Sex Trafficking

This is a topic that’s difficult to talk about.

As a father with a beautiful daughter of my own, just reading the words “sex trafficking” is enough to turn my stomach.

But I beg you not to turn away. Every single day, innocent and vulnerable Canadian girls are lured into Canada’s rapidly growing underground world of sexual slavery. It’s a psychological game played by master manipulators and the effects are long lasting and deeply damaging.

If you’re having a hard time believing this could happen in Canada, please watch Amy’s story here to see how easy it is to become a victim.

Amy was just like any girl you know – a regular teenager who liked to talk on the phone and hang out with her friends. But like some girls her age, she was gripped with low self-esteem.

Amy yearned for love and approval. She met Ryan and he changed her life, but in the worst way possible. His once kind and thoughtful actions turned into demands and violent threats once he ensnared her in the world of sex trafficking.

These predators are slick manipulators. They understand that many girls can struggle with body image, self-esteem and self-identity. These girls are then vulnerable to luring and falling for a false sense of affection.

Sex trafficking in Canada is primarily a domestic problem. Some 90 per cent of victims are female and most are Canadian girls as young as 13, and on average 17. Police have identified Toronto as a major trafficking hub and estimate the number of victims could be in the thousands. These girls come from all over the country and are from every background. In the last four years, Covenant House has seen a 300-per cent increase in our caseload for victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking.

As a Catholic agency, Covenant House follows the church’s values in our work with the most vulnerable, recognizing the value of each person. Since opening our doors in 1982, we have welcomed almost 95,000 homeless and trafficked young people, ages 16 to 24, from all parts of Ontario, Canada and the world.

When a youth enters our doors, we make a covenant to support them every step of the way to independence. We achieve this with the support of our donors, volunteers and through sector partnerships, however, it mustn’t end there. Broad collaboration amongst community members is essential for ensuring our young people, and victims of sex trafficking in particular, truly receive the wraparound support they need to recover.

In Amy’s case, she had the courage to leave her trafficker on her own and seek out the support she needed to rebuild her life but we can all, as full members of our community, help victims while preventing greater victimization.

We cannot, as people, flourish in isolation and as Pope John Paul II said, “…a community needs a soul if it is to become a true home for human beings.”

It is only together as a community that we can create a home of love and compassion and effectively combat this devastating crime which touches us all.

Please help us raise awareness by educating others about this issue. If you suspect someone is being trafficked or groomed for trafficking, alert your local police.

Guest Bloger Bruce Rivers
Executive Director, Covenant House Toronto

A story of human trafficking

Mai came to a city in Ontario to work as a caregiver for a family from her country of origin. She thought she was coming to Canada under the Caregiver program but when she arrived at the home, her employers took her passport and told her that she did not have the proper papers for being in Canada but that they would take care of the problem.  They also told her that she would be paid at the end of two years. Mai worked seven days a week (usually from 5:00 am to 11:00 pm) and slept on the kitchen floor. At the end of the two years she did not receive any payment. When she complained to the family they ignored her, except to say that if she tried to call the police (difficult given her lack of English), she would be arrested because she didn’t have the proper documentation (they did not do the immigration paperwork as they had promised).  Many weeks later, with the help of an acquaintance, Mai made it to a refugee centre to ask for help.

What is human trafficking?

Trafficking in persons occurs when someone gains a profit from the exploitation of another person through means of coercion, deception or fraud. This exploitation can take many different forms such as sexual exploitation (in sex trade, one partner exploiting another), labour exploitation in the service industry (restaurants, hotels), agriculture (fields, greenhouses), domestic work (baby sitters, nannies, personal care workers, housekeepers) as well as construction and manufacturing. Forced marriage can lead to both sexual and labour exploitation and, at times, reaches the level of human trafficking. In some countries, people are trafficked for their organs.

As a society, we contribute to many of the underlying causes of human trafficking

People become vulnerable to being trafficked through social and economic exclusion. Many people experience exclusion due to such barriers as poverty, gender bias, racism, lack of education and lack of opportunity; others become excluded as a result of mental illness, addiction, family disconnection or social isolation. 

First Nations women and girls can be particularly vulnerable to being trafficked for sexual exploitation because they often experience multiple barriers intersecting in their lives. Human trafficking exposes our failures as a society and challenges us to address these underlying patterns of exclusion.

Highly selective immigration policies force migrants into dangerous means of migration

Canada’s immigration policies give clear priority to those who are highly educated and highly skilled, or have money to invest. Such increasingly restrictive immigration rules are detrimental to people who are forced to migrate due to violations of their economic, social and cultural rights -- violations that are often so severe that they threaten survival. When denied regularized routes of migration, people in such situations are forced to take routes that are far more precarious. Some rely on smugglers to get them across borders, and too often these arrangements devolve into situations of abuse, human trafficking or death. Others migrate through temporary work programs and find that they are vulnerable to workplace exploitation that, at times, reaches the level of human trafficking.

February 8, 2015

As we join with others in prayer on February 8, 2015, to mark the Catholic Church’s first International Day of Prayer and Awareness of Human Trafficking, let us also bring an awareness of our collective complicity in these tragic stories so that we might be moved to action. The date for the initiative is the feast of St. Josephine Bakhita, considered a patron saint for trafficking victims. Born in 1868 in Darfur, Sudan, she was kidnapped at the age of nine and sold into slavery, first in her country and later in Italy. She died in 1947 and was declared a saint by Pope St. John Paul II in 2000. Here is her story.

Sue Wilson CSJ

Human Trafficking Conference in London: A Human Rights Approach

A London Ontario conference on Human Trafficking put the focus squarely on protecting the human rights of people who have experienced situations of human trafficking.  It was a wonderful contrast to much of the discussion on human trafficking in Canada, discussion that is focused on putting criminals in jail. Not that it isn’t important to put traffickers out of circulation – it is! But such a focus becomes skewed when it is not held in tension with the need to protect the human rights of people who have been trafficked.

NGOs that are engaged in the issue of human trafficking are soon confronted with the tension between prosecution and protection. And right from the Palermo Protocol, we see that this tension has not been held well: The Protocol had some articles that were obligatory for nations that signed and other articles that were optional. The articles addressing concerns of prosecution were obligatory; the articles on protecting human rights were optional.

We see a similar kind of development in Canada where our national response to human trafficking has focused primarily on efforts to prosecute traffickers and only secondarily on efforts to protect the human rights of people who have been trafficked. So, we have a Temporary Resident Permit (TRP) which gives temporary status (180 days for a reflection period) to people who have been trafficked but it is critically flawed; so much so that those who should be accessing this permit choose not to do so because they don’t feel sufficiently protected by the process. And even though, a person doesn’t have to be cooperating with law enforcement to receive the initial TRP, NGOs are seeing that the trafficked person’s TRP is unlikely to get extended without that cooperation with law enforcement. This leaves the survivor between a rock and hard place: frightened that they will get deported if their story is not believed by the CIC officer and frightened of what will happen if they testify.  In fact, many internationally trafficked persons choose to go underground when they finally escape from their trafficker because most have huge debts to pay and they can’t take the chance of being deported before they pay off these debts. As a result, they may end up in a situation that is worse than the one they just left.

Canada can and must do better for its temporary foreign workers.  This is key to the prevention of human trafficking.  But then, once we are dealing with situations of human trafficking, it is critical to hold the tension between prosecution and protection.  Ironically, when we lose our hold on this tension, and the emphasis is on prosecution over protection, it actually undermines the prosecution side of the equation because, when people don’t feel protected enough to come forward, it’s that much easier for traffickers to get away with their crimes.