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The Current Transcript for September 17, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: I think we were as prepositioned from the federal government standpoint as we can be. This is going to be a long frustrating event for people that have lost everything, but we're doing everything that we can to help our state local partners get this corrected.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: It's been a weekend of nature's fury with a typhoon slamming into the Philippines and then roaring into China, leaving death and destruction in both countries and torrents of water unleashed by hurricane, now Tropical Depression Florence in North Carolina. And as emergency crews and protocols kicked in across damaged U.S. states, as you heard there, the people of Puerto Rico were no doubt reminded of the contrast. After all it was a year ago, that the hurricane called Maria, raged across that island territory of the United States, but American citizens there didn't get the emergency help they expected. And today they are still struggling. In a moment, Ioanna Roumeliotis on the aftermath that lingers still. Also today, a mother's dilemma, a daughter's hard choice.

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VOICE: I have to think about it, but in myself I try not to think about it because I don't want my daughter to leave behind.

AMT: Her 11-year-old daughter was granted asylum in Canada after officials here recognized she faced grave danger from extended family. But the mother and her toddler son have been told they must leave. So does she leave an 11-year-old girl behind with social services or take her home to almost certain abuse. In an hour, we're asking about the Canadian immigration rules that leave a mother with two unacceptable choices. And what's on your smart phone?

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VOICE: It's not enough that they just monitor the victim, they will then taunt them or challenge them and say why were you telling your therapist this or why were you telling your sister that or why did you go to the mall today, when I told you, you couldn't leave the house.

AMT: Women vulnerable to domestic abuse are learning in difficult and painful ways how the technology that can help them, too often enables those partners and former partners who want to hurt them. More on that in half an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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One year after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico crisis hotline receiving 600 calls a day

Guests: Ioanna Roumeliotis

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VOICE: Hurricaine Maria continues to batter more tropical islands as it churns across the warm waters. But the light of day has exposed the immense destruction, the storm caused in Puerto Rico. The U.S. territory is home to 3.4 million people.

AMT: It was a year ago this week that Hurricane Maria battered the island of Puerto Rico, plunging it into darkness and in most parts of the island leaving people without communication or access to help for months. The death toll estimate is now between three and four thousand. Of course, all weekend U.S. President Donald Trump has disputed those numbers, saying they were cooked up to make him look bad. But there is no denying the storm took a heavy toll on the island and some people are still struggling trying to come to terms with what they went through and what they're still going through. The National's Ioanna Roumeliotis visited the east coast of Puerto Rico and returned just last week. It was one of the hardest hit parts of the island and Ioanna is with me in our Toronto studio. Hi.

IOANNA ROUMELIOTIS: Hi.

AMT: So where did you go?

IR: We spent most of our time in Naguabo, which is on the eastern coast of the island. That's where the eye of the hurricane made landfall. About 25,000 people live in the region and homes are sprawled apart and blue tarps still dot the landscape. We hired a drone operator to get that sense and some homes as I said are pretty remote. And it's a poor area, so many elderly people are living quite isolated and many of them are still without roofs caught up in these bureaucratic battles with FEMA, which is the U.S. disaster relief agency in charge of the recovery effort. They're still trying to get help.

AMT: It's so interesting given what's going on now in the United States with the latest tropical storm. So what's the mood like there, Ioanna?

IR: It's in one word, it would be defeat. There's a quiet to the place that feels unnatural, partly because so many people have migrated since Maria. Estimates are up to 300,000 people left for the U.S. mainland and this is an island of 1.3 million people. It's not a huge population. So almost everybody in some way has been affected by that and Puerto Rico was in bad shape before Hurricane Maria hit. It's been in a recession for a decade. Jobs were scarce and since the hurricane, a lot of industry have left, making that even worse. And power, which is the great matter for recovery there, remains fragile. There are still blackouts all the time.

AMT: So what's life like for the people who are there?

IR: It's an island of contrasts. We stayed in San Juan, where major hotels are up and running and tourism is trickling back in and the cruise ships, which is their main tourism industry, are starting to show up again. But in towns like Naguabo, the recovery is much slower and people are still scrambling to fill the gaps. One of the central figures in Naguabo is Jerry Kirkland, who runs the municipality's emergency response unit. And that sounds big, but it's this tiny little office. Several people we spoke to describe him as an angel. A one man force with a tiny budget, but intent on doing what he can to help people rebuild after Maria or at the very least, navigate the bureaucracy of FEMA. We spent a few days with Jerry and our first meeting was in his office, tucked into the unit's headquarters, like imagine this small modest cement building. And the air conditioner was cranked on high because that's what everybody is so grateful for, the fact they can run it. It is scorching hot air and he spoke to us from that office and I think you can probably hear the air conditioner humming in the background.

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VOICE: The whole island was without electricity, without water. All of our roads were some kind of damage or blocked. Thousands of houses or either their roofs were blown off or houses totally destroyed. Now we have 100 per cent electricity back, the water's running, our hospitals are running well. We have the banks back up and running. We have the supermarkets working. Small businesses are back up and running. So if we look at it that kind of point of view., yes we're almost back up to normal.

IR: As he talks, Jerry is pounding the table with his fists. He's really passionate and his gestures are big. He doesn't contain his energy and at one point he's juggling three phones while we're there with him because he has so many balls up in the air.

AMT: And I notice he said almost back to normal.

IR: Right. The things that can be fixed, relatively easily, are mostly getting fixed. Repairing roads, removing debris, but Jerry is now most worried about the emotional effects on the people. He talks about the kids, especially who've lived through their first hurricane and have seen a scale of devastation that still scares them. And then he talks about the adults, their parents and the older people in the community who've been struggling to simply survive, in some cases for almost a year because they've lost their homes and their jobs.

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VOICE: The Puerto Rican people are very proud, we are very proud people. Even if we are going through hard times, we will smile and say everything is okay, but the reality is not. I want to show you a community that's right next to my office that I care a lot about because obviously they're right next to me. And they're low income and you'll see these houses that still have blue tarps in the main town. They'll let you know why they feel so frustrated. They're alone. They feel helpless. They feel that the donations that were sent, a lot of them didn't get to where they should have been.

AMT: So he says he's going to take you somewhere, where do you actually go?

IR: We walk out of his office, literally around the corner.

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[foot steps]

[dogs barking]

IR: We walk down a quiet road, there's a chicken roaming, you hear the dogs barking and we walk for a bit and suddenly we're there. We stop in front of a shell of a house. There's no other way to describe it. And a man is standing there and he seems so incredibly sad.

AMT: And he's living in that house.

