S3 A Women's Spring: Gratitude in the Age of MeToo - Special Holiday Episode

This panel features memoir authors who are all sexual assault survivors.

The discussion centers around gratitude for the #MeToo movement, the everyday and extraordinary women speaking out relentlessly, and how we see societal support to eradicate sexual assault and uplift survivors.

Torah selected gratitude as the theme in light that March is Women’s History Month and that April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

PANEL/WEBINAR DETAILS:

Panel Members: Lisa Zarcone, Cameron Altaras, and Torah Bontrager

1. What are you most grateful for in terms of the MeToo movement?

2. How sustainable do you feel the MeToo movement is? E.g., Is it going to eventually fizzle out or is it here to stay?

3. In light that it was Women’s History Month in March and that MeToo is led by women, who are you most grateful for post-assault in helping you in your journey?

4. What’s one easy thing that any non-survivor can do to help raise awareness about sexual assault?

5. What impacts do you hope to see the MeToo movement have on the next generation? And what do you hope the next generation will do differently?

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Connect with Torah, speaker + memoir author of An Amish Girl in Manhattan: Escaping at Age 15, Breaking All the Rules, and Feeling Safe Again

http://www.TorahBontrager.com

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Connect with Lisa (Author, Speaker & Advocate):

www.lisazarcone.net

A wife, mother of three, and grandmother of three, Lisa Zarcone took all of her past experiences of her personal trauma and abuse and wrote a detailed memoir of her life. She shares her story through the eyes of a child: "HERS". She gives the reader a firsthand view of abuse through the child’s perspective. This is a very raw and real look at her life as it played out.

Lisa is currently the Massachusetts National Ambassador for NAASCA (National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse). She is spreading awareness for child safety/abuse and mental health Illness/stigmas. She travels all over to publicly speak as she is working towards raising awareness, educating people, and promoting change in a very flawed system. Too many children continue to fall through the cracks. She continues to work effortlessly as this is her passion, mission and goal to break the silence.

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Connect with Cameron (Writer & Speaker):

www.TorahBontrager.com/Cameron-Altaras

Cameron Altaras was raised Mennonite in Ontario, Canada and her mother was an Amish escapee. Childhood sexual abuse by her teenaged uncle set her on a path of further abuse, including at the hands of a highly revered, now deceased Mennonite pastor, Vernon Leis. She went through the Mennonite Conference of Eastern Canada (MCEC) leadership’s clergy misconduct process regarding this “Mennonite Harvey Weinstein” under whose grooming process she fell victim in her twenties. She gathered a supportive group of family, friends, and former MCEC leaders around her and together, they plodded through six years of tough challenges before the MCEC finally publicized the crimes.

Cameron holds a PhD in Religion from the University of Toronto. Her dissertation focussed on the critical theory of the Frankfurt School with regard to the ideological manipulation of power in religion and art. Before her retirement, she worked in Business Ethics. You can find out more about her at www.TorahBontrager.com/book, where there’s a link to the speech she delivered at the 2015 Annual SNAP Conference in Washington, DC: “Sex with a Pastor Is Never an Affair”.