Betty Mahmoody "Not Without My Daughter."

Many of you may be familiar with Betty Mahmoody's book "Not Without My Daughter" and the subsequent film of the same title starring Sally Fields ... ( this is the description from a film review website www.imdb.com/title/tt0102555/ ... "Plot:In 1984, Betty Mahmoody's husband took his wife and daughter to meet his family in Iran. He swore they would be safe. They would be happy. They would be free to leave. He lied. Outline: An American woman, trapped in Islamic Iran by her brutish husband, must find a way to escape with her daughter as well." )

It is hard to imagine that immigrant women coming to Canada for an agreed period of time with their Canadian spouse can have a similar experience! Many of us would think that in a "civilised" and "democratic" country like Canada, a country that prides itself on its "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms", "Bill of Human Rights", ratification of UN conventions such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,www.unicef.org/crc/ Declaration on Elimination of Violence Against Women and Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/ that immigrant women and their children would be safe. But I keep hearing about other immigrant women to Canada who have also experienced justice departments and justice systems ignoring all the Canadian laws and policies about violence against women and children when the woman is an immigrant.

At least when Betty Mahmoody arrived at her country's embassy in Turkey they assisted her and her daughter Mahtob to return home to safety in America. I wish I knew how to obtain assistance for my children and myself, and the other Australian children and women I know are in similar circumstances and bring these issues to the attention of the Australian government and Australian embassy.

Now more than twenty years later, in a new century, children and women are still not safe from violence and control by their father and spouse, can still be trapped in foreign countries where women have no rights ... in more countries than just Iran! The only difference between our experience and hers was that she was able to get assistance from people in Iran who did not find it acceptable for a man to abuse his wife and lie to her to trap her and her daughter in a foreign country and she had help from her own government - we are not experiencing either!

Take care ... take heart .... Merinda