We Deserve Healing Not Harm: Addressing the Criminalization of Sexual Assault Survivors

We Deserve Healing Not Harm: Addressing the Criminalization of Sexual Assault Survivors

Survivors of sexual assault are incarcerated, sued, harassed and vilified when they should be supported. This expert panel will explore how sexual assault survivors are often subjected to criminalization. Join expert Dr. Mandi Gray, Tracy Booth and Kharoll-Ann Souffrant to explore the impacts of these unjust laws, strategies for change, and areas for action.

We Deserve Healing Not Harm is a speaker series focused on the ongoing widespread criminalization and punishment of survivors of gender-based violence. This series is an opportunity to unpack, explore paths for change and generate collective action. Through speakers, panels, resource sharing, and calls to action we explore ways to recognize and challenge the intersecting systems that target and harm survivors.

Organizers: Consent Comes First (Toronto Metropolitan University), Consent is Golden, Wilfrid Laurier University, and Carleton University Sexual Assault Support Centre as we work towards systems that heal rather than harm.

About our Speakers

Tracy Booth: Greetings I want to acknowledge the Traditional Territory of Toronto. Since the 1980s, I have worked in various social service positions across three (3) provinces: Ontario, British Columbia and Ontario.    Over the last thirteen years, I have been honoured to work alongside women in the criminal justice system.  Since moving to Winnipeg, I have been interested in the Manitoba criminal justice system and its service delivery which is different from Ontario Provincial Courts and British Columbia Provincial Courts systems.  My interests in social justice led me to be the executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Manitoba and a Prairie Regional Advocate for the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (where I conducted tours of confinement at the Prairie Women Institutions/Penitentiaries).  Working with women involved in the criminal justice system, I became very aware of the impact of sexual violence, especially child sexual abuse, amongst women in the criminal justice system.

Dr. Mandi Gray: is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary. She recently finished a book titled Liar Lawsuits: Sexual Violence and Defamation Law in Canada that will be released in 2023. Mandi has been a community-based advocate working with women and girls involved in the legal system since 2008. Her experience as a sexual assault complainant and activist shape her academic research. Connect with her on Twitter @gotmysassypants or on her website www.mandigray.com (external link) 

Kharoll-Ann Souffrant: Born in Montreal to Haitian parents, Kharoll-Ann Souffrant is a social worker and a Ph.D. Candidate in Social Work at the University of Ottawa. Her doctoral thesis focuses on the # MeToo (# MoiAussi) movement from the perspective of Black feminist activists in Quebec. From September 2021 to May 2022, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. She is currently a part-time professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa, where she teaches the course Women and Gendered Violence. In 2020, she was named a United Nations Fellow for People of African Descent. She is also a freelance columnist in Quebec and the author of the forthcoming book, Le privilège de dénoncer ("The Privilege to Report"), published with Les Éditions du remue-ménage.