laws of armed conflict.

Quickly, the president himself appeared to backtrack, declaring: “You know what, if that’s what the law is, I like to obey the law.”

Explaining his earlier position, Trump had embraced a dangerous logic:

“[Iran is] allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn’t work that way.”

The argument is disingenuous, as it purports to highlight the value of human life as higher than that of cultural sites, while suggesting that those who want to protect heritage are implicitly attaching more importance to culture than to the torturing and maiming of people. This is simply not true.

Both international law and the U.S. military Law of War manual are clear on why protecting cultural sites in conflicts should be a priority for the belligerents. 
A view of Iran’s UNESCO world heritage site of the Qara Kelisa
 (Black Church), in Chaldran, 850 kilometres northwest of the
 Iranian capital Tehran. Also known as St. Thaddeus Church, 
it is believed to have been built in AD 66. AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian

‘Law of War’

In 1954, the Hague Convention tackled the issue of “Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.” The convention established cultural property as a legal category in international law where cultural property was defined as “movable or immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every people.”

The convention addresses wartime behaviour by prohibiting the use of cultural property in manners that could lead to its destruction or damage, and establishing the obligation to refrain from any act of hostilities directed at cultural property except in “cases of unavoidable military necessity.”

Furthermore, countries are forbidden from using their own cultural sites for military purposes (such as storing weapons or explosives) in hopes that they will be protected from an attack.

The Hague Convention was very much a reaction to the devastation brought about by the Second World War, which saw the deliberate destruction of countless cultural treasures. It signalled a desire on the part of the international community to protect the world’s cultural heritage from the ravages of war, and recognition that the loss of this heritage represents a loss for the country affected as well as for humanity.
What is cultural heritage important?

More recently, the world has witnessed the wanton destruction and plundering of historical heritage driven by ideological motives in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Cambodia, Mali, Syria and in many other countries rich in archeological heritage.

These events have highlighted how the destruction of cultural heritage can become just another weapon of war, one with targets that aren’t military resources or infrastructure, but rather the memories, history and identity of a people.
Left: Temple of Bel in April 2010, Palmyra, Syria. 
Right: ISIL propaganda image showing the temple’s 
destruction in 2015. (Left: Bernard Gagnon; right: ISIL propaganda), 
CC BY

Indeed, often the deliberate performative destruction of cultural heritage is used exactly for that purpose: erasing traces of a past that someone wants forgotten, so that a new history can be written.

Examples of this abound, from the Taliban’s demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan to the destruction of the Timbuktu manuscripts in Mali at the hand of the Islamist rebels of Andar Dine and the annihilation of Shi’a and Sufi heritage by ISIS in its controlled territory.
Teaching military cultural awareness

Awareness of the importance of preserving cultural sites in war, both to protect the world’s cultural heritage and to signal respect of every country’s history and contribution to humankind, is incorporated in the training received by the United States’ armed forces. The Department of Defense’s Law of War manual includes literally hundreds of references to this issue. 
 
The Pentagon deck of cards, ‘Respect Afghan Heritage,’ was handed out to troops with hopes of raising cultural awareness. (@hannahbloch)

The Pentagon even distributed decks of playing cards with photos of cultural sites to troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan to underscore the need to safeguard heritage sites and artifacts. One of the cards showed a picture of the Statue of Liberty, with the words, “How would we feel if someone destroyed her torch?”

At times of heightened tensions, when relations between two or more countries veer dangerously towards conflict and countless lives are at stakes, it is worth remembering why culture matters not only in peacetime but also, or perhaps especially, in conflict, when humanity is most at risk of getting lost in the fog of war.

Author
 

Costanza Musu

Associate Professor, Graduate Scool of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
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Costanza Musu receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council.
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Will Flight PS752 victims be remembered differently than those killed in the Air India bombing?


January 13, 2020 

There’s been an incredible outpouring of grief across Canada since Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 was shot down by Iran, killing all 176 passengers and crew on board.

We have learned that among the 57 Canadians killed, there were beloved students, professors, doctors and engineers. Children, newlyweds and entire families perished. Many of them have been described by Canadian news media and leaders as “exceptional.” They belonged to Canada’s vibrant Iranian communities and are being remembered as such in tributes and memorial services across the nation.

“Your entire country stands with you tonight, tomorrow, and in all the years to come,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told about 2,300 people who attended a memorial service in Edmonton on Sunday. “We share your grief,” he said on the day of the crash.

Trudeau called it a “moment of national pain” and recounted stories he’d heard from impacted families over the past few days, including one of a 10-year-old “who was confident he’d one day be prime minister of this country he loved so much.”


I’ve spent more than a dozen years researching public memory of another air disaster that resulted in an even greater number of Canadian casualties — the Air India tragedy.

