Literally disarming
A hundred pairs of eyes follow Samantha Nutt as she sets down her notes and steps to the side of the podium. "Aline was 13 years old when I met her at a rehabilitation centre in eastern Congo," she explains to a gathering of lawyers at Toronto's Fairmont Royal York hotel.
You can hear the emotion in her voice as she recalls how Aline was walking to Bukavu to buy malaria medication for her mother. "On the road into town, in the plain view of everyone, Aline was surrounded by three ex-combatants who pinned her down and took turns raping her. When she tried to run, they cut the soles of her feet so she wasn't able to stand. And then they raped her again."
Nutt stands a wispy five-foot-four, is blondish and although she turns 41 in October, she could pass for half that age. ("When I go to a school to give a speech, people will stop me at the front door and say, ‘Where is your uniform?'")
In the war zones where she's worked as a doctor and as the co-founder of War Child Canada, she is literally disarming. "I have been able to get across borders because there's been some hotshot with an AK-47 who thinks I'm a joke," she says. "He'll laugh, ‘You're so funny, you crazy young Canadian, you go.' Sometimes it's better to be underestimated, because then you really take people by surprise."
This morning, as she shares the story of Aline's brutal ordeal, she has indeed surprised her high-powered audience. Perhaps some were expecting another earnest do-gooder who speaks in acronyms, or an idealist with no understanding of how the world works. But Nutt is amiable, articulate and entirely genuine as she explains how the legal profession can play a role in stopping the violence Aline had to endure. Her listeners push aside their breakfast plates, sit back in their chairs and stop checking their BlackBerrys. If anyone can warm up a roomful of lawyers, it's Samantha Nutt.
No one who met Samantha Nutt as a child would be surprised by her accomplishments. She was born in Toronto, the daughter of a stay-at-home mom and a father whose work as a shoe designer took him to far-flung places. When she was just a few months old, the family moved to Durban, South Africa, where she lived for almost five years. One day when Sam was five, she went to the park with her best friend, Norah, who was black. "While we were playing, the police came and told my mother that it was a whites-only park and said Norah and I weren't allowed to play together. I remember the two of us holding hands and crying. That's stayed with me: I've always had a sense that the world can be unjust."
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