IR: Yeah, he's living in what's left of it. His name is Angel Luis Sandoyal Mendoza. He's in his late 50s, but he looks older and he receives us with a certain dignity that's quite touching, as if he's receiving guests. And what's left of his house, the tiny amount of shelter that's left everything is kind of crammed into the back of it his belongings are carefully arranged. He has no roof, a blue tarp is flapping in the wind, as we talk and is held up by wooden posts and what's left of the cement walls.

AMT: So he doesn't have walls?

IR: Nope. Barely any and most of the ones that are left there are crumbling. The home belonged to his mom, who passed away recently. His only companion is his little dog, Hank. And he says he never really sleeps and you believe him because his eyes are so hollowed. He's afraid of the night he says, of burglars and looters and most of his house is literally wide open. He's so incredibly vulnerable.

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VOICE 1: So this is your kitchen?

VOICE 2: Yeah that where I cook.

VOICE 1: So this is part of your roof that was?

VOICE 2: Yeah part of. Yeah that was only thing that Maria left.

VOICE 1: This is the only thing that Maria left?

VOICE 2: The little thing I put on top, I did it myself so I could use the kitchen. I used an umbrella to cook over there. There was some people next door they had one of those and they help me put it on. It's bad, but I mean what can I do? I'm afraid to get bad, and get not frightened. Not to think about it. If you think too much about it, you might get sick and I don't want that. I'm trying to get ahead. The hardest part is seeing that over there like that. That the worst thing over there, so the way it is. You'll see.

VOICE 3: It's frustrating to see our people suffer at this time, at this stage. When we're in peak of hurricane season, every time something talks about a storm or rain, I can imagine how he feels, you know, so that's what's so frustrating right now is how can we deal with these kind of situations.

AMT: So how can he deal with situations like Angel's?

IR: Well Jerry called out FEMA again to take another look, to re-evaluate his request for aid. And he had applied to FEMA months ago and he's had contractors over to give him estimates of the repairs and it's in the tens of thousands, but it's not clear yet, how much FEMA will give him. The U.S. disaster relief agency is still processing aid request and it gets complicated because they're demanding deeds, asking people like Angel to prove that they actually, that these homes actually belong to them. But these homes are ancestral, they've been in families from generation to generation. So a lot of people in the area don't have any official paperwork and frankly, if they did, it probably would have been lost in the hurricaine.

AMT: So it's a very difficult place to be for a lot of people. It is and it may be hard to tell because you know, we heard Jerry talk about that Puerto Rican pride and many people don't like to admit that they are suffering emotionally, even though it's very obvious and we certainly saw that with Angel. He had tears streaming down his face and he kept saying I'm OK and what else can I do? And you have to wonder, when is he going to hit his breaking point? And despite that pride, many people have and they end up here at the main hospital in Naguabo.

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VOICE 1: Welcome to Naguabo Medical.

VOICE 2: So this is new?

VOICE 1: We are modeling the ER because in the.

IR: They're remodeling the hurricane because of Hurricane Maria. It was the only hospital in the area that stayed open during the crisis and that person showing me around is Dr. John Velazquez, the medical director. For five days he was the only doctor here after Hurricane Maria hit because nobody else could get in or out.

AMT: Wow. And how did that manage to stay open, the hospital?

IR: It ran on generators and flashlights. It was overflowing, he says, with people being treated on the floor because they ran out of space. And in those early days, it was clear that what was needed was definitely urgent medical care and in some cases, just food and clothing and shelter. But once the immediate crisis settled, Dr. Velazquez noticed something else, that a mental health crisis was unfolding.

AMT: And what did he do?

IR: He pushed to actually create this mental health unit, which was brand new and that's the tour that he gave us and he pushed for it and today nearly a year later, it continues to see several visits a day from people suffering the after effects. In some cases, they present with a chest pain, but it really is anxiety. In other cases, it's clearly a mental health issue, without any other physical symptoms. And a lot of people are experiencing flashbacks, especially during hurricane season, which is starting now.

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VOICE: Increasing depression, they say, doctor, I don't want to live like this. My family want to go to the States, but to do that, I don't know English. I don't have education. Most of the people here are very poor people. Very, people with a very low education, whatever. So here, they look, they feel comfort. They feel that somebody help them to prevent suicide.

IR: You know, he's barely had a break because the need is so relentless.

AMT: Which raises the question, what kind of toll does it take on him and other caregivers?

IR: He was a little surprised at that question, as if he hadn't had a chance to stop and think about it. And he said though, that he does it because he is a doctor and that's his duty. But also, and we hear this often with people helping people there, that it's his duty as a human being to do what he can.

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VOICE: You know after three months from the hurricane, I think that I got to like a frustration because I want to give more and more and more from me for all the people that come here and one time I feel very, very, very sad. But every time I come here, I say no this is job. These people need me. The people need the hospital and I want to do the best for them.

AMT: It says something though that even the doctor running the hospital feels drained a year after that hurricane.

IR: Absolutely. And obviously he has access to help, but for others it's not so easy to just show up at the hospital.

AMT: And what do they do?

IR: They're calling the main suicide hotline. It's called Linea Pas and it's located just outside of San Juan.

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[phones ringing]

IR: The hotline runs out of a long rectangular room in a mental health complex in Bayamon, which is just outside the capital of San Juan. There are about a dozen people there with headsets, taking notes and it's non-stop.

AMT: How many calls are they getting?

IR: Hundreds. Suzanne Roig Fuertes runs the mental health agency that's in charge of the hotline and she says right now the centre is receiving about 600 calls a day.

AMT: 600?

IR: 600 and think about a small island. So that's a pretty significant number, but Fuertes says the effects of trauma, can manifest long after the initial crisis because people try to reconstruct their lives and they find they can't. And some callers, just want to talk about the fact that they've lost their home or their income or their family members, who have fled to the mainland. And you know that separation of families is a huge thing in a culture where family is central. And others call with very specific suicide plans about 200 calls a day, still are from people who are contemplating suicide. And while we don’t know exactly what proportion of that is related directly to Maria, they do say it is certainly is a part of it.

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VOICE: Maria was a very event. A very huge event that everybody who lives Maria, have been impacted by the hurricane. Many people have a lot of losses. Not only the loss of their houses or their belongings, but also the loss of life. The loss of the many people who left were either their neighbors, their family, their sons, their parents. Many people leave Puerto Rico, so we have elderly people who still living alone in their homes, that's a very important issue. It's expected.

AMT: So Ioanna, they aren't surprised. They're expecting that it takes a year for some of these effects to show up, but are there things that make it worse?

IR: For sure. This is I think we've heard a couple of times now hurricane season. People are on edge because of that, but it's also tough because it's approaching the one year mark.

