GoFundMe:

(6 minute read)

Help This Woman’s Truth Become a Registered Social-Impact Society by the 11-Year Anniversary of a Near-Fatal Cross-Border Victimization

Support the growth of a survivor-led social enterprise transforming how Canada responds to violence against women.

An endemic that affects 44% of Canadian women and 61% of Indigenous Women in Canada.

Overview

My name is Sarah, and I am the founder of This Woman’s Truth — a survivor-led social enterprise and emerging social-impact Society dedicated to strengthening Canada’s response to gender-based and cross-border violence. Through storytelling, design, advocacy, and public education, we reinvest our work into systemic reform and survivor support.

On January 1, 2015, I survived a violent cross-border physical and sexual assault involving near-fatal strangulation that left me with neurological, spinal, and psychological injuries. For eleven years, I have fought not only to rebuild my own life, but also to expose and address the systemic and structural gaps — jurisdictional, legislative, and institutional — embedded in Canada’s response to gender-based and cross-border violence, gaps that continue to leave survivors without protection or recourse.

This campaign is bigger than me.

It is about positioning This Woman’s Truth to incorporate as a registered Society by January 1, 2026 — eleven years after the assault — so we can build a sustainable social enterprise that channels revenue directly into NGOs and not-for-profits carrying out the research, policy, and front-line work that has long been neglected and underfunded here in Canada.

Becoming a registered Society is the next essential step toward building an organization with the capacity, legitimacy, and institutional power to influence real change.

Why Now: A Turning Point in Canada’s Commitments

In March 2025, Canada finally signed the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women (known as the Belém do Pará Convention) — the first binding regional treaty in the world to recognize violence against women as a human-rights violation.

It took Canada thirty years to sign.

But signing is not ratifying.

Because Canada has not yet ratified the Convention:

• its full legal obligations have not come into effect

• regional accountability mechanisms cannot be used

• survivors remain subject to the same fragmented system that failed me and fails so many victim-survivors of both international and domestic gender based violence

This Woman’s Truth intends to help change that — by building the capacity to contribute to public awareness, community-level advocacy, and revenue-supported partnerships with the organizations doing the critical research and policy work.

To do this work, we need to become a legally incorporated social-impact Society.

The 11-year mark of the assault is not just symbolic — it is a deadline that gives the work institutional meaning and historical weight.

How Systemic Gaps Shaped My Case — and Why This Social Enterprise Must Exist

In 2015, after surviving a violent act of non-state torture abroad at the hands of a fellow Canadian, I learned firsthand how deeply Canada’s systems fail survivors of cross-border crime.

1. Exclusion From Provincial Crime Victim Assistance Program (CVAP) Eligibility

Because the assault occurred outside British Columbia, I was excluded from the province’s Crime Victim Assistance Program — despite being a BC resident and despite CVAP offering some of the strongest supports in the country, including:

• medical, dental, and mobility support

• trauma counselling

• long-term disability and income support

• relocation, personal care, homemaker, and child care benefits

• security upgrades

• lost wages

My exclusion from CVAP meant losing access to up to $365,000 in essential crime victim assistance lifetime supports (as of 2015).

2. Federal Support Not Designed for Survivors

I was redirected to the Federal Victims Fund, which explicitly states that long-term disability, medical costs, and psychological impacts are ineligible.

The program was never designed for violent crime survivors. This is the same program that victims of international terrorism and mass violence also fall into. It’s atrocious to leave victims and victims families to crowdsource funds for their justice and their health-costs. Especially in cases hat are so sensitive and intimate in nature, relying on crowdsourcing for victim supports puts a cruel and unusual burden on a victim-survivor and risks jeopardizing their anonymity, their exposure comfort, their civil and/or criminal proceedings, and their recovery health.

3. Policing Misconduct

When I attempted to report the assault, police told me to “just move on.”
Later, I learned:

• the officer never filed my report

• he never informed me that Italy’s statute of limitations was rapidly expiring

• the department itself was under investigation for multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, harassment, and even assault involving at least four officers, only one of whom was ever publicly named

• officers took early retirement during the inquiry — including one who later had his retirement status revoked and was formally dismissed from duty

These failures cost me access to justice.

4. Canada’s Gaps in Recognizing Strangulation and Non-State Torture

Near-fatal strangulation is one of the strongest predictors of preventable homicide. Around the world, it is often legally defined as torture. But Canada still has not yet amended its Criminal Code to recognize non-state torture, and did not create a standalone strangulation offence until 2019 — a delay with real consequences for survivors like me.

5. Barriers to Disability Recognition

It took four years for the province to recognize me as a Person with Disabilities due to legislative barriers that penalize self-employed workers — leaving me without critical supports during the period of my greatest need.

These structural failures are not just my story. They reflect the lived reality of survivors across the country.

Why This Woman’s Truth Must Become a Registered Society

This Woman’s Truth is being built as a survivor-led social enterprise with a social-impact mandate — blending advocacy, design, education, and values-based commerce into one platform.

