Talia Battista sued after organizers would not welcome her in a sexual-assault survivors group because of her pro-life advocacy.
In February 2017, Talia Battista was treading water amidst a torrent of therapy bills. An abusive partner had raped Battista years before, and the lingering effects of that traumatic night still rippled across her consciousness. “I went through a period of extreme PTSD, where speaking about sexual assault was incredibly triggering. There were a lot of flashbacks, a lot of nightmares,” Battista says.
Battista, a biracial and disabled undergraduate student at Ryerson University, now called Toronto Metropolitan, had stumbled across a Facebook post for a “Self-Healing Through Yoga” campus event dedicated to sexual-assault survivors. The timing couldn’t have been better, Battista thought. It would alleviate the crushing financial stress of paying out of pocket for counseling while expanding her network of survivors.
However, when Battista approached the organizers to participate in the event, Ryerson’s Students’ Union (RSU) would not welcome her.
“After talking to the coordinators, we have decided that it is not appropriate for you to attend,” the body’s equity and campaigns organizer, Corey Scott, emailed Battista on Friday evening, February 10, three days before the gathering.
Battista was targeted because she was the Ryerson leader of a pro-life group, Toronto Against Abortion.
The business student had become a known entity to union leaders due to her weekly outreach on Gould Street, the main road that cuts through the downtown campus near one of the city’s busiest intersections. There, amid the dizzying hustle of 9-5ers, students, and buskers, Battista dealt with crowds often hostile to her advocacy for “pre-born human rights,” which often featured graphic images of aborted fetuses. RSU employees often counter-protested these events, frequently stealing posters and, on one occasion, even assaulting Battista’s friends, she says.
Battista had an inkling she might not be welcomed after she unwittingly dropped in on another RSU-led program three days earlier. When the bespectacled Battista entered the room, her presence collided with the university’s absolutist position on the question of abortion. A decade earlier, the RSU adopted a pro-choice plank barring the union from granting official status to any pro-life student organization on campus, effectively preventing groups like Battista’s from accessing university spaces and resources. A woman’s right to choose was sacrosanct in such spaces, and RSU leaders were empowered to enforce the orthodoxy regardless of the pain it might cause.
The leaders singled out Battista and asked her to leave in front of a room of students, an unprecedented action in a space intended to bring together “students from different marginalized backgrounds” to “come together and organize equity and social justice initiatives, events, and campaigns.” Battista was barred from the event and forced to speak with Tamara Jones, the union’s vice president of equity, and Scott about her desire to attend union-led events in the future.
“Unfortunately, since RSU does have a pro-choice stance, and a lot of the people in this space kinda feel targeted,” Battista remembers Jones saying in a closed-door meeting following her expulsion from that event, “some people just aren’t comfortable expressing their thoughts and opinions in that kind of setting.”
Asked to clarify which RSU equity service centers Battista would be barred from, Scott, a white man, chimed in. “I think that’s a larger conversation that we’d have to have, but I’d say — just off the top — all six equity services: all five except for the Good Food Centre.” In audio recordings obtained by National Review, the union organizer further elaborated that Battista’s presence in such spaces was tantamount to “an act of continuing . . . violence and . . . trauma.”
As the meeting wound down, Scott demanded Battista check with him before thinking about attending another event — a special protocol applied exclusively to her. Battista reluctantly complied with Scott’s requirement, emailing to ask whether she could attend the self-healing event. Scott replied with the February 10 email telling her she wasn’t welcome.
Within minutes of his original email to Battista, Scott sent a follow-up note clarifying that the earlier message was sent “prematurely” and that he was still “waiting to hear back from our partners within the university.”
Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information request later revealed that Scott had messaged Farrah Khan, then a senior Ryerson employee working in the Office of Sexual Violence Support and Education, minutes before to ask for guidance on the matter. Khan was a campus administrator responsible for helping sexual-assault survivors access a host of services.
“I do feel worried about letting this person access a space that they might make people feel unwelcomed or uncomfortable. They know that they are not allowed to spew anti-choice and anti-women rhetoric in the spaces but we cannot be confident that the rule will be followed and if her presence alone is enough to disrupt and make the space unsafe,” Scott wrote to Khan shortly before initially banning Battista.
However, with the weekend rapidly approaching — and no word from Khan — Scott waffled his response, leaving unclear if she would be welcome or even allowed to attend.
