Warrior Woman Rising
Speaking on the theme Reinvention at Speaker Slam® in Toronto on Sep 15, 2026 — Upcoming, Dr. Japji Anna Bas delivered “Warrior Woman Rising” and won first place.
Transcript
The warm sun was beating down on us as we rode his motorcycle through the city streets. I was so excited. I'd been waiting for years for this moment to finally spend time together, just the two of us. And then he reached down and put his hand on my thigh, massaging it, and my heart dropped. I was nine. He was my dad, and we were on our way to his tiny attic apartment for our first unsupervised visit in 2 years. See, a couple years before my mom had called the Children's Aid Society cuz he'd been molesting me since I was four.
My father was charged, convicted, jailed, and me, I believed he'd changed. All I wanted was to have a normal life, to have a dad like everyone else. And he promised. But the moment he put his hand on my thigh, I knew nothing had changed. And I knew something far more terrifying, that the systems meant to protect children had tried and failed. I knew I was alone. For the next few years, every Saturday, as he drove me back home, he'd go on and on about how what he was doing wasn't wrong, how I should give in, how I was myself up for not letting myself enjoy it.
Enjoy it? I'd pretend to be asleep, crawl into the back of my mind, silent on the outside, but inside I raged. I hated him, hated what he was doing to me, and I hated the people and systems that had handed me back to him. For years I endured until I turned 13 and something broke. I went to my mom and I said, "I don't care if I lose all my friends, if I can never go back to school, if it's all over the news again.
It has to stop. We have to go to the police." But, before that could happen, my aunt came knocking on our door. My dad was dead. He always said he'd kill himself if he couldn't have me. And then he drove into a rock face. Was that the one promise he kept? He was dead and he couldn't hurt me anymore, but I wasn't free from what he did to me, how he ended it, and the fact that the case worker had advocated for him.
I'd been trained to keep quiet, and for three more decades I did. Until one day I was done. I'd done the therapy, built a life, studied systems and policy, even earned a PhD in child well-being environments. And I decided to sue the Children's Aid Society. Yeah. It was one of the most empowering moments of my life. And one of those wild twists of fate, the lawyer I contacted, she already knew my case. So, it turns out when I was a kid, she had fought to prevent him from being accepted to the bar.
You know, cuz like pedophiles maybe shouldn't be lawyers. So, she said to me, "When I first finished law school, I got to protect the law from your father, and I never got to protect you. Thank you for trusting me with this. Her team spent 5 years building the case. Documents, records, negotiations, discoveries, until finally October 2024, the report the winning report, the expert report that detailed the ways that the Children's Aid Society had failed to meet the minimum standard of care.
These few words changed everything. In the blink of an eye the Children's Aid Society asked for a settlement. They took a knee, that untouchable institution, and I felt something brand new. I wasn't voiceless, I wasn't powerless. I had faced the institution that had failed me, slayed that monster, and entered my warrior woman era. Since then I've taken the voices of 4-year-olds to the federal government. I've supported the anti-human trafficking strategy, and I've even advised the UN. But what I'm actually most proud of is that I wasn't destroyed.
That I lead leaders. I'm now a founder, an international speaker, and frankly, I'm on freaking fire. So to everyone who has endured this kind of violation, and I know there are some of you here tonight, I understand the shame and pain that were forced on you, but it does not have to define you. We get to decide. We can reinvent. I stand here as living proof that when we use our voice, reclaim our power, and stop carrying the shame that was never ours to begin with, we rise warrior-like and are free.
Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.