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VOICE: Right now we're working with anniversary, the anniversary of the events, a very emotional event for all the people no matter how far we are in our recovery and Puerto Rico is recovering. The mental health of the Puerto Rican people is still in recovery and we know we have a lot of progress in that way, but the anniversary is really a very trigger for mental health and we have special projects to work on today and all the month of September and October we will still working with the issue of the anniversary.

AMT: So when she talks about special projects, what are they planning for people over these two months?

IR: It's pretty extraordinary and they started a couple months ago actually and it is, they are literally going door to door to every house on the island to get a sense of how people are coping and it goes back to that issue of pride in some cases, many cases people won't reach out for help, but if you go to their homes, they'll be more comfortable and share that. So last year, Puerto Rico saw nearly 30 per cent increase in suicides and this is all part of an effort to make sure they don't see that kind of spike again.

AMT: So it's the anniversary of that hurricane this week and we're seeing the coast of the U.S., hurricane season is underway in a very devastating way, what impact is that having?

IR: It's stressful and the hotline workers aren't the only ones going door to door to check on the well-being of people. We go back to Naguabo with Jerry Kirkland and he takes us along for a ride. He does his own kind of outreach. He went to check on people who live in remote areas. He knows people are stressed because it's hurricane season and in some cases they're still trying to just get a grasp of themselves after Maria. So he wants to reassure them that they won't be forgotten.

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[car starts]

VOICE 1: Where we heading?

VOICE 2: It's in the mountain region, close to the rainforest One of the areas that was mostly damaged. A lot of roads, a lot of wooden structures. There's still roads that are washed out. They were one of the last to get lights, electricity. So their mental health is off the wall because knowing that there's a possibility of a storm coming, you know they must be thinking, wow what's going to happen. We just got lights it's going to go again? What's going to happen. How do people feel? Despair. I guess that's the word. Despair. A lot of people use their finances for Maria to try to get back and they're just getting back on their feet. So if another hurricane comes, what's going to happen and how are we going to deal with it? That's the main issue now.

VOICE 1: How about for you? That must've been hard for you.

VOICE 2: There was a spot where my blood pressure went up and it's because I was going, going, going, going. I didn't want to rest. It's hard, sometimes I mean I'm fine, but the stress gets to you. You know anybody that says it doesn't you know, they're lying. It does get to you because you see the kids, you see the elderly, you see the need. And I'm not saying that I'm 100% percent, but I'm 95%. You know I try to keep that other 5 per cent.

VOICE 1: In reserve.

VOICE 2: In reserve, yeah. But everything is okay.

IR: So like everybody that we talked to who was helping people, he insists he's okay, but we went to many homes where people obviously still on edge, but Jerry did his best to make them feel better.

AMT: You know, it's hard to talk about Puerto Rico and not talk about the politics of the place. What does Jerry make of how the island's been treated through this whole thing?

IR: There's a lot of pain still in Puerto Rico, that's clear. But there is anger too and that's something else we saw. If you mention the Trump administration, people's expressions literally darken in front of you and that includes Jerry.

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VOICE: Every major war the Puerto Rican people have defended our nation with their lives. So I think we have the right to say to our leaders in Congress, our leaders in Senate, our president, we are American citizens. We have the right to be treated as equals. Not as a minor, as equals.

IR: He says until that happens, he'll do what he can to help the people in his community.

AMT: Ioanna, thank you for this. It's important to see the consequences one year later. Thank you.

IR: You're welcome.

AMT: Ioanna Roumeliotis, with CBC television's The National. You can see more of her reporting from Puerto Rico tonight and through the week on the National, on CBC Television and of course on CBC News Network. Stay with us, the CBC News is next and then cyberstalking and digital abuse, how the rise of technology in our lives is creating new avenues for domestic abusers to make life hell for their victims. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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How domestic abusers are leveraging technology to harass and control

Guests: Edmonton mother, Chantel Nelson, Periwinkle Doerfler

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, imagine coming to Canada with two young children and seeking asylum. Your claim is denied, but your 11-year-old daughter is approved because of legitimate fears she will face female genital mutilation back home, where your homeland is. Do you leave her here in Canada, with no family at all? Or do you return with her to Sierra Leone. It's an all too real dilemma and in our next half hour, I'll speak with the mother who's living through it. But first, fearing the phone, domestic abuse turns digital.

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VOICE: With our new phone, you can see who she's called. Who she's seen. How she spends your money. If she eats what she's told. It could even tell you when that lying [BLEEP] isn't at the grocery store, like she said she'd be.

AMT: Well that's not a feature smartphone companies advertise, but as that public service announcement from Toronto's Interval House women's shelter makes disturbingly clear, there is a dark side to modern technology for victims of domestic assault. Smartphones and social media have opened up powerful and troubling new ways for domestic abusers to coerce, intimidate and spy on their partners. In fact there's a story in the news today about an alleged incident that begins with a woman who meets a man on Tinder, she dates him a handful of times and then he then, there are demands from him and threats that he'll release intimate pictures of her online. In the case being reported today, RCMP in Manitoba have charged him under a relatively new voyeurism law. But my next guest knows how, all too well, how phone apps cameras and social media pages can be used to harass and intimidate. She's a mother of two. She lives in Edmonton. We're keeping her identity confidential and she joins us now. Hi.

VOICE: Hello. When did you begin to suspect that your ex-boyfriend was targeting you online?

AMT: It was as soon as he started sending me e-mails with intimate pictures of myself. He was demanding that I come back to him or he would post them all over the internet. He sent me probably eight or nine in 24 hours.

AMT: And what did you do?

VOICE: I called the police right away.

AMT: But he kept going. He went to an online dating service, what did he do?

VOICE: Yes. He created Plenty of Fish accounts and copied my actual Plenty of Fish account word for word and started sending men to my house. He got my address through a protection order that I had to get against him and started sending men to my house for sex.

AMT: So what, literally people would knock on your door?

VOICE: Yes. I had about 30 of them in under 24 hours.

AMT: How did you react?

VOICE: It was scary cause I had my two kids at home. They're pretty young. I kept calling police, but it wasn't a high priority thing at that point, so I just hid in my apartment, basically.

AMT: So essentially, he was he was pretending to be you on this Plenty of Fish account and he was basically messaging them that you wanted them to show up.

VOICE: Yes. And if they would talk and I'd say it wasn't really me, the one talking to them. They'd walk away and a couple of them ten minutes later would come back and say you just told me to come back.

AMT: Because what, he was doing that as well? He was like.

VOICE: Yes. He was just telling them, oh I missed it or you dialed the wrong number or something.

AMT: And did these men, when they realized when you told them this did they leave peacefully? Were there problems?

VOICE: No. Most of them took off because I mentioned the fact that the police had been notified and they were on their way.