Indeed, news of PS752 is triggering memories of June 23, 1985, when Air India Flight 182 fell into the Atlantic Ocean near Cork, Ireland, after a bomb hidden among the luggage exploded. All 329 passengers and crew on board that flight were killed. Among them were 280 Canadians, the majority from Indian-Canadian families, as reported by the official inquiry by Public Safety Canada.
‘I felt gutted’

Winnipeg resident Nicky Mehta was 13 at the time that her uncle, aunt and two young cousins were killed on the Air India flight. On the day after Flight PS752 crashed, she woke up to an abbreviated list of “deadly plane crashes that killed Canadians” published in the Winnipeg Free Press that did not include Air India. “I felt gutted,” she told me. “It was re-traumatizing to see that Air India was not even worth a mention here.” The article has since been removed.

Back in 1985, there was no collective outpouring of grief or statement of national solidarity for the victims of Air India Flight 182. Were these victims not “exceptional” enough? In fact, they too were beloved students, professors, doctors and engineers, as well as homemakers, teachers, civil servants and more.

Notoriously, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney offered his condolences to Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi for India’s loss instead of addressing his own citizens.

 

A member of the Iranian community in Calgary lights a 

candle during a memorial for the victims of Flight PS752 crash.

 THE CANADIAN PRESS/Todd Korol

It is clear that for many Canadians (not just Mulroney) the Air India bombing was unthinkable — and thus unmemorable — as a tragedy of national consequence due to the dominant assumption that Canadian identity is synonymous with whiteness. Indeed, critics as well as relatives of the dead have raised the obvious question: would there have been such trouble recognizing the bombing as a national tragedy if the majority of those killed were white rather than brown Canadians?
Crucial evidence lost

Now well-documented as the result of criminal trial proceedings and a long-awaited federally appointed Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India 182 are repeated instances where government officials, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the RCMP and Canadian airport authorities ignored, disbelieved, erased and lost crucial evidence — including surveillance tapes of eventually acquitted suspects and warnings by the Indian government and Air India officials of an attack on the airline.

Relatives of those killed in the bombing of Flight 182 also testified to how the government failed to provide them with the most basic, practical supports in the days, months and years following the deaths of their loved ones, many citing compounded grief as a result of being treated like second-class citizens for their “Indian-ness.”

Sociologist Sherene Razack has said that although “there is evidence that some Canadian officials acted heroically,” systemic racism played a role in Canada’s pre- and post-bombing response or lack thereof. In her expert witness report for the inquiry, she observed:


“When police, political and media elites all consistently treated the Air India bombings as a foreign event, it is not surprising that Canadians do not recall June 23, 1985. As a nation, we were not shaken, transformed and moved to change our own institutional practices for a tragedy we considered had little to do with us.”

It would take 25 years of lobbying by Air India families before the government of Canada would publicly claim their loved ones, as well as the suspected perpetrators, as Canada’s own.
Has Canada changed?

Does the national mourning as a result of the tragedy of PS752 mean then that Canada has since changed? Are we befittingly shaken this time around? Other news reports are citing diversity and multiculturalism experts who think so, some claiming that there has been a “180-degree shift.” But I am curious to see how the victims of this tragedy (and those of the Air India bombings, for that matter) continue to be remembered in time.

Despite the fact that the Air India bombing is now referred to by public authorities as “the worst encounter with terrorism Canada has experienced,” or even “Canada’s 9/11,” most of my undergraduate university students have never heard of the incident.

The 35th anniversary of the Air India bombings approaches this coming June. It remains to be seen how long it will take for the Flight PS752 victims to be forgotten.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Indian

 Prime Minister Narendra Modi visit the memorial

 honouring victims of the 1985 Air India bombing at a 

ceremony in Toronto in 2015.

 THE CANADIAN PRESS/Michelle Siu

It also remains to be seen if the deaths of these passengers will be mobilized in the interests of increased western military involvement in the Middle East. Again I can’t help but think of the Air India bombings, and the ways in which the government of Stephen Harper strategically used the memory of its victims to bolster support for conservative anti-terrorist legislation; or more recently, conservative pundits who invoked the bombings over and over again to bait NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh before last fall’s federal election.

Nor am I convinced that Canada’s response to this recent air tragedy and the loss of so many Iranian-Canadian lives means racist reactions won’t still emerge.

Often during times of national crises and heightened political tensions, race-based fears and anxieties about foreign and/or domestic terrorism result in the intensified stereotyping of particular people and places as inherently threatening — as exemplified in President Donald Trump’s latest characterization of Iran as a “rough neighborhood.” To be sure, the potential for rising anti-Iranian sentiment in Canada also exists.

And so as further details of the tragedy in Tehran unfold and political players in and beyond Canada negotiate their stakes, I expect that public memory will shift along with it, including how the incident and its casualties are remembered and understood.