Becoming a registered Society will allow us to:

• apply for grants and institutional funding

• collaborate with for-profit businesses and brands, enabling them to receive tax-credit incentives in exchange for partnership

• award grants and direct financial support to victims and survivors of gender-based violence

• collaborate with NGOs, women’s organizations, GBV–TBI researchers, legal advocates, and lawmakers

• contribute to treaty-aligned public awareness efforts, including those connected to the Belém do Pará Convention

• build long-term infrastructure to fund stronger GBV supports, protections, and pathways for victim-survivors

This is not charity work.
This is systems work, and it requires formal structure.

What Your Support Will Fund

1. Society Incorporation & Social-Enterprise Infrastructure

• legal filing fees

• bylaws and governance frameworks

• administrative and compliance systems

• early operational capacity

• brand/IP registration

• risk, privacy, and data security protocols

2. Advocacy, Awareness & Partnership Work

• research-informed public education

• policy-adjacent materials and communications

• partnerships with NGOs and not-for-profits

• survivor-informed resources

• community engagement

3. Medical & Trauma Recovery for Victim-Survivors Without Adequate Support

• neurological care

• trauma therapy

• mental health treatment

• long-term rehabilitation support

• asset and liquidity protection

4. Legal Aid for Victim-Survivors to Explore Charter Challenges and Class Actions

• Arvay Finlay LLP — the constitutional law firm behind landmark cases including same-sex marriage — has reviewed my file. A Charter opinion and early legal strategy is estimated at $25,000–$40,000.

What We Have Already Accomplished

Despite the barriers, and even as an entirely unfunded, grassroots survivor-led effort, This Woman’s Truth has already contributed to:

• improvements in Canada’s strangulation laws

• successful advocacy in Italy for extended statutes of limitations for GBV survivors

• provincial, federal, and public education on cross-border violent crime, non-state torture, strangulation risks, and brain injury

• relationships with provincial and federal cabinet members and support staff, including:

  • B.C.: the Office of the Premier (David Eby); the Office of the Attorney General and Deputy Premier (Niki Sharma); the Office of the Ministry of Finance and the Parliamentary Secretary for Gender Equity (Jennifer Blatherwick); the Office of the Ministry of Health and the Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health; the Office of the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General; the Office of the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction

  • Federal: the Office of the Prime Minister; the Office of the Federal Minister of Justice; the Office of the Federal Minister for Women and Gender Equality

• relationships with NGOs and national victim-serving organizations, including:

  • the Federal Office of the Ombudsperson for Victims of Crime

  • the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime

  • and close to a dozen additional not-for-profits across Canada

• relationships with nearly a dozen lawyers and law firms specializing in the GBV and Constitutional law sectors

• building a survivor-led brand and advocacy platform

• developing merchandise collection prototypes for awareness campaigns and social-impact products

The foundation is here.
Now it needs to be formalized.

What Comes Next as a Social Enterprise

As a registered Society, This Woman’s Truth will:

• launch social-impact products paired with national gender-based violence (GBV) awareness campaigns

• amplify and commemorate key GBV awareness dates, strengthening national recognition and public engagement

• collaborate with researchers, NGOs, legal clinics, and women’s organizations to bridge and finance gaps in support, education, and rights

• advocate for Canada’s ratification and implementation of the Belém do Pará Convention

• support victim-survivors navigating complex legal cases and systemic support gaps

• advance and fund policy recommendations, including:

  • enhancements to the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights

  • access to Restorative Justice

  • equitable CVAP programs across Canada

  • a FACVA-to-CVAP bridge program for cross-border victimization

• support victim-survivors in their advocacy, access to justice, and personal storytelling, ensuring their experiences shape law, culture, and reform

This is long-term, structural, survivor-led work.

A Personal Note

There’s a Sex and the City episode called A Woman’s Right to Shoes, where Carrie — tired of society celebrating only weddings and babies — “marries herself” and registers for a pair of Manolo Blahniks that were stolen from a baby shower she attended.

I’ve never had a wedding shower, engagement party, baby shower, or housewarming.
At 39, I don’t know if I ever will.

So instead of households or shoes, I’m asking for a registry of a different kind:

Your support in building a social enterprise capable of accelerating GBV prevention and transforming how this country treats survivors.

If this story ever reaches Sarah Jessica Parker someday — iconic.
But what I truly need is you.

How You Can Help

✔ Donate to help This Woman’s Truth incorporate as a registered social-impact Society by January 1, 2026 — the 11-year anniversary of the assault.
✔ Share this campaign — advocacy begins with awareness.
✔ Stand with survivors who deserve more than silence and system gaps.

Thank you for believing in this mission.
Thank you for supporting survivor-led systemic change.
Thank you for helping build something bigger than me.

— Sarah / This Woman’s Truth

www.thiswomanstruth.com

@this.womans.truth