AMT: But it sounds like you were pretty frightened by it all?

VOICE: Very. I had knives hidden everywhere. I wouldn't leave because he had my picture posted and I didn't know if these men were going to be coming up as I was walking out the door with my kids or something.

AMT: How did you figure out he was behind it?

VOICE: Because of the e-mails that he had sent with the pictures. He's the only one I ever sent those pictures to.

AMT: And you eventually contacted the service, right? Plenty of Fish.

VOICE: Yes. They actually would not help me until I got the news involved and they did a story on it. And then suddenly everyone started helping me.

AMT: And then what did they do? Did they pull that down?

VOICE: I believe he had deleted them because the police had been contacting him so much. But then the police were able to get a search warrant for the IP address for the two accounts that he made.

AMT: He also used Facebook to send messages to you, what what was that about?

VOICE: Yeah he made a fake Facebook with a girl's name and said your ex is going into the hospital. He's not doing well, you should really talk to him. But just the way the person was so pushy and it was a brand new account that had just been made, I figured out pretty fast that that was just him as well.

AMT: You say you contacted the police, so where in the process did he do that?

VOICE: Within the first hour of the first few guys showing up.

AMT: Within the first few hours? And what was the initial reaction of the police?

VOICE: They really didn't seem to care too much. It took two days for them to come and do the initial report after I called.

AMT: And was he charged? He was charged in the end, was he not?

VOICE: Yes, he had four or five charges against him, but he ended up just pleading guilty to one.

AMT: So he pleaded guilty to, a guilty plea was submitted what just in June of this year.

VOICE: Yes.

AMT: And two other charges were withdrawn just last week?

VOICE: Yes.

AMT: OK. But when was he actually charged?

VOICE: It was within, I think about a week. Once the police started to take me seriously and they had their cyber crimes unit talk to me that they were able to arrest him and confiscate his phone and laptop.

AMT: And when was that, that was at about a year ago that he was charged?

VOICE: Yeah. Maybe may.

AMT: OK. So I've got a note here, so he was sentenced to 90 days intermittent imprisonment and two years probation to follow release and a ten-year firearm prohibition, according to my notes.

VOICE: Yes.

AMT: So this happened after you broke up? You left. You were living with him and you left. Am I right?

VOICE: Yes he had left the province and I saw my way out and I took it.

AMT: And you had a protection order against him, but he knew where you lived, even when you left. Why?

VOICE: It was because of the protection order. When I had to get it because he started showing up at my kid's school trying to talk to me and getting in between me and the kids in the parking lot. And so that's when the police told me right away to get a protection order and then they asked if it was ok if my new address was on it, so he knew where he wasn't allowed to be and I wasn't thinking at the time and just said yes. And that's how he figured out where I was living with was because he was served with a piece of paper, telling him where he couldn't be.

AMT: But you say you weren't thinking at the time, but nobody, none of the police thought about that either? That he could use that.

VOICE: Not really.

AMT: Yeah. So In fact the very order that was supposed to keep him away, actually told him exactly where to find you.

VOICE: Yeah, exactly.

AMT: Had he exhibited signs of this kind of behavior before you broke up?

VOICE: Yes. We had a home security camera and whenever he was away, he'd ask me things like why did you just close the curtains? Or the motion sensor would go off in the hallway when I'd get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and I'd get a text straightaway, asking why I'm getting up at 2:35 in the morning.

AMT: So it becomes increasingly uncomfortable and that's why you left?

VOICE: Exactly. Very.

AMT: Yeah. What do you want people listening to know about some of those digital technologies out there? Because clearly that's not what you thought they were for when you moved in.

VOICE: Yeah. No. Just to be very careful with what you send, even if you think you really love the person with pictures, like he was sending me back. And that if the police aren't listening to you, just keep bugging them and keep documented everything that's happening because they will need it eventually when they do take you seriously.

AMT: Ok. And so how are you doing now?

VOICE: I'm pretty good. I still watch for him all the time, like whenever we go for walks or anything, I'm always looking over my shoulder, but we're doing pretty good otherwise.

AMT: Well thank you for speaking with me today.

VOICE: You're very welcome.

AMT: We are keeping the name of that guest confidential, but she joined us from Edmonton and she didn't actually go to a women's shelter for refuge, but a lot of people do and those who work in shelters say they're seeing more cases of technology being used to intimidate and spy on partners. That is why the Interval Women's Shelter created the ad we heard earlier. Chantel Nelson is the housing partnership coordinator at Interval House. She's in Toronto. Hi.

CHANTEL NELSON: Hi.

AMT: I'm watching you as you're listening and your eyes are getting bigger. What really struck you as you listened to that last conversation?

CN: One of the things that struck me was just sometimes people don't recognize and like the police, it's important for them to become educated on the uses of technology and how that can be used to harm and stalk and spy on people and it's predominantly men who are perpetrating this type of violence against women.

AMT: How common is the story you just heard?

CN: It's very common. It's extremely common. We at Interval House, we teach a program to women who are coming to the shelter on how to protect themselves against digital, like protect themselves against online harassment and to promote their own digital safety.

AMT: And their kids too, I guess?

CN: Absolutely.

AMT: So how is technology being used by people who want to abuse their former partners?

CN: It's being, the thing about technology is that there's so many different forms of technology that are being produced each day. So there's many new ways for people to continuously harass and stalk people. We've seen situations where we had a client who was in the park with her children and used Instagram to take a picture and posted the picture and the fact that she was in the park and the abuser showed up. Luckily she was there with other people and she was able to get away. But it's the location settings, GPS settings, all types of those things that seem sort of innocent in a way that you don't think of, they play huge roles in people being tracked down and people being stalked and people being followed and spied upon.

AMT: And so when you work with women who are victims of abuse and you start to go through that with them, how aware are they of those potential problems?

CN: Some are really weird because they've had their e-mails hacked and their passwords changed and their abusers contact their family friends, colleagues and have gone through the gamut of like being online abused, but a lot of them are not very aware. They're not even aware that their kids are using these new forms of digital and social media that track your location, so they don't even recognize it. It may not, they may not find them through their own phone, but they'll find them through their children's phone or children's toys or baby monitors, anything that they're trying to sort of bring with them when they're leaving an abusive relationship.

AMT: You can look into all of that, if you know what you're doing. Well we now can through our smartphones, basically control all sorts of things in our house.

CN: Yeah.

AMT: So if two of you are living in the same place and you can both do that on your smartphones, then when you separate still have that control is that what you're saying?