This is how public memory works: when new information and investments become present, we tend to revise how we make sense of the past.

The best we can hope for is that our practice of collective remembrance might become the grounds upon which those of us who were not immediately affected by the downing of PS752 — or the Air India bombings — join in memory and mourning with those who were. In doing so, we learn to live alongside one another in the aftermath of loss with renewed connection.

Author

Angela Failler

Canada Research Chair in Culture and Public Memory, University of Winnipeg
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Angela Failler receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canada Research Chairs Program..
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Transgender hate crimes are on the rise even in Canada

 August 20, 2019 
BEFORE THE MURDER OF TORONTO TRANS ACTIVIST JULIE BERMAN AT THE END OF DECEMBER 2019

People participate in the 2016 Trans Pride March in Toronto. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Eduardo Lima

Canada has a good reputation for LGBTQ rights. Federal political leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, attend pride parades across the country. But a rising tide of violence against transgender people raises the question: what will Canada do to protect trans and nonbinary people from targeted violence?

I am a security and surveillance doctoral researcher and recently received a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation scholarship to further look into anti-transgender trolls and digital vigilantes.

On a personal level, the hostility I’ve faced in the year and a half of transitioning as a trans woman has been immense. I’ve been aggressively harassed several times on Ottawa streets. I’m subject to constant weird looks, angry glares and misgendering. For these reasons, I battle anxiety as I leave my apartment, obsessing with how I look. If I look out of place it might provoke someone to lash out. This vortex of hostility and fear makes it challenging for me to trust strangers in my own community.

Our institutions and public spaces have historically ignored the basic rights and dignity of trans folk. At best, we are invisible in our institutions and in the daily grind of most Canadian lives, at worst, we are subject to hatred, suspicion and disgust.

On July 22, Statistics Canada published police-reported nationwide crime statistics for 2018. The report includes a table on hate crime that includes sexual orientation. Although the “gender identity and expression” category was recently adopted in the federal hate speech legislation, it does it not have its own category in the charts for the official Statistics Canada report. Statistics Canada says those hate crimes are reported as “transgender” and “agender” but gets put into the “other” category within “sex.”

Before the new wording in the legislation, police had not kept an official record on the hate crimes against trans and nonbinary folks. This invisibility had troubling implications for our criminal justice system. With no record of the violence we experience, there was no need for the government to act.

Now that there is an official federal category, will we start to see changes in the reporting of the violence? It seems like we still have a ways to go.

Climate of fear

The vitriolic national debates around Bill C-16 which proposed that the Canadian Human Rights Act be amended to include trans and nonbinary folks set the tone for transgender rights in Canada. The legislation was successful, but the language of hatred used by far-right politicians and residents around the legitimacy of transgender and nonbinary identities had a chilling effect on our feeling of public safety and security.

This climate of fear for trans and nonbinary folks has been distilling for years. The category of “sexual orientation” was officially added to the Canadian Human Rights Act in 1996 after a former Canadian Armed Forces captain, Joshua Birch, was discharged for publicly identifying as gay. Birch and his team argued that the exclusion of sexual orientation from human rights legislation constituted a form of discrimination.

Roughly two decades later, transgender folks became recognized as a protected class. Up until recently, trans folks have not been protected by Canadian human rights legislation.

Permission to hate

Recently in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford and his government meddled with how transgender issues are taught in the primary educational curriculum. The Ford administration decided the topic of “gender identity” was not “age appropriate” for grade school and removed it from the curriculum, postponing this lesson to Grade 8. Ford’s move reinforces the negative idea that being transgender is inappropriate and exceptional.

In a journal article published in Critical Criminology, researchers Barbara Perry and Ryan Scrivens from the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology make the argument that hate crimes grow substantially in “enabling environments” where people are given a tacit “permission to hate.”

Another example of this can be found in the United Kingdom, where the police do keep a record of anti-transgender hate crimes. In a recent article, the BBC reported that there had been an 81 per cent increase in crimes against transgender and nonbinary folks in just one year.

This increase in violence has thrived in the context of growing public hostility towards trans people. The BBC article reports: “Transgender people have their existence debated on a near daily basis across U.K. media, and several activists believe this negative attention reinforces the poor treatment they receive on our streets.”

Community data

Despite the lack of police data, there has been some research into the struggles faced by trans Canadians. In 2013, the Trans PULSE Project published results of a survey of 433 trans Ontarians. Their report said, “experiences of transphobia were nearly universal among trans Ontarians, with 98 per cent reporting at least one experience of transphobia.”

Another survey conducted by Egale in 2011, which surveyed 3,700 LGBTQ students across Canada, reported that 74 per cent of trans students in Canada faced verbal harassment and 37 per cent have faced physical harassment.

