(no paper is attached to this panel)

This was a panel of five survivors who shared their stories of how they have transcended unfathomable loss, abuse and betrayal by choosing to fight for answers and accountability and who will also share their own individual approaches to their ongoing activism which seeks, through exposing abuses of power, to inform and protect other survivors and the public. Each survivor, in their own way, has sought, or is in the process of seeking, to turn over their own personal tragedies to the service of the public good. Some of them have already navigated, or are in the process of navigating, the labyrinths of: the Ontario Criminal Justice System, the Ontario Supreme Court, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, the Coroner and Public Inquests. Some of what will be examined includes: the relationship between the Government of the Province of Ontario, Self-Regulating Agencies, the Pharmaceutical Industry, Psychiatry, the Addictions Business, Corporations, the Insurance Industry, Health Canada, the Coroner and Public Inquests, and how all of these powerful bodies and their alliances and relationships with each other can negatively impact the protection that our vast and diverse community expect and are entitled to. We each told our story: what drove us, what obstacles we overcame and how, how we got the word out through media and the creation of new media, the importance of a support network, the use of research, and the need for self care throughout. If power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely how can those, who are being abused by these absolute powers, be protected? This panel asked, as Juvenal asked, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Who guards the guards themselves? Who watches the watchmen? The enormous powers of the status quo and the inherent abuses of these powers that always choose profit over patient and loyalty over ethics will only be put in check when our own personal stories of surviving these abuses of power, and the stories of other survivors, are no longer silenced by these powerful interests, but heard, because no voice is stronger than that of the survivor.