CN: Yeah. And we try to like when women are fleeing domestic violence or intimate partner abuse, we try to explain to them before they get to the shelter in our safety planning that they should look at all the things that potentially could have location or GPS tracking and leave that behind. Try and, if you're on the same phone plan with somebody, maybe leave the phone behind or get a new phone. Basically start fresh. Start over. If you have Facebook, maybe leaving Facebook, Instagram, those things behind when you're going into a new setting because you don't want that person to continuously follow you.

AMT: And again some of the pictures that are really identifiable, but the kids can inadvertently send something right or their friends can.

CN: Yeah and a lot of abusers sometimes contact friends, especially if they're on your Facebook or your Instagram, they can get pictures from your friends, your family members. So it's a hard situation.

AMT: Yeah. And you know, you talk about leaving phone behind, but that's pretty isolating isn't it?

CN: It is.

AMT: And expensive. Right? It's not so easy to just get a new phone.

CN: Definitely. It's very expensive, but at the same time, we're prioritizing safety. It's one of those things that we try to say, we understand that you're cutting yourself off a little bit, but at the same time it's something that you can sort of get later and prioritize your safety now.

AMT: And are there things that they can just turn off on their smartphone like location services or there are a few things you can shut down, physically right on the phone?

CN: Yeah. So a lot of the time, during our workshop, once they get to the shelter, we explain to them the different types of items on their phone, like location settings, find my iPhone, find my friends. Different apps, different types of devices that people can use to track you and we explain, we go through the list of those, so that they know what to look for.

AMT: Not all apps show up on a phone either, right? Like some of the apps you can get to track your children, you could actually use to track anybody right?

CN: Yeah. I don't want to talk.

AMT: You don't want to publicize what's easy to get. Yeah.

CN: Exactly, but there are certain things that you could get that you could stick into people's cars. You can stick them into anything that provides GPS tracking and basically is another thing that you wouldn't necessarily know to look for, but they could be using to track you.

AMT: How long have you been doing the work you do?

CN: Eight years.

AMT: How much of a change have you seen in the technology from when you started to today?

CN: There's new changes every single day. Some of the things, like I was recently even put on to something concerning the Presto card that could be potentially used to be a tool that you could track someone.

AMT: Presto card is the Toronto transit card that you use for fares, right? Yeah. And they're moving to that whole new system.

CN: Right.

AMT: So there even in something like that.

CN: Even something as simple as that, they use to get around every day. And it's something that we understand, we don't want to necessarily publicize again, but at the same time it's important that people are aware that those things are happening because if they're not aware and when it comes to fruition, then you're like, whoa how did I not understand that, you know.

AMT: And what you're trying to do is protect the people coming to the shelter, but also the other people like you never publicize where those places are.

CN: No.

AMT: And so these can really work against you as a group to then?

CN: Right.

AMT: Lots of things to be aware of. Thanks for coming in and talking about it.

CN: No problem.

AMT: That's Chantel Nelson. She is the housing partnership coordinator with Interval House women's shelter in Toronto. My next guest has researched digital abuse and digital abusers. Periwinkle Doerfler is a PhD candidate at New York University's Center for Cyber Security. She is also co-author of a study released last spring entitled, The Spyware Used In Intimate Partner Violence. And she joins us from San Jose, California. Hi.

PERIWINKLE DOERFLER: Hi. How are you?

AMT: I'm well and I'm curious to know what else you can tell us about this. We just started to talk about how the technology is advancing and seemingly daily. What kind of digital tools do abusers have at their fingertips now that they didn't have in the past?

PD: Yeah, that's a great question and I think it's one that we don't as a field spend enough time thinking about, but in terms of those you know mobile applications and smart devices, like you were talking about with your previous guest as well, there's any sort of technological advance that brings people closer together and provides more connectivity, also has this sort of dark side where it can be abused. So obviously you know we hear stories, definitely with the smart devices in people's homes, like the smart speakers people have with the voice assistance and service, stats lights that are controlled and we also certainly hear stories about any sort of way people could be tracked. But the big one that we've studied is smartphone applications that are designed to do some sort of more benign monitoring like as you mentioned tracking your children or some are designed for people to track employees on corporate devices, but they can be installed on any sort of smartphone without a lot of trouble. And we see that a lot of that, a lot of abusers are using these kinds of applications fairly surreptitiously.

AMT: And is there a way to spot them on a phone?

PD: It depends. There's sort of this range of applications, some of which you would see in app dock, like you'd see anything else. Some are more hidden, they don't have an app icon on the phone and how people generally become aware of the presence of those things is their battery is suddenly draining much faster than it used to or their data plan is running down much faster than it used to. Because these apps are constantly sending information back to the abusers and using up a lot of data and a lot of power.

AMT: And so how would someone disable that? Can they just get it once they see it? Can they pull it off the phone or are they actually embedded in a certain way that makes that hard too?

PD: Yes. They're usually quite hard to find. If the app has come from one of the app stores directly, there's usually a way to find it through either the Play Store on an Android or the App Store on an iPhone. You could actually go into the store, open up the app store and look at the list of installed apps or previously downloaded apps. There's usually a way to delete it from there, even if you can't find it on the phone in the list of apps. But there are some that are not downloaded from the App Store. There are some that come directly off the internet, you have to reconfigure some of the settings on the phone to be able to install them. Sometimes you have to do what's called a jailbreak to install these things. And when people have that sort of stuff installed on their phones, it's very difficult to find and get rid of. My colleagues and I are working on building a software tool that can identify and help remove these hidden softwares. But it's not ready to be given to the public yet unfortunately, but that is something we're actively working towards.

AMT: In the course of your research on seeing what's being used out there and like for nefarious purposes, even though that's not how it was designed, what kinds of stories did you hear?

PD: We hear some really interesting things and I don't actually personally do the field research. I have a collaborator at Cornell Tech who actually goes to shelters and speaks with people, but the research I tend to be doing is we're actually studying abusers and their communications online with each other. So looking at reviews that are left for applications and blogs and forums where these types of people congregate. And so the story is that I'm observing personally are more abusers saying that they did one thing or another and I'm always surprised by how willing people are to express right out in the open that they're using this app to track their wife and they're really upset because it's not as invasive as they had hoped it would be or it's not as sneaky as they'd hoped it would be.

AMT: Wow. Talk about hubris.

PD: So it's really, it's really quite alarming.

AMT: And what about devices in the homes, like the ones you can control through the internet, like the thermostats or the Roomba vacuums or even the Alexa or the echo. What's going on with those?