“Self-healing is incredibly difficult without community support, but rejection by a community which ‘claims to believe all survivors’ has become yet another thing I need to heal from,” Battista reflected. “I was allowed to go, but it was so traumatizing getting the email that I ended up not going.”
When Khan finally responded on Sunday, she was unperturbed by the thought of excluding a rape victim from a safe space on the grounds that she was pro-life. While acknowledging that “I currently cannot ‘ban’ any student from participating in tomorrow’s programming,” Khan provided three alternatives for Scott to consider, with the first option being: “The event can be cancelled.”
The other choices the self-described gender-equality activist offered the union employee were for her office or the RSU to “pull its sponsorship for this event.” Khan signed off the weekend email breezily: “Warmest.”
Scott ultimately chose the third option, informing Battista that she’d be allowed to attend but that union staff would be boycotting the event because of her attendance. Neither Scott, Khan, nor the RSU, now called TMSU, responded to multiple requests for comment.
When reached for comment, a university spokesperson declined to address the specifics of Battista’s case due to privacy concerns and instead made vague gestures toward the school’s “ongoing engagement of equity, diversity and inclusion within every facet of university life.”
“We strongly believe it is the shared responsibility of all of our community members to foster a welcoming, supportive and respectful learning, teaching, research and work environment for all,” the spokesperson concluded.
The rejection and shame Battista experienced following Scott’s decision triggered harsh memories of her time in high school, she confessed. “It was a big step for me to attend an event that addressed sexual assault. I had great difficulty coping with the fact I had been raped,” Battista said. The event “was my first attempt to connect with other survivors of sexual assault, and because I was forced to disclose it in this manner, I felt judged and anxious.”
“There was a long period of time where I was suicidal,” Battista added. “And reading that email, I think if I didn’t have friends who cared, who were checking in with me, I probably would’ve gone back to self-harm. I was fortunate enough that when I was denied resources at the student union, I had people in my life. I picked up the phone and called a friend who made sure that I was somewhere safe.”
One person she picked up the phone and spoke to was Carol Crosson, founder of Rights and Freedoms Advocate, a legal group focused on defending religious freedoms. The attorney served as a pillar of support and shoulder to cry on for Battista throughout the intervening months as she explored internal university channels to deal with the matter. However, after exhausting the Human Rights Office, the Student Code of Conduct, the Vice Provost of Students, “and finally, the president himself,” Battista said, “I realized I would not find basic protection or be treated equally within Ryerson and so chose to file a complaint.”
In August 2017, Battista submitted a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, a body charged with resolving provincial discrimination lawsuits, alleging prejudiced treatment based on her religious beliefs.
‘An Incredibly Diverse Community’
Battista was born in Canada but doesn’t remember her early life before her parents returned to Antigua at age two for missionary work in the country of fewer than 100,000 people. “It’s very small,” Battista reflects fondly. “Growing up we had one movie theater on the whole island — we eventually got two — and that was very exciting.” When a Burger King popped up in St. John’s, the capital, that was equally noteworthy. “We’re too small for McDonald’s,” Battista says, before noting that KFC “is basically our national food.”
Raised in a devout Baptist house, Battista and her siblings were instilled with a deep religious conviction, particularly when it came to the right to life. “I believe that every human life must be respected and protected from the start of life at fertilization, and that every human being deserves human rights,” Battista said. This applies to pregnancies involving rape, as well. “In the case of pregnancy after sexual assault, we have two innocent victims: the woman so horribly harmed, and the child she carries. Killing one victim does not support the other — we need to support them both.”
Despite her religious anchoring, aspects of Battista’s life — “particularly when it came to questions of sexuality and relationships” — seemed to clash with her spirituality. The discrepancy “led to a lot of unhealthy and really abusive relationships,” Battista says. Shortly before returning to Canada to follow in the footsteps of her older sister Tia, Battista was raped by a partner at the age of 19.
“For a while after, I tried to deny the fact that I had been raped,” Battista said. She tried to move on with her life as if the trauma didn’t affect her; however, there were these unshakeable images, this bewildering sense of helplessness, that stuck in Battista’s mind no matter how much time or distance she put between herself and Antigua.
The unresolved trauma lay nestled in Battista’s brain when she entered Ryerson in 2015. “I wanted the whole university experience including club fairs and extracurriculars,” Battista says. “I signed up for every Christian club I could find on campus.” She was also elected to represent her department on the student council, joined a swim group, and worked at the business-school restaurant.