 

People cheer on participants of the 2016 Trans Pride March in Toronto. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Eduardo Lima

By not explicitly naming the violence, the state demonstrates complicity in the invisibility and violence that trans and nonbinary folks face.

When police institutions ignore the existence of hate crimes, it sets up an environment that enables more violence and harassment. Analyzing a series of police interviews, Perry and Scrivens found police were generally apathetic around the rising threat of far-right hate crimes.

They wrote: “In addition to the neglect paid to any known right-wing extremism presence, some police personnel deny — at least publicly — that there is any risk associated with the extreme-right. They trivialized their potential for growth and violence.”

Federal election

Election season is just around the corner, there is no better time to put the fire under the feet of our elected representatives.

In the meantime, Trans PULSE is conducting another large survey into the experiences of transgender and nonbinary folk. Share, and if applicable, participate. This is an opportunity to build a record of our experiences in the vacuum left in the wake of our exclusion from the institutional memory.

We need to have a collective conversation about the consequences of the widespread oppression and persecution many of us face when general anti-trans hostility is allowed to fester unacknowledged.

Author

Abigail Curlew

PhD Sociology, Carleton University

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Abigail Curlew receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) doctoral fellowship and the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation (PETF) Doctoral Scholarship. She is affiliated with Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation.

THE CONVERSATION 

LABOUR VICTORY FOR DIVERSITY IN PUTNEY, UK

'Every single day of the next parliament, 
I will fight for a better and more equal country'

By Sian Bayley 

Rosena Allin-Khan, Fleur Anderson and Marsha de Cordova,
who all won their seats for Labour in Wandsworth tonight.
Credit - Wandsworth Labour/Simon Hogg.

It’s been a dark and difficult night for the Labour Party who lost a number of seats in the General Election last night [December 12].

But Putney, on the banks of the Thames in the borough of Wandsworth, bucked the trend with a Labour gain to see three female Labour MPs elected in the borough.

Fleur Anderson took the seat for Putney, storming home with 22,718 votes compared to the Conservatives’ 18,006.

In her victory speech she thanked staff at the count and said her win was a “bright light in a dark night.”

Her victory saw the London borough of Wandsworth turn red after a huge campaigning effort that saw more than 700 volunteers out canvassing one night this week to win the constituency from the Conservatives.

She praised a “people powered campaign,” but acknowledged “Brexit will be damaging for Putney.”

She added: “We want to remain. Brexit will not be done by Boris Johnson, it will take years and years of negotiation.

“The Labour party must not stop in our efforts to block Boris Johnson’s hard Brexit. We could now be facing five more years of austerity, and that’s heartbreaking for all the people who supported us and all the people who voted for Labour.”

Marsha de Cordova was up next for Battersea, praising “one of the most energetic, organised and dynamic campaigns.”

She said: “Every single day of the next parliament, I will fight for a better and more equal country.”

However, she quickly lost her voice from the amount of talking she had been doing on the night.

She croaked to the Local Democracy Reporting Service that it had been a “good campaign,” in Wandsworth.

Dr Rosena Allin-Khan concluded the night by holding on to Tooting for Labour, shouting “we have three red ladies in Wandsworth.”

She applauded the “unprecedented numbers of people of voting,” and said people were voting “with their heads and hearts against the division being stirred up by the Prime Minister.

“Tonight the message was read loud and clear, Tooting went out in the cold and in the rain to reject division and elect a pro-remain member of parliament. I am very grateful to everyone that put their faith in me.”

But acknowledging Labour’s defeats nationally, she said: “Tooting is disgusted with the cuts the NHS have seen, which is why they have voted for their local doctor. Tooting doesn’t want to lose more lives to violent crime, we want proper policing. Tooting needs genuinely affordable homes, not a government in the pocket of developers. The harsh reality is that tomorrow the food banks will be open. Record numbers of parcels will be handed out, and on Christmas Day, 3,000 children in Wandsworth will wake up homeless.

“Apart from Tooting electing the local woman who is willing to fight for them, there is little to celebrate tonight.”

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service at the end of the evening Ms Anderson said she hoped that having Labour MPs will force through change at Conservative-led Wandsworth council.

“It means something for the council. The Conservative council are being held to account even more now with three Labour MPs,” she said.

“The people of Wandsworth have said they prefer to have Labour.”

She added: “I will do everything to serve and to honour their vote. I will also be looking at the issues on Putney High Street, including air pollution.

“I can’t wait to start being an MP and to tackle some of the inequalities in our area. I will be working very much on Roehampton and opposing some of the worst parts of the regeneration.

Turnout was very high at 77.41 per cent compared to 72.1 per cent in 2017.

Battersea and Tooting also saw a high turnout, with 75.83 per cent and 76 per cent respectively.

Conservative candidates left swiftly after the results were announced. The Local Democracy Service has contacted them for comment.

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