PD: So yeah we definitely have heard from other researchers, stories of people who you know maybe the abuser leaves and moves to a different house, but still has base control of the thermostat and the lights. For example, so we've heard you know from a woman who said that you know she would come home from work and the thermostat would be turned up to like 100 degrees and the lights would keep going on and off and on and off. Because even though her abuser was sort of technically not violating a restraining order, being however many miles away, they're still you know messing with their technology at home or you know as you mentioned like the Alexa or the Echo, those types of devices. Most of them have a log of all of the searches. So if you are asking, you know if you're asking your Echo device for directions on how to get to work or how to get to some place that you're going and maybe the abuser still has access to the Amazon account that is associated with that Echo, they're able to get the log of everything you've asked the device recently. I don't know exactly how the access systems work for each type of smartphone speaker, but I noticed that with the Amazon one, it's pretty easy to find that log.

AMT: Just that's an important thing to know that that's possible. You know we did ask Google, Apple and Amazon what they're doing to make sure that the apps that secretly offer surveillance of people, don't end up in the stores in the first place. We did not hear back from Apple or Amazon. Google responded, they said and I'm quoting here, "We have a proactive app review process to catch policy offenders earlier in the process." That's the quote and then they say, "If an app violates our policies, we take action." Do you see that?

PD: So Google has been very active in responding to our research. We shared the paper with them as soon as we had submitted. So they probably received it from us at the beginning of this year and they have been very active in working with us to help identify and remediate some of these problems. So it's still not done. The problem is not solved, but they have taken some very active measures. Just for example, they've blacklisted some search terms in their app store. So it used to before that you could go into the Play Store and search for track my wife and you would see apps show up and you would apps for certain child tracking applications.

AMT: Perri Doerfler, I hear the music, which means we're out of time, but it's important that you tell us what's happening there. Thanks for your time.

PD: Thank you.

AMT: That's Perri Doerfler, co-author of a study on how spyware is used by domestic abusers. This is The Current.

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Girl wins refugee status, but her family could still be deported

Guests: Mother, Daughter, Aleksandar Jeremic, Geraldine Sadoway

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. Our next story today is about a choice most parents could hardly imagine having to make, but it's a real dilemma hanging over my next guest's head and threatening to break her family apart. The family is originally from Sierra Leone and they came to Canada in 2016. The mother, her daughter and son and they claimed refugee status. The young girl's claim was approved. It was determined that if she, who she's now 11, returns to Sierra Leone, she faces female genital mutilation. The refugee claims were denied however for her mother and her three-year-old brother. That decision means the mother must now make an impossible choice: leave her daughter here alone in government care of some sort or take her back to Sierra Leone, where even the government of Canada recognizes she will be in danger. I'm joined now by the mother. We're not naming her. I'm calling her the mother because she fears for her safety if she returns to Sierra Leone. So we are not giving her identity today. Her lawyer is with us as well, Aleksandar Jeremic is with us as well. Hello to you both.

MOTHER: Hi.

AMT: When You first found out that your daughter could stay, but you have to leave. What did you think?

MOTHER: I was just crying and without no sleep because I was thinking it's not fair. How can my daugther be adopted or stay and then I have to go. So like the family would be apart.

AMT: And what are you thinking? You heard about this I guess in May. This is a long time to be thinking about what you do.

MOTHER: To be honest, I was just, I'm just praying to God for it to get changed because for each day that I thought of it, I'm not sleeping. And my sleeping it's just like three hours a day.

AMT: Why are you afraid to take your daughter back to Sierra Leone?

MOTHER: I'm afraid for her not to undergo the FGM and also for myself, for my safety because now I've came as refugee claim and explain about the situation about the FGM. Me too, I'm scared. I don't feel safe of going back.

AMT: Because you've raised the issue of that it's happening.

MOTHER: Yes.

AMT: And why do you expect she would face FGM if she goes back?

MOTHER: Because of my husband aunt is still there and she wants her to do it.

AMT: And you can't stop her? Like she has that kind of control over you and your daughter?

MOTHER: Yes she will. Because like even I'm against the like I'm from a country that has no rules or law. It's a society thing. Like I'm alone cannot go against it, so I can't fight the family or the law.

AMT: So you're essentially you won't be able to protect her, if you take her back?

MOTHER: No. I would try my best, but no. She will still don't be protected.

AMT: How common is FGM in Sierra Leone and in your community?

MOTHER: It's common especially like you have different tribes, like female needs to undergo FGM. Like you need to do it.

AMT: Now you've seen this struggle before, I understand. What happened to your sister?

MOTHER: Yeah that I heard for my mom because my mom told me my sister my elder sister was died to FGM.

AMT: How old was she at the time?

MOTHER: She was three.

AMT: She was three. They did it that early?

MOTHER: Yes.

AMT: And you managed to escape it?

MOTHER: Yes. Because my mom decided to leave my biological dad because of the incident that happened with my sister.

AMT: So it's not your side of the family that would insist on this, it is your husband's side of the family?

MOTHER: Yes, please.

AMT: So if you are deported without your daughter, what happens to her here? She's 11-years-old.

MOTHER: That's one thing that's I don't even want to think about, though I have to think about it, but in myself I try not to think about it because I don't want my daughter to leave behind.

AMT: What have you been told, if she is left behind. Who would look after her? Do you have any family?

MOTHER: I have no family here.

AMT: No relatives. No one?

MOTHER: No. So obviously she's going to stay in a adoptions home.

AMT: And have you talked to her about this?

MOTHER: She knew about it, it's affecting her as well. Because even with her academic, her academic is really down. Like her results in June was really poor because I can see it on her. So I have to talk with the school for them know because the school also know about this, so that they can keep eye on her in school.

AMT: Aleksandar Jeremic, you are here listening in. She wants to protect her daughter, she can't do it in Sierra Leone she says. She can't protect her here either? Like how can this happen?

ALEKSANDAR JEREMIC: Well what's going on is a product of the refugee determination system, where when a child is found to be a refugee, they're obviously entitled to apply for permanent residence, as a protected person, which is what the daughter has done. However as part of that application, a child cannot include their parent as a dependent. So whereas it doesn't work that way if a parent is successful, if a parent is found to be a protected person when they apply for permanent residence, on that basis they can include their dependents, including their children and a spouse and the whole family gets permanent residence together, but it doesn't work in the reverse.

AMT: And in the case of a minor, the authorities clearly believe that her daughter will be in danger if she's sent back because they have granted her status, right? But in the case of that, aren't they putting her at risk again by telling her mother she has to leave her here alone?

AJ: Effectively, yes. So yes, the refugee protection division has determined that the daughter is at risk of FGM. They believe that the risk is real, they believe that the situation in Sierra Leone is that bad that no one could protect her from the risk. So there's no issue with the daughter's claim, it was completely accepted. But there's no mechanism at the refugee determination level or later on when the daughter is applying for permanent residence as a protected person, to include a parent who is here with her, who was refused.

AMT: If her mom returns to Sierra Leone with her little brother, what happens to the 11-year-old? Who looks after her?