“My first impression of Ryerson was that we were an incredibly diverse community but what united us was how deeply we cared about the causes that mattered to us. I thought that was really cool.” In her second-year, Battista found her cause in pro-life advocacy, a conspicuous effort given Canada’s unique legal status on the question.
In 1988, abortion was decriminalized in Canada with provinces empowered to craft individual policies. Today, abortion laws vary widely across the country. British Columbia boasts the most permissive national laws, with procedures capped at 24 weeks and six days. By comparison, Nunavut, the northernmost territory, prohibits abortions beyond twelve weeks.
However, Battista was not focused on the legislative process. Instead, her weekly pro-life outreach on campus was aimed at changing “hearts and minds.” Often accompanied by “victim photography,” or graphic images of aborted fetuses, which were intended to provoke conversations with students.
The chats were sometimes constructive; occasionally, a student would return the next week to say they had changed their mind about abortion. More often, Battista and her friends would have thoughtful discussions and respectfully disagree.
“The first thing that anyone involved wants to do is find common ground. So, if we’re in a conversation and even if you disagree with me on 90 percent of things, there’s probably one thing you agree with me on. Let’s move the conversation from there.”
Nor was Battista’s goal to demonize pro-choicers or women who underwent an abortion. “That’s a really important distinction: that you can disagree with something that someone has done but you still love the person. The action to kill a child is always wrong but the person who chose that action, that person is so loved and so worthy of love.”
The work was emotionally draining for Battista, particularly when students challenged her to defend cases such as those involving rape. The encounters re-opened emotional scar tissue. “I came to the point where I couldn’t effectively talk. I was worried I couldn’t talk to people about abortion because we can’t avoid the subject. I went to a friend with my concerns, and she helped me find the first counselor I spoke to.”
“My motivation was very much: ‘If I don’t deal with this, I’m not gonna be able to help anyone else out.’ That’s what pushed me to actually come to terms and start to seek help.”
Battista Takes Her Battle to the Courts
The counseling got Battista back into the fray of campus advocacy with an understanding that access to vital services had become politicized at Ryerson. Battista never wanted another survivor to feel the humiliation and embarrassment she experienced when Ryerson and the RSU turned their backs on her in a time of crisis.
“My case is not about how ‘pro-lifers’ are treated at Ryerson: it is about whether those in power — student union staff and university administration — should be able to discriminate against those whose beliefs they disagree with,” Battista says. “I hope my case not only encourages the university to treat all students equally, but also encourages other students who hold minority beliefs to stay true to their faith.”
However, the wheels of justice churn slowly in Ontario, especially for people like Battista who bring their cases before the Tribunal. Unfilled jobs, lack of funding, and Covid-19 have pushed the body into a massive backlog. It wasn’t until May 2019, nearly two years after Battista first filed her lawsuit, that the Tribunal agreed to host preliminary hearings and obtain relevant documentation.
The following April, Tribunal adjudicator Darren Thorne determined that, before Battista’s case could proceed, the Tribunal would have to determine whether Battista’s “pro-life belief system constitutes a creed for the purposes of the [Ontario Human Rights] Code.”
The Tribunal finally resolved the question this January in a landmark decision. While the body dismissed certain sections of her complaints, the adjudicator found that Battista’s beliefs constituted a protected “creed” under the provincial human-rights code, setting the stage for a consequential forthcoming legal battle with Ryerson and the RSU.
“This decision is an unprecedented victory,” said Battista’s attorney Garifalia Milousis, who succeeded Crosson after her death less than two weeks before the ruling. “For years, pro-life individuals have tried to explain to an increasingly dismissive society that their views are not simply expressions of personal preference or individual whim.”
“To finally have a decision from the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal recognize this fact — recognize that the pro-life worldview is a ‘creed,’” the lawyer added, “is truly precedent-setting and ground-breaking.”
Following the news, Battista launched a campaign on LifeFunder, a Christian crowdfunding platform, to help with the mounting legal costs, which are approaching $30,000 but were lightened by Crosson’s organization conferring a grant to Battista. So far, her crowdfunding campaign, which has an ultimate goal of $50,000, has raised barely over $1,500.
The latest judgment has given Battista renewed hope. While it hasn’t made the pain of abandonment disappear, her passion for changing hearts and minds at Ryerson hasn’t cooled one bit.
“Our student body,” Battista concluded, “is one very interested in social-justice issues and very open to conversation, to dialogue. I really do love our community. I love how people are willing to engage in conversations that are important to them.”