AJ: Well, one option is for the mom to take her daughter with her. So the family stays together, but then obviously she would be exposed to the risk that she's protected from.

AMT: So if she wants to keep her daughter from that risk and that's the option, what happens here?

AJ: If no alternative applications let's call it that are successful, then the mom would eventually have to leave. The daughter would have no obligation to leave because she's a protected person in Canada. That does raise the question, what happens to her in practical terms. Who takes care of her? Where does she live? Who supports her and to be honest, I don't have an answer to that question. I've never had a case where this has happened where a child has been found to be a protected person, but a parent hasn't. So I don't have first hand experience with the complete kind of fallout. We're hoping we won't get there because we're hoping that the humanitarian and compassionate application will be successful.

AMT: Right, but I am sitting across from her mom right now and can you imagine leaving her here?

MOTHER: No. To be honest, I don't think I'm going to leave her.

AMT: You'd take her back. How would you protect her there?

MOTHER: I don't know, but leaving here is also not an option. They protect her from FGM, doesn't mean she's safe here, without her parents. She can be, a lot of kids get abused in those adoption home. So I don't think I'm going to leave my daughter.

AMT: So you essentially have one of two choices to make and neither choice is a good one.

MOTHER: Yes. It's hard. If I keep that on my head, I will not function. And I have to let it be, so that my kids can be happy because I have to look after them. I don't want to, I don't want them to see me be emotion or to be mad or start yelling at them or not do what they want. So I just try to keep calm and give them my support and love that I supposed to do as a mom.

AMT: Your daughter is with you today. She's been sitting outside the studio. We talked because you've indicated that some of this is very hard for her to hear, but I'd like to talk to her a little bit and we can maybe have her come in now and we'll just bring her in.

MOTHER: OK.

AMT: Hi. Your mom is telling us a little bit about what is going on. What does that mean to you?

DAUGHTER: I would not stay. I would go with my mom because she is my mom and I'm very close to my baby brother. I was the first person to pick him up. Me and his relationship are built very strong, so I would not leave them alone.

AMT: What has your mother told you about going back?

DAUGHTER: Well she hasn't really told me much. She told me that it's very dangerous there. She says she will explain to me when I'm older because I'm too young to know about it right now.

AMT: But she has told you that you could be hurt?

DAUGHTER: Yes.

AMT: And you know that you have been given permission to stay here.

DAUGHTER: Yes.

AMT: And she has not. Yes. When you found that out. How did you react?

DAUGHTER: It was very sad because I love Canada and so does my mom, so, but I would not leave my mom alone. I would just go back.

AMT: And so the idea of you staying here alone and going into some kind of foster care or government care?

DAUGHTER: I don't want that.

AMT: You've been here for, since late 2016 and you're in school, now?

DAUGHTER: Yes.

AMT: What grade are you in?

DAUGHTER: 6 and I'm also in a new school, so it wouldn't be nice moving again.

AMT: Yeah. Do you like school? Do you like it here?

DAUGHTER: Yes. It's really nice.

AMT: And at the same time, you know that there are people trying to decide whether you can stay with your mom all together. What's that like knowing that there's that uncertainty right now?

DAUGHTER: Well I know that most people should be saying that we should stay as a family, but for the people who say we should not stay, that's really bad.

AMT: When they made that decision, did they interview you?

DAUGHTER: Yes.

AMT: They did. Yeah. So they know you want to be with your mom?

DAUGHTER: Yes.

AMT: But they've also said you could be in danger if you go home.

DAUGHTER: Yes.

AMT: That must be confusing.

DAUGHTER: Yes. It really is.

AMT: What would you want to ask them?

DAUGHTER: I want to ask them, why did they come up with this rule? And why do they think it's a good idea for separating kids from their family.

AMT: Do you think they'd give you an answer?

DAUGHTER: I hope.

AMT: Yeah. Yeah. Aleksandar Jeremic, what's the timetable now for this family?

AJ: So for mom's application for permanent residence on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, about a year to get a determination on whether they would grant her permanent residence on that basis. And we're just waiting now. So, essentially on CBSA's word that they won't invite her in again. They won't continue these removal proceedings until we get an answer. The waiting time now, it's not a durable solution, it's just until we get that decision.

AMT: It's hard not knowing when you'll get answers, isn't it?

MOTHER: Yes. Very hard.

AMT: What do you talk about together to sort of get you through these many questions that you can't get answers to?

MOTHER: I just keep on talking to her for us to have the faith that everything is gonna be ok and for her to focus on her school work.

AMT: Is it hard to focus on school work? You thinking about this a lot?

DAUGHTER: Well. I do think about it, but sometimes I just try to focus on my work.

AMT: Have you talked to any of your friends in school about this?

DAUGHTER: No.

AMT: Not at all?

DAUGHTER: Not at all.

AMT: That's hard too, that you can't confide in any friends. Are you afraid to tell them?

DAUGHTER: Well, it's not like I'm afraid or something because it's something I'd like to keep privately.

AMT: This is for you and your mom to talk about and that's a big secret to keep though and that's a little burden.

DAUGHTER: Yes. No one else.

AMT: Thank you for talking to me today. I appreciate you taking the time to come in and tell us your story.

MOTHER: Thank you so much. Thank you for inviting us.

AMT: I was speaking to a mother and her 11-year-old daughter. They are in Toronto now. We agreed to keep their names confidential because they say they fear for their safety if they have to return to Sierra Leone. We were also joined by their lawyer Aleksandar Jeremic. My next guest has been advocating for Canada to recognize a refugee child's right to family unity for twenty five years. Geraldine Sadoway is a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. She is a lawyer focusing on immigration and refugee law. She's with me in our Toronto studio. Hi.

GERALDINE SADOWAY: Hello.

AMT: What's your reaction as you listen to that?

GS: It's just hearing this story again after so much time and so much effort. It's just devastating that we have not corrected this problem. We have a wonderful refugee determination system. We are very compassionate to refugees and yet, we are denying children one of the most important rights, refugee children the most important right that they have, which is unity with their family. We're actually proposing to separate a child from its mother at this tender age really, just because of some sort of speculative idea that if children had the right to be able to reunify with their parents and siblings in Canada after they're found to be refugees, that that would somehow cause a perverse incentive for parents to send children with smugglers to be an anchor or beachhead in Canada. That is exactly the rationale that has been given to us by the Immigration Department and it's completely without any foundation.

AMT: We do have a statement that I wanted to read to you because we requested a response from an Immigration Canada and it sent a statement and here's the quote. "Family reunification is a fundamental pillar of our immigration system. At the same time, we must provide safeguards against the potential exploitation of children. The department notes that allowing children to include parents on their application increases this risk, as unaccompanied minors are more vulnerable to dangers, such as trafficking and other forms of abuse and exploitation. Parents of protected children may apply for permanent residence on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, which ensures that the best interest of these children are considered prior to the landing of a parent." What does that mean?

GS: Well basically they're saying that they don't trust parents to be acting in the best interests of their children. They believe that parents who would allow a child to travel on their own to a country of refuge are somehow exploiting the child or doing this only for some other means, other than other purpose, other than protecting the child. And you know that's completely, there's no basis for that. There have been studies that have done about why children are travelling alone, but that doesn't explain the situation where you have a parent with a child in Canada and they're still not allowed to keep, if the child is accepted, they're not allowed to keep the parent with them in Canada.

AMT: So the daughter claimed asylum based on her, the danger of FGM. The mother claimed a separate asylum. If the mother had claimed asylum and had been accepted, the children would have been accepted automatically, right?

GS: Yes.

AMT: Is it often that we get more than one person in the family claiming different reasons for asylum?

GS: Not that often and it's usually the situation that one member of the family is a principal applicant and the rest of the family is granted refugee protection.

AMT: But the child can't be the principal applicant?

GS: Well that's, the child can be the principal applicant, but then they don't grant refugee protection to the parents and siblings.

AMT: Right OK. If they hadn't claimed two things, would that have been, we don't know.

GS: There's no there's no explanation of why Canada does this, other than some idea that it has to be an individual decision for each person. But for me, it's exactly the same to say that yes the children should be included with the parent, if the parent is accepted to say that the parent should be included with the children, if the children are accepted.

AMT: So the mother has applied to stay on humanitarian grounds.

GS: Yes.

AMT: Is that a practical solution?

GS: Well it's practical. It's the only solution. It's the only one that's been offered and it's a case by case scenario that depends on a lot of legal work, many, many hours, sometimes going to federal court, sometimes arguing for a stay of removal, while the process is taking place. The humanitarian application, I have challenged it in court in my previous position as a staff lawyer at Parkdale Community Legal Services. I challenged it repeatedly and other lawyers have used this same challenge. And these were all cases where the parent was in Canada, the caring, the primary caregiver parent and sometimes the reasons for persecution were the same, but the parent had not been accepted, the child had been. And in every single case they settled before we got to our charter challenge, to argue the charter challenge that this was unfair. This violated the fundamental justice rights of the refugee of the child, the Charter rights of the child to be reunited with their or to remain united with their family.

AMT: So is that a coincidence that just before you go, like that means that still hasn't been challenged.

GS: It has not been. There's no precedent because it has not gone ahead in the court. Every single time it's accepted and the mother is landed.

AMT: OK. But this comes to the fundamental issue that you're fighting for, which is the rights of a child. Just because they're not 18, talk to me a little bit about what you'd like to see.

GS: Right. We have a proposal to the minister to change the definition of family member of a protected person to include the parents of a child. The parents of a dependent child who is a Convention Refugee. So in other words right now, we have a system that if a parent is accepted and the children are not accepted or the spouse is not accepted, there is a provision in the act that allows that adult refugee to then include spouse and children in their application to be permanent residents of Canada, which then leads to being able to stay permanently. And it's very clear, it's a very simple application. It's very important because otherwise they would have to sponsor and they would have to be eligible to sponsor, which is quite expensive to be eligible to sponsor. You have to be earning enough money to support the person, you have to be fully independent yourself. So it's something that is really important for refugees, generally that we have this section. Why can't children also have that possibility? If they're accepted as refugees then they should be able to include, as their family members, their parents upon whom they are dependent, at that time. It would be better for everybody. It's not good for the Canadian society to have children who are on their own, maybe in foster care, trying to survive in Canada or maybe even with distant family members or relatives or community members. And no one really taking immediate care of them growing up in care.

AMT: What happens to someone in this case. She has no family here, so where would that 11-year-old girl go?

GS: She would go into, she'd become a ward of the Children's Aid Society. She would go into foster care. It isn't that often that children at that age are adopted. So you know she's going to be in foster care.

AMT: And the Canadian government has recognised she is in danger. That should not go home.

GS: Yes and it's very clear in Sierra Leone, that it's not even against the law in Sierra Leone. So there's no state protection and people keep it very secret because you don't even know who to talk to if you're afraid of this happening because you could then be caught out as a person who's opposed.

AMT: And yet the Canadian government says the Canadian government argues there this leaves the system open to abuse.

GS: And it's absolutely without foundation. There's no evidence of that in many, many countries in the world. Canada is one of only four countries that don't allow family reunification for children to be, children who are refugees. Canada is one of four countries. So the UK, the US, Canada and Switzerland are the only ones that do not permit this. Even Australia, which isn't great for protecting refugees, allows children to bring their family members after they've been accepted as refugees. So it's really there's no foundation for any argument that this would be done to exploit children. Children do not, are not sent by parents lightly. In fact the numbers are very small. The numbers of children that are left, that come on their own, are very small. The unusual thing in Canada is that we actually have children coming with parents, who are clearly not being exploited, they're being protected as much as the parent can and then being told that they might lose their parent.

AMT: We have to leave it, Geraldine. Geraldine Sadoway, thank you.

GS: Thank you.

AMT: Geraldine Sadoway is a private practitioner of immigration and refugee law. She is a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto. That is our program for today. Stay with Radio One for Q. Canadian actor, Sandra Oh, is on the program to talk about her latest project, Killing Eve. Remember, you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. Browse through past episodes of our program. Start listening in just a few seconds. Search for stories you missed, want to hear again, listen live on your local CBC station or right on your smartphone or tablet, where I won't mangle everything. We had an eye opening discussion earlier about the way smartphones, speaking of smartphones, and other technology can be used and abused in the context of domestic abuse. Our colleagues at CBC TV's marketplace are working on a story about the risks of smart home technology. We touched on that a little bit today, so we're going to leave you with part of their story and the voice of a woman to whom they spoke, who says her ex-partner used smart home technology against her. That episode is going to air in the next few weeks on Marketplace, which is Friday nights on CBC Television. In the meantime, here's a little bit of it. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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VOICE: It's almost as if the house is haunted. If any like body would walk into this situation, they would think they're walking into a horror movie. You know in the middle of the night, all of a sudden, I'm awoken and my dogs are awoken by this blaring music over the audio system. You know the most aggressive music that he could find. He would be able to flick on and off the lights. And it was almost like a strobe light you know and this really, I mean this affects your sensory on every level and it's frightening when it starts happening. He was able to monitor me you know using our security surveillance cameras, even remotely from thousands of miles away. So you create this environment where there's an omni presence over you. You're never outside the reach of your abuser.

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Sept. 17, 2018 episode transcript

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